MOVIES : Southwest Passage : It was an unlikely project to begin with, but the road got even rockier for ‘Roosters’ once the cameras rolled

Edward James Olmos stands amid the cacti in the desert, a brilliantly plumed fighting rooster cradled in his right arm, a cellular phone glued to his left ear. A black cowboy hat with a feather in its band shields the actor from the midday sun. Sans phone, he is El Gallo, the long-absent patriarch who rules the roost around these parts.

Olmos shoves the cellular phone in his back pocket and passes through the rusty gateway of the Morales Ranch, near a small stone-ringed patch of earth decorated with the shiny shards, china figurines and precious trinkets of girlhood. A waifish young woman in a tan cotton dress squats amid her treasures in this miniature cemetery that she has fashioned. She is Gallo’s daughter, Angela (played by actress Sarah Lassez), and this is her sacred ground.

It is a moment in which the yin and yang of the Latino Southwest collide. Gallo--proud, haughty and lethal, like the bird on Olmos’ arm--is a seething vestige of a misogynist culture. Angela, an ethereal teen-ager who dwells in a fantasy world of saints and martyrs, is art and spirit incarnate--and a challenge to the cult of machismo.

Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s “Roosters” is all about clashes. Based on the play of the same name, the film--which stars Olmos, Sonia Braga and Maria Conchita Alonso--just finished shooting on location 30 miles outside of Tucson.

It’s a film that is set hundreds of miles from the barrios and gangbangers who typify Latino culture, Hollywood-style. That “Roosters” has come this far is, above all, a triumph for first-time filmmakers Susan Block-Reiner and Sanchez-Scott.

“It’s an artistic film, it’s an ethnic film and it’s a woman’s film,” says Block-Reiner, the 34-year-old producer who has spent six years working with Sanchez-Scott to bring the project to the screen. “It’s a project that frankly no one believed would ever get made.”

It isn’t just a film about clashes, though. It’s also a work whose making has been a series of fractious encounters. “Roosters” has survived a shoot so troubled that its remote set was turned into a literal armed camp. The original director was fired, another 14 crew members departed, the production schedule extended, the budget ran over, producers have been at odds with one another, and one of “Roosters’ ” stars--Olmos--became the object of death threats.

“Roosters” is hardly movie business as usual.

The wooden handle of a revolver pokes out of the holster that hangs just below the beer gut of the grizzled sentry guarding the gate.

Entering the armed compound, your next once-over comes from a pair of Herefords grazing near the parking strip. Continue down the dirt road leading to the orange ranch house, the set where most of “Roosters” is being shot, and you’re surrounded by vast gray-green vistas filled with manzanita and jumping cholla cactus.

At the end of the road is the most remarkable display of all: a beehive of producers and high-dollar actors, pacing up and down in the midst of this epic natural panorama, with those ubiquitous cellular phones pasted to their ears.

The humans are as prickly as the cacti. Wounds are raw from recent staff purges and a number of folks have a lot at stake--including producers, who are going to have to pay for the film’s rising costs, and Olmos, who could use a hit in the wake of the disappointing reception to his last project, “American Me” (1992).

Stately saguaros--20-to-40-foot tall giants, with arms that curl balletically toward the sun--rise in the background. John Ford imported rental cacti when he shot “My Darling Clementine,” and the “Roosters” folks have schlepped in a couple of saguaros too.

This is the Southwest landscape where many of Sanchez-Scott’s plays are set, although it’s not her native habitat. Born on the island of Bali in 1955 to an Indonesian-Chinese-Dutch mother and a Colombian father, the playwright attended a Catholic girls’ school near London, and at age 14 moved with her family to La Jolla. When the adult Sanchez-Scott came to Los Angeles, L.A. Theater Works’ Susan Albert Loewenberg and playwright Doris Baizley encouraged her to write her first play, “Latina.” It was first produced in 1981 at the (now defunct) Pilot Theater in L.A.

“I’ve been totally nurtured by women,” Sanchez-Scott says. Her plays feature Cuban, Chicano, Filipino, Mestizo and other American and South American women and men who lead ostensibly unspectacular lives that are sometimes touched by the fantastic. She weaves together threads of spirituality, sensuality, artistic drive, religious fervor and political power with a lyrical and painterly use of language.

