LIFE IMITATES ... `LIFE'? WELL, ALL THAT DANGER AND ROMANCE SURE DID HIT CLOSE TO HOME.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

You've gotta love this one.

Cast and crew braved incredible obstacles - a South American coup, altitude sickness, unstable weather conditions that obscured and even washed away remote mountain locations, a director who admittedly turned into something of a monster, even an accidental death in the company - to film the movie ``Proof of Life.''

But now that the $70 million movie is being released, and for a good many months leading up to this hard-won conclusion, all anybody associates with the picture is the Meg and Russell show.

Perhaps you've been at the summit of Machu Picchu since spring and have not heard, but there has been rather some hubbub about the fact that the romantic thriller's two leads, recently minted international superstar Russell Crowe and Hollywood's bubbly comic sweetheart Meg Ryan, had their own romantic liaison while filming some 11,000 feet up in the Ecuadorean Andes. The relationship would not have been obsessed upon beyond the gossip columns but for the fact that Ryan was generally believed to be happily and stably married to her husband of many years, actor Dennis Quaid.

So now, as you might imagine, Crowe and Ryan are being extremely selective about speaking to the media at a time when their movie - a look at the current phenomenon of terrorist ransom kidnapping in the Third World - is coming out ... and needs all the promotional support it can get in the crowded, competitive and high-expectation-packed holiday movie rush.

Indeed, Crowe sounds like the only person from the company who's actually nostalgic for the thin air, rough terrain and constant dampness of the high Andes.

``When we were in Ecuador for four months, we didn't have to worry about paparazzi,'' Crowe says. ``I don't know why, but they didn't choose to fly to Ecuador.''

He can jest. But director-producer Taylor Hackford - yes, the very one who had those ``Fitzcarraldo'' moments of loudly shared stress during his madly ambitious Andean adventure - is none too pleased about the whole situation.

``It concerns me,'' says Hackford, a respected craftsman of grown-up studio fare such as ``An Officer and a Gentleman,'' ``Against All Odds,'' ``Dolores Claiborne'' and ``The Devil's Advocate.'' ``You know, you can't help what happens in life. These people didn't know each other when I cast them, and, well, things evolve.

``The problem is that you go out to make a film and people, including Meg and Russell, put a huge amount of time and effort and talent into something, and then you're usurped by the tabloids and hit the cover of People magazine twice in one month. They say that there's no publicity that's bad publicity, but I'm not so sure. I think that a lot of people read this stuff, which was published as 'Life imitates art,' so they think that's exactly what happens in the movie. Well, it's not. And I'm afraid, in this instance, that some people are going to figure that they've already read the tabloid story, so they don't need to see it.''

In ``Proof of Life,'' Ryan plays Alice Bowman, whose engineer husband Peter (David Morse) is kidnapped and held for ransom by drug-running rebels in the fictional but very Colombia-like South American nation of Tecala. Terry Thorne, Crowe's expert in the growth industry of international kidnap-and-ransom negotiation, dedicates himself to securing Peter's release. Early scenes establish serious troubles in the Bowmans' marriage, and as the extended and emotion-charged chess game with the captors drags on, an attraction grows between Alice and Terry.

Or so we're told. Perhaps a more serious casualty of the off-screen romance than the promotional spin may be a lack of discernible on-screen heat between Alice and Terry - in a movie made by a guy known for the memorably erotic ``Officer and Gentleman,'' ``Against All Odds'' and ``Everybody's All-American'' (which, interestingly, starred Quaid). But the only overt indications of intimacy come late in ``Proof,'' when a third party suggests it and Terry steals a desperate kiss as he is about to depart on a life-or-death mission.

Hackford has admitted that a love scene between Ryan and Crowe was filmed, but he fervently denied to this reporter that anything was cut from the movie to avoid ... well, a lot of things.

``The general audience may say, 'Wait a minute! That's all?' '' Hackford acknowledges. ``But I think that the tabloids are preparing you for an incredibly torrid thing in this film, and it isn't that.

``This film, and the ending of the film, was always as it is,'' Hackford insists. ``What happens in this instance, however, is that you have expectations. You have Meg and Russell, but the fact is that this is a film about adults in a complicated situation. These two people are really working and struggling very hard to get this woman's husband back. As such, they are very intensely involved in very serious business.''

According to Crowe, that's the main business that was going on at the Ecuador locations, too ... as well as later, in London, when the production arrived to film a few scenes amid a nova of paparazzi flashbulbs.

``All we were doing, mate, was simply getting on with the job of making the film, regardless of how other people phrase things or couch things,'' says the Australian actor. ``We were just focusing on completing the characters and doing the best we could, and all this other stuff started up around it which didn't actually have anything to do with us. It had to do with someone else's need for a story, I suppose.''

