A HOMETOWN SCREEN GEM : Promo Film Is a Festival Hit in Mill Valley

Did your parents used to drum into you that you had to do your best at any job, no matter how small? Well, much as it pains me to admit it, they were right. Again.

I went back last weekend to the place I think of as my hometown, Mill Valley, Calif., where their film festival was raging. It’s nice to see a local girl blossom and fill out, and Mill Valley’s festival has certainly done that over eight years.

But the buzz of the festival wasn’t (only) its “Mishima” premiere or its star-making sleeper, “Smooth Talk.” It was over the festival’s unqualified hit: a droll, three-minute promotional trailer starring the real folk of Mill Valley.

Three minutes of film. Nuts-and-bolts subject. What can anyone do with that? Wonders, apparently.

Untitled, unpretentious, sneakily fast, “The Trailer” has wit, as well as split-second timing, on its side. As the camera moves smoothly down tree-shaded streets and past the public tennis courts, a voice-over explains that film mania grips this small town once every year. A newsboy tosses out the local paper--from a Cahiers du Cinema bag. Then, one by one, the experts speak.

Two burly refuse collectors at the back of their dumpster are film noir freaks. “I love that deep focus,” one rumbles. They certainly plan to go to the festival’s noir- a-thon. “There’s a surface to the genre, that, if anything, improves with age,” says the other. Crash! His buddy’s enormous can of refuse hits the dumpster’s scoop.

At the local beauty shop, where finger waves are still an art, the most senior of its customers talks about last year’s coup, the festival’s West Coast premiere showing of “Paris, Texas” and of Wim Wenders. “Such a nice young man,” she says, with grandmotherly approval. “There should be more directors like that.”

The two young Japanese chefs at Samurai Sushi are beaming. “We have seats for ‘Latino’!”says one. “We’re Haskell Wexler fans from way back,” the other confides to the camera. (The mind reels at the takes on that tongue-twister.)

Up the hill, in the morning sunshine, a father and mother preside over a breakfast argument. Their son, about 11, considers the festival’s roundup of recent New Zealand cinema to be on a par with the French New Wave. His young sister is outraged. “Dad, that’s stupid! Where’s their Godard? Where’s their Truffaut?”

In his patrol car, radar gun at the ready, one Mill Valley officer sighs to his partner: “I say, ‘We got the world premiere of Joseph Papp’s ‘Plenty’ with Meryl Streep and John Gielgud.’ And he says, ‘Who’s Joseph Papp?!’ ” His voice rises with outrage at the memory. “I dunno how the guy ever made sergeant.”

While cutting up chickens, the butcher at Jerry’s Meat Market agrees that, of course, Eisenstein wrote the book on editing. Everything since then has been a footnote, “But some footnotes are more interesting than others.” The festival is going to present a panel with some of the world’s best editors. “Marcia Lucas,” he says. (With a thwok! his knife neatly bisects a chicken leg.) “Michael Chandler.” ( Thwok! ) “Bob Dalva” ( Thwok! ). . . .”

In an excess of modesty, the trailer ends without a single maker’s name, only the dates and name of the festival and its sponsors. The 35-millimeter film, shot in two 14-hour days, turns out to have been made entirely by donated labor from a “concept” by San Francisco ad agency brains Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein and Andy Berlin (a festival board member).

The festival program lists its makers, the cream of the Bay Area’s personnel and production facilities, a list of more than 100 names that, if run, would be as long as the film. In addition to their strong programming this year, festival officials suspect that their anonymous gem, shown in 16 theaters all over the Bay Area, may be part of the 33% jump at the box office. It certainly became a status symbol; you could hear its deadpan lines quoted in ticket queues or overhear its last zinger in popcorn lines.

Four mechanics peer under the open hood of a sports car, while one drawls: “So God looks at his calendar and sees that the end of the world is near and he wants to get it on film. So he has St. Peter go down and shop the property for a director. St. Peter comes back, says he can’t find one.

“ ‘What about Lucas?’ asks God. ‘George will produce it but he won’t direct.’ ‘Spielberg?’ ‘He can’t do it--something about his contract.’ Then St. Peter asks, ‘What about Coppola?’ ‘Coppola! Coppola!!’ God says. ‘I gotta make a profit on this thing.’ ”

It’s lovely to find that success has taken away none of the hometown’s irreverence.