On View : Power Trip : HBO OFFERS ITS 11 MEN-ON-A-RAFT STORY AS A METAPHOR FOR THE CORPORATE RAT RACE

Last year’s Emmy Award-winning HBO movie “Barbarians at the Gate” took a sardonic look at the corporate greed that came to symbolize the nation’s business climate in the 1980s. “White Mile,” the cable channel’s latest movie, explores similar themes, but in the context of the ‘90s.

The fact-based “White Mile” stars Emmy Award-winning Alan Alda (“MASH”) as Dan Cutler, an aggressive, demanding president of a successful Los Angeles ad agency. Each year he organizes a wilderness expedition for his top executives and clients. He believes the trips promote bonding and help his men develop a more competitive edge. This year, Cutler decides to take his group to the Canadian Rockies to raft the Chilko River, one of North America’s most treacherous stretches of water. Among the invited are Cutler’s right-hand man, Jack Robbins (Peter Gallagher), a dissatisfied client (Dakin Matthews) and a former executive (Robert Loggia) who took early retirement.

When it comes time to ride the raging Chilko, none of the 11 men bow out. And no one refuses to enter the boat, though there are too many men for one raft. The men wear life vests, but the guide does not supply them with helmets or wet suits. All goes well until they enter White Mile. Suddenly, the boat strikes a rock and upends, plunging the group into the freezing river. Six die; one of the widows ends up suing the company.

“This story is almost a metaphor, a punctuation mark to the ‘80s,” says executive producer Allan Marcil. “It’s not a black-and-white story. They went on a trip and just through a coincidence and lack of planning, disaster happened.”

Director Peter Baldwin is putting members of his cast through their paces this morning at the former Bullocks Wilshire department store, which is doubling for the ad agency. Alda and Gallagher are filming a sequence in which they sell their client (Matthews) a new ad campaign.

Later, over lunch in his trailer, Alda explains he was drawn to “White Mile” because he was intrigued with the relationships among the characters--”between those people in power and those people with less power. What the give and take is. What we give up to the ones who are telling us what to do, and how much the ones who are telling us what to do are willing to take on their own shoulders without sharing it with us.

“It’s a very tricky situation,” Alda explains. “It’s very complicated and yet it seems so simple: ‘Don’t put people in danger like that.’ ”

Alda recalls reading trial testimony from a survivor who acknowledged everyone was afraid not to go on the raft. “It was a male thing. No one wanted to look like he was the one who wasn’t brave enough not to do it. This corporate mentality was even worse in the ‘50s with the gray flannel suits. People gave up their lives for the corporations. They spent their whole lives doing the company thing.”

Gallagher (“sex, lies and videotape”) believes the movie illustrates the limits of power. “If you are in any kind of a powerful position where you can pick up the phone and get what you need, you forget the circle of power is not limitless. When confronted with a force of nature like a raging river, the things that are important in your world are suddenly useless.”

On the actual trip, Gallagher says, a “conspiracy of natural events” caused the fatal situation. “They didn’t go rafting on they day they had planned because it was pouring rain, so the water level was higher. Maybe had it not rained and the water level was somewhat lower, they might have been fine.”

Gallagher says he doesn’t know if he personally would have gone on such a trip. “I think anybody who says, ‘This is what I would do if ...’ is just talking through their hat. I think it has to do with the circumstances of the event. For my character, it’s part of the job.”

Adds Alda: “You might get out there and get caught up in the excitement. I’ve been invited on trips like that, but it doesn’t interest me.”

The cast and crew shot the thrilling rafting sequences last winter on the American River near Placerville in Northern California. Scores of river guides assisted in the filming.

“We were super careful,” Alda says. Still, he adds, “There’s this moment where they say, ‘Action,’ and you are going to jump in those rapids. It’s like jumping off a building. Even though you checked, you really don’t know if there’s a rock in front of you. I got washed over a rock. Thank God, it was a smooth rock.”

Gallagher acknowledges he was scared, especially when guiding the raft by himself. “I was with one of the guides, but he wasn’t using a paddle. I was trying to cross a minor eddy line. I could feel the river just pulling me down river. You realize what a fine line it is between sheer panic and quite literally, going with the flow. You can’t fight the river.”

“White Mile” premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO.