Paul's Boutique Industry

By now we've grown accustomed to famed author Paul Auster hassling the film industry for jobs. In 1995, he teamed up with Wayne Wang to co-direct Auster's screenplay for Smoke, starring a nicely understated Harvey Keitel, then did the same with Blue in the Face, a follow up to Smoke released that same year. He then wrote and directed Lulu on the Bridge, also starring Keitel. All this happened long after he hit literary gold with The New York Trilogy, proving himself in that most wonderfully abused literary form: metafiction. The trio of postmodern detective-fiction stories famously put a bunch of people named after colors and a man named Auster in a dizzying maze of identity and chance. Today, he appears for a conversation after a screening of his latest effort as writer/director, The Inner Life of Martin Frost, which, to be sure, hasn't been getting the best reviews on the planet, but still: Paul Auster. The film stars David Thewlis playing a semi-famous writer (Auster? Sure, go with that), who finds a girl in his bed. Who is she? How'd she get there? Auster doesn't reward nosy people. He talks with San Francisco International Film Festival Director Graham Leggat after the film.
Wed., Jan. 16, 7 p.m., 2008