The Caton-Jones View of America : Movies: The Scottish filmmaker showcases a fresh perspective on rural Americana with a Fellini-esque look at life in a small Southern town.

Director Michael Caton-Jones, a Scotsman, was having trouble making himself understood with the American crew of “Doc Hollywood” shooting at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank and on location in the deep South.

“Nobody understood me and I thought I was losing my marbles,” Caton-Jones recounted recently in his thick accent.

“I really thought I was going bonkers. I’d say something and they’d stand there and then they’d sort of go away and ask someone else.”

Eventually, the crew grew familiar with Caton-Jones’ melodic Scottish lilt and, ultimately, it proved to be no obstacle for the 33-year-old director making his first American film, due out Friday.

“Doc Hollywood” is a romantic comedy about a brash young doctor (played by Michael J. Fox) bound for a high-paying job as a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills.

He gets waylaid in a small South Carolina town, falls in love, learns to relax and eventually changes his career plans.

Caton-Jones’ accent might have provided an initial challenge for cast and crew, but his fresh perspective--unfettered by stereotypes--on rural Americana was considered an advantage by those integrally involved in the making of the film.

“There was this approach to American life that was different,” said the film’s star, Michael J. Fox. “You have this European kind of sensitivity and framing of familiar American icons and architecture. It’s pretty bizarre.”

Indeed, carnival scenes in “Doc Hollywood” are almost Felliniesque. Thanks to Caton-Jones’ perspective, the film’s small Southern town of Grady, S.C., (in reality a picturesque hamlet called Micanopy , near Gainesville, Fla.) had the requisite Spanish moss and plantation-style homes, but with an added surrealist twist.

“There’s a really cool scene--part of a kind of montagey thing--where I’m about to leave this town and there’s a squash festival going on,” Fox said. “Kids are running around with sparklers and it’s beautifully lit and I wander by this old kind of garage parking lot area and they’re watching a Buster Keaton movie projected on a wall and all these old people are fanning themselves. It’s American and European at the same time.”

That might best sum up Caton-Jones’ style, whose images of the rural South are heavily influenced by classic American films.

“I try to combine the best of America and the best of Europe,” he explained simply.

But, can a European director with little first-hand knowledge of life in the U.S. direct a movie about a quintessential American town?

The answer is an unequivocal “yes” for Caton-Jones and the principals in the movie.

“The great thing about him is he doesn’t seem completely conditioned into a Scot’s understanding or an Irishman’s understanding of life,” said Woody Harrelson, who plays Hank, an insurance salesman who longs to get out of small-town Grady. “He’s not conditioned into any of these types of attitudes. He’s just one of these guys who has a real childlike, open perception of everything around him. . . . He has great facility to direct anything in any country because he has that open, childlike attitude that I think is vital for great directing.”

Caton-Jones, who was born in the Scottish mining town of Broxburn, said he has absorbed nuances of American life from movies and television.

“As a kid growing up in Britain you grow up on a diet of American cinema and American TV and you know a lot about it before you get (to the United States),” he continued. “Because I grew up on this diet of Americana, I actually in some ways suspect I have a purer vision of America than people who live here in some ways because I’m removed and I’m very selective. I may be hyper-American, seeing it in its crystallized form.”

The film was developed with Fox in mind as the star, but at various times before beginning production, both Caton-Jones and Fox lost interest in making the movie. Then, when the pair finally met they discovered they were kindred spirits in their love for vintage American cinema.

“We met each other and it was like mutual sparks flew,” Caton-Jones said. “And we thought, ‘Great, let’s do this.’ So it really was a marriage made in heaven. It’s been really good working with him.”

Caton-Jones said he took particular pleasure in having Fox play the role of the Porsche-driving doctor whose dream it is to perform cosmetic surgery on the rich and famous. Fox is perhaps best known for his role as the aggressive young capitalist Alex Keaton on the television situation comedy “Family Ties.”

