High Loon

By JAY COCKS

HEARTS OF THE WEST Directed by HOWARD ZIEFF Screenplay by ROB THOMPSON

Lewis Tater has made it to Hollywood. Hollywood does not notice.

Hearts of the West, funny, jaunty and a little wistful, concerns Lewis' pleasantly unlikely adventures in movieland of the 1930s. Lewis (Jeff Bridges) is not far enough into adulthood to know he is there, but in any case his head is full of the prime fantasies of good pulp fiction. He wants to be a writer, particularly of cowboy stories, most specifically like those of his idol, Zane Grey. Lewis has the master's formula down pretty tight ("One thing leads to another, and pretty soon he's got a story"), and can emulate his prose with zest ("A Colt in either hamlike fist, The Kid . . .").

So thorough is Lewis' dedication to Western fiction that he leaves the family farm in Iowa to enroll in a Nevada college that promises to put the finishing touches on his art. Instead, the college puts them to Lewis. The entire faculty consists of two con men in the back room of a fleabag hotel, bilking suckers by mail. Fleeing this harsh reality, Lew is also accidently makes off with a strongbox full of several thousand dollars worth of tuition money bamboozled from the suckers of the nation's heartland. Wandering in the desert, lugging the strongbox, Lewis is suddenly set upon by . . . cowboys. Dreams do come true, at least for a while.

The cowboys, stunt men in the employ of a poverty-row outfit called Tumbleweed Productions, give Lewis a lift to Hollywood and set him down on his own. He picks up a little work as an extra, hangs around the Tumbleweed offices, gets tight with a grizzled old coot named Howard Pike (Andy Griffith), has a shot at being a cowboy star himself, meets a girl (Blythe Banner), works on his novel, and tries to stay away from the two con men who have tracked him all the way to L.A., looking for their strongbox.

Blithe Humor. Hearts of the West, Director Howard Zieff's second movie, abounds in happy eccentricity and cleverness, blithe good humor about fate and a buoyant faith in the happy ending. Lewis, the dumb but ingratiating innocent, is treated with the sort of subdued affection that never becomes condescending. The movie is well served too by an engaging Jeff Bridges and an altogether nifty cast of freshly minted characters, among whom Alan Arkin may be observed in full and wondrous cry. Arkin appears as an unctuous, anxious director named Kessler, a creation of devastating sardonic accuracy. His directions to his cowboy extras, delivered in a tone of hollow camaraderie, are depressingly, hilariously on the mark:

"Men, keep it simple but make me believe it." Arkin about steals the movie out from under everybody else.

If there is a catch to all the movie's charms, it is simply that Hearts of the West stays stubbornly slight, a spell that does not linger long. On his next outing, Director Zieff might try to extend himself a little further. Hearts of the West shows he has talent enough to take the risk.

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