“Roosters,” her best-known work, centers on Juana (played in the film by Braga), Chata (Alonso) and Juana’s children, Hector (Danny Nucci) and Angela. The catalyst for the action is Gallo--Juana’s husband, Chata’s brother, Hector’s and Angela’s father--who returns home after doing time for manslaughter. Gallo and Hector go head-to-head over a prized fighting rooster, with tragic consequences.

The idiom that Sanchez-Scott employs is magical realism--a cross-cutting between the mundane and the miraculous most often associated with the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The play made a splash in its 1987 premiere at New York’s INTAR. Around that time, Block-Reiner, who had just gone to work for KCET, was looking for projects to bring to American Playhouse. Although she didn’t see the INTAR production, she became interested in the property. (“Roosters” was also staged at the late Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1988.)

“Roosters” was initially optioned as a TV project. But, says Block-Reiner, “it deserved to be a film because the environment is almost another character.”

Co-star Braga says the setting may be the key element to the production. “This is about this land and the people that belong to this place,” she says. “Fellini does things about Rome. He doesn’t go anywhere else but Rome. And this is like those Italian realist films in that way.”

In 1988, Block-Reiner and Sanchez-Scott started working on a film script. “It was a difficult process,” says Block-Reiner. “It was two years before we had a draft that we felt good about.”

Like many projects in the new Hollywood, “Roosters” is being produced by an ad-hoc alliance of experienced, sort-of experienced and first-time producers. The film is KCET’s first foray into production on a theatrical project; co-executive producers are Ricki Franklin, director of cultural programming at KCET and Phylis Geller, the station’s former senior vice-president of national programming. The producing entities are American Playhouse Theatrical Films and WMG, in association with Olmos Productions. Only two of the producing entities, WMG (a 4-year-old German company with offices in Los Angeles) and American Playhouse, put up the bulk of the initial $1.7 million, although costs have since increased substantially.

Marcus De Leon was first approached to work on “Roosters” by Block-Reiner and KCET’s Franklin in July, 1991. A UCLA film school graduate, he had then just released his “Kiss Me a Killer,” which The Times’ Kevin Thomas called a “darkly amusing . . . contemporary film noir with a salsa beat.”

Block-Reiner and De Leon worked together on the “Roosters” script for a year and a half, during which time the script went through one more draft. Yet despite this process, the producer and director found themselves at loggerheads once they set up shop for pre-production in Tucson.

Block-Reiner says De Leon shut her out. “I was forbidden to talk to the actors,” she says. “I was not allowed in rehearsals. I was not allowed to talk to any of the key creative crew about anything in the script. When I had concerns and I told Marcus, I felt that I wasn’t being listened to.”

De Leon’s version differs. “I didn’t exclude anyone,” he says. “I went to lengths to include (Block-Reiner) in the development of what was happening visually and performance-wise.

“I felt it was imperative that we establish the characters and the interactions on our own, and then present what we had,” says De Leon. “After rehearsals, I invited the producers in and they watched almost every scene. Anybody could have any kind of input they wanted.”

De Leon also claims he requested that one of the key members of the creative crew be fired prior to the start of shooting. “I asked the producers for changes and my request was denied,” he says. (Block-Reiner refuses to comment on this point.)

The failure to resolve this situation made things worse. “Once problems became evident, there were other parties ready to exert their influence,” says De Leon. “I felt there was more than one director, more than three directors, on the film.”

The producers weren’t happy either. “We weren’t getting the movie that we wanted: Dailies provide the proof of it,” says American Playhouse’s Lindsay Law, one of the picture’s executive producers.

On March 1, line producer Lorenzo O’Brien was fired. On March 2, De Leon and cinematographer Yuri Neyman got the axe. Eventually, at least 15 people left or were fired from the project. Law made the ultimate decision on the three initial firings.

On March 3, the producers announced the hiring of director Robert M. Young and cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos. The set was shut down for two days, after which shooting resumed. All the footage that De Leon had shot, eight days’ worth, was scrapped.

Young, who first read the “Roosters” script when he was on the plane to Tucson, had known Olmos since 1976. They had worked together on many films, including “Triumph of the Spirit,” “Talent for the Game,” “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” and “American Me.” Together with his brother, Irwin Young, the two men also have a partnership called YOY Productions.

