SEEING WHAT DEVELOPS ROBIN WILLIAMS FOCUSES ON ANOTHER ATYPICAL ROLE IN 'ONE HOUR PHOTO'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

There are photographs in Robin Williams' household, but the actor/comedian is not and has never been the keeper of the albums.

``My wife takes all the videos and photos, really keeping great track of all the family,'' explains Williams, who plays photo development clerk Seymour ``Sy'' Parrish in his latest film, ``One Hour Photo.'' ``It's a great record to have. My older son is 19 now, and we have pictures of him when he was 3. He had blond hair. Now he looks like a Marine.''

Williams grew up within a family that didn't take pictures very often. After the death of his mother, he discovered some old Super 8 film that he hadn't known existed. And his interest was piqued.

``My father made them of my mother fishing. Sometimes you get it. Why were my mother and father together? And I was like, 'Oh my God, she was gorgeous,' '' says Williams. ``These were taken by my dad, and that's the other part of the equation. Then there's a shot where he hands the camera off to someone else and steps into the picture. And it's like, 'Jesus, there's Dad and he's handsome.' There's my mom. It's like time travel.

``It's like the Indians say: The greatest photos of all capture a bit of your soul.''

Williams has some experience in front of a camera. As a celebrity, he's a magnet for autograph and photo seekers, the majority of whom won't be going home with any portion of the comedian's soul.

That's cool, says Williams, as long as people ask politely.

``There's a face you put on,'' he says. ``Sometimes people will ask me to take a picture, and I'll say 'Sure,' and they'll say, 'Why aren't you smiling?' Hey, I am smiling. I'm happy. I'm just not goofy.

``For magazines, sometimes when you work with great photographers, they'll get pictures of you that are you. Those are kind of like the moments when you're vulnerable or happy, but it's genuine. It's not what you think people want to see.''

Through a lens, darkly

Researching and playing a character like Sy Parrish can turn a guy into a shutterbug philosopher in a hurry. Sy, ``One Hour Photo's'' bent antihero, has worked as a photo development clerk at a drab retail store for decades. He doesn't simply process people's snapshots, he studies and collects photographs, pondering their meaning. ``No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget,'' says Sy in one of the film's voice-over segments, which he narrates.

For all his insights, Sy, we come to learn, isn't exactly the most stable of creatures. Yet the movie never leaves his brain.

``I thought Sy would be a more interesting character if he were strangely knowledgeable,'' says ``One Hour Photo'' writer/director Mark Romanek. ``It makes him more threatening and unpredictable if he's not a simpleton.''

A photographer since childhood and later a successful director of music videos, Romanek inserted a lot more photo philosophy into ``One Hour Photo'' than ended up on screen. He started to trim that content when test screenings indicated audiences wanted more story and less photo-think.

Romanek eliminated a lengthy and rather creepy examination of the red- eye effect and its connection to predatory animals. The segment would have opened the film.

``But it was like starting the movie like an Errol Morris film. It was very verbose and intellectual,'' says Romanek, referring to the director of ``The Thin Blue Line'' and ``Fast, Cheap & Out of Control.'' ``I think it will end up on the DVD, because it's an interesting sequence.''

Strictly speaking, ``One Hour Photo'' isn't a movie about the science of photography. Nor is it a standard-issue stalker film, although Sy's fixation with the Yorkins - the young family whose photos he develops and collects - takes on a decidedly menacing air.

Man alone

In the creation of Sy, Romanek was influenced by the ``lonely man'' movies of the 1970s - films like Martin Scorsese's ``Taxi Driver,'' Roman Polanski's ``Le Locataire'' and especially Francis Ford Coppola's ``The Conversation.'' Harry Caul, of ``The Conversation,'' uses surveillance equipment. Sy uses a Minolta.

The director also sees his film as a peculiar love story. Through years of developing this seemingly perfect young couple's photographs, Sy has lived vicariously through the Yorkins.

``He just was in love with this idea of the family because they represented everything that was not available to him,'' says Romanek. ``I, as a director, and probably Robin as an actor, had to approach him from a sympathetic point of view. I like those movies where you're made a little queasy by feeling you have an affinity for someone who is sort of messed up.''

``Messed up'' is putting it mildly. Puffy and badly dressed, his hair a sickly blond and his social graces anything but, Williams is unrecognizable from the beaming, good-hearted characters the actor often plays.

When he's not giving people the creeps, Sy Parrish is a wallflowery nonentity, the kind of person whom dozens of people interact with during a day but nobody bothers to remember.

Admittedly, that description doesn't sound like a Robin Williams persona. But Romanek was intrigued to learn that Williams had seen his script and was looking for new acting challenges. The director particularly remembered Williams' work in an adaptation of Saul Bellow's ``Seize the Day.''

``That was a very raw, naked, emotionally violent performance,'' Romanek says. ``I never forgot it.''

``Death to Smoochy'' and ``Insomnia,'' the two films that, with ``One Hour Photo,'' make up Williams' recent twisted trilogy, weren't on the radar screen when Williams signed on for Sy. Romanek's main concern wasn't Williams' ability to carry off a borderline psycho, but to disappear into a role where the character is supposed to be a blank.

Crazy ... and quiet

``He has to be a compelling enough character to carry a whole movie, and yet he's like a nobody, a forgettable guy who blends into the walls,'' says Romanek. ``To bring in a movie star who has got all this other baggage, that makes it even harder to resolve that contradiction, and Robin's one of the most charismatic people on the screen.''

Adds Williams: ``People have said they got more frightened by the things I didn't do than what I did. I guess people are watching this wondering when I'm going to go off. It helped a lot to have Mark around to be the observer, because it helps to create that kind of containment.''

Even with ``One Hour Photo'' following immediately on the heels of ``Smoochy'' and ``Insomnia,'' Williams discounts claims that he has deliberately been trying to embrace his dark side. Sy Parrish, he says, was just a great character, while ``Insomnia,'' in which he plays a murderer, afforded Williams the opportunity to work with ``Memento'' director Christopher Nolan and Al Pacino.

``That truly was a no-brainer,'' Williams said. ``With 'Smoochy,' I just said, 'This is funny. This is nasty funny.' I had no idea what it would do, and obviously it didn't make any money, but I read it and laughed my ass off.''

``Doing these movies wasn't too much of a stretch,'' he continues. ``I wasn't thinking, 'Whoa! Where will we go now' or 'Will people accept this?' Too late. They're done.''

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Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) IMAGE REVERSAL

For his acclaimed turn in `One Hour Photo,' ROBIN WILLIAMS kept his comic persona out of the frame

(2 -- 3) In ``One Hour Photo,'' above, Robin Williams lives vicariously through the snapshots of his customers. At right, he greets the press with director Mark Romanek at the film's premiere.

(4) Robin Willimas on his ``One Hour Photo'' character

Chris Pizzello/Associated Press