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as in The Beguiled or the more recent and very sweet Bronco Billy, a film that he also directed, the audience is considerably smaller. Bronco Billy, for example, attracted less than a third of the au- dience than the Eastwood film that preceded it. Any Which Way You Can. Clint Eastwood is really only Clint Eastwood when he's the toughest guy on the block.
    And Reynolds, in the four years he's been at the top, is only Reynolds when he can get his hands on the wheel of a car and have extraordinary adventures. When he acts an ordinary guy (Starting Over) or Gary Grant (Rough Cut, Paternity), forget it.
    One Final extreme example: In the four years of his self-imposed retirement, Steve McQueen was getting unreal offers. A million a week for three weeks in two different movies, back-to- back. Six million for a month and a halfs work. He was the in- ternational star. Well, during that lime he made one movie, An Enemy of the People-
    -and no one would book it. (I think it tried a run some- where-maybe Minneapolis-and expired before the first fort- night.)
    The public didn't want McQueen in Ibsen, for chrissakes. They wanted bang-bang pictures, they had no interest in seeing him act.
    I'm sure McQueen knew that before he started An Enemy of the People. Just as I'm sure Reynolds knows where his power lies. So why docs he keep trying to expand his scope, why isn't he satisfied just doing Smokey?
    I don't know Reynolds, but I've followed his career enough to be positive of this: He's serious. He got his first stage part in 1956 and was good enough a year later to get cast in a major revival of Mister Roberts at New York's City Center. And he was good enough a few years after that to get one of the top roles in Look, We've Come Through by Hugh Wheeler, a writer who was good enough to win not one but three Tony awards.
    And look what Reynolds has been through. All those dreary tv series-Riverboat, Hawk, Dan August. And look at his earlier film doozies-Navajo Joe and Sam Whiskey and Shark! He was damn near two decades in the wilderness, doing crap because he had to; now, when he doesn't have to, why shouldn't he do what he pleases? (Why the studios continue to let him do what he pleases is a question we'll attack in the next section.)
    So there is this strange "something," this nerve that is struck simultaneously in audiences all around the world. And when that happens, it's like discovering a vein of gold. Which is, of course, wonderful. But which also makes for a certain nervous- ness, because no one can predict the richness of the vein, or its breadth, or its depth, or when it will run dry. . .. So, with the major exception aside, stars are essentially
    meaningless. Studio executives know this-they know that the picture is the star.
    But they are paying four million plus to Dustin Hoffman to appear in Tootsie. Of Hoffman's last three films, Agatha and Straight Time were disasters. The other was Kramer Vs. Kramer, for which he deserved every award he got. But don't tell me the picture would have stiffed if Redford or Nicholson had played the lead. The picture was the star. To repeat, studio executives know that to be true. They absolutely, positively, one hundred percent in their heart of hearts, in the dark nights of the souls, they know it. They just don't believe it, that's all. . - -
    EDUCATION
    Most stars don't have much formal education.
    (I know this must seem a bizarre and unimportant grace note, but please bear with me because I'd like to persuade you otherwise.) I think Barbra Streisand finished high school. I'm not sure Hoffman or Minnelli did. I think Jane Fonda may have had a year of college, Redford the same or less, Beatty the same or less, Travolta the same or less, Nicholson the same or less, many more the same or less. Now, this doesn't mean they're not bright. I've never met a star who wasn't clever and shrewd and loaded with more street smarts than I'll collect in a lifetime. What it does mean is this: early entry. And