Daily News from New York, New York • 249

il 4 d-, a i i ft ft ill. It I I i DAILY NEWS 34 uv, v. 1 Wednesday, October 14, 1987 I M2A1 l7l aT) jyy: 0ivl-rs UZAALAX nunyniM 1 iiiHTmrn I IfllJ 1 If "I When Hollywood goes behind bars in 'Weeds life in on-screen prisons will be grittier than youVe ever seen before A. MAMA'S BOY: James Cagney and stayed just long enough for Cagney to plot his escape or get the chair." In "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938), James Cagney stopped in for a hot meal and 2,000 volts. In "White Heat" (1949) he sat pat until he got wind Ma died and had the getaway car gassed.

In "Each Dawn I Die" (1939) he was a framed reporter forced to do time. None of these films, THINK HE I V' Cr CCT" iff "ZZZ. A State Prison, 0 i- PLAY'S THE THING: Nick Noltj ifcjT ft'SP freedom; "The Longest VVi U' Yard" (1974) allowed Burt I VVI Reynolds and fellow convicts 4fV a chance to beat back the -rx' i guards with a not-so-friendly i i gane of football. VWau. NTO THAT CROWDED I prison yard comes NTO THAT CROWDED prison yard comes "Weeds," written by direc By LORENZO CARCATEWRA T'S ABOUT TIME.

DAYS shedding off a corner calender, young men turning old, hard muscle gone soft, overhead sky always dark with clouds. Angry voices All halls during daylight hours, soft moans of pleasure and pain rock the night They're called the walking dead. Captured criminals caged inside a concrete den of thieves. Jailbirds. Con-victs.

Master killers of time. "Basically, not the kind of gentlemen you would like to see with an arm draped around your daughter's shoulders," Nick Nolte says. "Not before they get in and usually not after they've come out" On Friday, "Weeds," starring Nolte, William Forsythe, Joe Mantegna, Ernie Hudson and J.J. Johnson, opens. It is a film about convicts.

In this case, a losers band given new life as an acting troupe. It is the latest, and, if advanced whispers can be believed, one of the best attempts by Hollywood to bring the feel and smell of a prison cell to your local theater. "You think of films set in prison and you always end up thinking about Cagney, Eddie G. and Bogart," Forsythe says. "You never really had much of an idea what went on in those prisons.

Usually, you PENN LIKES TO time. He didn't Men PASTS Edmond O'Brien in "White Heat" great as they were, offered even the slightest glimpse into the darkened echoes behind prison walls. Back then, they used soft tones to deliver a message. The screams and shrieks of Cagney, seconds before the executioner's twitch, were thought to be enough to chill the bone of any criminally-minded audience member. In recent years, prison DEUuPEOFE? tor John Hancock and his wife, Dorothy Tristan.

A large portion of the movie was filmed at the Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, I1L Many of the men seen as guards in the film are actual convicts working off double-decade sentences. Daniel Hernandez, one of those convicts, called the casting "a cool change of pace." Mike Nolan, another guard for a day, calls it "a tension-breaker." Director Hancock calls it "realistic. I wanted the riot scene to be as real as any ever put to film. Mixing real convicts in with real guards inside the walls of a real prison has made it that These guys seemed to like hitting each other." "Weeds," unlike many of the earlier prison-set films, attempts to break down the day-to-day monotony of longtime cell life. It parts company with those hard-faced films of the '30s and '40s which failed to give any indication of what the world looked like inside these closed chambers.

Prison is the violent domain of men the rest of the country would just as soon forget existed. A film like "Weeds" reminds that they are there. That they will always be there. "It was very easy to forget who these men were and why they were locked up behind bars," says Forsythe. "There was a guy walking in the yard films have become as hard edged as a three-time loser.

"Brubaker (1980) had Robert Redford as an idealistic warden out to revamp a corroded system; "Bad Boys" (1983) threw Sean Penn into a juvenile correctional institution with the expected deadly results; "Escape From Alca-traz" (1979) saw Clint Eastwood break back and bone as he chiseled toward Miguel Pinero .1,. A A to who do the performing with The Families, a traveling troop of ex-cons turned actors. Hancock cast him in "Weeds," as Lazarus, a member of Nick Nolte's acting company. "I quickly found that I got higher on acting than I did on drugs," Johnson says. Charles MacGregor: Heaveyweight time.

Served 28 years in a number of state prisons for a couple of murders. Has acted in films: "Blazing Saddles," "Super Fly," "The French Connection." Wrote a book, "Up from the Walking Dead," about his prison life. Active in community and ex-con organizations. Miguel Pinero: His play, "Short Eyes," was based on his drug-related prison experience. Has done well both as an actor Apache: The Bronx," "Short and writer Still has occasional run-ins with the law.

Lorenzo Carcaterra real thing hardly talk about it When they do, they call it college. The following are four actors who finished college before starting screen careers: Richard Foronjy: Spent nearly eight years in a couple of upstate holes, including Dan-nemora. In prison, learned two trades-butcher and actor. Sidney Lumet cast him in his first film, "Serpico." Since then, he has worked steadily in both movies Gambler," "Once Upon a Time in America," "Prince of the and television St Blues," "Taxi" and the Serpico series). He is currently at work on a commissioned screen play about his early life.

JJ. Johnson: Did 18 months in prison for drug-related offenses. Was spotted by "Weeds" director John Hancock at Rahway.