By ALAN BURKE

Staff writer

PEABODY -- Orson Welles started out doing magic tricks for kids. Steven Spielberg made 8 mm films with his playmates as actors. And Mike Cersosimo pointed a video camera at the couch in the living room.

Haven't heard of Cersosimo? That might be because you haven't been watching AT&T Broadband's public access cable television channel. Cersosimo, a Peabody High School senior, started "Public Invasion" in December, 2000.

It's a mix of interviews, talk about movies and, recently, a first showing of a film created by Cersosimo and others while attending an American Film Institute workshop in Maryland. It tells a dramatic story of two friends in trouble.

Friends like Kenny McHugh, also at Peabody High, and Dave Bartlett of Middleton and Masconomet Regional High School, help make his cable access show happen, sharing the interview duties and working the camera.

"We only do movies on the side," says Cersosimo. "That's not our basic." Most of the shows are done in Cersosimo's home and then taken to the AT&T office where he edits them.

"It takesa couple of hours to do that," he says. One show is produced each month and they vary in length, from 30 minutes to an hour and it plays on Monday and Saturday at 8 p.m., a total of eight showings each month, on Channel 17.

One of the first interviewees had no connection at all to movies, then Mayor Peter Torigian. But Cersosimo soon discovered that it wasn't always possible to get interview candidates. Thus, the idea to discuss movies.

If the movies aren't basic to the show, they are basic to Cersosimo. "That's what I want to do when I get older, get into film production."

Moreover, this is not a show devoted to the latest teen cult movie. Even classics made half a century ago, the films that most young people have never seen, are dissected by Cersosimo and his friends. They've talked about "Gone With the Wind," "Citizen Kane," "Casablanca," "Lawrence of Arabia," and even the Beatles "A Hard Day's Night."

"These are some of the films that people miss out on," he says, adding, "We don't always want to talk about new films. Some of them aren't that good."

His own generation will often turn away from a film simply because it is in black and white, Cersosimo agrees, like "Casablanca."

"I'm a big Humphrey Bogart fan," he adds enthusiastically.

At the same time, he does admire contemporary films. Director Paul Thomas Anderson is a favorite. The creator of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," Anderson is known for creating films that are quirky, original and controversial.

"Boogie Nights," Cersosimo says, "was a break-through film for a lot of young actors and it revived Burt Reynolds' career."

Looking ahead to graduation, Cersosimo has already got his sites set on important film schools like the University of Southern California or New York University.

They are very competitive, but with a mini-career as a television performer behind him, Cersosimo already has head-start on the competition.

There's no telling how many people watch "Public Invasion," but Cersosimo says that he does get feedback. "People will talk to me about it."

Not all the talk is favorable, he adds. "But we take the good with the bad. ... I figure that's the life in television and film."