COMPANY TOWN : Production Aficionados Called Jersey

One of Danny DeVito’s favorite lines in his new film “Get Shorty” comes when the main character--a Miami loan shark trying to break into Hollywood--explains to a low-level mobster, “I don’t think the producer has to do much, outside of maybe knowing a writer.”

Sitting in his trailer on the Sony Pictures lot, where he’s directing the children’s movie “Matilda,” DeVito and his two producing partners, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, find that notion particularly amusing.

They, like other bona fide producers in Hollywood, know how hard it is to get movies made in a town where studio executives are by and large scared to take risks and where the numerous roadblocks to getting a project from the page to the screen are menacing.

“It’s a very difficult task,” acknowledges DeVito. “One of the most difficult things about it in our experience is to get the people who give you the buckaroos to make the movie come around to your [way of] thinking that this is a worthwhile project to make.

“People are making decisions based on their own feelings and their jobs. People who are in a position to bring movies into a company don’t want to be wrong. They want to be right.”

Sometimes the payoff is there. More commonly, it’s not.

This week, DeVito, Shamberg and Sher, who run the 4-year-old Sony-based production company Jersey Films (named after DeVito’s home state), are celebrating the debut of “Get Shorty,” their latest release and the nation’s top-grossing movie of last weekend. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo and DeVito, the $30-million movie is Scott Frank’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s sendup of gangsters in Hollywood.

Last year, the Jersey trio basked in the glory of their pop culture hit “Pulp Fiction,” a Miramax Films release that grossed more than $200 million worldwide and cost $8.5 million.

While Jersey, whose other previous productions include the less successful “Hoffa,” “Eight Seconds” and “Reality Bites,” is on a roll, getting its movies to market is analogous to “trying to pass congressional legislation,” as Shamberg views it.

As Chili (Travolta), the main character in “Get Shorty,” says midway through the film: “Rough business this movie business. I may have to go back to loan sharking just to take a rest.”

When the Jersey partners tried to get “Get Shorty” financed, all but one studio passed.

“Nobody but MGM was willing to step up and go for John [Travolta] in a major way at that point,” recalls Sher. “Pulp Fiction”--which marked the actor’s big comeback after a long career slump--hadn’t yet been released.

“God bless [MGM President] Mike Marcus and MGM,” adds Shamberg. “They snuck into a screening of ‘Pulp,’ looked at John’s performance and said, ‘This guy is back.’ ”

Shamberg points to another scene in “Get Shorty” that he calls “a pure producer moment.” Sleazy Hollywood producer Harry Zimm (Hackman) shows up for a lunch meeting about his movie at the Ivy with his hands bandaged, his neck in a brace and his jaw wired.

“Harry, what are you doing here?” asks the actress (Russo) who is to star in his project.

“My project,” Harry mumbles through his wired jaw.

Says Shamberg: “That’s a tribute to the tenacity of the producer and symbol of a guy who will do anything to get his movie made.”

When the Jersey producers were trying to set up “Pulp Fiction” at TriStar, where they have an overall deal, DeVito actually stood on an executive’s desk to make a point, Sher says.

“In order to get the [former] head business affairs guy to agree to one deal clause, we took Danny to his office and Danny literally wouldn’t let him out until he said yes. He stood on the table,” says Shamberg.

The executive finally agreed to that particular deal point, though TriStar wound up not making the film.

Says DeVito: “We got to a certain point and then no matter what we did--we brought in Quentin [Tarantino] and had this wonderful screenplay that everybody liked--we couldn’t get to first base.”

When Jersey tried to get things rolling on Ben Stiller’s directorial debut, “Reality Bites,” Sher recalls, “we thought we were dead dogs. . . . The film commission of Texas paid for us to go on a scout and [while there] we got a call that Winona Ryder committed to the movie and it was financed” by Universal Pictures.

It’s not at all unusual, says Shamberg, that Jersey will spend its own money to budget or scout a movie, to have read-throughs of scripts with major actors, or even hire a casting director “just to make it real to us and to other people.”

Shamberg, a 15-year producing veteran whose credits also include “The Big Chill” and “A Fish Called Wanda,” says his favorite anecdote is that “George Lucas just started making ‘Star Wars’ using the money he had from ‘American Graffiti’ before he got a deal.”

The producer believes that “the passion that gets people into the film business gets movies made. It’s up to us to keep the light burning and get in their faces in a nice way.”

Shamberg says it’s necessary to “build a coalition--of actors, directors, producers, agents, managers and executives--that believes in your film to reassure the studio.”

Jersey already has five new movies set for 1996: the DeVito-directed “Matilda,” starring Mara Wilson; “Sunset Park,” starring DeVito’s actress wife, Rhea Perlman; “Feeling Minnesota,” starring Keanu Reeves and written and directed by Steven Baigelman; “Fierce Creatures,” re-teaming the “Fish Called Wanda” cast, and “Spies and Innkeepers,” with DeVito and Stiller, who will also direct.

The Jersey partners concur that the kind of material they are attracted to--which Sher describes as “smart, literate and pop cultural”--does not make for easy-sell projects.

“Formula films are easier to get going,” says Shamberg. “‘We look for stuff that’s fresh. Does it make our life tougher when we’re trying to get the financing? Yes. Does it make us passionate, which is why we get the movies made? Yes. I’d like to say we’re looking for next year’s formula, not last year’s formula.”