MOVIES : The Lunches Won’t Be Naked : Fox’s almost-new movie czar Peter Chernin is an unknown in film circles but his taste leans more toward the family way than R

When Peter Chernin was appointed chairman of 20th Century Fox last November, it came as little surprise to studio insiders. As the favorite son of Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox’s parent company News Corp., the low-key but admittedly ambitious Chernin was clearly on the fast track. It was assumed the president of the Fox Entertainment Group was waiting in the wings should studio chief Joe Roth’s contract negotiations hit the wall.

Within film circles, however, this self-described “TV idiot”--as he’s convinced his movie colleagues view him--remains essentially an unknown. Not unlike the new president, the smart and likable Chernin is known to be a political survivor with a strong collaborative bent. But the type of material he favors, how creative he is, his grasp of the film world and most of all, the degree of autonomy granted by Murdoch are all the subject of speculation.

Chernin’s admirers say he has been overshadowed by colleagues such as former Fox Inc. chairman Barry Diller, who left the company last February, and Bernie Brillstein, his former boss at Lorimar Film Entertainment. They caution against underestimating the man.

“From what I can tell, Peter has no neurotic need to put his imprimatur on everything he does,” says Lynda Obst (“The Fisher King”), a high school acquaintance of Chernin’s and the first producer signed by the new chief. “For a Hollywood executive, he’s remarkably secure.”

“I had a happy childhood,” the tall, bespectacled studio chief explains. Three months into Chernin’s reign, the walls of his office are still devoid of artwork. A smattering of family photographs are the only personal touch. “I’m comfortable with myself so I don’t have to brag about things. But I’m as competitive as anyone I know--particularly when it comes to my creative abilities, which are, hopefully, as good as those of anyone around. The challenge of succeeding in an arena I don’t know that well isn’t daunting. In fact, it’s the single biggest lure.”

Filling Roth’s shoes, however, is a challenge both psychological and practical. His predecessor, after all, was the first director since Ernst Lubitsch, in 1935, to head a major studio, a down-to-earth guy whose hands-on management style and sensitivity to the process endeared him to colleagues and filmmakers alike. Spurred by the unanticipated success of “Home Alone,” the same studio that had seen three film chiefs come and go under Diller went from a 6% market share and seventh place tie in terms of 1989 box office standing to a 14.2% share, third place showing behind Warner Bros. and Disney in 1992.

Roth also had his share of box-office disappointments--as Murdoch recently pointed out, setting in motion a barrage of charges and countercharges. Still, he had the good fortune to bail out for an ultra-lucrative production deal at The Walt Disney Studios before the release of two of them--”Hoffa” and “Toys.” When production head Roger Birnbaum followed suit a week later, it marked the fourth loss of a major Fox film or TV executive in 1992. A fifth resigned last month.

Chernin was determined to bring a sense of internal stability to the studio, a task complicated by an initial wariness emanating from Roth loyalists. Reminding himself that he’d be judged on his own terms--and, hopefully, in his own time--provided much-needed perspective.

When Diller and Chernin had lunch before Christmas, the former chairman of Fox Inc. passed along some friendly advice. Don’t be snowed by people’s reputations, Diller warned. Don’t do things for the wrong reasons. Above all, make sure that there is an idea underlying every movie. Big names alone, as “Shining Through” and “For the Boys” proved, can be fiscal suicide rather than safety nets. The most profitable films--”Hot Shots,” ’Home Alone”--are the low-budget, high-grossing vehicles that no one expects to take off.

Chernin has taken the counsel to heart. Of the twenty or so films he’ll be releasing each year, he says, only three or four will be mounted as big-budget $40 million-plus projects with full-scale production values, top-of-the line directors and “the biggest stars we can find.” Six to 10 will be star-studded but less visually lavish, with budgets in the $24-million to $40-million range.

The rest, Chernin promises, will be projects with stories so strong they’re likely to fly with or without the aid of A-list talent. “There aren’t enough genuine movie stars to make 20 movies a year for six studios,” he explains, “so you better figure out some portion of your lineup that’s dependent on something else. I’m aiming for a slate that’s broad-based and eclectic.”

As the father of three and the latest beneficiary of the “Home Alone” bounty (the first took in $285 million in the United States and Canada and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” is hovering at the $150-million level), Chernin intends to make “family” pictures an important part of the mix. When you look at the numbers, he observes, it’s just good business sense. “Aladdin” and “Home Alone 2” together have grossed over $400 million in domestic box office. And, given children’s insatiable appetite for videos, the home video potential is probably equally strong.

Chernin denies he’ll be playing it “sweet and safe,” but admits he’s unlikely to spring for fare as downbeat as Fox’s 1991 “Naked Lunch.”

“I’m probably one of the few who’s read the book,” he explains, “and while I admire it as a detailed, insightful look at drug addiction, I’m not sure about it as a moviegoing experience. Will people dole out $7 to watch the story of a junkie’s love of heroin? The characters aren’t attractive. There’s not a lot to glom onto. Popular entertainment and quality is an elusive target--but a great one to aim for. If I wasn’t interested in the business aspect of the job, I would be teaching, editing at an obscure publishing company, or working at PBS.”

