Cut-Rate Comedy

Robert Simonds is rubbing his hands together, a tip-off that the comedy gods are smiling. “This stuff is gold,” he says to a pair of screenwriters sitting in his office. “It makes the rest of the world play straight man to our comedian. We build to this big joke where he gets caught with a stash and gets fired--and it turns out to be oregano.”

Curled up on a chair in his office on the Universal Pictures lot, Simonds is rehearsing a pitch for a film called “Half Baked.” Like almost every Simonds project, the film’s essence can be captured in one catchy phrase--it’s a Cheech and Chong pot comedy for the ‘90s. The baby-faced, 34-year-old producer nervously chews on his thumb, pondering that last punch line.

“I’m just wondering,” he says with a frown. “Is there something funnier than oregano?”

Simonds didn’t ponder for long. A week later Universal Pictures had bought the pitch. It’s just the latest sale for the onetime Yale University philosophy major whose bottom-line philosophy about comedy movies--make ‘em cheap and make ‘em dumb--has turned him into Hollywood’s Sultan of Schlock Comedy. Armed with a stock company of “Saturday Night Live”-bred actors and writers, he’s produced a string of low-budget youth comedies, including such box-office successes as the two “Problem Child” films, “Happy Gilmore” and “Billy Madison.”

In an era of high-budget blockbusters, Hollywood has often ignored low-brow comedy, but Simonds’ consistent track record has made him an industry hot property. The hyperkinetic producer has had a first-look deal at Universal since 1992. Now 20th Century Fox has signed him to a second-look deal, meaning the studio will get a crack at any Simonds projects Universal doesn’t buy.

Blessed with boundless energy--five minutes into a meeting he is either pacing the floor or squirming in his seat like a schoolboy--the sandy-haired producer has projects in place at nearly every studio in town. The next Simonds film due out is “Leave It to Beaver,” a $14-million update of the classic ‘50s TV show featuring Janine Turner and Christopher McDonald that arrives Aug. 1 from Universal.

New Line Cinema has “The Wedding Singer,” a just-completed comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore that’s due for release early next year. Touchstone Pictures has a Sandler-starring film, “The Water Boy,” due to shoot in the fall. Fox has a project in development called “Intelligent Life.” And TriStar recently bought “The Exterminators,” a special-effects comedy that could be best described--as Simonds often does--as “Ghostbusters” with big bugs.

“Bob’s found a niche for himself,” explains Larry Karaszewski, screenwriter of “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” who got his start, along with partner Scott Alexander, writing “Problem Child” and its sequel for Simonds. “You can see a movie and say, ‘Hey, the shots don’t match, but the movie’s still funny--it must be a Bob Simonds movie!’ Bob’s movies are truly a reflection of his taste, if you can call it taste.”

Alexander and Karaszewski relish teasing Simonds, saying he once got so excited during a story meeting that he snapped a leg off his chair. But their affection is real--the producer was a groomsman at both of their weddings. “He’s very driven--he’s all about forward motion,” Alexander says. “What matters is getting to the next joke as fast as possible. Bob will fire someone if it’ll get him to the next joke faster.”

Low in prestige but often high in profitability, especially with their healthy video afterlife, Simonds’ formula comedies are a throwback to the quickies churned out by B-movie tycoons Sam Arkoff and Roger Corman, who made cutting costs into an art, often the only art associated with the movie.

Simonds doesn’t have to worry about buying an Oscar-night tux. One critic called “Problem Child” an “atrocity,” another described “Billy Madison” as a film “scattered with bad jokes like fertilizer.” “Airheads,” another Simonds comedy, was ridiculed as a film “bursting with bad ideas.”

But the critical barbs haven’t slowed his comedy assembly line. Unlike most of today’s Hollywood fare, the films are models of cost-conscious planning. “The Wedding Singer” was made in 34 days, roughly half the industry average. To keep up the pace, the films use a minimum of locations and first-time directors who have worked on tightly scheduled TV shows. The biggest chunk of the budget goes to the star of the film. A veteran of four Simonds movies, Adam Sandler gets $5 million a film, having established himself as a box-office draw with 12- to 25-year-old males.

“We’re flying under the studio radar,” Simonds says. “If you’re making a $15-million movie, the studio pays a lot less attention to you than if you’re making an $85-million film. And if the studio isn’t so worried about its investment, you’re not under as much pressure to make safe choices. The comedies that work are original and idiosyncratic enough to feel fresh.”

By keeping costs low, you also have a better chance to turn a profit. Most studio-financed comedies cost between $25 million and $35 million. That’s below the current $40-million average for a Hollywood film, but still a sizable investment for pictures that rarely do any business overseas.

Simonds’ budget ceiling is even lower. “Problem Child,” made for $10 million in 1990, grossed $55 million. Made last year for $13 million, “Happy Gilmore” grossed nearly $40 million. “Billy Madison,” which grossed $26 million, was made for $10 million.

Simonds’ most expensive film to date is “Bulletproof,” a $25-million Sandler action vehicle that fizzled at the box office, but will go into profit on its video sales. Simonds makes no excuses. “It was a huge mistake,” he says. “I think people wanted to see Adam play a heroin dealer about as much as they wanted to see Jim Carrey as a cable TV repairman.”

