Waits sits there looking almost normal, his face just about clean shaven -- sideburns gone, a long, narrow goatee neatly trailing from his lower lip. His hair, showing its first sign of gray, is less unruly. At thirty-and-a-half, he appears to be in disarming good health and spirits. "I'm very confident right now. I couldn't be in better shape. Everything's going very well."

And 'everything' these days is One from the Heart. A romantic comedy/musical set in Las Vegas over one Fourth of July weekend, the picture stars Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr and Natassia Kinski, and will be directed by Coppola. "What's unusual is that most of the music will have been written before they shoot," he explains. "So I'm working closely with Francis on the story and on the development of the songs. It's a bastard musical in a way, not in the tradition of Dan Dailey and The Music Man."

Knee-deep in sheet music and charts, and surrounded by cinema heavyweights, Waits can't envision returning to his self-imposed exile in New York. "It's impossible now. One from the Heart is going to keep me a love slave till February."

So much for new urban landscapes. Has he abandoned all resolve and returned to his digs at the Tropicana? "No, I was staying in another motel -- a little Vietnam. I've found another apartment now."

What about "Blue Valentine?" "She went out one night without me and got in a fatal accident," he murmurs. "Luckily, no one was hurt." Instead, befitting his new line of work, Waits rolls down the boulevards in the safe anonymity of a rented sky-blue Monte Carlo.

As for Heart Attack and Vine, the songwriter did manage to shape up a few numbers while he was living in Manhattan. And he managed, in late April, while negotiations were still underway between his manager and Coppola, to record the LP at the RCA studios on Ivar, with long-time producer Bones Howe. "Pomona Lisa" didn't make it to his seventh album, but tracks like "Ruby's Arms," "Jersey Girl" and "Till the Money Runs Out" did. And another song -- "Downtown." A Waits' original or the Petula Clark classic?

"No. It's a long drive from Petula Clark's," he grins. And then sitting by the piano and plunking the ivories absently, his eyes look up. "Actually, I've been thinking about putting out an album called My Favorites. And instead of my cover versions of those tunes, it would just be an album of the actual cuts. Just songs that I enjoy and [in TV commercial voice] you can enjoy the same ones that I enjoy, but you'll know that those specifically are the ones that I like."