All in his head

IT'S at least 104 degrees in the shade in the foothills outside Lancaster. Anthony Hopkins is nursing a ruptured Achilles' tendon and limps toward a tiny patch of cover from the sun, blinding dirt swirling all around him. In between setups for his new movie "Slipstream," Hopkins can't retreat to a cushy, double-wide Starwaggon -- the low-budget production can't afford it -- and when production wraps for the night, he'll crash not in a Four Seasons but a nearby Comfort Inn.

Does the Oscar winner for best actor for 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs" really deserve this? He says he actually needs it.

Even though the 69-year-old actor can command $10 million and more to star in some splashy Hollywood role, Hopkins says he'd much rather be doing exactly what he's doing on this miserably hot July day: making his very own indie movie.

"I love this because it's punishing," he says, gulping down some water as cinematographer Dante Spinotti blows sand out of a camera lens. "I love the heat, the abrasiveness of it all. I love the difficulty and the hardship. It keeps me on my toes."

"Slipstream," which premieres Saturday in the edgy New Frontier section at the Sundance Film Festival, is Hopkins' film in every conceivable way.

He wrote it, directed it and stars in it alongside his wife, Stella Arroyave. As if that were not enough, Hopkins also composed the "Slipstream" score and conducted its orchestra. But perhaps his greatest "Slipstream" challenge lies in trying to elucidate what the film has to say.

A fast-twitch journey into a screenwriter's consciousness, "Slipstream" unfolds in both the blink of an eye and across 110 nerve-jangling minutes. Birds -- and spiders -- talk. Performers change costumes in the middle of scenes, cars switch colors, characters transform into the actors playing them. A quick clip of Richard Nixon flashes in one scene, followed by a snippet of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in another, then a few shots of Adolf Hitler in the next. For seemingly no apparent reason, a Frisbee flies through the frame. And the movie is all tied together by a conceit reminiscent of "Jacob's Ladder."

"I've always been interested by the mind and the dream world," Hopkins says a few days after he has emerged from weeks in the "Slipstream" editing room. "I'm intrigued by the peculiar structure of dreams and the odd things that happen in our everyday lives."

Odd things, indeed.

'Don't ask why'