THE 12-YEAR CYCLE TO GREEN-LIGHT ‘THE YELLOW JERSEY’

Getting a movie made is a piece of cake, producer Gary Mehlman thought when he optioned Ralph Hurne’s novel “The Yellow Jersey.” He got the rights to the book in November, he made a deal with Columbia Pictures in May, and two days after that, he was on his way to France to scout locations.

Those dates were November, 1973, and May, 1974. It wasn’t as easy as he thought.

“It sure looked easy then,” Mehlman says. “I couldn’t believe it. I made a deal on Monday, and on Wednesday I was on the plane. I had money in my pocket, we had a writer and we were negotiating with a director. I was gone, gone!”

For the last 12 years, Mehlman has made a living on his bad luck.

“The Yellow Jersey,” about an aging bicyclist who nearly wins the Tour de France, has not been made, but it has been productive. It’s been in development with four studios and several independent production companies and has generated expenses of nearly $2 million.

A lot of that money has gone to Mehlman. Development deals routinely pay producers a fee, as well as providing for the costs of script rewrites and running an office.

In the meantime, he has been back to France 16 times for either the Tour or to scout locations. He has seen “The Yellow Jersey” through three rewrites. He has watched a parade of major directors pause to contemplate it, and several major stars--the late Steve McQueen, Sylvester Stallone and Dustin Hoffman among them--try the “Jersey” on.

Always, something stopped the movie from being made . . . until now. Maybe. Last April, Cannon Films bought the rights to “The Yellow Jersey” from Columbia Pictures and, in July, spent nearly $1 million shooting 200,000 feet of footage of the Tour.

“This was the last year we could do that,” Mehlman says. “I have had the rights to shoot the Tour since 1974. The man who runs it has become almost a part of my family and he’s let me keep the rights. But he said this would be the last year, there was too much pressure on him from other people wanting the rights.”

Mehlman started with Columbia in 1974, then had an independent deal with La Victorine Studios in Nice, France, before putting the film in development at Universal, then with Lew Grade’s ITC/Marble Arch. There were other independent deals. Then, when Dustin Hoffman indicated an interest in starring in it, Mehlman took it back to Columbia in 1983.

“Dustin was passionate about doing it, and that was the first time I was in a position to make some really good money with it,” Mehlman says. “He had a deal with Columbia and it was right after ‘Tootsie,’ so it would have gone (into production) the moment he was ready.”

In 1984, Hoffman and director Michael Cimino accompanied Mehlman to France for the Tour, after which Hoffman told a French television interviewer that next to attending the birth of his child, watching the race was the most moving experience of his life. Mehlman figured that was it.

But the deal fell through with Cimino, and Hoffman wasn’t satisfied with any of the directors that Mehlman or the studio suggested. The directors Hoffman said he would work with weren’t available.

Meanwhile, time was running out on Mehlman. Last December, looking ahead to the 1986 Tour as his last chance to get footage, he pleaded with both Hoffman, who at nearly 50 is getting too old for the part, and Columbia to let the film go when the option ran out March 31.

Columbia had little choice, if it hoped to get back any of the $1.5 million it had spent on the film.

“I had mixed feelings about it,” Mehlman says. “It meant I had another chance. At the same time, I had the feeling, ‘At last, it’s dead.’ ”

At the suggestion of his agent, Mehlman and his producer-partner, John Veitch, made an appointment to pitch “The Yellow Jersey” to Cannon’s Menahem Golan. Mehlman had pitched the film so many times, he had accumulated visual aids (a stirring seven-minute videotape of old Tour footage) and marketing plans (the Tour has more commercial spinoffs and sponsors than the Olympics).

But Golan cut him short. In what has become either Hollywood’s ranking cliche or the flourishing signature of its most flamboyant mogul, Golan immediately committed to making the film. That was on a Monday in April, Mehlman says. By Friday, Golan had negotiated settlements with Columbia, Universal and ITC/Marble Arch and sent off checks totaling $1 million.

“It is the best treatment I have ever received,” says Mehlman, who produced films in the 1970s with the late writer/producer Carl Foreman. “There are a lot of people in town who can make the decision to spend $100,000 on development, but only a few who can make the decision to spend $10 million making a movie. And most of them don’t want to. Menahem does, and he gives you an answer.”

There have been reports that Golan has offered Harrison Ford $10 million to play the role of Jim Western in “The Yellow Jersey.” There has also been talk of trying to get Robert De Niro.

“The Yellow Jersey” is a star vehicle, so the star will be cast before the director, Mehlman says. The main character is expected to be signed within the next few weeks. The film will cost between $10 million and $15 million, depending on who is cast. Principal photography is set for next spring in the South of France.

Mehlman says Golan sees “The Yellow Jersey” as a potential Oscar winner for Cannon and that the Cannon chairman had insisted on he and his partner, Yoram Globus, being the credited producers. Mehlman and Veitch agreed, after getting Golan to include a provision in the contract providing that in all applications for festivals and awards, their names also will be listed.

“I don’t care what it says on the screen,” Mehlman says. “But after all these years, if by some miracle it wins the Academy Award, I want to go up there.”

Whatever happens, Mehlman says he is not sore about the 12-year gestation of “The Yellow Jersey.” The whole thing started because he fell in love with France during two years of studying international law in Paris in the late ‘60s. He optioned Hurne’s novel, thinking it would get him back there for six months or so. He’s done better than that.

“The good thing was that I always knew, no matter what the frustrations, come summer time I would be in France with my family.”

Although the rights to the novel were bought outright many years ago, Mehlman says he still keeps in touch with author Hurne, who lives in New Zealand. Mehlman wrote to him a few weeks ago to tell him about the Cannon deal. Hurne wrote back, saying he’s just finished a sequel to “The Yellow Jersey.” It picks up with Jim Western a decade after his experience in the Tour de France.

You know the question.

“I don’t know, I’m thinking about it,” Mehlman says, laughing. “If I could go through another 12 years like the last 12, I would be pretty happy.”