MGM/UA: TWO GUYS WORKING OUT A SCRIPT

Three weeks after MGM/UA’s surprise split into two production companies, the film industry is watching closely for signals of who will ultimately control the studio.

This week there was new grist for speculation when “Wise Guys,” a long-planned MGM/UA comedy, was put on hold during pre-production. The comedy is due to begin shooting in New York on Feb. 25, with Danny De Vito and Joe Piscopo starring, under director Brian De Palma.

But MGM President Frank Yablans has given producer Aaron Russo permission to shop the film to other studios, citing dissatisfaction with the $13-million budget. If other studios pass, MGM is expected to proceed with the project but at a reduced budget.

Why the studio’s sudden loss of enthusiasm? According to one scenario offered by insiders, the explanation lies with the new United Artists and its new president, Alan Ladd Jr. Ladd is said to have read the “Wise Guys” script and to have expressed doubts about the Yablans project to MGM/UA Chairman Frank Rothman.

Both Yablans and Ladd scoffed at that scenario this week. Yablans said that the only problem with “Wise Guys” was the budget, which had never been pinned down. Ladd acknowledged that he had looked at the script but said that he and Yablans have absolutely no say on each other’s projects.

Nonetheless, “Wise Guys” is seen by many industry figures as the beginning of a struggle for dominance within MGM/UA. United Artists is said to have wrested the most desirable projects from MGM’s development slate.

Even meal rituals are being watched: A rival executive tells of seeing Yablans displaced by Ladd from a key table at Morton’s restaurant in Beverly Hills in a reservations mix-up. On a recent afternoon at the MGM/UA commissary (the Lion’s Den), Ladd was sitting in a rear booth customarily occupied by Yablans, who was at a less lofty table.

Yablans seems unperturbed by the gossip. “As dramatic a change as this was, and as instantaneous, we understand that rumors are going to float around,” he said.

Yablans said that existing film projects at the studio have been divided between the two companies on a “mutually cooperative” basis. United Artists (which previously inherited the James Bond and “Rocky” film series) has wound up with “Youngblood,” a Rob Lowe drama now in post-production. MGM is proceeding with “Whereabouts,” Peter Bogdanovich’s next film, and “Running Scared,” a new project from Peter Hyams (“2010”).

Yablans said that the companies will compete like any rival studios over future projects. The result will be “one parent company and two fully staffed and fully viable production companies with philosophies that are probably dissimilar in terms of how they make pictures and what pictures they make.”

DISNEY SLATE: Walt Disney Productions’ new management team has unveiled an impressive debut slate of mainstream movies.

Nick Nolte will play a transient who “wreaks havoc” in the lives of a Beverly Hills couple, Bette Midler and Richard Dreyfuss, in “Jerry Saved From Drowning.” The Paul Mazursky comedy, loosely based on Jean Renoir’s “Boudu Saved From Drowning,” shoots in May.

Mary Steenburgen goes before the cameras Monday on “Father Christmas,” a family-oriented drama directed by Phillip Borsos. Disney will distribute “Off-Beat,” an independently produced comedy starring Judge Reinhold (“Beverly Hills Cop”) and directed by Michael Dinner (see next item).

MIRACLES: “Heaven Help Us,” which opens today, is an unusual labor of love--and luck. The coming-of-age drama set in a repressive parochial school was born in 1978 at New York University as an undergraduate screenwriting project. The writer, Brooklyn native Charles Purpura, was a veteran of Catholic boys’ schools.

An NYU teacher showed “Catholic Boys,” as it was then known, to producer Dan Wigutow, who unsuccessfully shopped it to production companies. Purpura, meanwhile dropped out of NYU, was fired from a local lithography shop for union organizing and wound up at the unemployment office. He was denied benefits because his nighttime screenwriting was considered potentially lucrative employment, he recalls. Disillusioned, he filed for bankruptcy, borrowed some money and took off for India.

“Catholic Boys” found its way from Wigutow to producer Mark Carliner, who wanted to finance further development. Purpura by now was at a remote religious retreat. Wigutow reached him with a cryptic telegram to call home. After an eight-hour journey by pony-cart, train and rickshaw, Purpura arrived at the nearest phone and got the good news.

While Purpura began rewriting, Carliner met a young American Film Institute student named Michael Dinner whose first film, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” had just been selected to play the Cannes Film Festival. Dinner had no money for subtitles or travel; Carliner wrote a check for $10,000, figuring it as “bread cast upon the water.”

On the plane to Cannes, Dinner met Maurice Singer, chief of the new theatrical film division of Home Box Office. By the time the plane landed in Europe, Singer was ready to make a film with Dinner. “Catholic Boys” was off the ground.

The title change was made after HBO and distributor Tri-Star Pictures argued that the “Catholic Boys” tag might alienate some viewers. The film makers aren’t happy with the new title or with teen-oriented ads that conjure images of nubile nuns and deviant altar boys. Tri-Star is releasing the film in more than 1,000 theaters, hoping to crash the youth market.

Purpura is onto a new script for Warner Bros. about an all-girl rock ‘n’ roll band. “I’d just seen the dark side of life when all of this started happening,” he says. “It still seems kind of sudden and very unreal. I guess the unemployment people were right after all.”