MOCKING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU : WRITER JOHN GREGORY DUNNE TELLS TRYING TALE OF EIGHT-YEAR ODYSSEY TO CREATE DISNEY FILM.

Byline: Mary F. Pols Daily News Staff Writer

Nobody bats an eyelash when a slender young man wearing a black suit walks through the dining room of the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills with a cell phone clamped between his hand and his ear.

Except for John Gregory Dunne. The writer pauses in mid-sentence, fairly gaping at the fellow as he makes his way to a table, still chatting away on the phone. Dunne blinks, then refocuses on his morning melon and toast.

``Cell phones,'' he says in a tone of genuine wonder, shaking his head.

Dunne is no country bumpkin. Married to elegant essayist Joan Didion, brother to Vanity Fair regular Dominick Dunne, uncle to filmmaker/actor Griffin Dunne, and the author of 10 books and many screenplays (written with Didion), Dunne has spent most of his years living in either New York or Los Angeles.

By all rights, cell phones shouldn't surprise him. In fact, he should probably own one.

But he chooses not to. He's a consummate insider and yet a deliberate outsider. And he brings that same perspective that reacts to the cell phone, that air of gentle bemusement, to his new book on the inner workings of the movie business, ``Monster: Living off the Big Screen'' (Random House; $21).

Writing of his experience as a screenwriter-for-hire, he toys with Hollywood like a rather gentlemanly and elderly cat. It's clear he could shred this industry town, but instead he chooses to poke fun at it, swiping with a sheathed paw, not a cruel one.

He's frank without being nasty, despite the fact that what he is recounting in ``Monster,'' the eight-year process of bringing the Disney romance ``Up Close and Personal'' to the screen, sounds as if it would have tried the patience of a saint.

Plugging the `Monster'

A slim 203 pages, ``Monster'' is already in its fifth printing after being released only a month ago, doubtless helped by two extremely favorable reviews in The New York Times. Dunne has been hitting the book tour circuit hard, plugging ``Monster'' on television, radio, in print and in bookstores. He swung through Los Angeles recently, combining two days of media interviews with visits to old friends.

Since he finished writing ``Monster'' 15 months ago, Dunne claims to be a little fuzzy on its details. But he has a vivid memory of all the time and energy he and Didion spent on the screenplay for ``Up Close and Personal.'' He never expected a cakewalk, but then again he never expected to devote nearly a decade to what started out as straight biographical telling of newswoman Jessica Savitch's life and early death.

``I am a professional writer,'' Dunne says. ``The thing is you don't think going into a movie that it is going to take eight years and 27 drafts to produce it.''

Still, he's not bitter about the experience. It was good money, and he readily admits that is what it was about.

``When you do something for eight years, it does become about money,'' Dunne says.

``In the movie business, you know what the terms are,'' he adds. ``I was no child when I first went into the movies, I was 35. If I were 22, it (the ``Up Close and Personal'' saga) would have driven me crazy.''

Although the book details the process of making ``Up Close and Personal,'' from the first contract to its box-office take, Dunne hastens to point out that ``Monster'' is not technically about the movie. It's more a portrait of a professional writer's life.

``I wanted to do a book about the eight years and all the other stuff that happened during that time,'' he says.

The writing life

Five people who were very important to Dunne and Didion died during that time, including her father. Dunne went through heart surgery. Both of them worked on numerous other projects, including novels and essays. In a sense, Hollywood funded their more ``important'' work.

One of these was Dunne's New Yorker piece on a bizarre murder story from Nebraska, a news nugget he discovered buried in Newsday back in 1994. As he talks warmly about reporting that lengthy piece, which delves into sex and violence within the white underclass, he seems far more excited about it than about the movie business. It's true, he admits, that he prefers that end product to ``Up Close and Personal.'' But he said he didn't go into either project with that expectation.

``You don't start off with the end product,'' Dunne says. ``You start out with what you hope it will be.''

Initially he and Didion did have high hopes for ``Up Close and Personal.'' Savitch's life was fascinating, although extremely bleak; she died young, in a car crash, after wrestling with addiction, professional failure and abusive relationships.

But those hopes began to ebb with a series of inane memos on their first draft from Disney executives who clearly wanted something perkier.

By 1990, he and Didion were trying to limit their involvement in the project, politely declining to do the umpteenth rewrite for Disney, dodging one producer by leaving messages for him at 4 a.m. when they knew he wouldn't be at the office and even flat out quitting.

They were finally lured back into the project by Robert Redford, who had signed onto the film in part because he liked the Dunne-Didion script. Redford wasn't happy with rewrites done by their replacements. He arranged a meeting in his Connecticut farmhouse with ``Up Close and Personal'' director Jon Avnet, who the couple had developed a dislike for.

``We just didn't hit it off,'' Dunne says, leaning across the breakfast table to emphasize the antipathy.

Strangely enough, after the Redford meeting, their relationship with Avnet turned friendly - very friendly. Dunne even dedicated the book to the director.

And ``Monster,'' for all its mocking honesty, doesn't seem to have made Dunne any enemies in Hollywood. He and Didion just finished a quick rewrite in January for Avnet on a script for ``Red Corner'' a Richard Gere thriller now shooting. Even Disney isn't bearing any grudges.

``People say to me, have you burned all your bridges?'' Dunne says. ``No. We just got offered a picture by Disney two weeks ago. We just finished another picture. Actually we could be booked until 2001 except that we want to take some time off.''

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Photo: `The thing is you don't think going into a movie that it is going to take eight years and 27 drafts to produce it.'

John Gregory Dunne

on the process of bringing ``Up Close and Personal'' to the screen