INDEPENDENT TONY BILL MINES FRESH TALENT

“When I was growing up, the biggest, most exciting dreams I had were to go where no one had gone before: to some island or the interior of some continent or to the moon,” said Tony Bill. “It’s this kind of excitement I find in going with talent that hasn’t been discovered.”

Bill, 46, was reflecting on what drives him to independently produce and direct the kinds of movies that many in the commercial film industry would consider gambles--films that have introduced new writing and acting talent, such as “Steelyard Blues,” “Hearts of the West” and “My Bodyguard,” and other Bill-produced films that have introduced new directing talent, such as Martin Brest with “Going in Style.”

Bill was here, at it again, producing and directing “Five Corners,” a film by New York playwright and first-time screenwriter John Patrick Shanley. It is a story about three days in the life of four white, middle-class teen-agers living in the Bronx on the eve of the tumultuous ‘60s. It features an ensemble cast of young actors who, excepting Jodie Foster, are relatively unknown.

The $5-million film, which recently wrapped after nine weeks on locations here, marks the first film venture for Bill’s own Market Street Productions, based in Venice, Calif., since “My Bodyguard,” the 1980 film by first-time screenwriter Alan Ormsby that starred a then-relatively unknown Matt Dillon.

“It takes time to find and develop the kind of material I like. . . . It’s like the luck of the draw: You wait until you get a good hand,” said Bill, who works steadily at yet a third vocation, acting, and who in recent years has directed TV movies for network and cable television, as well as the short-lived 1983 feature film “Six Weeks,” starring Mary Tyler Moore and Dudley Moore.

Bill, relaxing during a break in shooting on the streets of Queens, discussed his attraction to unusual projects like “Five Corners,” and of his preference for working independent of the Hollywood studio system.

“I know good writing when I hear or read it,” Bill said, recalling “the one-minute sampling” of a Shanley play he heard at a New York casting audition a little more than two years ago. “I had never heard anything quite like it. . . . It was as original and fresh as the best writing being done in the theater today.”

Bill said he immediately contacted Shanley, only to discover that the playwright was preparing his first screenplay, “Five Corners.” Bill agreed to produce and direct, and rather “effortlessly,” he said, Handmade Films (“Private Function,” “Mona Lisa”) agreed to finance the completed film sometime next year.

“Five Corners” focuses on Foster’s character and three young men, played by Los Angeles-based actor Tim Robbins and New York actors Todd Graff and John Turturro, who recently completed shooting a starring role in Michael Cimino’s still-to-be-released “The Sicilians.” According to Bill, the characters’ various conflicts signify the changes brewing beneath the surface of society in the early 1960s.

“It’s not calculated, but still it’s a topical look at the onslaught of violence and anarchy in our society,” he said. “It’s about something that happened (to us all) at the time of the Kennedy assassination; it’s not referred to explicitly in the film, but it’s there.”

Acknowledging that “on the face of it” his latest film is not a candidate for commercial success in today’s market, Bill said, “Each time out, I think, ‘Here’s a movie I want to make, but I wonder whether anybody else will be glad.’

“Each movie I make is a sort of experiment to see whether I want to stay in this business,” he continued. “I’ve come close enough (to leaving) that it’s always on my mind.”

Bill conceded the difficulties of working independently from his Venice operation and said he is sometimes tempted by the studio system. At the same time, working within the system can be laborious and aggravating.

“There are always the typical movie problems,” he said. “Actors come and actors go. . . . It’s very difficult to find stars who will agree to cut their salaries for the sake of a budget.”

“It’s very difficult and frustrating to own and operate and struggle to maintain what is, in effect, my own studio,” Bill said. “But at least I don’t owe anything to any studio, and no one can ask me to leave. I don’t have to wander from studio to studio like an itinerant, dependent on one of them or on luck, which is something no grown man should have to do.”