While his Oscar nomination for ``The Insider'' and the worldwide commercial success of ``Gladiator'' made Crowe an A-list actor this year, the garrulous bloke has clearly also learned the handy star tactic of talking around uncomfortable subjects. But getting Crowe cast as the lead before either of his breakthrough films opened was one of Hackford's first battles in the ``Proof of Life'' campaign. It took some impassioned convincing for Castle Rock Entertainment and the film's distributor, Warner Bros., to hang their expensive production on what was, at the time, a relative unknown's shoulders.

But they came around on that without too much of a fight. When a coup erupted in Ecuador shortly before filming there was scheduled to commence, however, the suits understandably hit the roof.

``I chose Ecuador for a specific reason: because it's peaceful, and I had a lot of input from the best experts about this,'' Hackford explains. ``So what happens? Three weeks before we go, there's a coup. I'm now facing a studio that's saying, 'Forget it, you're not going! Go to Mexico.' I'm like, 'You know, Mexico's a lot more dangerous than Ecuador.' They're like, 'Bull----! You're not going.'

``At this point, I had to start playing poker with them. I didn't know this to be the case but, basically, I stood by my research. In other places, a coup happens, it's going to be bloody. But Ecuador has no history of that, so I bet them that it would be an orderly transition of power on a Friday. Not believing it would happen, they kind of went, 'OK.' On Monday, an orderly transition of power; I won and I went.''

Was it an ancient Incan sage who said be careful what you wish for? Hackford not only wanted to film in Ecuador for its relative verisimilitude - violence-wracked Colombia is just across the northern border - but for breathtaking mountain locations that had never before been seen on film. Unfortunately, by the time he got cast and crew back to the volcanic, jungle-covered and difficult-to-access slopes he'd scouted months earlier, the wettest rainy season in 40 years had set in.

``Basically, you get yourself up in the altitude, everyone is asking you why they're here and having to go through this, and, at that point, you have to drive everybody forward,'' Hackford explains. ``And are you the nicest human being in the world during that process? Probably not.''

The filmmaker recalls a particular stretch marked by long drives over rutted roads and evacuations of personnel who could not function in the oxygen-thin atmosphere.

``A fog descended for one week on this mountaintop that has the most spectacular vistas you've ever seen, and only cleared for half a day,'' Hackford recalls. ``At that point, the studio's saying you could've shot this on a sound stage, you have some local actors who've never acted before, you get involved in these horrible moments ... and, yeah, it drives you nuts.''

Morse recalls the worst outburst.

``A lot of directors lose it, and understandably so; it's one of the hardest jobs in the world,'' says the gentle, unfailingly thoughtful actor. ``And Taylor lost it at me really badly one day, and at some girls who had never acted before and were up there suffering like everybody else. He was so out of control of the environment, we were in clouds so thick you couldn't see the length of a room.

``But then, he apologized. And to me, that was the real leader, somebody who could say, 'I made a mistake.' There are a lot of directors who wouldn't have done that, and it says something about his character.''

The indisputably worst day was when, 3 1/2 weeks into production, a truck carrying Will Gaffney, Morse's stand-in, fell 350 feet down a ravine, killing him and injuring five local actors.

Morse, understandably, does not wish to discuss the tragedy (``What's most important is his family and their loss,'' he says, not the discomfort it naturally caused him).

``It was a crushing blow of reality,'' says actor David Caruso, who plays Crowe's soldier of fortune buddy in the film. ``It was so rough; my wife and I would get on the elevator at our hotel and just see grown men crying. It was scary.''

Apprehensive better describes the mood as ``Proof of Life's'' box-office fate is about to be decided. Whatever the verdict, at least someone seems prepared to take responsibility for it.

``You know, this is of my own making and my own choice,'' Hackford concludes. ``I'm not complaining to anybody, I feel I was incredibly privileged. There is this love-hate relationship that goes on when a studio gives you all this money. But I wanted a level of reality to this film.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) PROOF POSITIVE

A coup, disastrous weather, a crazed director and scandal didn't stop MEG RYAN and RUSSELL CROWE'S new film, `Proof of Life'

(2) We were just focusing on completing the characters and doing the best we could, and all this other stuff started up around it which didn't actually have anything to do with us, '' Russell Crowe says of the media- fueled stories detracting from ``Proof of Life.''

(3) Director Taylor Hackford, left, says of Meg Ryan and Crowe's relationship: ``You can't help what happens in life. These people didn't know each other when I cast them, and, well, things evolve.''