Double EXPOSURE : Move Over, Jackie Collins. The New Kids on Hollywood’s Literary Block Say Two Heads Can Be Trashier Than One.

Apparently, it’s not easy writing a trash novel about Hollywood. Because it takes not one but two writers to do it these days.

Now, this may come as a shock to Jackie Collins, the undisputed schlock jock of the sun-and-sex-on-Sunset genre, who has been turning out mega-bestsellers by herself for two decades.

But, this summer, a new trend has sprung up: Hollywood trash teams.

The idea seems to be that two brains are better than one when it comes to thinking up story lines. True, screenwriters have been working in pairs since the movie industry began. But novel writers have almost always toiled solo--at least until now, when the latest tandems breaking the mold happen to be Hollywood insiders.

Who better to describe the fresh-faced studio executives competing for scripts “about Mother Teresa-types who plan plutonium heists to save their convents.” Or the bankrupt scions of famous directors who clip coupons and then go grocery shopping in a strange neighborhood so they “couldn’t possibly run into anybody they know.”

Those are just two examples from a pair of new books. Movie producer Lynda Obst (“Adventures in Babysitting,” “Heartbreak Hotel”) and screenwriter Carol Wolper (whose father-in-law is super-producer/director David Wolper) have made the transition from being screen-writing partners and good buddies to writing the just published “Dirty Dreams.” A fun and flip example of pulp fiction focusing on today’s young, hip Hollywood, the book is a kind of user’s manual on “How to Succeed at the Movie Business by Being a Weasel.”

Though less well-connected and well-heeled, celebrity photographer Nancy Lee Andrews (a one-time Ringo Starr squeeze) and struggling screenwriter Linda Lane teamed up in 1986 when their Studio City psychic astrologer declared one day, “Yous (sic) two should write together.” The result is new book “Malibu 90265,” a campy confection about winners and wanna-bes in the movie business that forsakes plot and characterization in favor of $12,620.25 shopping safaris at Ralph Lauren.

(A third book, “Boone,” released this summer, is the result of a college collaboration between New York writers Nick Davis, whose grandfather was “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, and Brooks Hansen, whose father is a television executive. The novel’s central character, Eton Arthur Boone, was an actor, stand-up comic, television writer, filmmaker, and playwright before he was killed in a motorcycle wreck at the age of 27.)

So far, the L.A. authors’ books have received mixed reviews. But publishers panting to find the next Jackie Collins seem willing to take a chance on new writers who might spark skyrocketing sales. (See accompanying story.) Though sales for both books have been sluggish, both teams of writers have second books in the works. The only question now is: How many more Rolexes, Rolfing sessions and turnaround deals can they cook up in these tongue-in-cheek visions of the Hollywood scene before they reach for the Rolaids?

“We tried to go for the absurd,” says the 36-year-old Wolper, who during a recent interview was screaming to be heard above the lunchtime din at Le Dome, one of the L.A. power eating establishments that pops up on almost every page of “Dirty Dreams.”

“And then what happened is the town kept keeping pace with us and making the absurd real,” picks up partner Obst, 40. She knows of what she speaks: after all, she gives new meaning to the phrase “biting the hand that feeds you” with the satirical essays about the entertainment business she writes from time to time for “California” and “Premiere” magazines.

Take, for instance, a little thing like trying to come up with a real-life “perfect” Hollywood couple for a scene they wanted to set at Morton’s. “But, over the course of five years, every time we wrote the couple in, they’d break up six months later, and we’d have to delete them,” complained Wolper.

Obst still giggles at the memory. “The first couple was Tom Cruise and Rebecca de Mornay, but then they split. Then it was Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore. Then Sean Penn and Madonna. Next we decided on Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers. And each time there was no way they were going to break up. Finally, we stopped at Bruce Willis and Demi Moore because we decided we didn’t want to take any chances that we were participating in the demise of these relationships by writing about them.”

“We took out the relationship altogether,” notes Wolper.

If it sounds like teaming up to write a Hollywood trash novel can be fun, it was, according to both sets of partners. And the main reason is that the two pairs didn’t even try to write The Great American Novel. After all, their real professions are making or breaking it in Hollywood.

For them, writing a trash book amounted to little more than moonlighting.

But in the entertainment world where ideas get pushed and shoved like Silly Putty so as to be almost unrecognizable by the end of the process, being able to start and finish a project without outside interference proved an unexpected bonanza.

“And the best thing of all is that it’s completely independent of all that armor that I have to put on during the day in order to pull the levers and get things done in Hollywood,” says Obst, who is hard at work producing “The Fisher King” with Robin Williams and developing a script written by sisters Nora and Delia Ephron, “This Is Your Life.”

