Amos Poe recreates the gangster genre with Frogs for Snakes, a screwball neo-noir set in a New York City demimonde where every career criminal is also an actor convinced all he or she needs to make it is one lucky break. Barbara Hershey toplines a star-studded cast as Eva, a single mother who pays the rent by doing collections for her loan shark ex-husband Al (Robbie Coltrane); also on board are Ian Hart, John Leguizamo, Lisa Marie and Clarence Williams III. When word gets out that Al's getting ready to expand into theatrical production with "American Buffalo", some of his cronies are prepared to kill to get plum parts. Some of the film's biggest jokes occur when the thugs' launch into monologues from films like The Third Man, Night and the City and The Hustler. "You can't reinvent speeches like these, but by altering the context you change their meaning," says Poe. "I've been exploring the concept of originality -- what in music is called sampling and in art appropriation." Frogs is the first entry in a trilogy of films Poe's written about actors and process and takes its name from a Sonny Boy Williamson tune Patti Smith will record as the title track.

Best known for his 1976 documentary about New York's punk rock scene, Blank Generation, Poe pioneered a Godard-inspired Lower East Side Nouvelle Vague with Unmade Beds, The Foreigner and Subway Riders over the next five years. His highly stylized 1984 Alphabet City inspired a rash of mainstream copycats, and Poe soon found himself in demand as a Hollywood pen-for-hire. His sweet tale about a dying writer bonding with his youngest grandson, 1988's Rocket Gibraltar, starred Burt Lancaster and introduced Macaulay Culkin. Poe's most recent feature, Dead Weekend, played as a Showtime Original.

"Amos has been around too long and not been 'discovered'," says Larry Meistrich, whose Shooting Gallery is producing Frogs. Frogs shot in downtown Manhattan for five weeks beginning June 30 with d.p. Enrique Chediak, a recent NYU grad whose work on Hurricane Streets won this year's cinematography prize at Sundance. Meistrich is mulling a foray into distribution that could kick off next year with Frogs; all rights remained available at press time.

Cast: Barbara Hershey, Robbie Coltrane, Lisa Marie, Ian Hart, Ron Perlman, Clarence Williams III, Harry Hamlin, Debbie Mazar. Crew: Producers, Larry Meistrich, Phyllis Kaufman; Co-Producer, Jonathan Starch; Screenwriter/ Director, Amos Poe; Director of Photography, Enrique Chediak; Production Designer, Michael Shaw; Casting, Lina Todd. Contact: Larry Meistrich, The Shooting Gallery, 145 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019. Tel: (212) 243-3042, Fax: (212) 647-1392.

A Fish in the Bathtub - Joan Micklin Silver
Frogs for Snakes - Amos Poe
High Art - Lisa Cholodenko
Karma Local - Darshan Bhagat
Mixing Nia - Alison Swan
Restaurant - Eric Bross
Route 4 - Jeff Dark
Show & Tell - Dean Pollack
Smart Money - Alexander Hennech
Strangers in Transit - Brad Kaned