Grownups in Hippieland

A lot of publications are earnestly making the scene these days, but not for very long. They hitch a ride with passing fads; when the fads run out of gas, they do too. One new monthly, Cheetah, has a better chance of survival because it covers all the current fads without being overly rapturous about them. It is, in fact, quite often acidly funny about them, which is calculated to turn hippies off but to turn other sorts of readers on. Unlike hippies, Cheetah people know their way around. Chairman of the Board Matty Simmons is a graduate of the Diners' Club, which he helped found; he put out its house publication, Signature, as well. Editor Lawrence Dietz, who has only three years left to scorn people over 30, freelanced for Sunday-newspaper magazines. Managing Editor Joel Boxer is only 23, but has had three months' training on the Wall Street Journal. "People over 30 either hate Cheetah or don't understand it," says Simmons, 41, saying what is expected of him. "People under 30 flip over it."

Free-Floating Libido. In the four issues that have appeared to date, one article examines the phenomenon of moviemaking at U.C.L.A. and speculates that many of the students turn to movies because they have found the literary life too strenuous. "Hunched over a Movieola like some anchoritic lama at his prayer wheel," says the piece, "the moviemaker imagines the medium an ideal outlet for free-floating artiness or supererogatory libidinousness. There was in fact at least one instance in which a director became so enamored of his leading lady that he wrote a nude love scene into the script and then played the male lead himself: ars gratia concupiscentis."

Another Cheetah contributor had the inventiveness to answer some of those lurid personal ads in the hippie newspaper, the East Village Other. For example: Man, 24, with insatiable appetite for sex, desires meeting uninhibited females for mutual satisfaction. No scruples. Am novice in Arts, but eager to learn. Modern wife consents. Call Ernie, (212) 265-3599. 9 a.m. to 11 p.m." The first time the writer called, all that she could hear was a child squalling loudly in the background and a harassed male voice that shouted, "Could you call me back in a few minutes?" When she did, he was all caution. "This may get you mad, but you'll have to give me your phone number and I'll call you back. I mean--well--you sound just fine, and I can tell it's all right, so I'll tell you something. I get a lot of calls from crackpots and curiosity seekers . . ." The result, as it was with all the other ardent seekers of love partners she called, was nil, and they wondered about what kind of hang-up it was that made her call.

Too Much Sun. Then there was a stream-of-consciousness interview with Actor Michael Pollard, who made it plain that he is no different off-camera from the engagingly befuddled garage attendant he plays in Bonnie and Clyde. He left Los Angeles, he said, because "I just didn't like the sun shining all the time." As for his looks, "Man when I got into show business you know everybody started saying, 'You've got a beautiful face. Beautiful face.' So uh then hey I looked in the mirror and I said, 'Hey yeah. They're right.' Khyem-muh. Rudolf Nureyev can't look like I look. You know like I guess you could say I got a unique face. I mean the only person who's got a face that even comes close to mine is Margaret Rutherford. That's my idol." Cheetah also uncovered the "first great mass producer of LSD," a University of Virginia drop-out named Augustus Owsley Stanley III. Operating in a way that might have made a financial success of Edgar Allan Poe, Owsley married a sensuous U.C.L.A. chemistry major and went into acid production in a laboratory near the Berkeley campus. He has turned out an estimated ten million pills, worth between $2 and $5 apiece.

Cheetahs still too young to have had an audit, but Simmons claims a circulation of 200,000 and says hopeful things about advertising. Simmons and Publisher Leonard Mogel have provided 50% of the financing; seven of their Wall Street friends have put up the other half. If Cheetah does not make it, however, Simmons has a more conventional iron in the fire. This month he brings out a magazine devoted to a fad that will doubtless never die: Weight-Watchers.

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