Talking Past, Present and ‘Suture’ at UCI : Movies: Scott McGehee and David Siegel say life’s good--now. But they admit to film professors and students that making their artsy thriller wasn’t easy.

Scott McGehee and David Siegel were beaming. And why not? They kept getting doused with high praise by the two dozen or so film professors and students who showed up Thursday night at UC Irvine to hear about the duo’s hot new movie career.

McGehee and Siegel, who grew up in Orange County, happily accepted kudos for their artsy thriller, “Suture.” The independent picture (which is being distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn Co.) has been lauded at prestigious events including the Telluride, Sundance and Cannes film festivals, and the small UCI audience didn’t find any reason to disagree.

The team that wrote, directed and produced “Suture” had to admit that life is pretty good these days. But that didn’t keep them from remembering how tough it has been. Siegel, 34, recalled his almost debilitating anxiety when shooting began several months ago in Phoenix.

“That first week, I was so frazzled I thought I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” he said during the informal gathering in the Humanities Building conference room. “There was so much to do, so much that could go wrong; making a movie is like catering 17 parties in one day.

“It was an exhilarating experience, but also overwhelming.”

Then there were the financial troubles. Even though “Suture” was shot in black and white on a relatively cheap $1-million budget, production stalled when funds ran out. It took five months, much hustling for backers and the help of director Steven Soderbergh (“sex, lies and videotape”), who saw the film at one of the festivals, to raise the needed cash.

“We were only two-thirds through and really struggling to finish,” Siegel said. “You never know if you will. Soderbergh was very committed, and that helped us through. After the (positive reaction at the) Telluride and Toronto film festivals, Goldwyn picked it up.”

“Suture”--which has already screened in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere for short runs, gaining generally favorable reviews--is scheduled to open at selected theaters in Orange County on Friday, said Stephanie Kluft, a Goldwyn spokeswoman.

The movie stars Dennis Haysbert (seen most recently with Michelle Pfeiffer in “Love Field”) as a man who is disfigured when his half-brother tries to murder him. A surgeon played by Mel Harris (a regular on TV’s “thirtysomething”) reconstructs his body while a psychologist (Sab Shimono) works on his mind.

As the slick press packet puts it: “Clay (Haysbert) suddenly finds himself with the face, the fortune and the reputation of a notorious scoundrel who is under suspicion of murdering his own father.”

Some critics have not been completely enamored of the movie’s artsy overtones. Times reviewer Peter Rainer wrote that “McGehee and Siegel have the flair to bring something distinctively new to black comedy once they shake out their art-film kinks. ‘Suture’ is the archetypal ‘promising’ first feature.”

It’s just the kind of criticism that annoys McGehee, who attended Laguna Beach High School, and Siegel, a Newport Harbor High School graduate. They’re proud of the movie’s highbrow style, saying they want audiences to be challenged as well as be entertained.

Their desire to move beyond the mainstream has actually created tension between them and Goldwyn. McGehee, 32, said the studio was looking for easy, viewer-friendly packaging when it began promoting “Suture” as a thriller, a label they feel is too simplistic.

“It should be pitched more as a film that makes you think,” he explained, adding that he nonetheless understood Goldwyn’s reasoning because “ ‘Suture’ is hard to describe and hard to sell.”

But Siegel was more pointed. He believes Goldwyn “doesn’t really like the film” and has not done enough to promote it, as a thriller or otherwise.

In discussing their movie, McGehee and Siegel were frequently asked by the UCI audience (many of whom saw the picture last weekend in a one-time screening at the Port Theatre in Newport Beach) why they chose Haysbert, who is black, to play the role as if he were white.

The film’s central conceit, and one that has generated much comment from critics, is that although the audience can see that Haysbert is black, they are supposed to accept that everyone in the picture perceives him as white.

Siegel and McGehee insist that they are not making a racial statement and, instead, are trying to question how we interpret the environment and our identities. Further, McGehee said that the audience should find some amusement in being privy to the illusion--knowing that Haysbert is black while the film’s other characters do not.

Siegel and McGehee, who now live in Los Angeles, began making short films together in 1989 without any formal training. Neither went to film school, but they shared a love of the movies, especially those from Japan. They learned on the job.

“On one of our first films, we rented camera equipment and had to pay the guy an extra $50 just to show us how to run it,” Siegel recalled. “We’d get our friends involved, everyone clicking the clapper (that introduces scenes) for fun.”

With a wry smile, McGehee continued: “I’d have to say we were pretty naive (both then and during the shooting of ‘Suture’). We’ve definitely learned a lot in the past couple of years.”