Writers who work with Simonds know their scripts are comic fodder--scripts are endlessly rewritten, and new writers will do a polish before the film begins shooting. When Alexander had problems with the director of “Problem Child,” he was kicked off the set. The script he and Karaszewski wrote for “That Darn Cat,” another Simonds film, was so mangled that the writers protested by taking a semi-pseudonym, using initials instead of first names on their credit.

Relations were briefly strained, but soon the team was doing a touch-up on the “Beaver” script. “One of Bob’s great qualities as a producer is that he’s hard to stay mad at,” Karaszewski says. “Before you know it, you’re back in his office, working on another movie.”

Simonds grew up in Phoenix, but as a boy he often visited Los Angeles, where he’d take the Universal Studios tour. Movies were his passion. He only majored in philosophy at Yale because the school’s film department had become obsessed with arcane field of study known as semiotics. “I got A’s on my papers,” Simonds recalls, “but I had no idea what I was talking about.”

As it turned out, philosophy was good training. “At its core, philosophy is all about arguing in a convincing fashion, which is a great skill for a producer.”

Simonds arrived in Hollywood as an intern at MGM, a job he got through his college-era girlfriend, actress Jennifer Beals. After everyone left work, he stayed into the night, rummaging through the files, soaking up as much information as he could. At age 26, he was at Universal, making “Problem Child.”

On most film locations, producers proudly boast about their movies’ lavish sets. Simonds is more eager to show how he’s saved money. On a visit to “The Wedding Singer,” then filming at the Ambassador Hotel, he strides through a ballroom decorated in blue and white hues for a comedy scene set at a bar mitzvah.

It’s the movie’s fourth party scene there. Just days before, the tables and chairs were red and black for an Italian wedding. Before that they were painted pink for a 50th-anniversary party.

Down the hall carpenters are building a set for another scene. “While we shoot one scene, we’re prepping another one 100 yards away,” Simonds explains. “That way we can turn the camera around and shoot the next scene without moving to another location.”

As soon as the first take is over, Simonds gets up to leave. Doesn’t he want to see the end of the scene? “I just did,” he says, already speeding out the door, heading to his black Mercedes SL 500 convertible. “We got it on the first take.”

Simonds rarely slows down. He has a girlfriend and a few close buddies, but relationships clearly take a back seat to work. “I call Bob all the time, but I’ve never once asked him, ‘Were you just sleeping?’ ” Sandler says. “He’s got tons of energy and ideas. With Bob, I know I’ve got my back covered.”

Back in his office, working on “The Exterminators” script with Rich Wilkes, Simonds keeps pushing the screenwriter to speed up the pace, telling him to get into the story faster.

“It’s not like we’re dawdling,” responds Wilkes, who wrote “Airheads” for Simonds. “We’re only at Page 10 and they’re already battling a giant cockroach.”

“The Exterminators” script will be even shorter by the time filming begins. “It’s a lot cheaper to cut scenes before you shoot them than after your screenings,” says Simonds, who keeps part of his budget stashed away in a reshoot account. After he’s test-screened a film and found its weak spots, he often reassembles his cast and crew and shoots new material.

Simonds usually chooses a director six weeks before filming begins, only after the cast and crew are already in place. Before filming begins, Simonds has a frank discussion with his new hire. “I tell them that we’ve promised the studio to make the funniest movie possible--but at a specific price. The director’s vision can’t intrude on what we’re trying to capture. If there’s a jump ball, the call goes my way.”

Most of his first-time directors have few complaints. “I was handed the keys to the car and told to drive as fast as you want, just stay on the track,” says “Beaver” co-writer Brian Levant, who directed “Problem Child 2” for Simonds before moving on to bigger-budget fare like “The Flintstones.”

Simonds readily acknowledges that his comedy formula is heavily influenced by Bill Murray’s anti-authority comedies, in particular “Stripes,” “Caddyshack” and “Ghostbusters.”

“It’s the paradigm of slobs vs. snobs,” he says. “Along with ‘Animal House,’ that’s where all these comedies come from. It’s what our generation was raised on.”

Unfortunately, his films are viewed as poor imitations. “Almost every movie I’ve made has gotten the most excoriating reviews,” he admits. “I hide behind the grosses and the profitability, but sure, I read the reviews. I just try not to let anyone else on the film read them.”

In box-office-obsessed Hollywood, bad reviews rarely slow career momentum. Simonds has already turned down at least one major studio post. But insiders at Universal say he could easily end up as a high-level executive there, if another studio doesn’t hire him first.

Returning to his office on the Universal back lot, Simonds stops to gawk at the billboards touting the studio’s upcoming releases. “You know, in the old days it was the Abbott and Costello and W.C. Fields comedies that kept this place alive,” he says quietly. “The studio’s bread and butter was all those low-budget comedies.”

His tone is wistful, as if he were thinking that their movies didn’t get any more respect than his do today.

“You know, my personality is very dark and depressed,” he says. “So maybe my movies are an antidote for that. I get to laugh in pitches, on the set, in dailies--every step of the way.”

He smiles and adds, “That’s the best therapy I’ve ever had.”