Too Cool for Words : Mix some risk-taking, some celebs and lots of right-on, who’s-hip forecasts. The result? One very hot magazine.

John Travolta?” a Detour staffer suggests.

“Maybe,” replies Luis Barajas, the magazine’s founder and publisher.

“Sara Jessica Parker?”

“Maybe.”

“Brendan Fraser?”

“Hmmmm, he’s in ‘Airheads.’ There is definitely a growing awareness of him.”

Deciding who’s cool enough to make the cover of Detour is a monthly ritual in the magazine’s North La Brea Avenue office. Glossy photos of young talents and faded stars on the comeback trail are piled in an enormous stack that will be dispatched as fast as a blackjack deck.

“I think Bruce Willis would be good,” Barajas says.

“He’s doing full frontal in ‘The Color of Night,’ ” a staffer adds.

(Several high-pitched hmmmmms. )

“Disney’s gonna cut it,” says Jeanne Yang, associate publisher.

With that, Willis’ face is jettisoned to the reject pile.

“We need a strong female,” Yang says. “How about Heather?”

The mention of Heather Locklear, supervixen of “Melrose Place,” derails the meeting. Much to do is made over a recent episode and speculation about future story lines abounds: “Dave’s gonna cheat on her. . . . She’s gonna become bulimic.”

The staff suddenly realizes that the magazine’s seventh anniversary party at the club House of Blues would conflict with the next airing of their favorite TV show.

“We’ll watch the show and then go to the party,” Barajas announces with great authority.

(Collective sigh of relief.)

Business resumes and within minutes Will Self (“English author. Very hot,” Yang says), Ashley Judd (“sister to the singing Wynnona”), James Woods, Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn are summarily dismissed as cover candidates.

“Nah, we have to take a chance like we did with Stephen Dorff,” Barajas says of the little-known “BackBeat” star who wore the Detour masthead in May.

For Barajas, taking chances means giving the cover to virtually unknown actors and filling the fashion pages with couture gowns modeled by transvestites. A monitor of the entertainment, nightclub, fashion and gay cultures, Detour is extremely forward in its visual presentation, long on celebrity interviews and short on reviews of music, art, books and films. Although the photography regularly delivers riveting cue cards for the desperately trendy, the writing is rarely daring.

The Detour formula has somehow survived, first in Dallas and now here, while similarly minded publications have succumbed.

“Other magazines have tried to reach the contemporary, young, hip, trendy people interested in the fashion life and haven’t been able to do it effectively. He found a way to do it,” Stephanie George, publisher of W, says of Barajas.

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The extremely loquacious Barajas, 34, and his almost-silent-out-of-necessity partner, Jim Turner, also 34, have managed to stay in business because they maintain a low overhead and high expectations.

“His greatest talent is wheeling and dealing and getting people to do something for nothing. People get taken in time and again. He is incredibly charismatic,” says makeup artist Tony Fielding, who worked with Barajas during the magazine’s early years in Dallas.

“I will do anything for the success of the magazine,” Barajas concedes.

To this day, something for nothing is Barajas’ editorial rate. He cajoles writers and photographers into working not for a wage but for exposure.

“The purpose of the magazine is very simple: It is a venue for everyone to showcase their talent without blinders,” Barajas says. “And I think that rather than have $150, which is what other magazines pay, they’d rather I spent the money on good printing.”

The New York-based magazines Details and Interview once operated on a similar stratagem, and Barajas patterned his publication after them.

“The horror of the system,” says Details founder and former editor Annie Flanders, “is (that) there are no magazines that new people can get started in without having exposure. There are talented people who need these outlets. Once their work is seen, they can go on to the next level.”

The one where you get paid for your work.

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To his credit, Barajas does not abuse the symbiotic relationship. He does not direct. “When a photographer comes into my office and says, ‘I want to do this for you,’ that is their first mistake,” he says. “I don’t want anyone doing anything for us. You have to do it for yourself. If we can click as human beings and respect each other’s work, then we will do something we can share with people.”

