INTERIOR: BACK DINING ROOM—JÁMA BAR, DAY

Film producer JEFE BROWN, 35, runs into frame carrying office supplies.

BROWN

Sorry I'm late.

BROWN sits at table, drops stationery, etc. onto tabletop.

BROWN

I have to get this application off to Cannes today, so ...

So, it's somewhat of a power lunch I'm having with the young Prague-based American expat producer. Brown finishes his application, eats lunch, greets people and carries on a conversation about life and work effortlessly, leaving the impression that this is his normal pace.

Brown has certainly been energized by the reception of his last produced film, Shut Up and Shoot Me. In fact, the British-Czech black comedy, written and directed by Steen Agro, has been gaining a wide fan base. Winner of two awards at the Cherbourg Film Festival in France, the low-budget crime tale has recently been invited to the Variety critics section of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival as one of the "10 films to watch" in Europe. It may even get a viewing at Cannes — that is, if the application gets there in time.

Film producers tend to have bad reputations, especially among themselves. Anyone who has read Art Linson's biting memoir What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line (soon to be a major motion picture starring Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn) will know the nightmare that one must endure (and that one might become) on the job. In his own filmland memoir, Studio Affairs, Vincent Sherman summed-up his career thus: "Being a movie producer was the same as running a pool hall or a whorehouse."

The picture isn't completely dire, however. "The problem is that to be a producer, one must be a gambler," renowned director Marcel Carné once said, "And the greatest French producers were gamblers." Brown seems to be a gambler. He also seems to be winning.

Brown has lived in the Czech Republic for 12 years. After graduating from Texas A and M University in Austin, he decided to go abroad to teach English and wound up in Brno, where he stayed for five years. With the outbreak of war in Bosnia, Brown took off to serve as a journalist in the conflict, while keeping the Czech Republic as his base.

His experience in the Balkans led him toward his first film project as a producer with a documentary titled Collateral Damage. "The film is critical of the NATO bombing campaign," Brown tells me. "We bombed bridges along the Danube, which had an adverse effect on the economies of Romania and Bulgaria." The film has become a staple of university screenings, and has been shown on Romanian and Bulgarian television.

For Brown, producing the film was formative, and he has been working as a producer ever since. With two colleagues he started UFO Pictures, and has racked-up a number of small, interesting music films, including the Nick Cave concert film, The Myth, and, something diametrically opposite Cave, Call of Dudy: Bohemian Bagpipes Across Borders (Dudy being a Czech variation on the bagpipe, usually featuring a carved ram's head). But it was Brown's next venture that put him on the local map.

Rex-patriates, a mockumentary on a group of expats who left Prague and then returned for a second second chance, is like a who-was-who of Prague expatdom. "It's a piss take on the 'Paris of the '90s,' " Brown says, laughing. Directed by local talent agent Nancy Bishop, Rex-patriates was an exercise in DIY filmmaking. "A lot of the film was guerilla shooting," Brown remembers. "We didn't have time to get the proper permissions, so cast and crew would quickly descend on a spot, and we would film the scene."

Premiering at the Rome Film Festival, Rex-patriates received good notices from CNN and Variety, and was certainly a hit in Prague, as most of the expat community who wasn't in it came out to see who was. The cast included well-known Czech actors Karel Roden and Martin Dejdar, along with such recognizable expats as The Prague Post's own Alan Levy, who was filmed not long before his death. "I call it 'the little film that could,' " Brown says. "It's been sold to Czech Television, so it will be interesting to see what the wider response is like."

"I always said that I would have a film in cinemas by the time I was 35," Brown tells me, "and it happened." The bleakly funny Shut Up and Shoot Me was picked up by Hollywood Entertainment, and opened widely last winter in Prague's multiplexes and garnered good reviews. "Harry Potter killed us, though," Brown remembers. "It was supposed to open the week after Shut Up premiered, but they suddenly decided to move up the opening."

Director/Screenwriter Steen Agro's tale of a suicidal Englishman, Colin, who hires a down-on-his-luck Czech to bump him off is a bit like Beckett meets Ealing Comedy. "I think it's a film that Scandinavians would love," Brown laughs. "Well, at least the French seem to." Agro's comically morose film comes with excellent performances from Roden and Anna Geislerová, and a marvelously deadpan turn from British actor Andy Nyman as the sullen, suicidal Colin (Nyman picked up a best actor award at Cherbourg).

The film has also firmly established a relationship between the producer and his director, whom Brown is eager to work with again. The feeling is mutual. "Jefe's single most valuable asset is his infectious enthusiasm," Agro told me before my meeting with Brown. "You need that kind of energy when you're working on a film, because the whole process takes forever and can be hell. He's also mastered the unnerving knack of delivering bad news and making it sound like a really good idea."

"Shut Up is definitely a stepping stone, I think," Brown says. "It was a great learning experience, and is something to build on." But producing is tough, as even some finer Hollywood fixers will admit. "People don't want to hear that it's more difficult to distribute a film than it is to make one," Brown tells me. "It can be crazy. Well, I'm at least confident in knowing that I know how to start and finish things." And with that, Brown is racing out the door to the post office with his kit for Cannes.