A genuine Zelig, an essentially vacuous guy who apparently becomes all things to all people (and thereby a secondary celebrity), is the subject of George Hickenlooper’s intriguing, and ultimately rather sad, documentary. The subject is Rodney Bingenheimer, a fairly homely, extremely quiet fellow from an upstate California town who was befriended by a slew of musicians and eventually became an influential D.J. in Los Angeles, introducing much cutting-edge pop music (like the Sex Pistols, for instance) to his audience (and America). He also opened a club which was, for a time, a very “in” place. But his natural timidity persisted, and it appears that he never allowed his reputation as a star-maker to go to his head, living a simple life even in his halcyon period. In more recent days Bingenheimer has fallen on less prosperous days: his club is long since closed, his radio station has exiled him to a few hours per week in the early morning, and his mother, with whom he was extremely close, died. But he remains quietly resilient, and some of his musical friends (Cher, David Bowie) continue to stay in close touch. That’s why his one outburst of anger comes as such a shock: it’s directed against musician Chris Carter (who’s also one of the producers of this film), whom he accuses of stealing his thunder when he takes a job at a rival station.

The portrait that Hickenlooper draws of this curious man, whose family life was precarious and whose persona seems a reflection of those with whom he connected, is sympathetic and perceptive. It features extensive footage of Bingenheimer himself, showing off his souvenirs, visiting the locales of his past glories, talking extensively about his triumphs and travails, puttering about his mother’s empty house and, toward the close, sprinkling her ashes into the Thames . It also includes interviews with others, including Cher; but certainly the most poignant testimony comes from his father and stepmother, elderly retirees who have only fairly recently resumed contact with him. (There’s a sadly revealing moment when Hickenlooper asks them whether, among the many photos in their house, they could produce one of Rodney. It takes them a good long while.)

There’s a good deal of music in “The Mayor of the Sunset Strip,” but it’s the intimate moments that matter. It’s worth seeing because its odd, self-effacing subject is fascinating by reason of his very emptiness, and more than a little pathetic–and not merely because his star has fallen. This Zelig survives, but he’s still Zelig.

B-

Though the four tales in Greg Pak’s episodic debut feature all touch upon artificial intelligence in one way or another, “Robot Stories” is actually a deeply humanistic picture that uses the vaguely sci-fi format, as Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison (as well as Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg) have done, to raise issues about man’s emotional connections. It’s clearly the work of a beginning filmmaker, modestly budgeted and variable in effect, but it shows promise.

Each of the four parts of the anthology, written and directed by Pak, is marked by at least one lead character who’s Asian-American, but the ethnic element doesn’t dominate in any of them. The strongest is the second, titled “The Robot Fixer,” in which a distraught mother (Wai Ching Ho) translates her grief over a comatose son to an obsession about completing his collection of action figures from “Power Rangers”-style shows and games while a daughter (Cindy Cheung) watches with increasing concern. This scenario could easily have been mawkish, but Pak pulls it off with elegant simplicity, helped enormously by Ho’s finely-tuned, minimalist performance. It’s like a very fine cinematic short story.

The initial segment, “My Robot Baby,” is much less subtle. A yuppie couple receive an egg-shaped robot from an adoption agency to take care of as a test–part of their application process. The wife (Tamlyn Tomita), an ambitious career woman who herself had a rough childhood, is left to care for the “child” herself when her husband is called away on business, with results that hold interest even if they’re insufficiently unpredictable.

The longest episode is the third, “Robot Love,” in which Pak plays an android assigned to type mounds of text into a word processor in a small office. Like the kid in “A.I.,” the creature is programmed to interact with people, but his office-mates prove utterly unwilling to give him a chance. It’s not surprising, therefore, that he should find himself drawn to another of his kind, a girl-android working in an office across the street. This is a fairly thin premise, and perhaps because Pak’s acting in it as well as directing (doing a sort of Brent Spiner Data turn, without the metallic surface), it tends to plod. Still, it has its moments.

Finally, Sab Shimono plays a terminally ill artist (with a holographic companion) in “Clay.” This slow, rather ponderous piece centers on the man’s resistance to undergoing a medical treatment that will prolong his consciousness in a new body. It wants to be profound but never reaches very deep, and is the weakest of the quartet.

“Robot Stories” is shot on digital video, with the usual deficiencies: shots from a distance have a grainy look. But Pak generally keeps scenes visually straightforward, and prefers closeups, in which the flaws are less apparent. He’s also secured performances from Ho, Tomita and Shimono that are strong enough to carry the picture over its slow patches. As a whole this is a reasonably good little picture that indicates he’s a filmmaker to watch.