Even such established photographers as Greg Gorman and Francesco Scavullo work in exchange for artistic freedom. Their names are on the Detour masthead, along with relative newcomers Davis Factor, Steen Sundland and James White.

Barajas’ first freebie conquest in Los Angeles was Gorman, who had a reputation and didn’t need exposure in some upstart magazine. But “Luis is one of the world’s major con artists,” Gorman says. “He talked me into shooting for him.”

Detour is one of the only large-format photo magazines that allows photographers carte blanche. For this luxury, Gorman often spends $4,000 to $5,000 of his own money on a shoot and hopes that resale fees--facilitated by Detour, which acts as a syndicate--will cover his costs. A layout of Keanu Reeves, for example, ultimately netted Gorman $50,000, but the Stephen Dorff shoot will probably not recoup expenses.

Although Detour’s list of contributing editors and photographers is long, five staff members put out the magazine 10 times a year. Each is a multitalented hyphenate (Barajas being the publisher-photo director-fashion director), and staffers’ aliases help beef up the credits. Jim Turner, editor in chief, is also art director James Morris. Contributor Larry Schubert is also the writer Grant Tume.

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As the cover-subject selection process suggests, the magazine can be somewhat choosy about which celebrities fill its pages.

“Most of the clients that Detour wants want to be in the magazine,” says PMK publicist Kevin Campbell. His clients Lori Petty and Kevin Bacon are scheduled to appear in future issues, and Keanu Reeves, also handled by Campbell, has the distinction of generating the most back-issue requests for Detour.

Indeed, appearing in Detour is a low-risk proposition for the actor or musician. The interviews are friendly, often a full body wax. The bulk of exposure is in the photography.

“The text gives you a flavor of the person. And if the photos are racy it’s because the celebrity wanted it that way,” Campbell says.

Getting the celebrities’ cooperation is what propelled Barajas and Turner to Los Angeles. The two met in classes at the Fashion Art Institute of Dallas 14 years ago and began the magazine in 1987. “We were both out of work and couldn’t find jobs. We were looking at magazines--Interview, Face, L.A. Style--and thought: ‘Look at that hair, look at that makeup, we could do this,’ ” Turner says.

The inaugural issue was “not a quality product,” he says. Done on newsprint, each cover came out a different color. But people saw the potential.

“Someone suggested I could get the printing done more cheaply in Mexico,” Barajas says. “So, crazy me, every month for three years I would take a plane to Mexico City, stay for two days while it was being printed and come back. Jim would meet me at the Lufthansa gate with a U-Haul. We would take the magazines around, 20,000 of them, and deliver them to stores. For our 20 subscribers, we’d take their issues in big brown envelopes to the Post Office.”

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When circulation reached 35,000 copies, they set out for L.A. Detour now claims an unaudited national circulation of 70,000. Barajas says he will consider an audit--detailing subscriptions, newsstands sales and reader demographics--when the numbers get closer to 150,000.

“I don’t expect the magazine to be the Redbook of America,” he says. “We can reach all the people we need to reach at 150,000 to 200,000. Exposure is not that much of a factor.”

Flanders agrees: “While not necessarily enormous (the audience) is trend-setting in their buying habits. (Detour is) reaching the taste-makers and trendsetters. Numbers don’t matter.”

Advertisers that make ad-placement decisions based on audit figures will just have to wait. Those who rely on their gut instincts--Guess, Marlboro, Diesel jeans, Miramax and Absolut--are already in the book.

The readership--or lookership (many fans claim to peruse but never read)--is made up young twentysomethings (who have to know the scene, even if they’re not part of it), publicists (who must scout for client-placement opportunities), fashionettes and other media watchers. Many appreciate its seemingly fail-proof ability to predict the next hot property: “Airhead” Brendan Fraser made the June/July cover.