1994: YEAR IN REVIEW : What a Wacky Town II : Hollywood is as Hollywood does--it was a year of executive shake-ups and a film slate that ran from ‘Natural Born Killers’ to ‘Dumb and Dumber.’

Perhaps there were signs in the heavens and the earth.

A quake registering magnitude 6.8 jolted Los Angeles in January and amid the widespread destruction and frayed nerves, production in the area’s huge entertainment industry came to a virtual standstill for weeks.

A helicopter plunged out of the sky in April, killing a top executive of the Walt Disney Co., and one of the most stable of entertainment firms was suddenly wracked with acrimony and turmoil at the highest levels. When it was over, new leadership was installed at the studio and a Dream Team of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen announced plans to form a new studio.

The cast and crew of “Waterworld” fled their coastal Hawaiian movie set after officials issued a tidal wave warning. But what Universal Pictures really feared was a financial tsunami should the Kevin Costner film--which at $135 million and climbing stands to become the costliest ever--bombs next summer.

As 1994 wound down, one could argue that even by Hollywood standards, it was an unusually turbulent year. But then, any year that begins with a Jim Carrey movie (“Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”), continues with a Jim Carrey movie (“The Mask”) and ends with a Jim Carrey movie (“Dumb and Dumber”) has to be strange.

From executive suites to the movies themselves, surprises abounded.

Who would have thought as the year dawned that Paramount Pictures, a studio gripped with uncertainty while a merger battle raged over its parent firm on Wall Street, would release the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time, “Forrest Gump”?

Or that MCA’s two top executives, Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg--the very symbols of stability in the entertainment world--would hint at leaving if they didn’t win more autonomy from their corporate owners in Japan?

Or that Warner Bros. would have lackluster box office with Costner (“Wyatt Earp”), Warren Beatty (“Love Affair”) and even Steven Seagal (“On Deadly Ground”), but succeed beyond its wildest dreams with Carrey’s “Ace Ventura”?

Or that Sony would take a staggering $2.7-billion write-off on Sony Pictures Entertainment--on top of a $510-million operating loss on the studio? This, in the same year the studio opened its new Art Deco commissary, where waiters in black-and-gold striped vests and crisp white shirts serve $15.25 hamburgers and $5 desserts.

Or that 20th Century Fox, which looked so savvy with its summer blockbuster “Speed,” would look so inept by Christmas with four straight flops, and then come up with the bizarre gimmick of offering moviegoers their money back if they didn’t like “Miracle on 34th Street”?

It was a year when some mini-studios made major gains.

New Line Cinema, which built its reputation with “Nightmare on Elm Street” flicks, became a major Hollywood deal maker, thanks to an infusion of media mogul Ted Turner’s money. New Line spent $4 million on a Shane Black spec script called “The Long Kiss Goodnight” and $1 7 million on Carrey (who starred in the studio’s summer hit “The Mask”) to star in two other films.

MGM/UA, its glory days long gone and its lifeline now dependent on a French bank, suddenly looked like the most stable studio in town. With little fanfare, the studio quietly went about its business, making deals and putting movies into production and even came up with the surprise hit of the fall, “Stargate,” which grossed more than $65 million.

Sometimes there was upheaval and calm occurring inside the same company at almost the same time.

Take Paramount. Was there ever a studio that appeared to be in such chaos? For months, Viacom and QVC waged all-out war trying to wrest control of Paramount Communications as employees watched with a combination of awe and fear. When it was over, Viacom had won and Paramount’s top two corporate executives--chairman Martin Davis and president Stanley Jaffe--had departed.

Yet across the country at Paramount Pictures, studio chief Sherry Lansing and her staff remained snugly in place. Saddled with $10.5 billion in debt, the company next brought in Sony executive Jonathan Dolgen--an expert at forging financial partnerships--to chart a new path for the studio.

Then there was Sony Pictures Entertainment. The studio consolidated power when it combined the distribution arms for Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures, and again when it put Columbia chief Mark Canton in charge of both units.

