HE’S FOUND THE SHOE THAT FITS

Film producer Victor Drai (“The Woman in Red,” “The Man With One Red Shoe”) doesn’t expect you to feel sorry for him. He understands that to most people, trading down from a Rolls-Royce to a Cadillac doesn’t seem much of a sacrifice. And, though many of us know what it is to struggle with the mortgage, it’s hard to empathize with someone scratching together $35,000 for monthly payments on a Bel-Air mansion.

But the truth is, says the 38-year-old French entrepreneur, times were tough three years ago.

“Hollywood thinks I’m very rich because I worked in real estate and I drive a Rolls,” he says. “But that’s just my way of living. It has nothing to do with what I own.

“I really couldn’t put gas in my car. I was completely broke. Every penny I had went to the mortgage each month.”

What’s worse, his nine-year romance with Jacqueline Bisset had just ended,

his house sale fell out of escrow on closing day, and he was borrowing money at 26% to make other payments at 20%.

He who lives by the real estate boom . . . .

“It was crazy,” he says. “I had no income, just the house. If I don’t pay, they take it away.”

Drai, who sold his clothing business in Paris and emigrated to Los Angeles after falling in love with (1) Disneyland and (2) Bisset (they met on a flight from L.A. to Paris) in the mid-’70s, says he anesthetized his romantic and financial grief with lungs full of marijuana smoke.

“I was lazy, and I had never been lazy in my life,” he says. “I said, ‘What am I doing? I’ve got to pull myself together.’ ”

Fortunately, Drai’s long relationship with Bisset had left him well-connected in Hollywood.

Drai says he’d thought about the film business before, but he was doing too well in real estate. Through a series of Bel-Air “fixer-uppers,” he had parlayed $300,000 from his clothing business into $3-million equity in that vast manse in the hills.

Before his troubles began, he says, he had paid a young writer $5,000 to develop a script, and he circulated it among such influential friends as Guy McElwaine, Bisset’s former agent and then head of Rastar Pictures, and Freddie Fields, then head of MGM/UA.

The script was well reviewed by the execs, Drai says, and was read and rejected (no harm in this) by such stars as Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood. But the process scared him and he put the script away, only to pull it out later when his finances turned sour.

Eventually, he coasted onto the MGM lot in his Cadillac and--courtesy of Fields, who provided office space, a secretary and administrative overhead--became a producer.

That was three years ago. One of the first things he did was go to France and buy--on credit--the movie rights to a batch of French books. Some of them had already been made into French movies, but that was an advantage.

“That’s an easy way to start,” he says. “Films they (studio execs) can see, they don’t have to read. We know they don’t like to read.”

Drai sent one story--”The Woman in Red”--to Gene Wilder, asking him to write and direct as well as star.

Wilder said he’d do it, and Orion Pictures agreed to pick up the $8.5-million tab. The film was released one year after Drai turned producer, and though it did a modest $15 million in film rentals in the United States, it became a huge international hit, and Drai was welcomed into Hollywood’s elite club of hot producers.

He has since married his star (Kelly LeBrock, who played the title role in “The Woman in Red”), made two other movies--the recently released “The Man With One Red Shoe” and the upcoming “The Bride” (a romantic retelling of “The Bride of Frankenstein”)--and has six other projects in development at four studios.

Oh yeah, and he sold his mansion to Warner Bros. chief Terry Semel and got Semel’s house in Benedict Canyon as part of the deal.

In case you’re wondering, Drai is a Leo.

But even though he’s back in a Rolls and able to keep its tank filled, Drai says producing movies pays far less than fixing up homes did during Southern California’s real estate surge.

Only a handful of producers are strong enough to share in the gross profits of films, and the box-office take has to match the annual defense budget before a studio will acknowledge and share its adjusted profits. Drai must make do on producer fees.

“You can’t go into film production thinking you’re going to make big money,” he says. “You can make a great living, but you don’t make money.”

BACK IN CHARACTER: Christopher Reeve, like Sean Connery, Roger Moore and other stars of episodic features, may be eating his resignation letter soon.

Reeve, who said he was through flying in tights after “Superman III,” is considering an offer from Cannon Films to star in “Superman IV,” which is to be filmed next year for release in the summer of ’87.

A spokesperson for Reeve said the actor “is not anxious to do it” but may agree if Cannon comes up with a great script.

Cannon’s Menahem Golan, in Israel preparing to direct Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin in “Delta Force,” says that he hasn’t signed a writer to “Superman” yet but that the movie will be made with or without Reeve.

“It’s obvious we would like to see the star that people identify with,” Golan says. “It doesn’t mean if he’s not in the part, it won’t be done. Even James Bond was changed.”

Cannon bought the rights to all future Superman films from Alexander and Ilya Salkind and has a distribution deal with Warner Bros. for the ’87 release of No. 4 in the United States.

Incidentally, while we’re saying never say never again, add Charles Bronson to the list. Bronson said he’d never do another “Death Wish” after II. “Death Wish III” is being released by Cannon Oct. 25, and Golan said Thursday that Bronson has agreed to do “Death Wish IV” next year.

KILLER DEAL: While Jerry Lee Lewis hammers the ivories during his Saturday-night concert at the Beverly Theatre, some people in the audience will be imagining his act--it’s been wild on stage and off for 30 years--on the big screen.

PolyGram Pictures, which owns the rights to the flamboyant country rocker’s life story, is turning the evening into a celebration that its executives hope will lead to a movie deal.

Adam Fields, a young producer now at Paramount Pictures, spent two years talking Lewis into giving PolyGram the rights to his story. Fields also bought the rights to a book titled “Great Balls of Fire,” written by Myra Brown Lewis, Jerry Lee’s cousin and third wife, who was 13 when they were married in the late ‘50s.

“I see his story as a rock ‘n’ roll ‘Raging Bull,’ ” says Fields. “He has had an incredible life.”

By coincidence, Lewis’ concert date in Beverly Hills comes less than a week after ABC Theatrical Films’ 2 1/2-year development deal expired and the property was returned to PolyGram. Fields says Mickey Rourke had planned to play Lewis and had even taken piano and singing lessons.

ABC executives would not discuss their reasons for letting the project go, but other sources say Rourke was not satisfied with the scripts written for it. One of them was reportedly written by Barry Levinson, who directed “Diner,” Rourke’s breakthrough film.

PHOOEY: Columbia Pictures has a recent history of generosity with charities, allowing groups to host the world premieres of such big-budget films as “Annie” and “Gandhi” and also covering major shares of the premiere’s food and theater rental bills.

No more. A memo circulated among Columbia executives this week said the studio will now participate in premieres by supplying prints only. The decision is one more sign, say insiders, of purse strings being tightened by the parent, Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta.