TO MARKET, TO MARKET TO BUY UP OUR MOVIES

If you can picture a crowded market in some exotic locale like Casablanca, with a noisy tangle of merchants and buyers haggling nose-to-nose over the latest shipment of hand-carved gourds, you have a good notion what it was like to wander into the American Film Market during its years at the Hyatt Hotel on the Sunset Strip.

It was crowded. The language was eclectic. Most of the products were handmade. And when it was all over, no one was quite sure who had sold what to whom, and for how much.

Now, five years after the market was launched to help American independent film makers sell their products to foreign buyers, the American Film Market has moved into the expansive Beverly Hilton a few miles west and is stretching out.

“Years ago, we contacted the Hilton and they said, ‘Who are you?’ ” said director Tim Kittelson, on the eve of Thursday’s opening day of AFM ’86. “Last year, they called us. The AFM has grown up.”

Yeah, it has. Since the inaugural market in 1981, the American Film Market has grown from 37 selling companies to 95 and from about 600 buyers to more than 1,000. It has outgrown two hotels (the first market was held at the Westwood Marquis), and its organizers now claim that more actual business gets done here than at any other market, including the famous one in Cannes.

The members of the American Film Market Assn. aren’t the only ones who benefit from the market. Most of the major studios, whose domination of the film industry partly inspired the independents to put on this party, are now regular participants. Their international divisions take suites to sell their films to foreign buyers too.

In all, 147 new movies will be screened during the next week at theaters in Westwood and Beverly Hills, and at the Beverly Cineplex.

Not all of the movies are good. In fact, given the foreign appetite for action adventures, teen sex comedies and horror (anyone for “Raiders of the Living Dead”?), and the limits of most independent budgets, most of the films are probably pretty bad.

But they’ll all do business.

The X-rated film industry will also be displaying its latest products. Those dealers aren’t invited, and Kittelson says they will not be allowed in the Beverly Hilton. But because many of the foreign buyers run X-rated as well as conventional theaters, those films will be successfully shopped.

“Yes, we do enjoy a good taste of this,” said David Friedman, who owns Entertainment Ventures, an established X-rated film maker and distributor. “The AFM is our second-best international meet, next to Cannes.”

Friedman said virtually every major American producer of adult films is in town working the market’s registration roll. Adult film makers are running ads in the Hollywood trade papers inviting AFM buyers to sneak previews in their studios or suites in other hotels. One company is providing free limousine service from the Beverly Hilton to its facility in the San Fernando Valley.

Friedman, who estimates the average adult film will fetch $35,000 in foreign sales during the American Film Market, said 50% of the X-rated film makers are located in Los Angeles. For them, the market is really a boon.

“We can show them (the buyers) everything we’ve got here,” he said. “In Cannes, you have to rent an expensive booth and you can only take so much with you.”

Other hopeful beneficiaries of the American Film Market are the 67 film commissions from the United States, Canada and the Bahamas that are setting up for a three-day “Location Expo” in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton.

Film commissions from various cities, states and other countries have been aggressively pursuing film production from Hollywood in recent years. This is the first time they will have gotten together in one location to make their pitches.

While the American Film Market opened Thursday, it will be formally launched with a laser show in the Beverly Hilton courtyard tonight, followed by a party for 2,500 people at the Century Plaza Hotel. The Hilton couldn’t handle everything.

PAGE, TOO: Producer Diane Silver’s “Native Son” doesn’t go into production until next month, but it is already one of the year’s most interesting film projects and its release is bound to be a major event this fall.

First, there is the cast, as interesting a mix of stars as you’ll see anywhere. Silver had already announced the signing of Oprah Winfrey and Akosua Busia from “The Color Purple,” as well as Carroll Baker, Matt Dillon and Elizabeth McGovern.

Thursday she added Geraldine Page, the eight-time Oscar nominee (she’s up again this year for best actress for “The Trip to Bountiful”).

Then, there is the subject.

“Native Son” is adapted from Richard Wright’s benchmark 1940 novel that tapped into the alienation and growing hostility of blacks in the urban North. It is the story of Bigger Thomas, a naive 19-year-old black youth who accidentally kills a wealthy white girl and through his defense becomes aware of the antagonism of an oppressive white society.

Silver says she is still zeroing in on the actor, probably an unknown, who will play Bigger.

Although the book was adapted almost immediately into a play, produced on Broadway by John Houseman and directed by Orson Welles for Mercury Theater, it remained a controversial property for decades because of its perceived pro-Communist content.

Wright was a member of the American Communist Party, and in the novel Bigger Thomas is defended by a Communist lawyer.

(The book was made into a movie in Argentina in 1951, starring Wright as Bigger Thomas, but it had no impact in America.)

Silver, a former journalist and a former magazine editor (New Woman and You), began developing “Native Son” 2 1/2 years ago for PBS’ “American Playhouse.” But she said she got additional financing to produce it as a feature, plus a commitment from a major distributor to release it this fall.

Silver said “Native Son” will have a videocassette release after it has played in theaters, but its first TV airing is reserved for PBS and “American Playhouse.”

“Native Son” was adapted for the screen by Richard Wesley (“Uptown Saturday Night”) and is being directed by Jerrold Freedman, whose recent credits are mostly movies of the week for television. His last feature was the 1980 “Borderline,” which starred Charles Bronson.

Silver would not identify the distributor for “Native Son” or reveal its anticipated budget, but she says everyone, from the cast to herself, is taking minimal fees up front, gambling on percentages on the other end.

WISE MOVE: Academy Award-winning director Robert Wise (“West Side Story”) has agreed to direct Zupnik Enterprise’s “Going to the Chapel,” a romantic comedy about a female New York cab driver and a male socialite with an inheritance problem.

Wise, who hasn’t directed a comedy since his 1962 “Two for the Seesaw,” will also co-produce with Zupnik Vice President Jerry Tokofsky.

“Going to the Chapel,” budgeted at $13 million, goes into production late this summer. No cast is set yet.

Zupnik also announced that Irvin Kershner, whose recent films have included the adventures “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Never Say Never Again,” will direct “Puccini,” a $14-million biographical film about the great Italian composer.