And now and then, this deadbeat procrastinator - no, sorry, make that this purveyor of the quietly surreal, of moody philosophical mysteries and crisscrossing fables about the imagination - finds time to make movies. The Inner Life of Martin Frost, which Auster wrote and directed, is his fourth. (His first two, Smoke and Blue in the Face, were collaborations with filmmaker Wayne Wang.)

A parable about a novelist (David Thewlis) who wakes up one morning to find a lovely stranger (Irène Jacob) asleep next to him, the film will have a free screening tomorrow night at the Ritz Five - sponsored by the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design at Drexel University.

"I have to say that each time I've gotten out of my room and worked with other people - and film is all about working with other people - I've enjoyed it tremendously," says Auster, 61, on the phone from his house in Brooklyn recently. "It's invigorating, it's thrilling, it's inspiring, and it's full of humor and hard work."

The Inner Life of Martin Frost - which Auster will present with a Q&A following the screening - was shot in Lisbon, Portugal. Like much of the author's work (The Music of Chance, The New York Trilogy), it asks questions about reality and illusion, at the same time it spins a yarn about spinning yarns - the nature of storytelling. The film costars Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos and Sophie Auster, a striking 20-year-old who happens to be the author's daughter with novelist Siri Hustvedt.

Auster says he had no doubts whatsoever about casting their progeny in the picture.

"She's a very talented young person, I had total faith in her, and there were no problems whatsoever," he reports. A much younger Sophie had a small part in Auster's 1998 film Lulu on the Bridge, opposite Harvey Keitel, Mandy Patinkin, Vanessa Redgrave and Mira Sorvino.

"She held her own with everybody, so I wasn't worried," Auster recalls. "I knew what she's capable of. And she's about to go off to Spain to act in another film. A big part. . . . She's playing some kind of a distraught, psychologically damaged model."

Imperioli had auditioned for 1995's Smoke - he was too young for the role - but Auster liked him, and wanted to work with him.

Imperioli's great problem in the wake of the success of The Sopranos, Auster says, is that "most of the films he's offered are cop movies, he's either a gangster or a cop. And he's sick of it. And I guaranteed him that [Martin Frost] wasn't going to be anything like that. So, he read the script and the very next day called and said he was in."

As for Thewlis, star of Mike Leigh's fierce Naked and a bunch of films about some kid who's good with magic (Thewlis is Remus Lupin in the Harry Potters), it turns out the actor was a fan of Auster's, and a budding writer, too.

"David had been trying to track me down to tell me a story about something to do with one of my books," Auster says, "so when I called and left a message on his cell phone, he thought that it was one of his friends making a joke. . . . I think he's an undervalued actor of great brilliance."

Thewlis' debut novel, The Late Hector Kipling, came out late last year. "The great thing was that he finished the novel while we were in rehearsal, in Portugal," Auster says. "He finished his own novel and then began playing a novelist in this film."

As for Auster's leading lady, the French actress Jacob, the writer was a fan from her work in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red and The Double Life of Veronique. On an author's tour in France in 2004, Jacob read the translations of Auster's excerpts, following his passages in English.

"She was hugely pregnant, about eight months pregnant at the time, and a couple of nights later she invited me to a play that she was acting in - even pregnant she was in this play! - and we went out with some friends for a drink after the performance. It was raining and she asked if I would like a ride back to the hotel. . . . She barely could squeeze in behind the wheel. She told me it was the last time she drove before she gave birth, and as I was sitting in the car I looked over at her and I thought this is [the character] Claire, this is the one.

"So, I said in the car, 'You know, I'm writing a script, and I think I have something for you. Would you be willing to read it when it's finished?' And she said 'Of course.' . . .

"So I got lucky, very lucky, with the casting."

Auster has a novel due out in August, Man in the Dark, about war and family, he says. "It's a short novel, it all takes place in one night, a man lying in bed, making up stories, remembering his life.

"It's a very emotional work, and I don't really know what to think of it right now. . . . I poured a lot of my guts into this one."

As for another film, perhaps.

"The few times that I've done films, the stories have been conceived of as films from the beginning, and if I get another idea that has to be a movie, I'll try to make it," he explains.

"I'm in that funny position where I think of filmmaking as an extension of my storytelling job, it's just another way of telling stories. And one with all the peripheral pleasures, as I said, of working with other people, as opposed to working in isolation.

"But I'm not a professional, full-time filmmaker. So if I don't feel something really urgent, pressing, I'm not going to do it."