My Kid Could Do that

Wedged behind tyke-sized tables on the auditorium stage, seven Hollywood faces sip bottled water and silently scan their scripts. The writers look nervous. One glances anxiously toward the stage.

“Where’s Mark Hamill?’ he demands. After being assured that the “Star Wars’ actor is on his way, the screenwriter makes eye contact with a person on the other side of the room.

“Mom,’ he whispers loudly. “Mom!’ He waves, forgetting for the moment to worry about his script, his late actor, his upcoming spelling test.

Welcome to graduation night for Playa del Rey Elementary School’s Young Storytellers Program, a sort of screenwriting Little League where 12 third-graders come out pitching dialogue and swinging camera angles like pros. They’re young, they’re creative and their moms still pack them lunch--at least until they secure good tables at the Ivy.

Tonight is the culmination of a six-week, one-on-one mentoring program between 12 American Film Institute fellows and the third-graders--an energetic mix of girls and boys, high achievers and potential “at risk’ students. Beaming at their budding Shane Blacks, the mentors proselytize how by simply letting the kids be brilliant--or “just be’ as AFI fellow Andrew Barrett solemnly puts it--the students developed fully realized scripts. For all the goodwill, however, the auditorium carries the faint odor of adult competitiveness. “Drama is drama,’ notes one twentysomething audience member to a fellow screenwriter, “even if they’re 8.’

Mikkel Bondesen, producer of the program, moves to the lectern. “All rise,’ he orders. “This is how we’re going to loosen up this evening: You’re going to make three very silly faces to the people around you.’ As the audience titters, Bondesen adds, “You may think you’re not going to do this, but you are.’ A moment later, a roomful of adults is shuffling in a circle making faces, one woman completing the full 360 degrees without once removing the camcorder from her face. The kids remain seated--scripts in laps--serenely observing.

Finally, the stories. Each screenwriter stands behind the lectern while Hamill and the other actors--the most recognizable of whom, especially to the boys, is Debbe Dunning, “Home Improvement’s’ Tool Time girl--handle the dialogue. In Mario Cruz’s script, he and his sisters save the Dallas Cowboys:

Coach: Mario, we need you to kick the field goal.

Mario: I’ve never kicked before, but I can do it.

When we next see Mario he’s sitting on his bed, twirling a Super Bowl ring around his finger.

In “The Witch of Room 6,’ Noemi Edgerton’s thriller about an evil teacher who shrinks two girls to Barbie-doll size, justice is served via an authority even higher than the principal.

God: I am God. I am 10,000 years old and I do good things.

Mrs. Snyder: I have powers and I will use them.

God: I am helping the girls because it is right. Your powers are of no use.

Mrs. Snyder: Errrrrrrr!

Afterward, as the actors chat and sign autographs, Patrick Fabian (“Saved by the Bell: The College Years’) reflects on the evening. “I can see the influence of ‘Goosebumps’ books here,’ he says. “And every time someone got into trouble, they got a second chance.

“These were,’ Fabian declares, “stories of redemption.’