The Club Guy : To his fans, Rudolf <i> is</i> nightlife. The veteran clubographer is out to wake up the L.A. scene.

Tatou is six hours away from opening. The tables haven’t been set and the rug has yet to be vacuumed, but Rudolf is already on the scene.

He strides upstairs to his office with the book “Art Under Stalin,” Bikini magazine and a green apple tucked under his arm. A few minutes later, an underling asks him to choose a typeface for the company’s Christmas cards.

“I like the script, but the (wording), I mean, it’s too corporate: ‘The friendship of those we serve is the foundation of our progress.’ C’mon, now, no way!” Rudolf says. “We have no progress and we don’t serve. We don’t serve. McDonald’s serves. We . . . we entertain. And we have no progress. Progress is a notion, of, like, a fascist dictatorship or something.”

Such is the life of a nightclub owner--part glamour, part annoying administrative details.

Rudolf, a weathered veteran of the club life, foreign and domestic, will turn the big 5-0 next year. He is part owner of Tatou, Beverly Hills’ newest and hippest nightspot-plex, incorporating a restaurant, bar and club over two stories and several thousand square feet. In the space of the former Max au Triangle restaurant, it has an upscale ‘40s supper-club feel, with fake palm trees bowing gracefully over deep red banquettes and fabric-draped walls.

And if the name Rudolf isn’t yet synonymous with L.A. nightlife, it probably soon will be.

Like Cher, Fabio and Madonna, the tall, slender German expatriate lopped off his surname--Pieper--years ago. Some people add the Club Guy when talking about him because, to them, Rudolf is nightlife.

“To me, he represents the best cross-blending of creative and commercial elements,” says Michael Musto, a veteran New York nightlifer who writes a column for the Village Voice. “Too many people are only in clubs to make a buck. (But) he really enjoys his parties.”

Rudolf also has quite the impressive resume. His clubography entails owning, running or acting as consultant at nightspots in his hometown of Berlin, in Rio, Tokyo and Bangkok. His New York clubs included Mars, Danceteria, Tunnel, Palladium and Studio 54 (the post-disco palace incarnation). Some--like the huge, multi-floor warehouse that became Mars--drew thousands and were notorious for turning away the un-hip.

“When I was in Berlin,” he says, “I realized I was spending most of my time and money going to nightclubs. I thought they were inferior and thought I could do it better.”

Not quite the line of work you’d expect from someone with a doctorate in economics from the University of Berlin.

If Rudolf ever penned his autobiography, he might call it “Enigmatic Like Me.” One minute he is discussing East German politics (“I think one reason communism failed was that people were bored”); the next, he’s laughing and making superficial small talk with a ditzy performance artist. He appreciates technology, yet keeps phone numbers on a worn yellow legal pad and writes notes on tiny pieces of white memo paper.

Rudolf’s unfinished, under-furnished office never stays quiet for more than a few minutes. The day is punctuated by meetings with promoters, meetings with decorators, phone calls, questions from employees. At 7 p.m., he puts on his jacket over a black shirt and black jeans and checks on the restaurant, making sure that the regulars are greeted and that the doorman is handling the nightclub crowd.

Rudolf is good at schmoozing. Very good. He can make a guy in polyester flared pants and robin’s-egg blue cowboy boots feel like the hippest thing since Barbie’s boyfriend Ken started sporting an earring.

Some might view the nightlife scene as nothing more than a bunch of people standing around talking, drinking and/or dancing, but to Rudolf, it’s a sociological study.

“The scene in L.A. is still very incipient, but it’s getting much better,” he says with lingering traces of a German accent. “Now, for instance, there are things to do seven nights a week. In the last five years, there’s been real progress. But nightlife is still not considered an important part of life the way it is in New York or some cities in Europe. People judge the degree of sophistication of a city by many aspects, one of them being the quality of its nightlife.

“Society is almost molded in nightclub tendencies. Maybe it’s hard to believe, but if you look at the past, the Russian Revolution was probably brewed in some smoky Paris bar, the Nazi party was probably started in some brewery. It’s a caldron of new ideas, good or bad. It’s a way of shaping up what the future should be, or could be. After all, modern art wasn’t started in a health club in the morning.”

