We’re Just One Giant Boot Camp

John McFarlane’s practiced eye zeros in on a quartet of teen-age girls on a Melrose Avenue spree. With a nod, he dispatches Rory Rooney.

Before you can say combat boots , Rooney intercepts: “We’re from England and we’re doing a (ad) campaign for Doc Martens. . . .”

Soon, his giggling hostages are being laced into gold and silver Doc Martens.

The girls are photographed, unlaced, paid--in shoe key chains--and sent on their way.

Rooney, jaywalking on Melrose with abandon, brings back more willing victims. Eyes peeled for a black-and-white, a member of the entourage mumbles: “I can’t wait to see him talking the police into putting on Doc Martens.”

A tattered-looking chap strolls by. McFarlane tells Rooney: “We’ll give him a pair. He looks like he could use them.” But the man must be the only person in greater L.A. who thinks that Doc Martens is a practicing surgeon. Thanks, but no thanks.

Rooney shrugs, figuring one in three will demur. Told that they’ll star in a glossy magazine spread, some are eager to pose, although confiding that the clunky boots are really ugly. Others, such as Olga Munoz, 16, of Montebello--who sported her own Doc Martens and a blond brush cut--are big-time fans: “Even my grandma has a pair.” (Forty percent of the British firm’s shoe sales are in the United States.)

Director McFarlane, 31, and his merry young London crew of five were winding up a monthlong adventure that had begun in New York, which in itself was quite an adventure.

Mission: to buy a vehicle to transport them and their cache of classic unisex Doc Martens on their 10,000-mile journey to L.A. via Central America and Mexico. First stop: a used car lot in Queens to take a van for a spin.

“The engine seized on the freeway,” McFarlane recalls. They abandoned the car. “There we were, walking through Queens with $8,000 in our pockets. . . .” Eventually, they made a deal with the owner of a Chinese restaurant to buy his delivery van, a 1989 Dodge Ram, for $4,000. “It was like a wok inside,” says McFarlane--but it ran.

At trendy Club USA in Manhattan, they photographed transvestites in boots. Stumbling on a gang fight in Harlem, they filmed that, too. “We couldn’t put them in Doc Martens,” McFarlane says. “They were shooting each other.”

Heading south--way south--they wound up in strife-torn Chiapas, Mexico. “We did all these revolutionaries in the boots . . . we managed to infiltrate their ranks by talking about the (Northern) Irish”--they could relate.

Did the Mexicans know about Doc Martens? They do now. The Brits gave away 15 pairs.

In Guatemala, McFarlane and company found themselves in a Holy Week stations-of-the-cross procession. “Five thousand Mayan Indians and six gringos,” recalls McFarlane, “and none of us speak Spanish.”

Still, they left with photos of the faithful in ethnic dress--and Doc Martens. Later, “We got a guy walking down the road to market with his wild boar.”

In El Salvador, they put farmhands in Doc Martens. In Mexico City, it was ladies of the night. In Arizona, they posed residents of a retirement complex in Doc Martens a la “American Gothic.”

In Malibu, they recorded a model emerging from the surf in bikini--and Doc Martens.

The crew--Rooney, 22, production assistant; free-lance photographer Eddie Monsoon, 27; producer Paul McPadden, 30; stylist Lisa Traxler, 27, and cinematographer Haris Zambarlouks, 24--had also been commissioned by English TV to do a documentary on the Americas as they traveled.

Doc Martens, which advanced them about $15,000, plans to build a print campaign around the photos.

When McFarlane pitched the idea, he says, “The board didn’t really understand it at first.” But, then, another of his quirky ideas had proved a smash ad campaign in England.

“We walked 400 miles over the Himalayas wearing these really expensive suits and Doc Martens. We had 30 Sherpas in Doc Martens,” McFarlane says.

What’s next?

“I’d like to do workers of the world, people in all the industrial capitals, at their jobs.”

In Doc Martens.

Natch.

Reel Goes Retail: When Western Costume Co. cleans out its closet, now, that’s entertainment!

The 82-year-old costumer to the stars has gone retail with the recent opening of an outlet store adjacent to its huge warehouse at Vanowen and Vineland in North Hollywood.

Greeted by a waving gorilla and a mannequin in armor, shoppers picked their way through an eclectic 2,000-item inventory, including World War II WAC oxfords, Carmen Miranda-esque headgear and Revolutionary War soldiers’ tunics.

Even the biggest walk-in closet can hold only 5 million items, company president Eddie Marks explained of his decision to open this off-the-wall thrift shop.

And, frankly, he added, “Some of the stuff just doesn’t rent that much anymore.” He mentions leftovers from ‘50s and ‘60s films--”Summmer-time back-yard swimming pool parties. Sandra Dee. The Elvis pictures. The gowns went from one film to another.”

But now, he says, they’re just a little “too tired, like some of the actors and actresses.”

Western veep Donna Roberts has pulled from the warehouse saloon girl dresses, flapper gowns, even a handsome pair of rabbit ears. “At Halloween, some guy is going to want to be a Playboy bunny,” she reasons.

There are feathery, mega-glitter numbers from long ago Hollywood musicals. “It’s over,” she says--no demand. For garage sale prices ($1 to $20), fans may buy a piece of “Brigadoon” or “Flower Drum Song.”

If the Thursday-through-Sunday store catches on, Marks says, he may open satellites. “If we take a $75 rental item to Rodeo Drive and put a $2,000 price tag on it, someone will buy it.”

Overheard: During a USC panel discussion, English professor-poet-critic Carol Muske-Dukes told of going to an industry party with her actor husband, David Dukes, soon after they moved here from New York. Inevitably, someone asked, “What do you do?”

“I said, ‘I’m a writer’ and they said, ‘Half-hour or hour?’ ”

* This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.