Until now, the list of fiction-writing teams has consisted mostly of husbands and wives. Most notable are Howard and Susan Kaminsky, whose novel about the games that Hollywood agents play, “Talent,” comes out in paperback this month, and Judith Barnard and Michael Fain--they write soap opera-style books under the name “Judith Michael”--had great success with their 1986 novel “Private Affairs.”

But, for Obst and Wolper, the book began one lazy summer afternoon while they were relaxing in Obst’s back yard. Having both just ended two “very calamitous” relationships and started two “very dramatic” ones almost simultaneously, their talk naturally turned to men.

Then men and women. Then men and women and people’s careers. Then men and women and people’s careers and Hollywood deals. “And we realized that our lives and the world around us were far more complicated, far more psychedelic, far more dangerous than anything Jackie Collins had ever written about,” recalls Obst.

“And we jokingly said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we wrote a yuppie trashy novel?’ ” continues Wolper.

They started making up people, places, plots, drawing on their own experiences, making up new ones. But most of all, they screamed with laughter. Before they knew it, they had talked for hours. And then they went home, without having written a single word.

“Now, the difference between Linda and me is that I would have left it as a wonderful summer fantasy. But Linda picked up a phone and called a literary agent in New York and said, ‘Can you sell this idea?’ And the agent told us to do a couple of chapters and an outline.”

Five years, four drafts, two movies (Obst’s) and one marriage (Wolper’s) later, “Dirty Dreams” became a reality when NAL Books paid a high five-figure advance for the hard cover and paperback.

Almost immediately, the pair found that writing the book was a way they could live and work in Hollywood and still keep their sanity. “This was an outlet for expressing the things I found hilarious or ironic. And once I wrote about them they didn’t bother me quite as much,” Obst says, her partner nodding in agreement.

Still, the two were aware that, with both of them seeing Hollywood from the vantage point of front-row seats, some might think they were telling tales out of school.

“I was worried about it,” admits Wolper. “But I felt I’d been carrying these secrets around a long time, and I wanted them out.”

To limit any damage, however, the women decided to place limits on just how far they would go to write the “truth” about Hollywood. “I don’t write journalism. I don’t write anything based on fact. I don’t write anything that can hurt anybody that I know,” says Obst. “As a producer, I have axes to grind, but my writing can’t have anything to do with that.”

Andrews, 43, and Lane, 45, were in a different position, however. They wanted Hollywood to stand up and take notice of them. So the more outrageous their book, the better, they decided.

Take sex. “I didn’t think there was enough and Linda thought there was too much,” recalls Andrews during an interview in the post-breakfast, pre-lunch quiet of the Malibu Inn. “She was worried about going overboard and I was going, ‘No, let’s go over the edge!’ ”

“We were both always right. We would yell and shout and argue,” says Lane about the pitfalls of the collaborative process.

“But when we butt heads, we compromise eventually,” adds Andrews. “And that made it perfect for the book.” So instead of jumping into bed on every page of the book, their characters jump into bed on every other page.

Lane, for one, doesn’t think she could have written the book without the discipline of having a writing partner. “As a single parent, I’m very involved with my daughter, so my time can get away from me. But when you’re working with another person you have to set aside specific time. So it forces you to get something done because you’re meeting tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock. So I think that was a great motivating factor for me.”

For Andrews, the advantage of teaming up was “being able to sound out your ideas, sharing experiences. It’s like having a second or third brain for input.”

Between them, both women had lifetimes of real-life Hollywood anecdotes to draw on. For instance, Andrews actually endured the scene in their book where a jealous woman threw cottage cheese in her face at the Polo Lounge. And Lane modeled one character after herself, the rich man’s daughter who had fallen on such hard times that she shopped outside of Malibu just so her neighbors wouldn’t know she was reduced to clipping coupons.

By their own admission, the pair had only been “barely” getting by in Hollywood when they started the book 2 1/2 years ago. Though Lane had grown up in wealthy surroundings in Brentwood, she had trouble selling her movie and TV scripts and treatments. Andrews, a former Ford model and one-time TV writer, got a small palimony settlement from Ringo Starr when they broke up in 1981 after seven years together. But going from jetting between the ex-Beatles’ homes in London, Monte Carlo and a suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to making ends meets by herself in a small L.A. bungalow was a comedown she was ill prepared for.

Now both women are keeping their fingers crossed that money won’t be a problem in the near future. They’re already plotting a sequel to “Malibu 90265,” since they signed a two-book deal with William Morrow for a six-figure advance.

And if that means they have to share the limelight, well, that’s a small price to pay for fame and fortune, at least the way they see it.

“The real glory is that you’re both out there and you’re going to get twice as many people excited about the book,” notes Lane.

“I’m a team player,” adds Andrews. “There’s room for everybody.”