Returning to the crime scene

Film producer Paul Coyne says his K Street house is more famous than he is. Ditto, he says, for his big-time Hollywood producer brother-in-law, and even Mary from his favorite corner store, Miller's Market (which, like Coyne's converted condo, appeared in the movie "Mystic River"). But he hopes his first release, a feature-length documentary, might put his new production studio -- a tiny home office with a view of Dorchester Heights -- on the map.

Coyne, a 43-year-old former NBC exec, says all you need is a good story to make a good movie, and he thinks he's got one: It began with a tribal massacre deep in the Ecuadoran jungle and came to him three months ago via Somerville director Scott Braman.

"This story just kind of struck me," says Coyne, whose most serious prospect before choosing to make the documentary was a script about vampires, which he shelved for his current project. "I think it's much more important to try to make a movie that people will go see rather than make a classic, anthropology documentary that somebody may see in college in five years. The whole point of telling a story is to tell as many people as possible."

Braman, 27, befriended two Huaorani tribal leaders -- Penti and Moi -- while in the Amazon on a Fulbright scholarship to study eco-tourism and indigenous filmmaking with the tribe.

Last spring, after Braman had returned home, Penti called, upset about a terrible incident that had occurred. Penti told him that they were investigating the massacre of at least 23 Taromenani people -- a Stone Age tribe, known essentially through legend -- by eight Huaorani tribesmen. And that they had filmed a government investigation of the murders.

"The idea really started to take shape when Penti called to tell me about the Taromenani massacre," Braman wrote in an e-mail from Costa Rica. Braman, Mark Meatto (co-director), and Chris Webb (sound designer, composer) arrived in Ecuador last Wednesday to begin filming Coyne's production, titled "People of the Path."

"[Penti] and other leaders captured [the investigation] on their own with a mini DV camera given to them by a Danish development project.

"As an editor, I quickly realized that they had amazing potential. The footage from the helicopter with government investigators and an elite military unit, and on the ground, was so well done that it seemed a natural step in their development and in [the story's] telling," Braman wrote.

Coyne says the Ecuadoran government can do little to prosecute the confessed Huaorani killers because the massacre -- which included women and children and may have decimated the tiny Taromenani tribe -- occurred on tribal land.

Coyne's crew plans to travel back to the crime scene with two of the killers, as well as Penti and Moi, to try to delve into the motivation behind the massacre.

"The incident itself is completely outside of tribal norms," Coyne says.

Coyne says the first goal of their planned, five-week trip -- which will at times take them four days into the jungle from the most outlying village -- is "to find the site, in other words, to bring the killers back to the scene of the crime -- the classic police thing. Stuff comes out when you're at the scene."

He wants the viewer to "get to know the guys at the most personal level they can. It's going to be a road trip movie, really. You know, friends on camera. It just happens to be that they're going to be discussing a mass murder. It's a bizarre topic, but we're going to be going at it from a very human level," says Coyne.

"This movie is about getting into the mind of these killers as human beings, not as anthropological subjects," he says. "What I think is the wrong way of looking at these people is to say they're a cultural phenomenon first and a human being second."

How does director Scott Braman feel about embarking into the jungle?

"I can't say that I am really scared," wrote Braman. "I completely trust my Huaorani friends and would without hesitation put my life into their hands. Talking to and spending time with the killers may be difficult at times, but I have confidence that Moi and Penti will help us navigate those situations. . . . I am sure some nights camping in the rainforest, it will be a bit tough to fall asleep, knowing that somewhere out there, there are people whose entire families were massacred. The way of their world has always been to revenge death."

Coyne says that while the massacre made headlines in Ecuador for a few weeks, he doesn't know of any other news organizations taking interest. In March, he's planning a trip to the capital, Quito, to try to get footage of the crime scene from the police. In the meantime, he's been shopping the nonprofit film around to New York executives -- most recently to representatives from HBO Documentaries. He expects to finish editing the crew's projected 8,000 minutes of footage into a 90-minute movie by next winter.

"All the translation has to be done in the field and almost immediately," says Coyne. "The rough-cutting is going to happen in the jungle."

Coyne says he'll try to self-distribute the film to small theaters at first, like the Brattle in Cambridge, as well as enter it into film festivals.

A South Philadelphia native, Coyne first moved to Southie after graduating from Connecticut College. He was introduced to the neighborhood by his college buddies, hockey players who grew up in the McCormack housing development.

"The first place I ever went in Southie, 23 years ago, was Triple O's [pub]. It was one of the first things I ever saw in Boston," says Coyne.

His first job after school was driving a workboat in Salem Harbor, servicing whale-watch boats. At 28, he got a job as a security guard at Lotus software company in Cambridge. He worked his way up to becoming a director at Lotus and was made an executive when IBM bought the company in the mid-'90s.

"It's kind of the old mailroom story," says Coyne. "It's the great thing about technology; all you have to do is know your stuff."

Four years ago, he and his wife bought their home in Southie. But soon after, he was recruited by NBC to become a business development executive for technology and moved to Manhattan.

After his two-year contract ended, Coyne moved back to Southie and began plotting a second career in filmmaking -- inspired by his sister's husband, Ed Saxon, who produced "The Silence of the Lambs," "Philadelphia," and "Adaptation."

"One of the cool things about making films now is that, for what used to cost you half a million dollars, you can do for a couple thousand dollars. I think that's why so many people are getting into it, too," says Coyne.

But if his second career takes off and the film is a money-maker, the producer says he has no plans to relocate to any swanker locales.

"The guy who built my place, I've known for three years, he lives four doors down," Coyne says. "The first time we met, he was working on the one next door.

"In Back Bay, you're not going to live four doors down from the guy that built your house."