Hallstrom, Wondering About Oscar, Tries Hand at TV : Swedish Movie Maker Could Win 2 Academy Awards for ‘My Life as a Dog’ as He Prepares Comedy for NBC

While waiting to begin production on a new feature film version of “Peter Pan”--and, more important, to find out if he will win Academy Awards tonight for directing and co-authoring the hit film “My Life as a Dog”--Swedish film maker Lasse Hallstrom says he has been “getting some wet feet” by making a television pilot.

Hallstrom, 41, is a relative newcomer to Hollywood, to television and, apparently, to American slang--but he is happily looking forward to his life as a TV producer. “Of course, feature film is where my heart stays, but it’s useful to me to have this practice,” he says.

Hallstrom is the director and co-executive producer of “The Big Five,” a laugh-trackless comedy pilot for NBC about four boys and a girl in the 10-year-old age range. The pilot was written and co-executive-produced by John Steven Owen for Weintraub Entertainment. If NBC picks up the series for fall, Hallstrom will serve as creative consultant.

“Television here is great fun, it’s a candy store for me,” Hallstrom said cheerfully in a recent telephone conversation. “To compare it to Swedish television, you can dig for gold here--you have the PBS and you have the cables and it’s a fantastic variety of things. In Sweden, we have two channels. I’m jumping around in the candy store enjoying myself.”

If American television is the candy store, then Los Angeles is “the big, huge candy store,” Hallstrom added. “After the success of ‘My Life as a Dog,’ America has shown a fantastic warmth, this overwhelming warmth. I hope I survive it when it ends.”

Like “My Life as a Dog,” the bittersweet story of a 12-year-old boy separated from his dying mother (it won the Swedish equivalent of the Oscar for best picture and netted the best actor award for its young star, Anton Glanzelius), “The Big Five” views the world through children’s eyes. Unlike “My Life as a Dog,” “The Big Five” is not set in a quirky Swedish village, but in suburban Anywhere, U.S.A.

Hallstrom sees no problem in adapting what he calls his “real-life” approach to the tragi-comedy of growing up to this new arena. “When it comes to style and neighborhoods, I have to rely on the other people here,” he says. “When it comes to kids’ experiences, and kids’ adventures, it’s universal.”

Hallstrom’s list of films includes others that feature children. Along with the upcoming “Peter Pan,” based on the original J. M. Barrie novel and also for Weintraub Entertainment, Hallstrom made two films based on stories by “Pippi Longstocking” creator Astrid Lindgren: “The Children of Bullerby Village” and “More About the Children of Bullerby Village.”

Hallstrom guesses that Weintraub chose him for both “Peter Pan” and “The Big Five” because “My Life as a Dog” solidified his image as a good director of children. He says his association with kids occurred by chance, not design, however.

Hallstrom is often asked if “My Life as a Dog” is autobiographical; it is not. Hallstrom owns a dog and is the father of a 12-year-old boy, but “My Life as a Dog” is based on the Reidar Jonsson novel of the same name. “And the book just happened to include a boy,” he adds.

“I guess after ‘Peter Pan’ I will have to turn to the adult world for some time, to avoid being typecast as a children’s director. And also to stay away from the noise, sort of. It’s an exhausting experience to shoot with kids for a long period.”

Exhausting, but rewarding. “When you’re shooting a movie (with children), you’re forced to work with each other on an equal basis, and take each other’s work seriously,” Hallstrom enthuses. “It’s a collaboration between adults and kids that you rarely find in real life; the mutual respect of kids and adults . . . is something very rare.”

Because of his respect for children, Hallstrom says that if “The Big Five” is picked up as a series, he hopes to let the children--Cory Danziger, Todd Cameron Brown, Sean Baca, Mike Ryan Cash and Maia Brewton, all from Los Angeles--ad lib some of their lines so their speech will sound more natural.

Hallstrom says he was delighted to elicit very natural performances from his young cast in the pilot, even though American TV led him to believe Hollywood’s jaded child actors would have a hard time behaving like children.

“I’ve seen American kids on television, and I have a slight problem with that kind of precocious performance,” Hallstrom observes. “When you have kids reading grown-up lines, you have a cheap way of getting comedy or laughs. I’m trying to avoid that, to have kids speak like kids.

“Coming here as a European, you see a lot of precocious performances, and also strange, precocious body language. It looks like the kids are imitating what they see on television. Sometimes I have a strange feeling that its not only television imitating reality; it’s reality imitating television.”

And Hallstrom has made another observation about American TV that he finds disturbing: “It’s a cultural difference here: They have more of a hang-up about them (children) watching sex than watching violence. I think it should be the other way around: I’m more concerned about them watching violence. I guess that’s very Swedish, though.”