People Like Those Found Only in L.A. : Books: ‘An Inconvenient Woman,’ Dominick Dunne’s new novel, takes aim at Southland’s social set.

It was only a matter of time before author Dominick Dunne decided to turn his attention westward and give the bluebloods of Los Angeles some attention. After writing two novels chronicling the lives, loves and scandals of the moneyed and powerful members of the East Coast social circuit, he’s come up with “An Inconvenient Woman,” set in Los Angeles. The book, his fourth (already sold as a miniseries to ABC), takes up with the lives of the old guard and Hollywood nouveau riche. Although the two groups have seldom been known to cross paths, they do in this book, with murders and dangerous liaisons shaking the foundations of some seemingly perfect lives.

After two novels--”The Two Mrs. Grenvilles” and “People Like Us”--dealing with East Coast society, Dunne explains why he decided to take his focus west.

“I’ll tell you one thing, I lived in Los Angeles for many years, and it is an utterly fascinating city,” says the 64-year-old former movie producer, now a contributing editor of Vanity Fair magazine. “I’ve had enormous happiness there, and enormous unhappiness there. I’ve sort of gone through the spectrum. But I’ve always been interested in how the groups do not overlap the way they do in New York.

“I’ve never understood it, but I’ve always been fascinated by it. The kind of old guard Los Angeles who belong to the L.A. Country Club really are totally into themselves. It’s not like the ladies who go to the Bistro, they don’t sit there and talk about the movie stars at the next table. They might even live next door to celebrities, but they don’t care, and they don’t relate to them. It goes the other way, too. The movie world has no fascination for the social world. . . . I still don’t think they do for the most part. I think one of the best things that happened to L.A. was the Music Center, because it did bring those various groups together.”

Scandal-driven downfalls of a city’s most prominent citizens are a recurring theme in Dunne’s previous novels. It’s a case where art obviously imitates life. He has to look no farther than the newspaper to find models like Donald and Ivana Trump, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.

So why is it that we revel in seeing the mighty fall so hard?

“It isn’t that we’re tearing them down,” he says. “They’re tearing themselves down. Nobody tore down Mike Milken. Nobody is tearing down Trump. And I think you only relish seeing them fall if you think they’ve abused the system. Certainly Mr. Milken abused the system. I think it’s wonderful that they haven’t gotten away with it. There’s something about Donald Trump, that his ego has so kind of gotten in the way of his life. Donald rode high for so long, he was kind of due for a fall.”

So far, he says, “An Inconvenient Woman,” due out next month, hasn’t caused too many social moths to turn the book into a brainteaser as they try to determine on whom the characters are based, as they’ve done with his previous books.

“I don’t think I’ve ever written a one-on-one character,” he says. (Although he has admitted to close correlations in the past, including Gus Bailey, who mirrors Dunne himself in “People Like Us.”) “I’ve always put three or four people together. A friend of mine said this book goes beyond the guessing game, and if that’s what people are doing, they’re missing the point of the book. Someone else said they loved the book, and they’ve already guessed who everyone was. I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

Dunne called L.A. home from the ‘50s through the ‘70s, when he produced such films as “The Boys in the Band” and “The Panic in Needle Park.” The source of his “enormous unhappiness” in L.A. could be the death of his daughter Dominique, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1982.

“An Inconvenient Woman” isn’t the first book Dunne has set in L.A. His first, “The Winners,” dealt with the inner workings of the movie industry. He readily admits it was a flop.

“Listen, nobody read ‘The Winners,’ that just sort of passed by,” but he still has “great affection” for the novel. Some characters who appeared in “The Winners” crop up again in “An Inconvenient Woman.” Actually, Dunne threads some of the same characters through all of his novels.

“I do that to show that there is a continuation of life, even though ‘The Two Mrs. Grenvilles’ took place in the ‘50s and this takes place in the ‘90s. It reminds us that these groups keep going on.”

He keeps in tentative touch with the L.A. social scene through sporadic visits here. “When I go back now,” he says, “I really sort of don’t go out very much. When I’m there it’s usually to do a story for Vanity Fair. My former wife, with whom I’m very close, is there, and I’ve got some great chums there. . . . I was out there recently and went to (literary agent Irving) Lazar’s Academy Awards party. I always have a great time at that; it’s a wonderful way to catch up with people.”

His exclusive contract with Vanity Fair has resulted in profiles of Candy (Mrs. Aaron) Spelling, Imelda Marcos, Diane Keaton, Claus von Bulow and Elizabeth Taylor. Dunne is now writing about “a wedding that recently didn’t take place in Venice between a great Australian heiress, who turned out not to be an heiress, and a Venetian prince, who turned out not to be a prince.” He laughs mischievously and adds: “The wedding was canceled at the last minute. But that’s what I love about working for Vanity Fair. You wake up one morning and get a call and it’s someone saying, ‘Can you go to Venice tonight?’ ”

Dunne heaps credit on editor-in-chief Tina Brown for his late-in-life success as a magazine writer. “I met her at a dinner at the home of (fellow contributing editor) Marie Brenner. I had just left Hollywood and was here in New York and trying to write ‘Grenvilles.’ This was before she was editor of Vanity Fair, and I knew she was this English girl who was with the Tattler. So I got a call from her and she said, ‘You know, you should be writing for magazines.’ I said, ‘Listen, I’m just learning how to write a book.’ And she said, ‘I could teach you.’ She recognized that I had something.”

Access to the rich and infamous affords Dunne fodder for his novels. For years he’s managed to maintain a delicate balance between befriending the social elite and writing about them. But not all his subjects have been thrilled with his stories. “Listen, some people get mad at me. I don’t think Claus von Bulow wants to have dinner with me, but I don’t want to have dinner with him, either.”

He says he never sets out to skewer his subjects. “I would hate to make a fool of anybody. That’s irresponsible. Besides, people are too damned interesting. If you know how to interview them right, let them do it to themselves.”

Still, after years of viewing firsthand the world’s moneyed and powerful, Dunne isn’t the least bit jaded by some of the scenes he has witnessed.

Imelda Marcos, for instance, allowed him a four-hour interview at the deposed couple’s Hawaiian hide-out while Ferdinand was at the dentist. “When he came back and saw me there I could tell he was mad,” Dunne recalls. “He was furious with her. They got into a fight in front of me. Now, I can’t talk about foreign policy, but to see this couple that the whole world was focused on, that was fascinating.”

Dunne is also at work on a Vanity Fair piece about Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers accused of murdering their parents.

His book tour kicks off as the miniseries version of “People Like Us” has just aired on NBC. A recent TV Guide article, titled “Author: TV Botched My Bestseller,” portrayed Dunne as being displeased with the show’s final script.

“I haven’t read the piece,” he explains, “but God knows I’ve had it read to me. The headline says something about it being botched. I never said that. I know the network is really upset with me. I stand behind those quotes, and I still retain my opinion about the fact that people writing screenplays ought to consult with the author. But I was talking in generalities about adaptations. I was a movie producer for years, and I changed other people’s works. All the good stuff that I said--and I spoke very highly of the producer, that I knew how hard he fought to retain as much of the book as he could--none of that is mentioned.”

With the miniseries over, what’s pressing now are his Vanity Fair deadlines and the book tour. A billboard ad for the book is due on Sunset Boulevard soon.

He chuckles at the thought of it. “It’s like a cheap dream, isn’t it?”