Murdoch, who professes to share the same taste as Chernin, forecasts that the studio “will be somewhere between Disney and Warner Bros.” in its approach to “gratuitous” sex and violence. “That’s not to say that we won’t have any ‘R’-rated films,” the News Corp. chief explains, “but we’re looking for successful movies we, ourselves, would like to watch. I didn’t like our ‘Night and the City’ (a grim urban tale starring Jessica Lange and Robert De Niro). It had no redeeming qualities. It was a useless picture.”

Though Murdoch stepped into the post of Chairman of Fox Inc. after the departure of Diller (now a part-owner of the QVC home shopping network), Chernin parries the “silly paranoia” that has people assuming he’ll be calling the shots. For one thing, he asserts, Murdoch--a fellow in whom conservative and sensationalist tendencies subsist side by side--is drawn to TV more than to film. For another, he says, Murdoch is in the tradition of the late Steve Ross, ex-chairman of Time Warner--a man who appointed strong people to run his operations and stepped out of the way. Chernin claims Murdoch hasn’t read a movie script since November. While he fully intends to run the major decisions by his superior, Chernin’s own ability to “green-light,” or give a “go” to, those projects he favors has no asterisk attached.

“Rupert has a mind like a steel trap and the ability to grasp lots of detail,” Chernin says, “but he’s not interested in the minutia of moviemaking. He trusts me to run the day-to-day film operation and to be accountable. If I make the wrong decisions over time, he’ll replace me. Rupert is also involved in newspapers, magazines, book publishing and television. To assume he’ll be concentrating on film is extremely self-centered.”

Chernin pauses a moment to reflect on the man who leveraged a small Australian newspaper into an $8-billion-a-year global media company. “All that said,” he adds, flashing the whitest of smiles, “Rupert has been the owner of this studio for nearly eight years and, trust me, he’s never been the absentee owner of anything.”

Though Murdoch, when pressed, can reel off four or five movies he considers most promising on the ’93 Fox slate, he insists that the knowledge comes for the most part from proximity. “Peter and I will be living in neighboring offices 10 hours a day,” he says, “so I’m sure I won’t have to read the Los Angeles Times to know what’s going on. Still, I witnessed Joe Roth discussing production deals and budgets with Barry Diller--and Joe had a great deal of freedom, nevertheless. There are no territorial limits at this company. We kick things around.”

Chernin started out as a Berkeley English literature major, someone who, anti-Establishment tendencies notwithstanding, took to books rather than to the barricades. Stints in publishing led to network and cable TV where he served as an executive at the independent David Gerber Co. and Showtime/The Movie Channel.

A two-year stretch overseeing a dozen or so movies including “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Running on Empty” as president and chief operating officer of Lorimar Film Entertainment gave Chernin some concrete, if unremarkable, grounding in the big screen. But TV again became his focus in February 1989 when he accepted the post of president of the Fox Entertainment Group, where he directed programming, marketing and business affairs for the Fox Broadcasting Co. The fledgling outfit not only succeeded in becoming a fourth network but, bolstered by such hit shows as “In Living Color” and “The Simpsons,” was second in profitability to ABC during the 1991-92 season.

In the Hollywood hierarchy, however, feature films and TV are two different worlds, with the big screen lording it over the small in terms of both power and prestige. Differing players, sensibilities, and rhythms, say insiders, can make for a ticklish transition. Current CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky had trouble finding his film legs at the helm of TriStar as did ex-NBC chief Brandon Tartikoff who, citing family pressures, left his spot as chairman of Paramount Pictures four days before Chernin was dubbed. Though the new Fox chairman acknowledges the obstacles, he says they’re eminently surmountable.

“Filmmaking,” Chernin explains, “is pure high-stakes gambling--a game in which each of the releases, after production and marketing, represents a $40-million, $50-million, $60-million bet. TV is more of a business in which the ongoing need for programming and pervasive time and money constraints necessitate greater creative compromise. Directors are more hired hands.

“Still, the decision-making psychology is basically the same,” he continues. “I was as nervous about making a bad $2-million pilot as I would be about making a $25-million feature film flop. Though I’m excited at the thought of creating a full artistic vision, I’ve never been snobby about TV. ‘The Simpsons,’ in my mind, is as significant an artistic achievement as anything in the entertainment world.”

Chernin says that four of what he calls “the top 10 film executives in the past 10 years”--Diller, Michael Eisner, Frank Price and Robert Daly--had roots in television. For that matter, he adds, Creative Artists Agency chairman Michael Ovitz started out as a TV agent. Murdoch suggests that a TV background may actually be a plus. “You’re closer to public taste in TV,” he asserts, “testing people’s reactions and choices every day, every night, every hour. There are a lot of talented people in film but their world can be an incestuous and insular one.”

Diller agrees. “The passage (from film to TV) is difficult less for the job itself than for the attitudes of the people already in the movie business,” he charges. “Movie experience has never been particularly enlightening as to whether anyone is qualified.”

