SUMMER FILMS: ACTION!; Watching Hollywood Brew a 'Perfect Storm'

By SEBASTIAN JUNGER

A COUPLE of years ago I gave a talk in Nantucket about my book, ''The Perfect Storm,'' and afterward a man raised his hand for a question. He loved the book, he said, and wanted to know what I thought of the fact that ''they'' were turning it into a movie.

The line got a laugh, but after the audience quieted down, I went on to talk seriously about the strangely ambivalent relationship writers -- and the general public -- have with Hollywood. There are many measures of literary success, but none that involve a world writers spend so much time claiming to disdain. We all know, of course, what Hollywood producers do to books: they dumb them down, change their plots, violate their integrity, put stupid dialogue in characters' mouths.

The book was about six commercial fishermen who went down on a boat named the Andrea Gail -- hardly Hollywood material. The next day I met with two different producers, one of whom had heard about the previous day's meeting and was worried he was missing something. By Day 3 I had a full schedule and my agent was fielding a steady stream of phone calls from people who had never read the manuscript but were worried something was passing them by.

I didn't. On my last day I met with producers from a company called Spring Creek, which had a production agreement with Warner Brothers. There was something about these people that I instinctively trusted, and after the meeting I told my agent I wanted to go with them, even if they offered less money. I doubt he told them that, but three days later an auction was held, and Spring Creek bought the rights for more money than I'd earned over the course of my entire life.

If not quite that dramatic, the effect of the book's popularity on Warner Brothers was still remarkable. Suddenly, everyone at the studio was talking about it. Soon the studio was floating names of possible directors, and eventually they decided on Wolfgang Petersen, best known for his classic World War II submarine drama, ''Das Boot.'' I was in college when ''Das Boot'' came out; I remember going to see it at the campus cinema. There are scenes in the movie that, nearly 20 years later, I still find disturbing. I met Mr. Petersen in his Santa Monica office and liked him immediately; he was direct and unpretentious and made a point of asking me if I had any concerns about the movie.

I did, I told him; I was worried that not wanting to kill off a big-name actor, they would have some of the Andrea Gail crew survive. He had no intention of departing from the book, he told me, and it was a relief to realize that issues could be dealt with that directly. Over the next few months there were rumors of negotiations with one lead actor or another, and eventually word came down that the starring roles would go to George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. Soon afterward I realized the project was now way out of my control. I called the studio and was momentarily taken aback when the receptionist answered the phone, ''Perfect Storm, may I help you?'' I told her I wanted to be transferred to the producer. ''Name please?'' she said.

''Sebastian Junger.''

''Very funny,'' she said. By early last September, they'd done two months of filming on a sound stage and had moved the set to Gloucester. A few days after their arrival, Hurricane Floyd started drifting up the East Coast. I drove to Gloucester from New York to see what would happen, and when I went down to the set, I was chilled to see a boat named the Andrea Gail tied up at the town wharf. It was a sight no one had seen since late September 1991. Floyd missed town but generated some huge seas, and the next morning the boats were sent out to get some B-roll storm footage. I went out with them and watched an impressive variety of people -- technical guys, producers, even Gloucester fishermen -- turn pale and get sick over the gunwale. If you felt sick, you were supposed to raise your hand so that the rescue swimmer could come stand next to you and make sure you didn't fall overboard.

One of the last scenes to be filmed in Gloucester was at St. Peter's Church, where they used 700 locals to shoot a memorial service for the dead fishermen. I wasn't there but I heard about it from a lot of people, including Wolfgang Petersen. It was a strange blurring of fiction and reality, he said, one of the most intense experiences he'd ever had on set. During a eulogy given by the actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, whole sections of the audience started to cry, including family and friends of the original crew. They'd sat in the same church eight years earlier, listening to virtually the same words. Later, reviewing the takes, Mr. Petersen heard a faint thumping sound that he could not identify. Finally he realized it was the beating of Ms. Mastrantonio's heart, picked up by a highly sensitive mike.

At this point, the question I most often get asked is whether I had anything to do with the making of the movie -- which I haven't even seen. No, I say, absolutely nothing, which is as it should be. I don't know anything about making movies, and there's nothing I could say that a Gloucester fisherman couldn't say better. (In fact, a former sword fisherman was hired as a technical consultant.) If I were building a house, the contractor would never ask me to help pour the foundation; why would Wolfgang Petersen conceivably ask my advice about framing a shot?