THE BIZ

In a town that treasures three-hour lunches, filmmaker Jonathan Heap has pulled the ultimate prank--”12:01 P.M.”--a short film /social commentary guaranteed to unnerve even stalwart “Twilight Zone” fans.

The story is simple. Law clerk Myron Castleman (Kurtwood Smith) discovers that the world has undergone a time bounce and is doomed to repeat the same lunch hour into infinity. But he is the only one who realizes the catastrophe. He begins every hour in a traffic circle near Los Angeles’ Bonaventure Hotel, where returns, at the stroke of 12:59, faced with yet another meaningless lunch hour.

“12:01 P.M.,” based on a short story by San Francisco writer Richard Lupoff, was filmed last year in Los Angeles. And the story of its making reads like a script, albeit a schlocky one. Heap, a 33-year-old graduate of the film school at Ithaca College in New York, came to town in 1987. After toil ing on projects for various independents, he was accepted by the Discovery Program, a 3-year-old, not-for-profit organization established by former studio head David Putnam and funded by Showtime, that gives unknowns working in the industry a crack at directing.

Discovery gave Heap $35,000 and the services of some of Hollywood’s best writers, cast and crews. The rest is history. “12:01” debuted on Showtime in August and won widespread acclaim, and the Academy, in an unusually macabre mood, nominated it for an Oscar. (It didn’t win.)

Heap is flabbergasted by the attention. “I have to tell you,” he says, “the doors to this town used to be hermetically sealed to me. Now everyone seems open for business.”

He is working on a full-length feature of “12:01” for New Line Cinema. Also in the works are “Dead Silence,” a psychological thriller for RKO and five other projects.

“It just goes to show that Putnam’s program is doing what it was intended to do,” he says.