Working with the tough and demanding Diller, Chernin says, was invaluable training since he, unlike many, responded well to his confrontational management style. “Barry believes that challenging people is a way not only of gauging passion but of determining how much homework has been done,” Chernin says. “In the end, however, he’s one of the world’s great listeners--one of the few on the senior level who genuinely wants you to come in and change his mind.”

Like Diller, Chernin is reluctant to buy heavily into market research--surveying audiences to determine their likes and dislikes and tailoring films and marketing campaigns accordingly. Just as Fox Broadcasting used “a fraction” of the statistics so central to other broadcast operations, he maintains, the studio will do its best to avoid a numbers fixation.

“I don’t want to be a David Puttnam,” he says, alluding to the producer-turned-Columbia-studio-chief whose outspoken criticism of the Hollywood mainstream ruffled feathers, “but market research is vastly over-used. The screening process is valuable in assessing those parts of a picture in which an audience laughs or squirms. But if I spend millions of dollars chasing people whose visions I admire, deciding that they’re idiots because of the scores people leaving the theater turn in is not the smartest thinking. I’m interested in my gut . . . and the gut of the people I work with.”

Chernin’s first couple of months have been spent reassuring producers and directors such as John Hughes and Ron Shelton associated with the studio that he, like Roth, is “filmmaker friendly.” (Only one writer, whom he declines to identify, asked--and was permitted--to be released from his contract.) The staff was informed that there is no fiscal mandate to make cutbacks. Talent agencies, concerned about a loss of work for their clients, were advised that the new Fox will be even more aggressive than the previous regime when it comes to making movies.

The amount of material in development, however, has been an ongoing bone of contention. While Murdoch bemoans the fact that Fox has only 80 projects in the pipeline compared with 300 or 400 at some of the other studios, Roth--who intentionally reduced the number--is proud that a greater proportion were made.

“It’s a different philosophy,” Roth explains. “Barry Diller and I both felt that there was too much in development, that one of the excesses of the business is the ratio between scripts developed and films produced. No one makes much more than 20 a year and some of the studios develop hundreds of them. I wanted to work the ratio way down--from 10 to 1, which isn’t uncommon in the industry, to 4 to 1.”

Chernin sides with Murdoch. “I’m not putting down Joe (Roth),” Chernin cautions. “The studio is in great shape in terms of marketing, distribution, foreign, video, and business affairs. But there hasn’t been enough development here. Joe had strong relationships with filmmakers whom he looked to to deliver. I’ll be formulating writing, producing, and writing relationships, too--though not so many as Sony, who signed everyone in town and is so overextended that it has a hard time servicing all of them. But, primarily, I’ll be governed by material and be adding people to our development ranks.”

Among the bright spots in the 1993 slate, Chernin says, are filmed versions of TV’s “The Beverly Hillbillies” and Michael Crichton’s “Rising Sun,” Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Hot Shots! Part Deux” and Joe Ruben’s “The Good Son,” featuring Macaulay Culkin, whose “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2” were such a boon to the 20th Century Fox balance sheet.

“Home Alone,” Chernin predicts, still has a long life ahead of it, but there may be only be one more “left-at-home” installment of the Hollywood’s highest-grossing comedy before the tale has to be adapted to an adolescent Culkin. Though the fate of “Alien 4” is up in the air and “Die Hard 3”--a co-production with Cinergi Pictures--is awaiting a script, sequels to “My Cousin Vinny” and possibly “White Man Can’t Jump” are likely.

“Our single greatest asset, however, is John Hughes--a phenomenal writer with a long-term deal with us and Warner Bros.,” says the studio chief of the “Home Alone” director, the dismal performance of “Dutch” and “Only the Lonely” notwithstanding. “James Cameron (the “Aliens” director, who has an exclusive 12-picture deal with Fox over the next five years) would be equally important, if only we had foreign rights as well as domestic. We’re hoping his company, Lightstorm, will be as successful for us as Castle Rock and Imagine are for Columbia and Universal.”

In a business marked by increasing consolidation, Chernin insists, there’s a significant niche for independent operations--if only they limit their sights. One of the “negative lessons” learned at the now-defunct film division of Lorimar was the importance of thinking small. Because independents are more vulnerable to risks, he points out, distributing as well as producing may be an unrealistic goal.

“I’m perverse enough to think, however, that there are interesting opportunities out there for anyone who wants to be contrary,” he says. “It’s difficult for studios to manufacture creative, quirky product on a mass basis and that can work to the benefit of upstarts. The success of the Fox Broadcasting Co.--after 40 years of only three networks--is testament to that. The challenge for the majors is not to fight the independents but to nurture them and distribute their product.”

And Chernin’s biggest personal challenge? Avoiding the insularity endemic to an industry as obsessed with the bottom line and the art of the deal as with the movies themselves. Though power breakfasts and contract negotiations come with the package, he admits, that’s not what gets people into the seats.

“Things have been done the same way for 70 or 80 years,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean that they’re etched in stone,” he asserts. “For starters, I make a point of heading for theaters instead of private screening rooms. It’s crazy to be in a business in which you try to anticipate the response of the audience, then choose to experience the product in isolation from it.

“I don’t pretend to be an outsider,” Chernin concedes. “I’ve been moderately successful playing the game. But I’ll fail if I let myself be seduced by it.”