Highway 66 Revisited : NBC rolls out a new-model Corvette this week with a rock ‘n’ roll version of ‘Route 66.’ But the two producers have different visions for the road show: dramatic fiber vs. funny dialogue

T od Stiles and Buz Murdock are visiting Jenny, a fading jazz singer who’s bedridden after suffering a blackout and nearly getting hit by the two travelers in their 1961 Corvette convertible.

Jenny asks the young men where their journey is leading, and what they intend to do once they get there.

“Anything we can do,” Stiles says politely.

“Sounds like easy come, easy go,” Jenny responds.

A sad smile crosses Murdock’s dark, handsome face. “Not exactly,” he says. “You see, well, we’re sort of looking for a place where we really fit. A kind of niche for ourselves, you know? But until then, I guess we’ll just sort of keep looking and moving.”

“Route 66” only ran on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It was never a major ratings hit. It never won an Emmy. But for many of the baby boom generation, then hitting adolescence, it was a cultural landmark--an unassuming piece of melodrama that fueled the same potent fantasy that Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” had a few years earlier and that Peter Fonda’s “Easy Rider” would a few years later.

The romantic vision “Route 66” offered in the characters played by Martin Milner and George Maharis was a simple one: To jump in a sleek sports car with the top down and drive--neither stopping to look back nor worrying about what lies ahead. Letting fate dictate the itinerary through the back roads and small towns that make up the heart of America. Living day to day in a vagabond crusade for self-awareness.

Michael Ventura, 47, a columnist for L.A. Weekly, spent several years in his 20s picking up work while traveling through the South and Southwest, the result of having watched “Route 66” as a teen-ager.

“I looked at these two guys going around the country,” Ventura recalled, “working from job to job, meeting people and searching for their souls--which is why they were on the road; they were very upfront about it. And I said, ‘That’s how I want to live, right there. I’m not interested in any other kind of life being offered to me.’ ”

On Tuesday night, NBC will pick up that endless soul search in the 1990s with a slick new rock ‘n’ roll version of “Route 66.” The series pairs rising star Dan Cortese, the flip “MTV Sports” host and Burger King pitchman, with James Wilder, who played an assistant district attorney on ABC’s 1990-91 legal drama “Equal Justice.”

But like the confused characters in the original road show, the new “Route 66” does not seem to be headed in a clear direction.

Herbert B. Leonard, 62, created the first “Route 66” and is one of two uncomfortable executive producers on the NBC version. Leonard cut his teeth in the 1950s producing such classic television as “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” and “Naked City.”

He’s fighting for dramatic fiber.

But the creative vision of the new show is under the charge of 39-year-old executive producer Harley Peyton, a 1990s picture of pop culture. Peyton tapped into the Angst of modern youth with his screenplay for the film “Less Than Zero,” and he won an Emmy for writing on the cult TV series “Twin Peaks.”

He wants funny dialogue and snappy repartee.

“Now, doing that on television is not easy,” Peyton said. “Because those who look at the bottom line are more concerned with ‘Well, but we need a story to promote. And we need these specific values or people won’t watch.’ I could argue with them whether they’re right or not, but that’s how they feel.”

That’s certainly how Leonard feels. Recalling the original black-and-white series, he said: “The stories were about something. They had a theme. They had a point. They had a human spirit. The guys were really testing their values against the people they met on the road.

“And I’m sick and tired of being told that’s old-fashioned. Because American values and morality are about substance, not dialogue. When you piss on substance, you piss on everything that’s important in our life.”

“Route 66” was created as a vehicle for the brooding young Maharis, whose dark good looks and intensity made him the ideal rebel. He played the streetwise Murdock, who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in New York. The clean-cut Milner played the rich kid Stiles. When Stiles’ father died suddenly, the unlikely pair hopped in the old man’s Corvette and took off.

In the new version, Wilder, 28, portrays the son Murdock never knew he had. Traveling to the Midwest to claim his dead father’s assets, he discovers that the only item of value is--you guessed it--the perfectly preserved Corvette his father once drove, now two-toned red and white for the color screen. When he hits the road and picks up a fun-loving hitchhiker, played by Cortese, 25, the series is off and running.

“This is kind of like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the quintessential American adventure,” said Scott Siegler, president of Columbia Pictures Television, which is producing the series. “There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work again.”

At least as important as the concept to the network and studio executives, however, is the fact that they feel they have their hands on the tail of a streaking comet in Cortese, who only 17 months ago was an unknown production assistant at MTV.

The original “Route 66” catapulted Maharis onto magazine covers, and Leonard sees the same potential in Cortese. “I think the kid’s a major star, and I hope we can take advantage of it,” Leonard said.

On this subject, he and Peyton see eye to eye. “I’ve told the network that this is his first and last television series,” Peyton said. “The guy is skyrocketing, and if this series isn’t picked up, you can count on him walking out the door the next day. I think he will move immediately into movies. A cast like this doesn’t come along too often. We either welcome them or wave goodby.”

