ESCAPE--NOT ETHICS--STILL THE TICKET IN HOLLYWOOD

Movie plots that turn on ethical issues? “We just don’t have any,” says a Walt Disney Studios spokesman, barely pausing to double-check his company’s schedule of upcoming releases.

With Wall Street mired in scandal, the White House hounded by investigators and a presidential candidate undone by his poor judgment, the supposed breakdown of America’s value system is certainly in the headlines. “Has the mindless materialism of the ‘80s left in its wake a values vacuum?” frets Time magazine’s current cover story.

Yet moral quandaries and soul-wrenching ethical dilemmas like those in “Absence of Malice” and “The Verdict” aren’t likely to become the standard stuff of Hollywood movies any time soon, according to a sampling of agents, film makers and studio executives.

“Honestly, I just don’t see all that many morally aware projects floating around,” says Michael London, a movie development executive with Simpson/Bruckheimer Productions.

“I really can’t think of much” in the way of ethical drama making the rounds of studio development departments, says a top agent who declines to be identified. Despite the success of a movie as difficult as “Platoon,” “high-concept comedies, not thought-intensive plots, are still the order of the day,” the agent adds.

Movie development executives are often quick to take their cues from the daily news flow when acquiring the stories and scripts that will become completed movies at least 18 months later.

Thus, several companies are now at work on projects that deal specifically with financial corruption, perhaps the most notable of which is the movie “Wall Street,” about a young stockbroker who is co-opted by an Ivan Boesky-like financier. The film will be co-written and directed by Oliver Stone (writer and director of “Platoon,” an Oscar-winning drama that dealt with the Vietnam War and the loss of innocence), and is scheduled for Christmas release by 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Yet many film makers remain convinced that moral issues--which have become the heart and soul of TV situation comedies like “The Cosby Show” and its many clones--are either too difficult or too dull for movie audiences. “Movies, by the very nature of the experience, have always celebrated release. I strongly suspect that wish fulfillment often runs completely counter to morality,” says London, whose company’s latest effort, “Beverly Hills Cop II,” traffics less in moral fine points than in explosive action and wise-guy humor.

Successful movies that grapple with values are “very, very hard to do,” says Brian Grazer, who wrote and produced “Splash” and other popular films, and is now co-chief executive officer of Imagine Films Entertainment. Grazer adds: “Frank Capra did it. Paddy Chayefsky did it. But there aren’t too many of them.”

Grazer says his company is developing a “moral quandary” movie that deals with the problems caused by a new drug invented by a large pharmaceuticals industry. But the plot was conceived more than four years ago, long before the current round of headlines. And Grazer says he considers the film risky despite the current morals mania, because he finds modern audiences somewhat cynical. “I think the public has become sophisticated enough to realize that the system always wins,” he says. “An individual might win in a specific situation. But generally, the system wins. I don’t know any time that it doesn’t.”

At least some film makers counter that the best films, from “High Noon” to “Platoon,” have ultimately turned on moral points. “Even Rambo is supposed to be ethical. Very tough, but ethical,” says David Brown, who co-produced “The Verdict.”

That film, starring Paul Newman, examined the multiple dilemmas of a group of attorneys and doctors caught up in a high-stakes malpractice suit--and grossed a handsome $54 million at the box office for Fox in 1982. Brown, who doesn’t predict a wave of imitators, says it succeeded not because it was about medicine or money, but because it dealt with “moral redemption.”

“Absence of Malice,” a 1981 movie that starred Newman and Sally Field, dealt with the interplay between an executive wrongly suspected of involvement in a murder and a newspaper reporter who pursues him. The film was released by Columbia Pictures and grossed more than $40 million at the box office.

David Picker, recently named president and chief operating officer of Columbia, says his company is focusing much more heavily on strong stories than in the past, some of which wrestle with tough ethical problems couched in fairly sophisticated terms. But he is also quick to disclaim any charge of excessive moralizing. “We’re out to tell exciting stories about exciting people in an exciting way,” says Picker. That policy, he adds, reflects his own creative instincts and those of Columbia Chairman David Puttnam, and not a reaction to the headlines.

According to Picker, some upcoming Columbia movies may deal with the legal defense of the homeless, Philippines President Corazon Aquino’s triumph over political corruption and “the labor movement and ethics” in West Virginia. Columbia also signed a long-term contract with Stanley Kramer, a producer-director whose credits include such morally informed films as “Judgment at Nuremberg” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

For the most part, however, many studio executives seem inclined to stick with the mix of hard action, raw comedy and ample pyrotechnics that have informed hits like “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun” and “Lethal Weapon,” or Disney’s largely successful recent slate, which has included comedies as hard-edged as “Ruthless People” and “Outrageous Fortune.”

“The only change I see is that some things are coming out of movies” because studio executives are growing more cautious, contends Rima Bauer, an agent who represents a number of screenwriters. “If you have the word drug in a script, forget it,” she says.

“I think you’re going to start seeing some less venal characters on the screen,” offers a major studio production executive, who declines to be identified. The executive says he doesn’t see any sign that the studios are hungry for sophisticated “dilemma” movies, or are dealing better with moral complexities. But he does believe that audience tolerance for nasty screen characters may be diminishing.

“We used to tell (screenwriters), ‘That’s too bland. That’s white bread,’ ” he says. “But maybe white bread is on the way in.”