They’re on Track--and Offbeat

“Offbeat studio movies”--a rarity, if not an oxymoron. Yet two little-known writers are pushing the envelope of mainstream fare, introducing a fringe mentality into the Hollywood machine.

“Both of us prefer marginal material, subversive ideas, but we’re also a champion of production values and big stars,” said Scott Alexander, who, with his partner Larry Karaszewski, is responsible for Columbia’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” a critically acclaimed picture about the Hustler magazine founder that has been nominated for four Golden Globes. “We respect the studio style of storytelling. . . . We’re just not enamored of the stories they tell.”

Karaszewski also acknowledges their middle-brow roots. “We’re into happy endings,” he said. “ ‘Flynt’ was pitched as ‘Frank Capra with pornography.’ ”

The wisecracking former USC Film School roommates have hooked up with other off-center personalities whose clout has been useful in bringing their scripts to the screen. Without Tim Burton, it’s unlikely the Walt Disney Co. would have gone near “Ed Wood” (1994), a black-and-white cult film about an inept 1950s movie director. And it was “Flynt” producer Oliver Stone who persuaded Oscar-winning director Milos Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus”) to sign on despite initial concern about the subject matter.

“Scott and Larry have an enormous respect for reality, an awareness that there are a lot of colors between black and white,” said Forman on the phone from Switzerland. “The script struck the perfect balance between compassion and cynicism, showing you can like the man without whitewashing the worst he represents.”

There’s nothing derivative about the duo, says Janet Yang, a “Flynt” producer who formerly headed Stone’s Ixtlan productions. “Scott and Larry take wacky or obscure subjects that inspire them and make them accessible,” she said. “Unlike most of their colleagues, it’s not about pleasing the audience--they don’t write to sell.”

Still, going the weird biopic route was a practical as well as an aesthetic move, the 33-year-old Alexander and the 35-year-old Karaszewski point out. They’ve stumbled onto a genre that allows them to bend the rules.

“True stories permit you to break the cookie-cutter mold,” Karaszewski says. “No executive can say, ‘Can’t Ed Wood make a couple of good movies?’ There’s also a lot less fear of being fired since we’re the ones with the information.”

As college freshman at USC, the two started talking Herschell Gordon Lewis slasher movies and soon realized they were of similar mind. The L.A.-born Alexander had been writing, directing and shooting Super 8 films, he says, making him the “Joseph E. Levine-Ed Wood of Palisades High.” The Indiana-reared son of divorced parents, Karaszewski devoured drive-in movies once a week when his father took him out.

Their sensibility is still apparent in their office, located on the Sony lot. Posters of films such as “The Hills Have Eyes” decorate the wall. A painting of a man with an Uzi hovers over the desk. No need for a second computer, the two of them point out. Scott sits at the keyboard while Larry--the slower typist--throws out lines from the couch.

“We’re not one of those writing teams that says you’ll do the first act, I’ll do the third and we’ll meet up in March,” Alexander said.

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Inspired by the headlines, Alexander wrote a Larry Flynt movie proposal during his sophomore year. But it was a senior-year script they knocked out together that actually took off. “Homewreckers,” the story of a crook filing suit after falling through a skylight, was written “as a hoot,” they say. Still, they passed it along to friend at the ICM agency, and, two weeks after their 1985 graduation, the project was bought for a whopping $300,000 by 20th Century Fox.

Next came a project about an adopted kid-from-hell that turned into Universal Pictures’ “Problem Child” (1990). The low-budget film did big business and put them on the map. But creatively and emotionally, it was a disaster, they maintain.

“Our tone was closer to ‘War of the Roses’ while the studio wanted a family film,” Alexander said. “In the end, there were 30 pages of re-shoots. There’s no point setting up a Scott and Larry movie and second-guessing it--bringing in other writers to punch it up.”

As likable as these writers are, Forman says, they can be “opinionated, stubborn--even arrogant” at times. “Scott and Larry tell you everything straight ahead, but it’s always for the sake of the film,” the director said. “Whatever they say, though, is said with class--they’re neither intimidated nor intimidating.”

After reluctantly turning out an unsuccessful “Problem Child” sequel, the writers didn’t work for nine months. Since “selling their souls,” as they put it, wasn’t panning out, they set out to redeem themselves. Though “Ed Wood” never scored with a mass audience, it had some die-hard fans. After two Oscars (best supporting actor and makeup) and worldwide critical acclaim, the writers found themselves in demand.

Based on their track record, “Larry Flynt” got made--much to the chagrin of some high-profile viewers venting their displeasure on the op-ed page. Why glorify a sleazeball, they ask?

“It’s true that we try to find redeeming qualities in unsavory characters, but it was the New York Times’ Frank Rich--not us--who called the movie the most patriotic movie of the year,” Alexander said. “Still, the critics are right. In two hours, we couldn’t represent every point of view. And unless the film was rated NC-17, we couldn’t show how raunchy he was.”

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In general the writers put in 40-hour weeks, approaching a screenplay like a job. Not so, however, with “Mars Attacks!” After two months of interminable seven-day weeks, they were denied credit by the Writers Guild. It’s hard to take credit away from the original writer, the disappointed duo point out--which is why they get credit on Disney’s upcoming “That Darn Cat.”

The assignment, they say, was the last gasp of the first half of their lives, taken on prior to “Ed Wood.” Since almost all the dialogue has been changed, they’re using a parody of pseudonyms (“S.M. Alexander” and “L.A. Karaszewski”) on screen to distance themselves from the film. On Warner Bros.’ “Cats Don’t Dance” little of their work is reflected, they say.

More to their liking is a project about another offbeat cultural icon: the late comic and “Taxi” star Andy Kaufman. Danny DeVito is set to produce while Milos Forman is attached. At Paramount, Barry Sonnenfeld (“Get Shorty”) is set to direct their update of Elaine May’s “A New Leaf.” Though Alexander and Karaszewski don’t mind deferring to such first-rate talent, they say, on some future projects they plan to write and direct. The two of them are remarkably in sync, Yang says. Both are homebodies with two children of nearly the same age.

“Whatever offbeat tendencies they possess are only manifest in their work,” she said. “And whatever success they’ve enjoyed, they come across young--and refreshingly underdressed.”

That they’ve managed to thrive with their integrity intact is, without question, a point of pride.

“Ten years ago we were like deer in the headlights, with executives sitting behind desks trying to pick us apart,” Alexander recalled. “Now there’s a measure of trust. Yet we still identify as iconoclasts. At USC a few months ago, the students told us we were their idols since we represented the ‘troublemaker’ point of view.”