Steve Guttenberg is a nice guy. If you don't believe me, go to "Steve Guttenberg %u2014%u2014My Official Home on the Web" (http://www.steveguttenberg.com). There you can read all about Steve's film career and charitable efforts, look at bare-chested photos of the star, and even write him personally (steve@steveguttenberg.com). No snapshots though of Bucky, his golden retriever. Darn!

Steve, for those of you in your twenties, was once a rather big star. His hits included Diner (1982), Cocoon (1985), Short Circuit (1986), Three Men and a Baby (1987) and the brainlessly amusing The Police Academy series. There were also numerous disasters such as The Man who Wasn't There (1983) and one unforgettable gay camp classic, Can Stop the Music (1980). Yes, that's the one with The Village People and Bruce Jenner.

Not satisfied with how his career has gone lately, Steve last year decided to direct and star in James Kirkwood's once popular and controversial novel, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead (1972). Kirkwood, you might recall, wrote the musical Chorus Line%u2014%u2014and the play version of this book was starring Sal Mineo when he stabbed to death.

Steve's film version, which is now on DVD and video, is an extremely pleasant affair. I mean how could you not like a tale about a straight man who captures a gay burglar on New Year's Eve, ties him down with his *** exposed, and then becomes his friend?

But why was Steve attracted to this material in the first place for his directorial debut?

"Oh, I believe in myself," Steve insists, "and I believe in the piece, and I believe in the theme of the piece which is no matter where you are in life, no matter how bad it gets, you can always fight and win, and always come back. You know, I first saw P.S. Your Cat is Dead off-Broadway when I was a teenager. It'd been optioned by all the studios over the last 30 years, and I had the opportunity to get it when there was a window of time in October of '99 that it wasn't owned. I just snapped it up."

Of course, the book and the play based on it are less unnerving today. What was radical in the seventies now seems endearing. Does the actor/director realize this?

"When it first came out in the seventies," Steve says, "the gay culture, the homosexual culture, was really such a taboo, but today you have shows like Will and Grace, Six Feet Under, Queer as Folk, movies like The Birdcage which really show a bit more of the gay culture. Some are a little bit too stereotypical but the fact is that underneath all the skin, we're all the same."

Of course, we might have to skin a few heterosexuals to prove this point, but more importantly, the thespian portraying the gay burglar, Lombardo Boyar, has a superb rear end which is on display for most of the film. Was Boyar's butt the reason he was hired? Would an actor with a saggy *** have destroyed the film?

"Well, you know, most behinds are probably nice. I'd have to really think about it," Steve ponders, proving once and for all, he is the most heterosexual man alive or at least not a butt-man.

Moving back in time for a second, I ask about Can't Stop the Music. Did Steve know it would be a glorious disaster?

"I might have smelled a rat during it," he offers. "I might have thought that it wasn't going to go as great as I thought it was going to go. But the musical numbers were so incredible, and it did have (producer)Alan Carr who was really on his game, and the Village People were very, very popular. I don't know. I couldn't tell really."

But how was it acting opposite the Village People, hundreds of hunky male extras, and a few pretty females?

"You know," Steve notes, "it depends on your attitude for every film. Every film can be fun even if they're terrors because you're making a movie. It's a great gift that the universe gives you as opposed to working at a desk crunching numbers somewhere. Or helping a lady into size 7-1/2 shoes, and she's really a 9. I look at filmmaking as 'you're really lucky if you're doing anything in the process of it and making a living.' "

And we're really lucky Steve Guttenberg is persevering.