By FOXY GWYNNE

Before I start on Bedford's Joe Whelan and his hero Jesse Ventura I must say a word about the Iranian film series at the new Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville before it is gone. I have seen four now and am addicted to them. They are utterly absorbing and unlike films as we know them.

Why? Well first of all, there are no sets - everything is shot on the street, on the land. Whatever you see is real Iran. Most of the children and people in the film are not even actors but succeed beyond the wildest dreams of Hollywood.

"Leila," the last film I saw (gone now), was essentially a love story Can You imagine such a thing in Hollywood where the lovers may never kiss, show their bodies or even touch? Because, of course, all that is forbidden in Iran even for professional actors. And yet there is such a feeling of love - all through the eye and gesture - as is rarely seen.

Humor is never slapstick but so real, just little life incidents, which turns all American jokey stuff to dross. And the endings are never what you expected You think about them and wonder about for days.

How is it that Iran - which has the reputation for brutality and repression can make such sensitive films while America, the good guy, deals mainly in lust and violence? Well, I'm racing home from Cape Cod Friday to see the last of the September series, called "Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of jasmine."

So Joe Whelan - colorful, contentious school board member - called me to say that he had wondered if' he should drive 80 miles to the Hilton in Fast Brunswick, NJ., to hear Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura speak on behalf of' gubernatorial candidate Brett Schundler, the Republican mayor of Jersey City

Joe, an Independent who believes that a third party forces the two major parties to be more responsible, had run against Vincent Leibell, a Republican and Michael Zarin, a Democrat, for state senator in 1996.

This was the first time Jesse Ventura had traveled out of state to boost an independent candidate, so Joe drove those 80 miles to hear and meet with his hero.

Why is his hero often put down as a sleaze or a carnival act?

"First of all, Jesse's an honest man who speaks his mind," said Joe. "Fed up with the 'good old boy' network he was able to defeat Hubert Humphrey's son in the race for governor. Maria Shriver interviewed him for much of that race and NBC booed her for spending time on a loser. When he won, Tom Brokaw called Ventura for an interview and was turned down with the words 'I'll only speak to Maria Shriven'

"I like that consistency about him. Nobody thought he could win," said Joe. "Garrison Keillor said 'voting for Ventura was like throwing toilet papers in the trees to piss off Dad.' But a huge number of first-time-voter college students voted for him. He thinks of young people as a force for good by holding their representatives accountable.

'Jesse is thoughtful - not a scholar, but learned," said Joe. "if he doesn't know something, he'll say 'I don't know,' but then he will find Out about it."

Ventura took the tough courses in high school - physics, chemistry, calculus. His high school Football team was Undefeated, and the fact that he broke swimming records endeared him to the heart of Joe, a swimmer.

"I Ain't Got Time To Bleed," (a line from Jesses film, "Predator") is the title of Ventura's first book - autographed by Jesse to Joe, who has heavily underlined  and checked crucial phrases clear to both of their hearts, such as "We need to keep a tight rein on government spending, and working people should keep as much of their money as possible... Our lifestyle choice should he left Up to us  not the government... We've gotten into a bad habit of over legislating.Just because
you are a legislator doesn't mean your job is to create more laws for people to live by. No amount of tax money can replace parental involvement. The government is not a parent."

An attractive thing about Ventura is that in today's political procedure where everyone is owned by one of two parties or special interest groups, he has said, "No one owns me. I come with no strings attached.

And then, I never read a prewritten speech. I speak from the heart." Can't you see him deliberately sitting between his two opponents, Coleman and Humphrey making them look puny by comparison?

"I looked strong and powerful," he said. "Neither one of them looked powerful at all. People looked at me and saw a leader."

"You never bear about 'Jesse being mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota's sixth-largest city," said Joe. "The guy didn't just come out of nowhere before becoming governor. For 25 years he's been married to Terry, his high school sweetheart. They have two children jade and Tyrel. And he hosted a popular radio talk show in St. Paul."

Following a brief stint in movies, where he often acted with his good buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse turned to another aspect of' theater wrestling, whose prime oireciivc is that

You "Protect your opponent as you would protect yourself."

He describes wrestling as "very much like dancing - like doing a waltz. When someone body slams you, they won't injure you if they're doing it right, but, rest assured, you feel it. When you' re in wrestling, you're in pain so often you take it for granted."

Perhaps taking on the persona of the heel" (the bad guy as opposed to the baby-face-) -who everyone loves to hate was a way of deflecting some of the pain.

Crowd hatred of the heel at times became so intense that Ventura received death threats.

In the early days Ventura once had to wrestle 68 nights straight.

"You not only had to be great in the ring, you had to be a tremendous talker when they handed you the mike for TV interviews. You had to make people hate you. You had to have a talent for irritating people. I did," he said.

"With his trademark feather boa resting on his 65", 275-pound frame, he could pull down a million dollars a year, " said Joe. "Just before he was to fight Hulk Hogan for the world championship, Jesse was hospitalized with blood clots in his lungs, which would have killed him. He was cured, but it ended his career. He did a lot for wrestling by unionizing the sport."

If all of that does not make Ventura a hero, joining the Navy Seals must. A film, "The Men With Green Faces," shown to 300 Seal wannabes, sent 260 of them flying to the exit door. As a Seal, Jesse chose to parachute 38 times from a plane to get over his fear of heights before joining the BUDs (underwater demolition) In an actual class, only 20 out of 100 might get through it. He learned how to blow things up, how to dive with an Emerson's rig, a device that filters out carbon dioxide so that diving becomes bubble-free, hence undetected, and in seven weeks of advanced guerilla war "how to" he learned all about demolition raids, assassinations, ambushes and kidnapping.

During the Vietnam war, Ventura loved being overseas and asked to be sent back there. "Over there, I was treated like an adult; over here I was like a child who can't drink or vote," he said.

Did you get a chance to speak to Ventura at the Hilton? I asked Joe. "Yeah, for about 15 minutes." I asked him how he felt about the new education standards of testing. "Testing is needed to know what students know, and to know what teachers know, or we'll have a cheapening of the high school diploma," he said.

Ventura has gone from being "The Body" to being "The Mouth," and now it's "Jesse the Mind," Joe told me.

"As Tom Paine said, 'One honest man is worth all the crowned heads that ever lived""

What a guy What a guy. What a guy.