"Even if they dropped the charges against me back in New York and I could walk free, I don't think I'd wanna go back," concluded Fugitive Radical Abbie Hoffman, 38. Facing a 15-year to life prison term if convicted on drug-dealing charges in New York, Hoffman has been on the lam since jumping bail 13 months ago. In an interview with Ron Rosenbaum of New Times and TV Documentary Producer Michael Shamberg, Hoffman described in considerable detail his new life as a member of the underground. Not only has he undergone plastic surgery, claimed the onetime Yippie leader, but he took a daytime job for a while, began going to night classes, married a second time, and even survived a minor drug arrest without being recognized. The cat-and-mouse game between fugitive radicals and the police "is the greatest show in the world, and I got the best seats there are," boasted Abbie. "I'm almost grateful to the cops who busted me for making me get off my ass. What's there to go back for, anyway? You get tired of sitting around telling the same old stories." sb

"I'm here to swim," asserted Actor Dustin Hoffman, explaining his relaxed ways at the Cannes Film Festival. Hoffman, a contender for the festival's Best Actor award for his performance in Lenny, had the look of a winner as he held court with his wife Anne. Despite his swimming schedule, the actor met with Directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Constantin Costa-Gavras and Francois Truffaut. "It's been nice not just shaking hands with them but getting together around a table and talking cinema," he said later. Hoffman, however, declined to reveal any plans to work with one of the three directors. When a reporter asked what he expected to be doing in ten years, Dustin quipped, "The way things are going in medicine and technology, I might well be having a baby."

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"My eyes are so swollen. I had too much vino last night," complained Playwright Tennessee Williams. With a new novel, Moise and the World of Reason, just off the presses and a play, The Red Devil Battery Sign, opening on Broadway in August, Williams had an excuse for his revels. Last week he got together with the cast at the first rehearsal. Written two years ago while Williams was in Tangier, Battery Sign casts Anthony Quinn as a Mexican street musician, Katy Jurado as his wife and Claire Bloom as his downtown diversion. "I have never had a part before that was so me," proclaimed Quinn, who will be making his first Broadway appearance in 14 years. Like Williams, Quinn had a few battle scars from the previous evening. "I got bitten on the cheek last night by a girl because I wouldn't go dancing," he explained, adding: "I wanted to be fresh for today."

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Daytime tube watchers have recently been getting less spice and more sobriety from Galloping Gourmet Graham Kerr. "I think the Lord is changing my future," said the TV cook after announcing his new membership in the Church of the Brethren. Kerr, who long combined TV tippling with saucy commentary, traces the start of his reformation to a 1971 auto accident that left him partly paralyzed. Subsequently there were family problems and financial setbacks. One night last March, says the British-born gourmet, he suddenly found himself on his knees in his hotel room. Recalls Kerr: "I said, 'I love you, Jesus.' He was just like a giant can opener, and he rolled back the ceiling. And he was saying, 'Fine, I love you too. Welcome aboard.' " Kerr's old fans may regret his conversion when they see the series he is now taping. Gone are the double-entendres of the past, the cracks about chicken breasts and hazel nuts. What's more, adds Kerr, his forthcoming cookbook, The New Seasoning, will reveal "how Jesus Christ manages to get into my kitchen."

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"The people were all being very relaxed. They put me at ease," said the novice actor after rehearsing his big scene in All the President's Men. The "people" included Robert Redford, who portrays Washington Post Reporter Bob Woodward, and the assessment was made by Frank Wills, 27, the Watergate guard whose late-night snooping led to the Waterburglars' capture three years ago. Wills, who is re-creating his real-life role at the actual spot where he discovered tape on the Watergate basement door, is philosophical about the hard times that followed his historic moment. "I don't feel that I have received too much or too little attention," he said last week. "As I see it, I had my job to do and I did it." Now a college security guard in Washington, D.C., Wills has no illusion about a future in acting. Warner Bros., he pointed out, has given him only a five-day contract.

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Former White House Wunderkind Egil Krogh Jr., whose government career had apparently gone down the drain with the Nixon "plumbers," has resurfaced, buoyant as ever. After serving four months in jail for his role in the 1971 burglary of Psychiatrist Lewis Fielding's office, Krogh, 35, has been hired as a legislative assistant by California Congressman Pete McCloskey Jr. 'I think it's a shame to waste that kind of talent," said McCloskey of his new aide, who now shares a crowded Washington, D.C., office with two other McCloskey assistants. Declared the new Krogh: "I've got a lot of catching up to do in a lot of areas, but I'm very, very grateful to get back into government." sb By now, Actors Richard Burton, James Coburn and Charlotte Rampling may consider their new film Jackpot a loser. Production on the movie, which stars Burton as a has-been actor who suddenly wins an Academy Award, has stalled for lack of money, stranding the cast on the French Riviera. "I have another film to make in Mexico, and I can't wait much longer," threatened Rampling last week. Burton, however, seems content in the presidential suite of Nice's Hotel Negresco with former Playboy Playmate Jean Bell, 22, who appears as Burton's nurse in the new film. Although Richard's old flame, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, was scheduled to make her movie debut in Jackpot, she eventually ended up on the cutting-room floor. "If we don't get money quick," said one studio hand last week, "so will Burton, Bell, Rampling and everybody else."

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There was no red carpet to welcome Actor John Amos back to East Orange, N.J., but then the star of TV's Good Times wasn't walking anyway. Amos, who spent some scuffling years as an auto worker and garbage collector before hitting the big time on television, celebrated "John Amos Day" in East Orange from the back of a sanitation truck. It was "beautiful going home again," said the actor after retracing his old collection route. "But I missed the people who were not there, the friends who had O.D.'d, who were in prison. It made me realize how fortunate I was to have escaped." Which may explain Amos' almost complete lack of nostalgia about his old job. Said he: "It was great to know I could get off that truck and not go back."

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