On a shimmering spring day, Peter Fonda is jumping between phone calls and an interview in his West Hollywood hotel suite and barely pausing for breath. He seems to enjoy the rush, just as he seems blissfully unaware that he is a bundle of contradictions.

He enthuses about the simple life on the spread outside of Livingston, Mont., that he shares with his wife, Becky (whom he proudly identifies as "the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Davy Crockett"), and his Labrador retrievers. But here he is, in this swanky Sunset Boulevard suite, surrounded by laptops, cellular phones, pocket computers and mini-CD players.

He talks warmly about his famous family, how he feels protective of them. But then he launches into an unprintable anecdote about facing off with a director on a movie set, and his voice could just as well be out of "Easy Rider," Fonda's immortal film rebellion against Hollywood.

Fonda is so in love with moviemaking that he casually drops terms such as anamorphic and techniscope into conversation, and even keeps a list of camera filters in his pocket computer. But this time he's not in town for a movie: He's directing a new play by Joseph G. Tidwell III, "Southern Rapture," opening Friday at the Met Theatre.

As an actor, Fonda freely admits that he has questioned authority and resisted the rules. "To this day," he says, "I don't have a head shot. Every actor should have a head shot. I mean, I have pictures of me with Becky, or with Larry Hagman riding Harleys together. Maybe it's being dictated to. . . ."

At the same time, Fonda apparently can also dictate to others. He notes some of the early production-related problems of "Southern Rapture" ("the usual--a breakdown in communications") and says that "if I have to be captain of the whole thing, by God, those lights cues will be memorized and the stage action will be letter-perfect! When I leave the rehearsal room, I announce, 'The captain's off the bridge!' and when I return, I announce, 'The captain's on the bridge!' "

But in a way, Fonda warns his guest, he's almost always kidding. He recalls how an elaborate joke he once told an interviewer about making "a family pornographic movie" with his sister Jane ended up in Peter Collier's biography, "The Fondas: A Hollywood Dynasty."

"The old line," Fonda says, "used to be 'screw them if they can't take a joke,' but in reality, it's 'I'm screwed if they can't take a joke.' "