DREAM SEQUENCE, TAKE 2

Norman Lear, the television producer-currv-socialcritic, is looking grimly innovative as he steps off the elevator and nearly into the arms of Mike Nichols, the comedian-cum-social critic turned stage and film director. The two men greet each other fondly and fall into conversation. Presumably, Norman has an idea for an artistic collaboration: a docu-sitcom called Shit in which a divorced, thrice-aborted lesbian mother of seven just barely makes ends meet each week by saying dirty words on national television and thus allowing the show's smarmy producer to run away with the ratings during the Nielsen sweep period. Of course, it will be performed before a live audience. Across the lobby from this would-be conversation, Bobby Short, the legendary jazz pianist/vocalist -cum-television commercial star, is rounding the corner and stepping into the elevator which Norman Lear has lately abandoned. Presumably, Bobby is on his way upstairs for a nap before his nightly stint at the keyboard in the lavish hotel bar. As the^elevator doors close behind him, a tall, slinky blonde in diamonds coasts by on the arms of two black-haired men in dinner jackets. They are on their way out at 4:30 in the afternoon. Norman Lear eagerly does an about-face to accompany pal Mike back upstairs' where they will flesh out the concept. Somewhere, also upstairs, Henry Ford H's suite anticipates his rapidly approaching retirement | from the Pinto business. The Hotel i Carlyle is a discreet and elegant pied d j terre from which the princes of art and commerce can hold forth when they are stopping in New York. In a room on the ninth floor, Bryan Ferry, singersongwriter for the reconstituted Roxy Music, whose first studio album in three years, Manifesto, has just been released, is dreaming that he kissed himself and turned into a prince. Bryan Ferry, frog-cum-prince, has this to say.

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