But in a highly unusual move, NBC cautiously ordered only four episodes of the one-hour drama, budgeted at $1.2 million an episode, plus eight additional scripts. Even if “Route 66” turns out to be a smash this month, the soonest Columbia could have new episodes ready would be the middle of next season.

“A lot of it had to do with chemistry,” said Kevin Reilly, vice president of drama development at NBC, explaining the network’s limited order. “This show, these two guys, they’re either going to click or they’re not. And you don’t know until you stick your toe in the water. With the networks, every time you stick your toe in the water it’s another million dollars. So you try to arrive at a number where you can see a sample of the show and the chemistry between the actors without getting in too deep.”

In 1960, Leonard put up $219,000 of his own money to shoot an hour pilot for “Route 66.” CBS quickly moved in and bought the series, followed by the sponsorship of General Motors, which also supplied the automobiles.

The Corvette was an undeniable draw for “Route 66.” With that in mind, Chrysler lobbied to get involved in the new NBC series by replacing the vintage Corvette with its own $60,000 muscle car, the Viper. (After Chrysler was turned down, a deal was struck with Paramount Pictures to develop a science-fiction TV series based on the high-tech Viper. It hasn’t been scheduled yet.)

“ ‘Route 66’ made the Corvette--popularized the whole thing,” said Roger Brunelle, 63, known as the Hollywood guru of fiberglassing for his body work on Corvettes, including the 1961 model used in most of the original series. “That’s where the love affair started.”

But it was the show’s sense of freedom and adventure that was the principal allure, and not only to adolescents.

“A lot of people find themselves, for one reason or another, trapped in a certain place--trapped by family ties, trapped by a job, trapped by what’s expected of them,” said Milner, now 61 and living in San Diego. “That whole fantasy of being able to get up and leave it all behind is attractive to a lot of people who really can’t do that, for any number of reasons.”

(Milner, a childhood actor before “Route 66,” went on to star in “Adam-12” from 1968 to 1975 and most recently had a recurring role in ABC’s “Life Goes On.” Maharis, who left “Route 66” midway through the third year because of hepatitis and was replaced by Glenn Corbett, reportedly inherited enough money a short time later that he didn’t have to work again. He starred in the short-lived ABC series “The Most Deadly Game” in 1970, made a few B-movies and acted onstage. As for his activities today, his agent, Jerry Levy, wouldn’t say: “We don’t want to comment on anything associated with the new series.”)

During its four-year run, 116 episodes of “Route 66” were shot in 40 states. The core production unit was like a traveling sideshow, moving from town to town with a caravan of equipment and hiring locals as crew members and extras. “We didn’t stay on Route 66 by any means,” Leonard said. “But we thought (using it as the title) had that kind of emotional connection with something moving.”

Leonard had full creative control of the series--and he was always pushing the envelope. Only once did CBS put its foot down, cutting a four-minute scene when Murdock and Stiles used a shoelace sterilized by steaming radiator water to cut the umbilical cord of a mother whose baby they had just delivered in the back of the Corvette.

“When I made this show originally, I had everything to say, in the sense of power,” Leonard said. “All we had to do was accommodate the censor and (use) good business practices. No one told us this scene didn’t work, or this theme wasn’t right. We weren’t troublesome and nasty, but we were able to concentrate totally on the making of the show and not the politics.”

These days, Leonard feels almost powerless.

Two years ago, Creative Artists Agency, which represents Leonard and Peyton, brought the two producers together when Peyton expressed an intense desire to redo “Route 66.” Leonard was busy finishing up 106 episodes of “The New Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” for the Family Channel, so when he saw Peyton’s genuine passion for his old series he agreed to sign away control.

But Peyton’s passion was more for “the idea and the notion” of “Route 66,” which he refers to as “a state of mind.” Peyton said he was not that familiar with the actual series when he first met Leonard.

“This is much more of a comedy than his show was,” Peyton said of the new “Route 66.” “While there may have been some humor in the original show, it was really a very melodramatic ‘50s drama. In a way that feels archaic now.”

As executive producer, Leonard says, he received a modest $25,000, plus $2,000 an episode from royalties. Although he told himself he wasn’t going to get emotionally involved in the situation for that price, he felt differently once he saw the direction Peyton was taking. Yet contractually there was nothing he could do.

“Now you understand why I’ve been tentative, like I’m walking on eggs,” Leonard said. “I think I’m a pretty hip guy. I’ll go as wild as anyone can go. But in the end it all has to be about something. There has to be a moment when these two guys stand up for something. They have to show who they are through their actions. Not through fighting, but with ideas. It has to be a show about ideas, a show about America.

“I committed myself and I couldn’t blow up the ship, so I let it sail. I want to see the show get picked up; then you’ll see me do my number.”