“On one level it was a story of a doctor who was a lost soul,” he said. “He’s buying into the dream of ‘If I come to Los Angeles there will be palm trees, women and money’ . . . which is really the sort of ‘80s outlook. And Michael, by playing Alex Keaton, became the embodiment of the ‘80s. In many ways, Michael was an icon of an era which I perversely found great delight in debunking. This is sort of like Alex grows up and becomes a hippie.”

After directing the technically complex “Memphis Belle,” the year before, Caton-Jones said he longed to do a simpler film. A light comedy like “Doc Hollywood” seemed to be the ideal follow-up picture.

“It’s a really user-friendly movie, a really simple film that wears its heart on its sleeve,” the director said. “You just feel warm when you come out.”

Warner Bros. executives admit they were going out on a limb when they signed Caton-Jones on to direct it. Having directed only dramas--”Scandal” in 1988 and “Memphis Belle” in 1989--he had never proven himself as a director of romantic comedy.

But, says Bruce Berman, Warner Bros. president of theatrical production, studio officials were happily surprised by the results.

“If you look at ‘Scandal’, ‘Memphis Belle’ and ‘Doc Hollywood’ you see what clearly emerges is a director that can handle more than one genre and handle each of those pictures well and in an entertaining way,” Berman said. “The guy happens to be a very reliable, creative person who has brought his movies in on budget and also has managed to get the audience behind him in all of his movies. He’s an emerging talent with great competence and ability.”

“Scandal” was Caton-Jones first feature film and it won Caton-Jones kudos from the critics as well as a Golden Globe nomination. It became the third highest-grossing independent film released in 1989, according to box office officials.

Caton-Jones is in the early stages of casting his latest film, “This Boy’s Life,” a drama adapted from a novel by Tobias Wolfe about a young boy growing up in a dysfunctional family.

The director credits his early work as a stagehand on London’s West End in the late ‘70s for leading him to the cinema. He had worked in theater for five years when he was offered a job as a stagehand on an American film called “The Last Horror Movie.”

“It was directed by a bunch of lunatic Americans,” Caton-Jones remembers with a laugh. “It was just awful, but it was really good fun for me. I was having a whale of a time on it. It was shot in the South of France. . . . I watched the director and I thought ‘I can do that. Anybody can do that.’ He didn’t know what he was doing.”

So Caton-Jones enrolled in London’s National Film School at night and continued as a stagehand by day to pay tuition costs.

Soon, he began making films with borrowed equipment. His first student film won best film at the European Student Awards. His second was bought by the BBC.

“I suddenly realized that because of my theatrical training and because I had been messing around on my own I suddenly knew a lot more than most of the students (at film school),” he said. “I became like a hot piece of stuff, whatever that means. It just meant I sort of knew where to put the camera. I didn’t know much else.”

But officials at the BBC thought he knew plenty. After only two years of film school, the broadcasting company offered him a chance to direct a television movie.

Despite his European roots, these days Caton-Jones is considered a Hollywood director.

“To be here is just so desperately romantic for me,” he said, launching into an impassioned discussion of movie history, particularly the lore surrounding silent films.

“Most of the original Hollywood filmmakers were European emigres,” he explained. “I’m simply following a well-trodden path.”

But that path has been an all-consuming one for Caton-Jones. He has worked steadily for the past seven years, directing a film a year.

Despite the frenetic pace, Caton-Jones seems supremely relaxed. Those who have worked with him point to his enthusiasm, his youthful sense of exuberance as a director.

“He’s a blithe spirit--light and lively and fun,” said Barnard Hughes, who plays the town’s resident curmudgeon, Doc Hoag. “You feel totally at home with him and wanting to do good work.” An affable, easy-going man, Caton-Jones prefers jeans and denim shirts to power suits. He likes to kid around with crew members and keeps a jovial atmosphere on the set. Eschewing the demeanor of the serious director, he occasionally dons a fez with a long black tassel and strides around cracking a riding crop.

“He energizes the whole set with his child-like teddy bear attitude,” Harrelson said. “He has his riding crop. He walks around with it, slaps it on his hand, slaps it on his boots.”

Caton-Jones offers a simpler reason for his use of props: “It’s practical actually. They can always find the director this way.”