One week after his dismissal, De Leon, O’Brien and others met with members of the press and the independent film community at downtown L.A.’s Troy Cafe. There, at least one of the terminated employees contended that Olmos was behind the firings.

“Edward James Olmos told me early on that there were major changes that were going to happen,” said costume designer Yvonne Cervantes. “I had no idea what he was talking about. Now I do. In come his very good friends . . . that is what happened with this picture.”

On March 29, a theater full of wise-acre Latinos gathered at East L.A.’s Plaza de la Raza for the second annual Nopalote Awards--the artsy Chicano answer to the Academy Awards. Midway through the ceremonies, a woman in calavera makeup presents the award for “Best Hijacking of a Creative Endeavor.” Sure enough, the winner is . . . Edward James Olmos for “Roosters.”

Speaking to The Times, Block-Reiner and Olmos deny the charge, although WMG’S Justin Ackerman and Law remain tight-lipped about the subject. “I know there’s a lot of feeling that Eddie was behind this, but he wasn’t,” says Block-Reiner.

“There was never a conspiracy to change the hierarchy of the director, the producer, the actors or anything on my behalf,” says Olmos.

Although producers claim to have initiated a last-minute scramble to replace De Leon, Young suggested differently.

“Eddie called me on a Friday when I was trying to set up another film,” says Young. “I came because I was called by Eddie and he’s a close friend of mine.”

Whoever initiated it and whenever it began, the transition was messy. On March 1, when the firings were made public, the production brought in security guards.

Cervantes and others subsequently complained about being harassed by police who were called to the set when they attempted to retrieve their personal belongings. “The costume designers unfortunately went out (to the set) and production wasn’t notified,” says Block-Reiner. “Nobody knew who they were.”

On March 3, death threats against Olmos were phoned into the production office, and more armed security was added and remained in place. Olmos said the threats were “coming from people who are angry at being fired,” dismissing any possible connection between these calls and past troubles he’s had with the Mexican Mafia in connection with “American Me,” which he wrote, directed and co-produced.

“I never got a phone call from the ‘American Me’ people. Those people don’t tell you they’re gonna do it to you, man. They just murder. Trust me. This was disgruntled employees.” De Leon and others deny they are involved in the calls.

Angela’s Chino Valley Cemetery is a shrine in progress. A rickety brown child’s chair with pastel hearts and bunnies painted on it sits in the corner of the plot, near where several women crouch, shaping wire gates and placing itty-bitty flowers on wooden markers. Even Block-Reiner can’t resist dabbling, absorbed as she is in gluing stones on a tiny stick cross for one of the miniature grave sites.

Nearby, Lassez, costumed for her role in Angela’s muslin dress and brown cowboy boots, listens to instructions on the proper way to spritz holy water. Velia Morelos, a local woman in a bright turquoise skirt outfit and Birkenstocks, has been hired for the day at Young’s behest to coach the actress in Catholic ritual.

“Say anything that’s the truth,” Young, hovering nearby, tells Morelos. “If there’s something we’re doing wrong, tell us.”

This pursuit of authentic detail is one of Young’s calling cards. “I believe in grounding things,” he says. “The actors are always located in a logical physical and psychological reality, and that’s what can’t be violated. All I know is that these actors need to be supported.”

A key acting question facing “Roosters” is how to handle the non-naturalistic language. In magical realism, there’s leeway as to whether you go heavy on the magic or heavy on the realism. And Sanchez-Scott’s drama pivots on moments and motifs that are decidedly beyond the conceptual pale of standard screen mimesis.

The film has shifted toward naturalism under Young. “It’s not as stylized perhaps as the other way was,” says Block-Reiner.

“The look of the film is quite different,” says Law. “Adjustments have been made to the graveyard, (Angela’s) dolls, the costumes and props.”

By several accounts, De Leon’s work involved a particularly active camera, including crane and dolly shots. Not so Young and Villalobos’ footage. “We don’t think about what’s a beautiful shot or how to go in for coverage,” says Young. “We put the camera where the story is.”