But nightclubs do not live by smoke and crowds alone. There must be some hook, and in New York, Rudolf found that hook: exclusivity, fostered by The Myth.

The Myth is the code by which Rudolf ruled his clubs, and it goes like this:

“The vision of Studio 54 was to give the image of a great VIP place where nobody could get in. But the fact was that they had 4,000 people there every night. So even in a city like New York, yes, there are a lot of fabulous people there, but not 4,000 every night. So on a bad night, when you had, say, 2,000 people waiting at the door, you picked the best of those 2,000 and left the rest out. But the best out of this 2,000 may not have been so great. The Myth was there . . . but it’s just a myth.

“I think the secret really is to make a club big enough that it can accommodate everybody, but at the same time you can make The Myth. . . . I think this is a totally excusable way of getting the right people and keeping them. And I think that the right people are all very fashion-conscious.”

And what of those stuck behind the ropes for all eternity?

“The people who don’t get it, I don’t want them in because nobody else wants them in, either. It’s one thing if you live in Peru and you look like a schlump, because you don’t know better, you don’t have access to communication and the fashion is not made there, there is no major couture locally. So I think you have an excuse over there to look bad and have the wrong haircut.

“But to live in New York or in L.A. and look disgusting, I mean, what magazines are you reading, what TV do you watch? If you don’t know how to dress, you’re just out, man, you know? What do you want in life?”

But it’s a kinder, gentler world at Tatou, which Rudolf opened almost a year ago on Beverly Drive with a partner from his Studio 54 days, Mark Fleischman.

“It goes against The Myth that only the best and the brightest come to Tatou,” he says. “This is a club and a restaurant that is basically available and open to a lot of people, and to make them feel good it’s sort of like a matter of schmoozing them. So I take care of regulars, normals (the non-trendy) and young (person) events, which is basically the upstairs and the bar. And I basically do the programming, while my partner (Fleischman), takes care of the business side.”

Although Tatou is packed on certain evenings with celebs ranging from Milton Berle to Shannen Doherty and has received favorable reviews, Rudolf isn’t foolish enough to believe that it can last forever. The recession, competition and a smaller pool of fabulous nightlifers mean Tatou can’t survive on word of mouth alone. That means a lot of promotion, as well as catering to “normals.”

Not that he seems to mind. Business, after all, is business.

He’s been successful at chameleon-izing the club, offering theme nights during the week. The hottest is China Club on Monday nights, a jam session of rock musicians that have included Billy Idol, Tanya Tucker and David Crosby. He just started a jazz jam on Wednesdays, and other theme nights are planned.

He leaves it to promoters to bring in the talent and the crowds.

“Rudolf always stays on top of the game,” says Jon Sidel, a former Rudolf protege who took charge of the rock ‘n’ roll floor at Mars. Sidel now runs L.A’s Olive restaurant and Small’s bar, two locales that have managed to survive way past the usual 6-to-12-month life span.

“He’s got a lot of energy and really goes out and spends time figuring out Los Angeles,” Sidel says of Rudolf. “And he doesn’t let anything bring him down. There are so many things that can, like permits, the drug scene, petty jealousy from competitors, women. None of that stuff brings him down. If a club doesn’t do well, it’s on to the next one.”

Then Sidel adds: “Our relationship (at Mars) was really funny. I never knew what he thought of me during the whole time. I always wondered why he liked me.”

Although he is extroverted and easygoing, Rudolf answers questions about his personal life quickly, with little embellishment.

He doesn’t get back to Berlin that often, even though his mother still lives there: “We don’t get along that well.”

Divorced amicably from his wife of eight years, the clubstress/author/bombshell Dianne Brill, he doesn’t have a steady girlfriend: “This life is not conducive to relationships.”

His mysterious side is appealing, says the Village Voice’s Musto. “It’s not like people who tell you everything over a cocktail. I like the fact that he keeps that side to himself, while at the same time being gregarious and outgoing. It’s a likable contradiction.”

Nearing the half-century mark, Rudolf is still plainly having the time of his life.

Is there anything L.A. lacks that he’d like to provide?

“I want to basically keep my eyes open, and I’d like to do something more cutting-edge, aside from Tatou,” he says. “I’m looking.”