PROJECTING COOL; CAGE AND HIS `8MM' DIRECTOR OPTED FOR PERSONAL RESTRAINT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Most people who work in the Hollywood movie industry would not view a story about illegal pornography, violent sadomasochism and thrill killing as an opportunity to tone things down.

And then there are people like Nicolas Cage and Joel Schumacher, who rather remarkably took the subdued approach with their latest release, the snuff film/mystery thriller ``8mm.''

Before he became an action-movie hero, Cage won an Oscar for portraying the most intractable of alcoholics in ``Leaving Las Vegas.'' But that was just one of many extreme, outre performances that have come before and since, in ``Peggy Sue Got Married,'' ``Raising Arizona,'' ``Vampire's Kiss,'' ``Wild at Heart,'' ``Kiss of Death,'' ``Face/Off'' and, most recently, ``Snake Eyes.''

Director Schumacher is also known for his wild hair (both literally and figuratively). Although long considered a reliable supplier of commercial studio product (``St. Elmo's Fire,'' ``The Client,'' ``A Time to Kill,'' ``Batman Forever'' and ``Batman and Robin''), Schumacher has an ultrabusy style that turns even the most mundane material into colorful, noisy sensory assaults. And, sometimes, he ventures into unexpectedly inflammatory (the controversial ``Falling Down'') and just plain weird (``Flatliners'') territory.

``8mm'' is a trip into terra incognito if ever there was one. Cage plays a strait-laced Pennsylvania private detective who, in trying to determine whether a snuff film is real or staged, journeys through the Dante-esque sexual underworlds of New York and L.A.

While searching for the young ``star'' of the reel, Cage's Tom Welles is exposed to sleazy sex merchants, far-out fetishists and kiddie porn peddlers. He more or less maintains his professional composure until he uncovers a callous, exploitative subculture of torture-loving kidnappers. At that juncture, even he has trouble controlling his own darkest impulses.

Until that point late in the film, however, Cage plays Welles with the utmost steadiness and simplicity. As underplaying goes, it's subtler than his work in last year's ``City of Angels.'' And that was a romance in which Cage portrayed a gentle celestial being, not a private eye surrounded by danger and debauchery.

``It was an experiment,'' Cage admits. ``I like guys like Steve McQueen, who seem to be able to resonate or be larger than life doing, well, nothing. I think the power in that was the power of interpretation.

``So I said to Joel, `Can I try going the other way, like the old maxim of less is more, and see if this works? I'm just curious. I haven't really done it.' And he said, `Yeah, we should both grow from this movie in some way. You and I have both been given to flash - let's try to go in the other direction.' Which is what we did, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.''

Despite his record of on-screen pyrotechnics, the 35-year-old Cage's personality is naturally analytical, calm and deliberate. On the other hand Schumacher, 59, is a former costume designer known for his personal flair and effusive demeanor. But he found toning down his creative style just as refreshing as Cage did.

``We had both had luck with more theatrical, showoffy work, if you will,'' Schumacher says. ``It was time for us, individually, to work on a more restrained, more internalized, more inwardly developed level.''

Indeed, Schumacher's last film, ``Batman and Robin,'' hit such heights (or depths) of overpumped bombast, it threatened to destroy the superhero franchise with sheer screechiness.

``I needed to get out of the summer corridor because the box office had become more important than the movie, and it scared me,'' Schumacher admits of his blockbuster-making period. ``It was like the only game you ever played was the Super Bowl; you never got to have any of the games before it. It's been very good to me, I'm not complaining, but by `Batman and Robin' I started to lose a little of myself. I needed to get back to just telling the story.''

Understandable. But a story as unappealing as ``8mm's,'' which was written by ``Seven'' scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, seems as perverse a move - from a commercial standpoint, anyway - as some of the kinkier sex practices the movie depicts. Cage acknowledges that the movie dances on the borderline of prurience, but he insists that the smarmy details are just window dressing for a character piece.

``I was kind of aware that this stuff was out there, although I hadn't really seen any,'' Cage says of illegal pornography, which the filmmakers define as films and videos that combine violence with graphic sex and child porn. (There is no evidence that snuff films, the fabled reels of someone actually being killed for viewers' voyeuristic pleasure, really exist). ``But what attracted me was the character.

``As an actor, I have to find new ways of being interested in my work so that it stays interesting for the audience. Sometimes, that means I have to look in places that push the envelope or are more risky. I can either fall on my face in this experiment or grow from it or do something new. ``8mm'' seemed very risky and appealed to me; it wasn't your standard studio movie.''

That's for sure. But Schumacher questions whether anyone in post-Monica America will find anything in his picture truly shocking.

``I always make films on the theory that the audience is as sophisticated as we are,'' Schumacher says. ``In a lot of media, and in a lot of the Hollywood film industry, there's this attitude that the audience is like children. `Don't tell them that! They can't handle that.'

``But just think of what everyone in the United States has had to deal with in the last two years - and on television. Oral sex and DNA and ethnic cleansing ... I mean, what is it, in this day and age, that anyone thinks they don't know about out there? Ten billion was spent on the sex business in the United States alone, just in the last year. All of this is on the Internet, including kiddie porn.''

It was ``8mm's'' righteous violence, rather than its carnal content, that most concerned Cage.

``I think there are different factions of the pornography audience,'' Cage says. ``There are a lot of lonely people out there who it provides a release for, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

``But I don't think that's what's going on in `8mm.' I see this more as an examination of the horrors that can happen to young people who run away. On a symbolic level, Tom Welles is an amalgamation of a lot of people in America who are frustrated and angered by what they hear on the news. I know I get angry when I hear about a horrible thing that happened to a child.''

Part of the reason why Cage played it so cool through so much of the movie was that he genuinely didn't trust himself when it came time to act out Welles' anger.

``Violent scenes are a little tricky for me because, as an actor, I try to trick my mind into thinking I'm really there,'' Cage says. ``That's because I want to do it with some level of authenticity. But over the years, I've noticed that you can go so far there that it's kind of scary. Luckily, Joel made sure that the set was always cool, that no one crossed the line and everyone really controlled themselves. That was helpful.''

Schumacher confirms that, however startling ``8mm's'' sexual imagery may be, the film's truly disturbing aspects are its physical and psychic brutality.

``There's only one thing I know, having lived awhile on the planet Earth,'' the director says. ``There is no atrocity that you can dream of that someone hasn't done, and done worse than you ever dreamed. There is violence in us. We like to think that it's just an aberrant person here and there, but we know deep down that it isn't.

``It's not unusual for you to turn on your television and see that some adult has raped and murdered a child again,'' Schumacher adds. ``You say, `How can a human being do this?' Because they wanted to, that's why. There are lots of movies about serial killers, but that's too easy because a serial killer is a crazy person and we can chalk them off.

``This is about deeper evil than that. It's about people who just don't care; human life just is not of any concern to them.''

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Photo: (1--2--Cover--Color) DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS

Nicolas Cage unreels sordid tale in `8mm'

(3) Nicolas Cage on his role as a detective investigating a snuff film: ``I can either fall on my face in this experiment or grow from it or do something new. `8mm' seemed very risky and appealed to me; it wasn't your standard studio movie.''