Alonso calls Young “an actor’s director--and I’ve had very few of those in my life.” Indeed, says Block-Reiner, the decision to dismiss De Leon had “a lot to do with performance, the actors.” And yet, De Leon’s work in his earlier film, “Kiss Me a Killer,” was acclaimed precisely because of his success with actors.

Block-Reiner cannot say how she could have worked with De Leon for a year and a half and not known what kind of stylization he had in mind.

Block-Reiner probably didn’t foresee that some of her own power would be taken away at the same time. Although Block-Reiner denies it, Law acknowledges a shift. “We felt it was necessary to bring in some experienced people,” he said through a spokesperson, referring to personnel such as production executive Norman Cohen, who replaced line producer O’Brien at the same time Young came on board. “She’s still a producer, but she no longer has the sole voice.”

It’s 9:20 on a Thursday night, less than a week since Young has taken over. Cast, producers, crew and a few others are gathered in a salmon-pink meeting room in the Tucson Ramada Inn to watch the dailies.

The screen is filled with a close shot of Gallo at the dinner table, stuffing his face with tamales, rice, frijoles and tortillas, downing tequila as he rants at his off-camera family.

Several takes meet with “oohs” and “ahhhs.” During one take, noise begins to intrude on the soundtrack, apparently from an airplane that had been flying overhead. On screen, Olmos doesn’t miss a beat. “Let’s wait for the plane,” says the actor. “Keep it rolling.”

Both Olmos and Gallo know how to take charge. Yet Gallo’s brutishness is a far cry from Olmos’ assiduously practiced charm. “I’ve never done a character who is a self-serving, egotistical, macho (man) who tries desperately to hold on to what he is,” says Olmos. “This exposes the male.”

Sanchez-Scott also wants to expose the gender role traps that women fall into. “Either we’re the madonna or the whore,” she says. “At age 45, the men are like old warriors coming home. The women, who’ve been so adoring to these brutal men, sense a weakness and turn macha. It’s amazing to me that there are children who come out of this like flowers, fully intact.”

It is also amazing that a film like “Roosters” can get made in today’s industry’s economy. Unfortunately, this film’s troubles didn’t end when the producers switched directors. And the future is far from a lock, since there’s no major distributor yet.

“Roosters” was originally budgeted at about $1.7 million, with roughly $1 million coming from WMG and the balance from American Playhouse, according to WMG’s Ackerman. But it is actually going to be much more expensive.

On March 12, Playhouse’s Law estimated the cost would be “two-and-a-halfish--probably.” But the shooting schedule was then delayed and extended again. What was originally planned as a 30-day shoot ended up taking a total of 39 days--eight under De Leon and 31 under Young. Sources now predict the tab will approach $3 million--nearly twice the originally budgeted cost.

WMG and American Playhouse have worked together before and have what a spokesperson characterized as “an overall deal together,” of which “Roosters” is a part. Although WMG’s Ackerman calls the teaming “a very good relationship,” reports persist that relations between the two companies have been rocky.

WMG reportedly dragged its feet on anteing up its share on a joint project called “Shimmer.” (American Playhouse refused to say when, if ever, WMG came through with the cash on this one.) Meanwhile, Playhouse had been unable to get Olmos to commit to “Roosters.” WMG, which now has other projects lined up with Olmos, seems to have been the decisive player in finally getting Olmos to the table.

WMG and Playhouse refuse to say who is going to pick up how much of “Roosters”’ extra costs. But if Playhouse--which is ultimately financed by the Corp. for Public Broadcasting and therefore particularly sensitive about how it is perceived--gets stuck with much of the bill, the number of films it makes this year could be reduced.

That kind of pressure doesn’t make things any easier, and the Tucson atmosphere remained chilly and tense through the end of production.

Yet Olmos, Block-Reiner and the others have stuck with “Roosters” perhaps because films like this fill a need.

“Because there’re 22-25 million Latinos registered in the United States, people are thinking more about making films that deal with that culture,” said Olmos. “And Milcha is important to balancing out the biggest problem we have on the planet: the inequality of women.”

“I’m hoping it works,” said Sanchez-Scott, after spending a week on the set. “Chicanos, Hispanics, minorities need optimistic endings. We believe in miracles. We need them.”