May 9, 1982

It isn't 1947 here, but it might as well be. Extras stroll through Rockaway's Playland in vintage summer clothes, the women wearing impeccable 40's makeup and hairdos. ''Hey, sailor, I got a dame for you,'' jokes one gray-haired extra to another, who's in uniform. Little girls in ringlets play catch for the camera, then slip anachronistically into down jackets between takes, since the morning is chilly. Children who seem to have stepped out of old photographs are coddled by moms in 1982 running clothes. They are gathered here for the filming of ''Sophie's Choice,'' the best-selling novel by William Styron that is now being adapted for the screen by Alan Pakula. Mr. Pakula, writer and director of the film version of ''Sophie's Choice,'' scheduled to open in December, maintains that there are two sorts of books that can become movies: ''One is a book that has an interesting idea, but you feel the book itself is not a film, so you change it until it becomes one. The other is a book that must in some way be translated. If you translate successfully, the movie will have the life and soul of the book, and the core of the same emotional experience. People will think they're seeing the book on the screen.''

LOS ANGELES Last spring, Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, was feeling desparate. It was nearly time to announce the network's prime-time schedule for the fall and the pieces just weren't falling into place. ''I was running around to Rock Hudson's house trying to persaude him to do a series,'' Mr. Tartikoff remembers, ''then to Gabe Kaplan's to get a script finished for his series, and then to James Garner's place to try to talk him into doing a new series based on his 'Maverick' character.'' Mr. Tartikoff finally succeeded in all three missions, but it proved to be an empty victory. Shortly before filming was to begin on the Rock Hudson series, Mr. Hudson suffered a heart attack. The series starring Mr. Garner as Brett Maverick and Mr. Kaplan in ''Lewis and Clark'' failed in the ratings, and neither one is on next fall's schedule.

STAMFORD THE fate of a proposed Center for the Performing Arts in Stamford could be decided this week when the city's Board of Representatives votes on a $500,000 bonding proposal for the center. If the 40-member board rejects the bonding proposal, the state will withdraw its contribution to the $5 million center, putting its eventual construction in jeopardy. But if the panel adopts the financing plan, proponents of the center hope it will signal a resurgence of cultural activity in the area. The complex has been planned around the Hartman Theater on Atlantic Street, and would be shared by the Hartman Theater Company, the Stamford State Opera Company, the Stamford Symphony and other cultural groups.

BRIDGEPORT ROCKING her granddaughter on her shoulder, Phoukhao Sylaphet yawns. It is 3 P.M. and the sun floods the room. But it is midnight to her body, which still abides by the time zone of a refugee camp in the Philippines. Two days earlier, Mrs. Sylaphet lived there. When she, her daughter-in-law, Phetmany Sylaphet, 21 years old, and the 11-month-old child, Phetsavann, arrived in this city on April 28, an end finally came to the seven-year odyssey of the Laotian family.

Three Queens men were slain and a Long Island man was critically wounded early yesterday in a fusillade of shotgun blasts and pistol fire that erupted on a street near Kennedy International Airport in Queens, the police said. Several assailants, who the police said may have been organizedcrime gunmen, escaped in one or more cars. The motive for the attack was not immediately known, though robbery and drugs were apparently not involved, detectives said. The victims, a father, his son and two other men, apparently were lured to the scene of the shootings, on 156th Avenue near Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach, about a half mile west of the airport and the grounds of Aqueduct Race Track.