HUSTON DOCUMENTARIES: ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS

For a few moments, the present fades for John Huston. The tubes leading from his nose to the green oxygen tank--sitting like a growling pup at his side--don’t exist. The voice, the spirit and the memory are still strong--if the lungs aren’t--and the images are recalled in sharp detail.

Huston is a young soldier standing on a corner outside the walls of a palace in a small Italian town during World War II. Suddenly, a jeep rumbles around the corner, sending the tall Signal Corps officer diving headfirst into the dusty street.

As the jeep passes, Huston sees that it’s “one of ours,” and remembers that he is miles from the front. Moments later, another jeep turns the corner and he’s on the ground again.

“I felt like a perfect fool,” he says, with a laugh made husky by his long bout with emphysema. “Your instincts become so alerted that you do things automatically, trying to keep yourself in one piece.”

The subject of this interview, at a friend’s home in Mandeville Canyon where the 79-year-old director is staying, was the war effort--his. Like many of the best film makers of the time--William Wyler, John Ford, Anatole Litvak and George Stevens among them--Huston went to war with a camera and captured history.

He captured it in the North Pacific, documenting American flying missions over Japanese bases in the remote Bering Strait. It was “Report From the Aleutians.”

He captured it in Southern Italy, documenting a costly battle to take a mountain village. It was “The Battle of San Pietro.”

He captured it in Mason General Hospital on Long Island, documenting the treatment of shell-shocked GIs trying to shake the shakes on their way back to society. It was “Let There Be Light.”

“San Pietro” and “Let There Be Light” were so good, they were temporarily banned from release--the first for a year or so, the second for nearly four decades. “Let There Be Light,” made in 1945, sat in a Defense Department vault until 1980 when, according to Huston, Walter Mondale mounted a successful offensive to liberate it.

Huston, whose brief but indelible documentary career will be honored by the International Documentary Assn. next month, says he just followed orders. After completing “Report From the Aleutians,” which he says was basic “patriotic cheerleading” aimed at lifting spirits back home, he was sent to Italy to cover what was to be the Army’s triumphant march into Rome.

The premise faltered when bad weather and feisty Germans combined to derail the objective and Huston ended up shooting a story that shot back (two members of his crew were killed). After seven months in Italy, he returned with a documentary that included some of the most painfully authentic footage of combat ever filmed, and no one in the Pentagon wanted to watch.

Talk about tough audiences. When Huston showed “The Battle of San Pietro” to Army brass in Washington, they all walked out--in descending order of rank, starting with the presiding three-star general.

“By the time I got back to the Signal Corps, my name was mud,” Huston says. “The picture would never have been shown, except that Gen. George Marshall saw it and made it required viewing for every man who might have to go into combat.”

Marshall’s endorsement quickly washed the mud off Huston’s name. He was, in fact, decorated for his work and given a promotion. Then he was assigned to Mason General Hospital to film the treatment of psychologically impaired veterans, with the honorable goal of convincing industry that these men could responsibly perform work.

The changes in the men, filmed during therapy sessions over a period of about four months, were astounding and seemed to prove the Army’s point. Even the men loved it, Huston says, celebrating their participation at one point by decorating a jerrybuilt lamppost with a sign saying “Hollywood and Vine.” The patients were shown the final product, he adds, and each one signed a release.

Nonetheless, the Army, calling it an invasion of privacy, refused to show it to anyone. As for the signed releases, Huston says they miraculously disappeared. There is no record of who those men were, or what became of them (and wouldn’t that make a documentary?).

Now, after adding 37 features to his 1941 debut, “The Maltese Falcon,” Huston is planning another documentary. This one, for producer Alan Landsburg, would take him to the Sea of Cortez along the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of his jungle compound in Puerto Vallarta, to film some of the most exotic marine life in the world (how about 100-foot-long whale sharks?).

Huston left his Mexican home to promote the opening of “Prizzi’s Honor” three months ago, and ended up spending two weeks in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for treatment of his emphysema. The chronic illness, which Huston attributes to a lifetime of cigar abuse, forces him to install the oxygen tubes for extended conversation, but it saps none of his creative vitality.

“Prizzi’s Honor,” one of the year’s most critically applauded films, shows more signs of intelligent life than the rest of the summer’s movie fare combined.

Huston is planning to get back to work soon. In two months, he will fly to England to play the part of a “soul collector” in a Christmas movie that will be directed for British television by his youngest son, Danny, who will then handle a camera for the Cortez documentary.

(Huston also may be seen starting Friday in “Fatal Attraction,” but his work in that Canadian-made psychodrama was done three years ago.)

As for directing another feature, Huston says he’s reading scripts, but not too seriously.

“I’m laying off that for the moment,” he says, shooting a disgusted look at his oxygen gear. “I’ve got to get away from this damn thing before I start throwing my weight around.”

(The International Documentary Assn.’s all-day tribute to Huston, which will include screenings of his three war documentaries, will be held Oct. 6 at producer Landsburg’s home in Malibu. Tickets are $100 each. For information, call (213) 655-7089.)

SIMPLY AMAZING: If you stand right next to a heater, chances are you’re going to get hot. Mick Garris, who’s been standing next to the hottest heater in Hollywood (brand name: Steven Spielberg), is sizzling.

A year ago, Garris was just a name on a stack of unmade screenplays. Now, after several months as story editor on Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” TV series (see related story on Page 1), the talented 33-year-old writer is wearing out the keys on his personal computer.

Besides writing several episodes of “Amazing Stories,” Garris was commissioned to write a screenplay for a potential Eddie Murphy comedy, he optioned a script for a psychic thriller called “Double Vision” to producer Mark Carliner (“Catholic Boys”) and he has an assignment to write a horror film for producer Mike Backes and Tri-Star Pictures.

Best credit yet, Garris has co-written with boss Spielberg “Batteries Not Included,” a flying saucers fantasy that will go into production soon for Universal Pictures, which apparently intends to release it next summer. Spielberg will executive produce the film; the director has not been set.

Meanwhile, Garris has bought his first home, in the Hollywood Hills above Universal Studios where Spielberg’s mission-style Amblin Entertainment is located. Every morning before going down the hill, Garris says, he steps outside, enjoys the view and says, “Thank you, Steven.”

SERENDIPITY: Writer-producer Myron Meisel was passing through Paris on his way home from the Cannes Film Festival last year when he paused for lunch with French director Barbet Schroeder.

Schroeder casually mentioned that he and Eric Rohmer, his partner in a French film company that specializes in small personal films, were thinking of adding a dash of Hollywood to their next film with the objective of perhaps making some money off it.

Meisel, who is also an entertainment attorney, offered to write the script, and 18 months later, “Machete” is a go project. Meisel, 34, says the film will go into production in Colombia after the first of the year.

Schroeder (“Tricheurs,” “Maitresse”) will direct a mostly French cast.

Meisel, who wrote the script in English, describes the story as “Ordinary People Meets Scarface,” and insists it marries the best elements from Hollywood and French film styles.

“It’s a story about contemporary gangsters, but done in a Continental style,” he says. “It’s got things like trucks full of explosives crossing mountain roads, guerrilla fights, boat duels . . . There is lots of sex and violence. But basically it’s a serious, small, intimate story about a father and son.”