REYNOLDS A 72-YEAR-OLD MERCHANT IN `BOOGIE' FOLLOW-UP.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Would you buy Burt Reynolds as a 72-year-old Jewish shopkeeper? You'll have a chance to decide before too long. He's recently completed playing that role in North Carolina in the independent feature ``Waterproof'' - and industry interest, incidentally, is surging.

``With Burt being so hot from `Boogie Nights,' a lot of people have been wondering what he's doing for a follow-up. This is it. ... We're talking to a number of distributors already,'' reports Frank Capra Jr., who produced ``Waterproof'' - and is also the president and CEO of Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, N.C.

Capra tells us the picture, which also stars Whitman Mayo and April Grace, sees Reynolds' character shot and kidnapped - and eventually cared for by an African-American family in Louisiana.

Capra took time away from his heavy schedule this month to wing to England, where his late father's beloved ``It's a Wonderful Life'' has just been re-released in a small number of theaters - on the 50th anniversary of its British debut. ``They're calling the results `dumbfounding,' '' Capra says. ``There was no TV or radio advertising - and it wound up with the biggest per-screen average of any film in the U.K. on its opening weekend, about $5,000 per screen.'' Now, NBC, which has an exclusive deal to re-broadcast the Jimmy Stewart classic through 2002, has the film scheduled for showing in its original form Saturday.

Boo-who

Jamie Lee Curtis, who years ago vowed she was done with being the horror movie ``scream queen,'' is returning to her old haunts. Next month - some 17 years since she made her last horror film - she'll begin shooting ``Halloween: Revenge of Laurie Strode.''

This time around, the embattled Laurie has an 18-year-old son. She's living under the name Keri Tate and working as the headmistress of a private, all-girls high school. (Oh, can't you imagine the possibilities there?) Sure enough, big trouble begins when her maniacal serial-killer brother appears on the scene, ready to launch a murderous rampage.

Sounds screamy.

Hot ticket

When Jay Leno hosts the first live weekend edition of the ``Tonight'' show - on Super Bowl Sunday - his studio audience will have an extra treat in store: a game-viewing party, complete with food, (nonalcoholic) beverages and giant-screen TVs brought in for the occasion.

Cable's American Movie Classics and Romance Classics are trying to counterprogram the New Year's Day football bowl games with what they're calling the ``Heart Bowl'' - a marathon of romantic movies they hope will lure women uninterested in football. This week, they're bringing in Miss Universe Brook Lee, Miss USA Brandi Sherwood and Miss Teen USA Shelly Moore to tape segments in advance for the ``Bowl'' - in ``romantic'' Southern California locales. The ladies will talk about men and love and all that and introduce the Jan. 1 romantic film lineup.

The videoland view

Michael Ironside, who played Dr. William Swift in the first season of ``ER,'' pops back up on the medical drama Jan. 8. Dr. Swift surprises his former ER co-workers when he returns as the attending physician for Synergix, a corporation looking to take over management of the ER.

Meanwhile, Ironside is just finishing shooting the suspense thriller ``Captive'' with Erika Eleniak. He says the troupe, on location in Montreal, found ``some strange energy in a defrocked monastery where we were shooting. When you walk in, you have this feeling that you're intruding. They said it was a monastery, part of the Montreal diocese. I went, `Oh really? It had to be either that or the city morgue.' It had that kind of psychic Jell-O feel, which lent itself to the scenes we were doing.''

The actor with Irish roots, who also stars in Paul Verhoeven's ``Starship Troopers,'' says he tends to be a little more open to psychic phenomenon than most people. ``In the old country, you'd say my family was pixilated or fey. We're all very close, and we have each other's dreams and stuff like that.''

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3 Photos

Photo: (1) Burt Reynolds

Stretching in ``Waterproof''

(2) Jamie Lee Curtis

Ready to scream again

(3) Michael Ironside

Returns to ``ER''