Angst we got fun

''I'm sorry,'' he says. ''I tend to ramble.''

Dudley Moore is sitting on the sofa, explaining to the psychiatrist why he doesn't want to date actresses anymore.

''I'm sick of this starlet mentality,'' Moore says, looking genuinely troubled as he plays to the camera. ''Even in bed, I asked her if she had an orgasm and she said, 'Trust me, babe.'''

As Moore sails through his lines, Richard Lewis is watching a monitor in the rear of the suite, his script tightly rolled in his hands, bobbing and weaving with every turn of the dialogue, shadowboxing with the images on the screen. When Moore nails a joke, the rolled-up script becomes a bat in Lewis' hand. He swings and hits an imaginary home run.

''Dudley,'' he says, when the take is over, ''milk those lines like a dairy farmer, babe.''

He has been like this all afternoon, living and dying with every performance, silently reading along, checking around the room to see whether everyone likes what's happening. They do.

''They all came through for me,'' Lewis says after the shoot wraps at 5 p.m. Angie Dickinson has talked about sexual rejection and O.J. Simpson has complained that his family never supported him and Robert Goulet admits to low self-esteem.

''I just sneaked in my little coaching tips when I could,'' Lewis explains. ''I just didn't want to put too much pressure on them. They were doing me a big favor by doing this. And they all nailed it.''

This is a side of Richard Lewis that doesn't come out too often, a moment of unbridled happiness. He acts surprised that just because he spends so much time talking about what's wrong with his life people would think he's not happy.

''The truth is that I'm not an unhappy man. I just feel that I'm in a storm and the winds are coming from my family or from girlfriends or whatever.

''But I'm not going down. If I wasn't communicating that, then I don't think things would have gone as well as they have. Then I'd just be a complainer, and people don't want to just see someone complain. I feel I'm more of a fighter. A neurotic freedom fighter.''