This playboy’s first love?

“Everything I learned about love,I learned from the movies,” Hefner said. “The reality is because I was not shown affection,I escaped into an alternate universe,and it came right out of the movies. Love for me is defined almost exclusively in terms of romantic love as defined by the films of my childhood.”

Hefner might finally see a version of himself as a child up on the screen; a biographical film is ramping up. Brian Grazer is the producer,Robert Downey Jr. is keenly interested in the starring role and Brett Ratner has been lined up to direct. “Brian made a comment that I was the only man who had made love to over a thousand women and they all still liked him. And I do take some pride,in fact,that I remain friends with the majority of former wives and girlfriends. I am a romantic.”

The biopic will be co-produced by Playboy’s Alta Loma Entertainment,his production company,which is redoubling its efforts in Hollywood. The company was started in the ‘70s and,after years of making soft-core porn,was a limited partner in August’s The House Bunny. Alta Loma is following that with the R-rated Miss March.

For decades,movie screenings have been a tradition at the Playboy mansion. Hefner used to screen two new films every week but,in the 1990s,he surrendered to the fact that the contemporary cinema output just doesn’t yield 104 good movies a year. Now,Friday nights are for new films while Sunday nights are for the classics.

“This literally is a second home for a great many of my friends. I think on my passing a lot of my friends are going to be lost socially,” Hefner said. The mansion and its master have become symbols of refined debauchery,and Hefner has carefully cultivated that imagery. The library shelves are dominated with books on Hollywood history,and it’s surprising,perhaps,that Hefner hasn’t put himself in their pages in a bigger way since moving west in 1971,the year he produced Roman Polanski’s grim and gory The Tragedy of Macbeth. It became Polanski’s first film after the 1969 murder of his pregnant wife,Sharon Tate,during the Manson family attacks.

During production,the movie was lagging behind schedule and the company that had insured the film was pushing for Polanski to be replaced. “I told them,‘Polanski is our star; he’s the reason we’re making the movie,’ so we gave up the insurance policy,and I covered the film myself,” Hefner said. “The film was directly related to the murders. There was a moment in which,during the murder scene,he misaddressed the actress as ‘Sharon’. It was such a dark and cathartic project. I only wish I had produced his next film,Chinatown.”
_Geoff Boucher,LATWP