Party-hopping Francophile cineastes were having a gonzo week. The night before, in the grand salon upstairs at Maxim's, the Fifth Avignon-NewYork Film Festival had kicked off its weeklong schedule of wine, cinema and questionable French delicacies like prunes stuffed with foie gras. While Yanna Avis, the French wife of rental car magnate Warrren Avis, wailed French torch songs in the dining room, American director Michael Sergio was sweating up a storm near a row of steam tables. "Let's go talk somewhere cooler," said the director, who had a curly head of gray hair and the approximate dimensions of a refrigerator box. Mr. Sergio was feeling superstitious since his "light drug, light mob, light street theme" film, Under Hellgate Bridge - featuring Sopranos stars Dominic Chianese and Vincent Pastore - was the first of the festival's films to sell out. "It gives me the willies. I wouldn't mind being the third or fourth," he said, mopping his soaking brow with a pile of cocktail napkins. Things were going so well

that Mr. Sergio realized that he would have to make some sacrifices to accommodate all the film distributors who wanted to see his movie. Danny Aiello had called him, and he didn't even know if he'd be able to squeak the actor into the April 26 screening at the Alliance Francaise. "My father's booted. My brother is going next. My son after that." he said. Although Sergio played a bodyguard on the soap opera Loving, sang for 20 years at the now shuttered Improv nightclub, and won an Emmy Award for directing a television special about the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, he is best known as the yahoo who was imprisoned for 21 days after he parachuted into Shea Stadium during the 1986 World Series, a "Go Mets" banner trailing from his back. "It's kind of a sensitive issue for Mike," explained Hellgate co-producer Isil Bagdadi while the New York 1 cable network interviewed Mr. Sergio across the room. "Now, he's a filmmaker. Now it's all about the movie."