Boston

Local heroes at the Toronto film fest

There's a local hook for two of the more smashing world premieres that turned up earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Spanish Prisoner, an ingeniously constructed Hitchcockian thriller directed and written by our own David Mamet, a Newton resident, was that rare film at Toronto that virtually every critic felt disposed to like. Audiences, too. It's much fun!

There was more argument about the ultimate worth of Boogie Nights, an erratic but extraordinarily pungent fictional look at the '70s world of porn. Yet everyone praised the burst-out talents of director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson -- the next Scorsese? the next Tarantino? -- who in 1988 split from Boston to California after six disaffected months as an Emerson College frosh.

The Spanish Prisoner starts amid sand, sea, and palm trees on a remote Caribbean island (recall the opening of Dr. No). In the winning manner of mid-'50s Hitchcock (The Man Who Knew Much, etc.), it catapults to New York's Central Park, then to Logan Airport, climaxing on a ferry in Boston Harbor. Campbell Scott plays Joe Ross, a Hitchcockian regular guy sucked into an across-the-map intrigue. Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet's off-screen wife, races attractively alongside as Ross eludes criminals and cops, confidence men and businessmen, all in pursuit of his secret plan, "The Process."

"I just read an essay by Jean Renoir on Mack Sennett, whose only object was to entertain the people," Mamet said at Toronto. "That's what I set out to do with The Spanish Prisoner. Hitchcock created the genre of `light thriller,' and this is part of it."

Like all of us, Mamet's protagonist feels underappreciated by his employers. Which makes him perfect game for flattering hucksters who praise his talents.

"What is the flaw in this supposedly excellent man that allows him to trick himself?" Mamet asked, then answered, "It takes a very strong person not to fall victim to the blandishment `You aren't getting what you're worth.' "

I asked was I reading too much into The Spanish Prisoner in detecting subtle Hitchcock references? Ross agrees to lunch at New York's Plaza Hotel, and that's the spot from which Cary Grant is kidnapped in North by Northwest. Ross circles about on a carousel, which reminded me of Guy and Bruno's merry-go-round battle in Strangers on a Train.

Mamet acknowledged these homages but added of Hitchcock, "His greatest film is Lifeboat," the 1944 war film in which a Hollywood cast float about in one set at sea. "Lifeboat stuns me, but the real challenge is about the imagination, not the locale."

His next movie? "I'm going to remake The Winslow Boy, which was from a great play by Terence Rattigan." The 1948 British film starred Robert Donat as a lawyer defending a Naval cadet charged with theft. "I'm going to remake it with Rebecca and some other actors."

And Boogie Nights' Paul Thomas Anderson? "Film school is a waste of time and money!" I told him I'm a film prof, so Anderson, a nice guy, qualified his remark. "Well, I didn't really go to film school. I briefly attended Emerson, but it was more that I wanted to get away from my hometown, LA. I was never very good at school.

"I did walk into one Emerson film class, and the professor said, `If you're here to write Terminator II, get out!' That was bullshit to me. Terminator II is a great movie. Anyway, I got the feeling that film school wasn't practical enough. Real filmmaking is about unions and overtime."

And about being thirsty and sweaty for round-the-clock movies, a rare quality among today's film-school cool. "Since I was a kid, I've been a film freak. Watching everything, loving everything. My taste is really broad, from David Mamet and Jonathan Demme, two favorites, to Robert Downey Sr. His Putney Swope is a massive influence."

And Nashville? "You've said it all! A masterpiece! I wish they'd release it on laserdisc and letter-boxed, a wonderful Cinemascope movie!"

Boogie Nights opens with a long, intricate, impressive, visually sensual tracking shot through a 1970s California nightclub. It's typical of Anderson in that there's film history behind it. "The first time I was aware of a tracking shot was Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners, then Scorsese, Orson Welles, Max Ophuls . . . My underwater shot in the swimming pool scene is inspired by I Am Cuba."

Is there also some Tarantino? This interview with Anderson proves one of the first ever: "Nobody has asked me that!" Oh, they will, especially about Boogie Nights' delirious cocaine-den murder scene, as fabulously precocious as anything in Reservoir Dogs. "It's only legitimate if you're young that they bring up his name. He's made a huge impression. Pulp Fiction is great filmmaking."

Finally, he does indeed admire '70s vintage porn: "The Opening of Misty Beethoven is a wonderful romantic Pygmalion thing, Bob Chin's early Johnny Wadd is great, but I haven't seen a porn film made in the last 10 years that's good. They're so different now, made on videotape."

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary[a]phx.com.