TV REVIEW : DEAL MAKERS ON CAMERA IN ‘HOLLYWOOD DREAMS’

Casting agent Mike Fenton leans back in his chair and launches into the hard sell on the telephone. He is trying to convince a producer that actor Eric Stoltz (“Mask”) is perfect for the lead in the producer’s newest film.

“Look, some of his magic is internal, but I promise you he is Robert,” Fenton says. “The other thing is he is more than willing to change his hair color; he’ll do whatever has to be done.”

The scene, one of the better ones from the PBS “Frontline” documentary “Hollywood Dreams” (tonight at 9 on Channels 28 and 15, 8 p.m. Channel 50), captures Hollywood at perfect pitch. Doing whatever has to be done is part of the complex and byzantine process of getting a movie made.

Documentaries on behind-the-scenes Hollywood are decidedly difficult to pull off. In the strange and sometimes perverse universe of moviemaking, reality is a two-pronged thing. There is that glittery surface--a world of power lunches at the Palm, Gucci loafers and a lot of, “Who loves you?” And then there is the work: the tedious drudgery of production and the anxiety-ridden, Maalox-accompanied deals that inevitably precede them.

Getting beneath the surface of this giant dream factory is a formidable task. More often than not we are allowed to see only the final illusion, and none of the equally intriguing mechanics that produce the final product. If you think of Tinseltown as one giant birthday present, the truth is that most of us go through life only seeing the wrapping. “Hollywood Dreams” works best (about half of the hourlong program) when it cuts through that surface glitz and shows us real people in real jobs.

Producer Irv Drasnin intercuts between Hollywood’s working world (agents haggling, casting directors casting) and the much more familiar tourist terrain (we follow the Hollywood Fantasy Tours bus with its Wonder Bread logo around town). Says Drasnin: “There’s a reality of the business behind the marquee that few people get to see. The Fantasy Tours bus makes a lot of stops, but it doesn’t stop at International Creative Management or the casting director’s office.”

Drasnin focuses his camera on the frenetic literary department at the giant ICM talent agency. Here we see a brash 27-year-old former parking lot manager, Jeremy Zimmer, working the phones and putting out the various brush fires that erupt during the course of the day. Like Fenton, he’s willing to do whatever it takes--hyperbole and outright exaggeration are standard operating procedure in this game--to protect the deal and, ultimately, the movie. “I’m putting together a movie with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas,” he tells the “Frontline” reporter. “Burt wants to be first on the credits and Kirk wants to be first. Who’s going to win? I don’t know.”

Cohort Bill Block, an icy counterpoint to the flamboyant Zimmer, speaks to the camera in rapid-fire staccato. “The telephone is a bayonet in this town,” explains Block, who says he places about 150 calls a day. We see the less intense casting director Fenton smoothly chatting up Steven Spielberg. And we meet 27-year-old 20th Century Fox production vice president Scott Rudin talking about the liabilities of picking movie projects.

Drasnin says it was difficult finding Hollywood players to consent to his let-the-cameras-roll technique. Spielberg, the late Orson Welles, director Francis Coppola and a small roster of other big names all turned him down. But Drasnin’s instincts were solid: Instead of the cliched narration that often mars these kinds of shows, he lets his subjects do the talking. “We tried to capture some of the realities of the movie business instead of the superficialities you get on TV. We know we didn’t get all of the reality, but we tried to capture moments of truth.”

And there are some bittersweet moments. Fenton is polite and warm to a recently arrived young model/actress who excitedly tells him she has just landed her first bit movie part in Stallone’s next production. He is encouraging, but later, when the reporter asks about her odds, Fenton concedes--albeit diplomatically--that it’s a long-shot proposition.

And Zimmer, a kind of urban Harpo Marx wrapped in Perry Ellis garb, is much more than the caricature he first appears. With an army helmet with the initials M.I.T. (Mogul In Training) at his desk, he explains with relative ease the fundamental cause of bad movies making it into the theaters. “Eight, 10 guys decide 75% of the movies that get made. They’re guys just like me, only older. They divorce their wives, drink, make mistakes. . . . “

Unfortunately, along with these revealing scenes there are an equal number of rather cliched sequences of Hollywood that will seem like well-trod turf to most Hollywood watchers.

A scene, for example, of a young actor, earnestly doing a dialogue from an Arthur Miller play in acting class while his glassy-eyed classmates look on, belongs where it takes place--in the classroom. Shots of the front of the Paramount lot and the Hollywood sign look like the opening from “Entertainment Tonight,” the very kind of puffery “Hollywood Dreams” often beautifully escapes.

In the end, “Hollywood Dreams” never quite delivers the knockout punch because it fails to put any lasting perspective into its captivating slice-of-life imagery. Still, Drasnin, a California native and a former CBS news producer, is to be commended on two counts: first, for getting these normally camera-shy backstage players to let him film them in action; and second, for not cluttering up the pictures of them with excessive narration.

The bad news is that in the wake of “Hollywood Dreams” we may see even less of this kind of programming on this industry. Watching themselves on camera may well make the Jeremy Zimmers of the world decide to stay behind the scenes.