AUTHOR CAUGHT IN HIS ‘SPIDER WOMAN’ WEB

“I don’t photograph well,” said Argentine novelist Manuel Puig in fluent English. “I always end up looking . . .” and he bugs and rolls his large, dark eyes, imitating a horrific character out of a 1930s B movie.

Puig loves those movies, and the plots of two of them, “The Cat People” and “I Walked With a Zombie,” form part of his best-known novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

The 1985 film version, which won a best-actor Oscar for William Hurt, who co-starred with Raul Julia, has sold more than 117,000 copies on the home-video market. Puig’s stage version, which has run for several years in Brazil, Mexico and Spain, opens Saturday in Los Angeles at the Cast Theatre. (See related story by Don Shirley on Page 8).

While Puig was not happy with the film (for which he was a consultant but not a writer), he said the play is much closer to the original novel “because I did it myself. I would have done the film totally differently, but somehow audiences come out with the impression I wanted: Molina (the homosexual window dresser and movie fanatic played by Hurt) thinks of himself as the quintessential flaming, screaming queen, and Valentin (Molina’s revolutionary cellmate, played by Julia) thinks of himself as the quintessential tough guerrilla. But when they get to know each other, they find that they are really more complicated than the roles they have chosen.”

Although Puig thought the film of “Spider Woman” showed “disrespect” for his story, he became good friends with its producer, David Weisman. The two hope to bring the author’s just-completed fourth screenplay, “The Seven Tropical Sins,” to the screen for Weisman’s Sugarloaf Films with Susan Seidelman (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) directing.

Puig, Weisman said, is planning to meet with Seidelman in New York next month to discuss the film. Weisman envisions Sonia Braga, who played the title role in “Spider Woman,” and John Malkovich as two of the three leads of “Tropical Sins.”

“The story takes place in Rio,” Puig said, “and involves a Brazilian leading lady and two American leading men. It’s about wishful thinking, and two people projecting their wishful thinking on one another. Somehow they meet by means of unreality.”

Is this another story, like “Spider Woman,” about obsessional love?

“Yes,” Puig acknowledged. “Two people in love with their ideals somehow learn to play that ideal role. Each one has a certain need. He needs a woman he can trust. Trust is the key word.”

Weisman said that working with Puig is “one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve ever had. Here is a prominent, slightly avant-garde Latin American writer so steeped in the realities of movies and the film business that he can talk story points or personal dealings in the industry like the head of a major agency. That’s rare.

“I spend a fortune talking to him on the phone . . . his grasp of cinema is so strong.”

Much of Puig’s work--his seventh novel, “Pubis Angelical,” was published in the States last month--reflects his passion for the movies, especially those of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Among his favorites are Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” and “Rebecca.”

“What I like is their stylization,” Puig said. “I think I can understand the reality of the 1930s by means of the unreality of their films. The films reflect exactly what people dreamed life could be. The relationships between people in these films are like the negative of a photograph of real life.”

Born 54 years ago in a small town in the Argentine pampas, Puig became fascinated with films as a youngster. He went to the local movie house five nights a week for 10 years. The first film he saw was “The Bride of Frankenstein.” He kept notes and clippings. Puig’s first novel, “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth,” published in this country in 1971, includes a semi-autobiographical character, an artistic boy named Toto, who admires the actress.

In 1956, he won a scholarship to study film making in Rome. Until he began writing fiction in 1961, he worked as assistant director on several films, including “A Farewell to Arms.” But, Puig realized, “it wasn’t making films that interested me; it was watching them.

“When I started to write my first novel, I used detail, accumulation of detail. That’s not possible in films. I wanted to analyze certain problems of mind and soul. I couldn’t do that research in film. I thought, now that I’ve conquered this new territory I would never go back to film. But after many years and a few novels, I’ve been asked to do film scripts again.”

Weisman and Puig also have signed with United Artists to develop “Chica Boom!” an original musical comedy farce, based on a story by Puig, inspired by 1930s bedroom comedies. Weisman came up with the original idea, which draws on “two of Puig’s fascinations,” Weisman said, “the search for identity and women’s roles. “It’s about Carmen Miranda who was actually a Jewish girl from Brooklyn who went down to Rio.”

Puig’s other screenplays include Spanish-language versions of “Pubis Angelical” and an earlier novel, “Heartbreak Tango.” (“I own the rights, so if anyone wants to redo them, they are available. . . . “)

But for Puig, all roads lead back to “Spider Woman.” He is now working on the book of a musical version for Hal Prince.

Both “Spider Woman” and “Pubis Angelical” reflect the author’s passion for the movies. Both novels are written largely in dialogue.

“Slowly I have discovered that I can feel comfortable also doing film work, as long as it’s not realistic,” Puig said. “Film, I see more as the realm of allegory, and allegory goes well with synthesis.

“The dreams we dream every night are all symbols. What better example of synthesis than those few seconds that tell long stories? For me, film is another language, which I associate with fantasy, the dictates of the unconscious. I save realism for fiction.

“If I could, I’d capture an MGM film forever,” Puig said, “but I think writing about politics is unavoidable, though I don’t take sharp positions in real life.”

Like the heroine of “Pubis,” Puig lives in exile, even though he is now free to return to Argentina.

“I left in September, 1973, and I’ve never been back. I left before the trouble started. I smelled it all. I felt hostility in the air. A few months after I left, the police seized my current novel, ‘The Buenos Aires Affair,’ on the pretext that it was pornography. . . . ‘Spider Woman’ wasn’t published in Argentina until after the junta fell.”

Today, Puig lives in Rio de Janeiro. “I like a placid environment,” he says. “I appreciate the sweetness of the climate and a certain peace. For me, the 50s--so far--have been the best part of my life. Absolutely. No doubt about it.”