Peyton was sitting in an air-conditioned mobile trailer outside a beach house in Venice, where the new “Route 66” was in its last days of production. On a small Sony Trinitron, he was screening a scene in which Nick Lewis (Wilder) and Arthur Clark (Cortese) are musing around a campfire.

“Do you believe in luck?” Lewis asked Clark.

“That sounds like a loaded question,” Clark said.

“I didn’t,” Lewis shrugged. “I figured you did your best, lived with the results. Until I saw that car.”

“It is a beauty,” Clark said, eyeing the Corvette.

“I got inside. I felt different. I felt lucky for the first time.”

Staring at the screen, Peyton said: “I love to write dialogue. I don’t care about story.”

Peyton says his scripts tend to run longer than most because they are heavy with dialogue that zips along. ABC was impressed enough with his writing to order his new series “Do the Strand,” a private-eye drama set in Miami Beach, for its fall schedule.

He is a big fan of Preston Sturges, regarded as one of America’s greatest writer-directors. With “Route 66,” Peyton wanted to put a contemporary spin on the screwball Sturges comedy “Sullivan’s Travels,” in which narrative was secondary to witty dialogue.

“Everyone in this process has had arguments, because the problem with ‘Route 66’ as a show is that you can pour anything into it you want in terms of the vision,” Peyton said. “When I look at stories, I tend to start with the character and work outward. And TV traditionally starts with story and works inward. I’m much more likely to go off on a little character tangent that goes for four or five pages.”

There are dramatic road stories to be told, Peyton said. When he was hitchhiking years ago, he and a buddy were nearly killed by a suicidal, lovesick driver who had a crescent-shaped bruise on his forehead from where his girlfriend had whacked him with the heel of her shoe. But in the first four episodes of “Route 66,” Peyton has not explored that darker underbelly of life on the road.

“That sort of danger we have not really done as of yet,” he said. “We’ve done much more with relationships. Quite frankly, and if we erred in any sense, there’s a lot of girls-girls-girls stuff going on here. When two young men cross the country, they’re usually not looking for rare Mark Twain first editions. They’re usually looking to meet girls.”

Peyton is not worried that fans of the old series will feel betrayed, because he has found that many people don’t accurately remember the original--even though it recently had a run on cable TV’s Nickelodeon channel. He says people who tell him they love “Route 66” often start singing the old song by Bobby Troup--who crooned “Get your kicks on Route 66”--and not the Nelson Riddle instrumental jazz theme that was featured in the show. (NBC’s version will feature a new theme, composed by Warren Zevon.)

In 1960 there was a strong sense of patriotism, and America was the land of milk and honey. The perfect symbol for the country’s free spirit was the romantic U.S. 66.

Today, the two-lane roadway meandering 2,448 miles from Los Angeles to Chicago has become entombed beneath interstate freeway, leaving behind an arid landscape of boarded-up roadside cafes and dying gas stations. Some suggest that the innocence of “Route 66” has been lost as well.

Stirling Silliphant, who wrote about three-quarters of the original show’s episodes, turned down an offer to become involved in the revival. “In today’s climate of political correctness, with so many different polarized special-interest groups and so much hatred in American society, I can’t bring myself to write from my heart about America anymore,” he said.

The question of whether the “Route 66” fantasy still holds was a frequent topic of conversation among the series participants.

“The two big fantasies or goals we were striving for when I was in early grammar school was to be the President of the United States, or maybe one day fly to the moon,” said Wilder, who spent a couple of years as a struggling actor traveling the country and living out of the back of his van. “And during my course of education, I watched Nixon get impeached and Armstrong land on the moon. So there went those fantasies.”

But, he added, driving in a sports car with the top down is still “the template for cool” for young people today.

“The original show was Zeitgeist , capturing the spirit of the time,” Peyton said. “If we tried to do this show five years ago or seven years ago--when the thing to do was to go to business school and become an investment banker and work for Mike Milken, when that was the groove you were supposed to be into--I think this show would have had a lot more trouble being accepted as opposed to now. Because the floor’s kind of moving under our feet a little bit. It’s not going to be the ‘60s again, but I would like to think that maybe the times are a little more favorable.”

Leonard believes a contemporary, thoughtful “Route 66” could be the perfect elixir for an ailing nation of young people with no direction--but only if the subject is treated seriously. For that reason, he is developing another TV series set on the highways about two truckers, a mother and daughter.

“All you have to do is look at drive-by shootings and carjackings,” he said. “It’s all connected. The process of self-discovery is a perennial of youth, and it probably can be applied to today’s youth more than when we did it. It’s a matter of just contemporizing the problems and dealing with them, as opposed to the problems of the early ‘60s.”

Silliphant is not so sure: “I just feel they have a real tough problem lifting it out of an ordinary television show into something which touches a nerve in the public. I don’t know if that nerve exists anymore. That’s really what I said to Bert (Leonard) when I decided to pass. He said, ‘There’s still thousands of human stories out there.’ And I said, ‘That’s true, but I don’t know that the public cares about them anymore.’ ”