REEL LIFE / FILM & VIDEO FILE : ‘Drug Dealer to Stars’ Is Local Tie to O.J. Trial : The Ventura resident’s tattletale book, ‘The Hollywood Connection,’ has made him a popular guest on a variety of TV talk shows.

For a while it seemed that one of the best things about Ventura County was that nobody here was trying to make a buck off the O.J. Simpson case. It turns out that Reel Life was just watching the wrong programs.

Ventura does have a home-grown O.J. opportunist. He’s Rayce Newman, and if you’ve been bottom-feeding on the tabloid end of the television spectrum, you’ve met him: the “authority” on coke-sniffing movie stars.

The publishers of his tattletale book, “The Hollywood Connection,” tout Newman as “drug dealer to the stars,” a sobriquet that has earned him spots on “Hard Copy” (six times), “A Current Affair”(five times) and “Geraldo” (four times).

Actually he should be called “drug dealer to the stars, emeritus.” At age 32, Newman says he’s clean. He’s married, a new father and has been living in Ventura since 1992. Pretty mundane stuff, and not at all the sort of material that’s going to have Maury Povich calling up.

So along comes the O.J. Simpson case and--what luck! Newman claims to have known Nicole Simpson for a year just before he left the club scene and got clean. He said he even supplied coke to her once, so what the heck, that’s enough for a book, right? And some TV appearances? You darn betcha.

That was Newman being interviewed Tuesday by Kathleen Sullivan on “E!” during a break in the trial.

The publicity put out by his publisher, S.P.I. Books, blares, “Newman knew alot about Simpson. From the many prostitutes O.J. hired from Rayce to the drugs O.J. did. Newman knew it all. In fact, O.J. and Marcus Allen had sex with Faye Resnick.”

Newman, on the other hand, said the book is mainly about how “a skinny white kid from Ventura got involved in the O.J. Simpson case.”

Involved! Hello?

Of the 280 pages, 74 are transcripts of a taped interview he had with one of Simpson’s investigators probing him for a possible drug angle to the murders. An additional 20 pages are photos and 50 more pages are devoted to Faye Resnick, who appears to have been a naughty, naughty girl.

As for knowing a lot about Simpson: “Well, I didn’t know him actually. I met him one time when he asked me for drugs and I didn’t have any.”

One thing you have to give Newman credit for, whether you believe or even care about what he says, is his honesty about the motivation for writing an O.J. book. It’s the money. He’s just going through a weird transition from dope dealer to average schmo.

“I wish I could write a great novel, but drugs and Hollywood is what I know about,” he said. “My wife is tired of the whole media thing, the books and the smut. She wants me to come home, play with baby, not fly to New York to be on “Geraldo.” I circled some want ads for a job as administrative assistant. I type 90 words per minute.”

But in the meantime, Maury Povich is on the other line.