THE `BUZZ' ON SCREENWRITER IS GOOD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Albert ``Buzz'' Bezzerides wrote some of the more flavorful films of the 1940s and '50s, Nicholas Ray's primal ``On Dangerous Ground'' and the noir apocalypse adaptation of Mickey Spillane's ``Kiss Me Deadly'' among them.

The subject of the documentary ``Buzz'' was also Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum's favorite dialogue doctor. And he was pals with much-better-known authors William Faulkner and William Saroyan, among others.

Additionally, at age 98, the Turkey-born, Fresno-raised son of a Greek father and Armenian mother is still kicking around his ramshackle Woodland Hills home, shouting like any screenwriter worth his salt about how Hollywood screwed him. With missing teeth and sheepdog eyebrows, Buzz still nurtures the sharp, critical view of the world that informed his best books and scripts -- and even at his most nostalgic moments disdains sentimentality like a cancer. It's a ball listening to him gripe.

Two hours of it, though, is a bit much. And Greek director Spiro N. Taraviras doesn't present his material in anything like a scintillating manner. He makes the crucial mistake of going in straight chronological order, and there really isn't very much interesting about Bezzerides' immigrant background or college days at the University of California at Berkeley. He would've been better, perhaps, to revisit that stuff after focusing on some of Buzz's movieland adventures, which cover the gamut from run-ins with moguls to fighting for story integrity (and usually losing) to the fear and loathing of the anti-communist witch hunts.

Apparently unable to access (or afford) actual footage from films such as ``They Drive by Night'' and ``Track of the Cat,'' Taraviras treats us to their vintage theatrical trailers instead. This doesn't give us much sense of Bezzerides' fine writing, but boy, were those things sexy as all get-out. Ever wanted to know why they call them teasers? This movie shows you.

Beside the always-entertaining Buzz, Taraviras interviews some actors he wrote for (Cloris Leachman, Terry Moore, Gloria Stuart) and director Jules Dassin, himself 95 and an Athens-based expatriate since the blacklist days. Friends, relatives and, of course, enthusiastic European critics contribute their views. The talking heads are broken up by unimaginative establishing shots of both San Francisco (Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars) and SoCal (palm-lined boulevards, Griffith Observatory).

But we sure get what makes Buzz distinctive: an unshakable belief that the rich and powerful will always cheat the average guy, and he crankily considers himself one of the latter to this day. Along with being a respectful portrait of an amusing, singular talent, the film also, by extension, fights the good fight for all of the overlooked creative types whose work make movies great while a few big names grab all the credit.

Bob Strass, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

BUZZ - Three stars

(Not rated: language)

Director: Spiro N. Taraviras.

Running time: 1 hr. 58 min.

Playing: Laemmle Fairfax, Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Biography of 98-year-old screenwriter Albert ``Buzz'' Bezzerides is often fascinating.