PBS doing special on gadfly Gore Vidal

LOS ANGELES -- You might think that Gore Vidal, the novelist, playwright, essayist, congressional candidate, TV personality and all-around American gadfly, would be mellowing at age 77.\nThink again. The tireless iconoclast, who published his first novel at 20 and has written 25 more, remains as feisty and prolific as ever.\nHis latest book is a paperback "pamphlet" called "Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta." And he's busy on another, "The Founding Fathers," in which he will claim that the leaders of the American Revolution were not as saintly as schoolbooks would have us believe.\nOther works in progress: a movie script, a reworking of his play "Visit to a Small Planet" and a possible Broadway musical about Oscar Wilde.\nHe's also the subject of an American Masters special, "The Education of Gore Vidal," which appears on PBS at 10 p.m. Wednesday. The hour-long show features a healthy dose of Vidal talking about himself, as well as comments by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., George Plimpton and others. There are also readings of Vidal's works by longtime chums Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. \nVidal questions the title, "The Education of Gore Vidal."\n"I had no education," he declared in an interview. "I graduated from Exeter (prep school) at 17 and went directly into the Army. I came out of the war with a novel, 'Williwaw,' for which I found a publisher. So from the age of 17 my father and grandfather didn't have to support me. Which made them very happy."\nHis father became head of the Civil Aviation Administration; his grandfather was a powerful senator from Oklahoma, who was blind. Vidal read the Congressional Digest to him and gained an early education in politics by watching Capitol dealings.\nThe boy's mother, a Southern belle he calls "not my best friend," married three times (Vidal and Jackie Kennedy shared a stepfather).\nThe TV special supplies at least one revelation: During a first reading of the Broadway revival of his play "The Best Man" two years ago, Vidal takes over the lines of a pompous Southern senator. His delivery was impeccable and the cast applauded at the end.\nThe incident made one thing clear: Gore Vidal is an actor. Indeed, he has acted in four films and he learned to face the camera in the 1950s, when he made hundreds of appearances on TV talk shows to promote his books. He resorted to TV, he claims, because major critics refused to review his books for seven years because of his third book, "The City and the Pillar," which dealt with homosexuality.\nVidal and his companion, Howard Austen, spend part of the year in the Hollywood Hills and also own a sprawling villa at Ravello, Italy. The Hollywood house faces busy Outpost Drive, but entering the driveway you seem transported into a rain forest. Towering pines, verdant ferns, ivy everywhere. The foliage partially hides a traditional California white stucco and red tile-roof house that Vidal has owned for 30 years.\nWhy live in Hollywood when he has scant regard for the place?\n"Cedars-Sinai," he replies succinctly, referring to the hospital of choice for many Hollywood celebrities. He has been plagued with an arthritic knee, that for a time prevented him from walking. A knee operation, with daily swims and muscle massage, has allowed him to hobble, but more surgery may be needed. "I don't want a plastic knee," he insists.\nHis face is lined, but he has all his hair, which he says has become fine and unmanageable with age. His mind remains agile, and he tosses epigrams like confetti.\nVidal is reputed to have engaged in a number of famous feuds.\n"That's really not quite right," he responds. "What it comes from is I'm extremely sharp about politics. I'm not shy about mentioning crimes of politicians. This upsets not only the politicians, but those newspapers that love them. Suddenly you have a chorus: 'Oh, he's a terrible man!' Norman Mailer got upset about a review I wrote about one of his books, 'The Prisoner of Sex.' The argument was over feminism; it had nothing to do with Norman, it had to do with me."\nHis relations with Mailer have improved. Last summer Vidal flew east with his ailing leg to appear with Mailer in "Don Juan in Hell" at the Provincetown Theater in Massachusetts. They had done it for an Actors Studio benefit eight years before.\nAs a writer, Vidal's relations with Hollywood have been hit and miss- "my disasters are more famous than most people's good movies."\nVidal was asked if he had any regrets at this point in his life. He responded unflinchingly:\n"As somebody who has done exactly what he wants all his life, I don't see why I would have any"