Everyone’s Writing a Screenplay and They All Call Joe : ‘I would call my roommate, I’d say: “Come here, listen to this one.” He’d say: “God, you’re crazy.” ’

All Joe Fernandez wanted was an easy phone number. Something that new friends could remember. For a $10 fee, the phone company offered him a choice of two numbers. He picked (213) 550-1000. A breeze.

The first day the number was installed, he dialed up his electronic message service at day’s end to see if anyone had called. Thirty people had. Most were complete strangers. And they left the oddest messages: people wanting to know how to protect their scripts, people insisting someone was trying to steal their scripts. “I realized I had the Writers Guild number,” Fernandez says.

Indeed, he had the same seven-digit number as the Writers Guild of America West, the prestigious craft union that represents L.A.-based film and television writers. He just happened to have it in a different area code. When the city subdivided last year, adding an area code, the Writers Guild’s number went from 213 to 310.

That meant that any of 8,863 guild members, plus thousands would-be members, could be accidentally dialing Fernandez’s number. But rather than being horrified at the prospect, he was delighted.

At age 29, Fernandez was newly divorced, living apart from his three young children and adjusting to a new roommate in a rented Glassell Park house. He was lonely. He was bored. Suddenly, he had found a new group of potential phone pals.

Fernandez, who dreams of being a music recording engineer but for the moment runs a small travel agency, is also one of those people who considers the outgoing message on his automated answering service a creative outlet. So he concocted a new message for his phone, calculated not to shoo writers away but to playfully encourage them to call again:

This is not the Writers Guild. But if you would like to send me your scripts for my personal reading entertainment, please send them to the following address. . . .

To his surprise he got four scripts. “One was a murder mystery. It reminded me of ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ ” he says. He also got some unkind cracks on his voice mail. “Some guy called and left me all this profanity--I guess he had writer’s block,” Fernandez says, laughing.

And he caught the attention of the Writers Guild, which had a lawyer call to remind him of the potential for confusion.

Fernandez had no intention of giving up his phone number. He refined his outgoing message to fend off critics of his solicitousness:

Hello there. For those frustrated writers experiencing writer’s block or who criticize my message, send me your scripts for some criticism--if you have any. For those who want to get in touch with the Writers Guild, dial area code 310 first.

The easy-to-remember phone number was becoming more than a convenience to Fernandez. It was a chance to tap into a subculture of the Hollywood dream, the working and the wanna-be screenwriters. For some floundering writers ignored by the Hollywood system, Fernandez was a kind of lifeline, even if his only entertainment credential was that he lived within driving distance of the Writers Guild. At least he was a friendly voice:

Tuesday, Aug . 24, 12:52 a . m. . . . I don’t know who you are, but I like your message, dig the music in the background, too. Anyway, I’m a frustrated writer and I have written a screenplay that I think is perfect for Michael Keaton and I’m trying to figure out if there’s anyone out there in Southern California who would like to let one of us Northern Californians know how you find out who represents these people or how you send a screenplay to them or their manager. If you happen to know the answers to any one of these questions or just want to give me some general advice, please call me .

In the eight months since Fernandez put his message into play, he has gotten 10 to 15 messages a day from writers, some just thanking him for the telephonic directions to the Writers Guild. Most calls are from California and New York, but he also gets “a lot from Vermont, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon. I guess writers like to hang out in those forested areas.”

Aug. 24, 11:21 a . m. I am very interested in having a screenwriter do an adaptation from a book that I just bought dealing with the Mafia. My number in Miami is. . . .

There’s the guy in Pebble Beach who told Fernandez he had been writing a mystery novel for 40 years and still had this pesky problem of how to get rid of the wife. There was the young woman who said she had been on the road in some dubious capacity with rock stars and had a tale to spin of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. She needed a ghostwriter. Hey, thought Fernandez, maybe the guy in Pebble Beach could write the groupie’s autobiography. He passed some phone numbers between interested parties but never did find out if anyone had struck up a partnership.

Aug. 15, 2:49 p . m. I’m calling for the Writers Guild, but you have a really sexy voice.

She never left her name and number.

When Fernandez would come home at night, “I would call my roommate, I’d say: ‘Come here, listen to this one.’ He’d say: ‘God, you’re crazy, how long are you going to deal with this number?’ ”

Actually, it is the roommate that Fernandez is no longer dealing with. They parted ways and Fernandez moved to a little bungalow in Sherman Oaks. But he loves his phone number so much that he took it with him--no easy task because he cannot have the 213 number hooked up to his San Fernando Valley residence. He pays for two phone numbers: one from his place in the Valley, and the infamous number from the now empty Glassell Park house, which rings only at an answering service.

Aug . 23, 9:04 a.m. Yeah, my name is Dave . . . and I don’t have a problem with someone helping me with my next idea for my next script. I wrote two already. . . . And I’m looking for stories to write.

“I never called that guy back,” muses Fernandez as he listens to the message again, sitting at a back-office desk in his tidy, modest travel agency. He saves the most memorable messages. For all involved, there seems to be magic in these momentary connections. In a town where imperious receptionists reign, here is an electronic crossroad where people pause for a chuckle, a friendly chat, and then move on to face the next indignity.

10:41 a . m . , Thursday, Sept . 9. Yeah, I’m a frustrated writer. . . . Anyway, have a nice day .