Yet Sony was suffering the most disequilibrium of all the studios. It made few movies and many of the ones it did stank up the box office. Sony chief Peter Guber bid goodby as did a number of lower-level executives and there were constant rumors that Canton himself might go or that one of the units might be sold off.

It could be argued that the studio upheaval was attributable to the movies themselves.

“Movies have become so expensive to produce and to market that management, stockholders and boards of directors are less willing to indulge a creative executive again and again without seeing a substantial return on the investment,” said one industry insider.

Indeed, given all the pressures to succeed--and all the headaches putting together projects and dealing with egotistical actors and directors--the real question in 1994 was why more studio executives didn’t bail.

While the box office is heading for its best showing in more than three decades, clouds were still on the horizon. Consider:

* There were too many movies in the marketplace.

Every weekend, it seemed, was a gigantic roll of the dice. While Disney and Warner Bros. seemed to be releasing a movie a week, the others had to grit their teeth and hope they picked their best shot.

“There were too many films chasing too few screens,” explained entertainment analyst Jeffrey Logsden, managing partner at Siedler Cos. “A lack of screen expansion meant that studios had to give up more of the pie to exhibitors just to get choice screens. One way you get better screens is to give exhibitors better terms.”

* The old adage that nobody knows anything in Hollywood still held true.

As the year began, who would have guessed that three of the biggest stars of 1994 would be Jim Carrey, Tim Allen and Keanu Reeves?

“There were people inside the business who had never even heard of ‘Ace Ventura’ before it came out,” said entertainment lawyer David Colden.

* Violence continues to sell--even satires about violence.

Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers”--a movie about America’s culture of violence and the media’s ratings-driven exploitation of that culture--raked in nearly $50 million at the box office for Warner Bros. Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-cool, ultra-violent “Pulp Fiction” has already earned nearly $60 million and is still performing well at the box office.

* Studios don’t draw talent, material does.

“Warner Bros. has made all these movies with big stars over the years, but that doesn’t mean the stars won’t work anywhere else,” said former TriStar chief Mike Medavoy.

“Kevin Costner works for Universal. Clint Eastwood does a movie for Castle Rock. Mel Gibson does one for Paramount. Michael Douglas will work for anybody. So will Sylvester Stallone. It finally comes down to who has the material to do what they want to do. It isn’t like in the Golden Age of movies when Warner Bros. spun out these gangster movies, Universal did a certain kind of film, Columbia did a certain kind of film. That isn’t the case anymore.”

* Put a project in turnaround at your own peril.

Paramount Pictures basked in the glow of “Forrest Gump,” a box-office champ and likely Oscar contender. But Warner Bros. and Columbia had earlier turned down the project. Paramount, meanwhile, missed the boat when it placed “Speed” in turnaround and Fox scooped it up.

* How many creative development people does it take to make a hit?

“How many development people did Thalberg have?” asked one movie executive. “Those guys loved movies and they made them and they knew how to make them. They selected the right people and left them together. People who run studios today are not movie makers, they’re basically deal makers.”

* Stars ruled.

Studio executives repeatedly went after the same small group of bona fide box-office stars for their big films.

Sometimes the formula worked (although studios paid 5% to 15% of the gross for success): Arnold Schwarzenegger in “True Lies,” Harrison Ford in “Clear and Present Danger,” Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster in “Maverick,” Tom Hanks in “Gump” and Tom Cruise in “Interview With the Vampire.”

Sometimes the formula didn’t work: Costner in “Earp,” Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte in “I Love Trouble,” Macaulay Culkin and Ted Danson in “Getting Even With Dad.”

“No studio would have done ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral,’ ” said one industry observer.

But getting a big star for a movie was not easy.

Michael Douglas left “Cutthroat Island” after he was displeased with the script. Citing similar reasons, Jodie Foster bailed out of “Crisis in the Hot Zone” and when no other major actresses would come on board, Robert Redford also bailed. Then Redford bailed out of Castle Rock Entertainment’s “An American President.” Castle Rock then announced the picture would be made anyway--with Michael Douglas.