In the Write Place

Paul “P.J.” Castellaneta may soon be the envy of every Hollywood wannabe.

Instead of reporting to his clerical job, he’s sitting in the comfort of his cozy Santa Monica apartment, hunched over a laptop computer at the dining room table, shoes off, getting paid to rewrite a screenplay. If Castellaneta can deliver a draft good enough to attract the “right kind of talent,” and the project can be made “for a price,” the 37-year-old aspiring filmmaker will get a shot at directing.

What makes Castellaneta unusual is that he’s been working for 10 years under the noses of executives at the very studio that now wants to be in business with him. As a story supervisor at Warner Bros., Castellaneta’s day job involves overseeing the computerized inventory system that tracks the scores of scripts that typically pile up at a major studio. He also organizes the packet of scripts top Warner executives take home every weekend to read.

He might still be one of the thousands of nameless faces on the lot, but “Relax . . . It’s Just Sex”--a film he wrote and directed on a shoestring in 19 days while on a five-week leave of absence last summer--caught the attention of some lower-level Warner executives when it debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to favorable buzz.

Currently on a six-week unpaid leave from his job, Castellaneta is getting what everyone vying for entry into Hollywood’s coveted creative club would kill for: a potential big break.

“It’s very exciting because it’s the first time I’m getting paid to write a movie,” said Castellaneta, estimating he’s about a month away from delivering a draft of the comedy he’s rewriting (originated by another screenwriter) about three sisters in New York.

When his home answering machine blurts out a message from a colleague at Warner about a work-related matter, Castellaneta listens, then shrugs and returns to discussing a more interesting agenda: his budding movie career.

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Like many bright-eyed strivers who have designs on breaking into Hollywood, Castellaneta moved to California as a college student from New York nearly 20 years ago to pursue his dream of writing and directing movies.

While holding down various day jobs along the way, including security guard, substitute teacher and glorified clerk at a Hollywood studio, he made two low-budget art house films, one of which received a limited U.S. theatrical release and both of which won him awards on the international festival circuit.

Castellaneta was born in the Long Island suburb of Lynbrook, where his Italian American working-class parents--whom he describes as “right out of central casting”--still live in the house where he and his four siblings grew up. He said pursuing a career in the arts is not exactly commonplace where he comes from.

“People from my background don’t do that,” he said, joking that if he had even suggested to a family member his desire to be a director, the response would surely have been, “Here’s a direction--take out the garbage!” His 85-year-old father worked as an administrator for the post office and later as an auditor for a bank, and his mother, about to turn 75, worked at Macy’s in Manhattan.

Castellaneta’s down-to-earth style and soft-spokenness belie his drive and ambition. On the surface, his clean-cut, fresh-faced appearance suggests someone you’d associate with more conventional, middle-of-the-road taste than the controversial and racy.

Castellaneta describes the latest of his two films, “Relax . . . It’s Just Sex,” as an “NC-17 version of ‘Friends.’ ” It’s about a diverse group of thirtysomethings in Los Angeles, some straight, some gay, whose lives are forever altered by a particular event. The story centers on a struggling gay playwright looking for love.

Castellaneta, who is gay, says the film’s “very frank” sexuality is probably what’s scaring off potential U.S. distributors.

“We’re still talking to some of the distributors,” he said. “They keep coming back to see the film. But even though people seem to love it, they don’t know what to do with it.”

Billy Gerber, co-president of Warner Bros.’ movie division, confirms that the film’s graphic sexual content is what’s precluding the studio from picking up the movie. Yet he and his colleagues were so “impressed with the film’s complexity and comedy,” they were convinced Castellaneta was someone they’d like to be in business with on the creative side.

“We’d like to find a movie for him to direct,” Gerber said, referring to what’s happening to Castellaneta as “a great ‘Cinderfella’ story.”

Whether the script he’s reworking will turn out to be the project Castellaneta eventually directs is anybody’s guess. The majority of studio development properties never become movies.

Then again, that’s not discouraging to someone like Castellaneta, whose day job forces him to be realistic even about his own odds.

“We have a vault full of scripts--hundreds of projects in development, some more active than others,” he said. “Movies go and don’t go for all kinds of reasons.”

Castellaneta has an edge in that he’s caught the attention of top studio executives with the power and influence to help him get ahead.

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When he set out to make “Relax,” he sought the help of Gerber and co-movie president Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, who gave him access to a Panavision camera and the studio’s prop and wardrobe departments and arranged to have the film transferred to videotape during post-production.

Warner also gave him a five-week leave last year to make the film, which he shot in 19 days under what he described as “very adverse conditions”--meaning on a meager budget.

The film landed Castellaneta his first Hollywood agent.

“It made me laugh, it made me cry and it made me respond, because he is a filmmaker who understands human nature,” said Bobbi Thompson of William Morris Agency, who aggressively pursued Castellaneta after seeing his movie at Sundance.

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Not long after Castellaneta joined Warner in 1988, he wrote, directed, edited and catered his first full-length feature, “Together Alone,” an 87-minute black-and-white movie about two strangers who open up to each other the morning after spending the night together.

“People have called it ‘My Dinner With Andre,’ but I think it’s more like ‘Virginia Woolf,’ “said Castellaneta, whose parents lent him $5,000 to make the movie, which ultimately cost $7,000. He shot it in nine days in the living room of his Hollywood apartment, working from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the studio and from 7 p.m. to midnight behind the camera. The film won several festival awards, including the best-art-house-film prize at Berlin in 1991. A year later, it had a limited release at New York’s Film Forum.

After high school, Castellaneta went to Albany State University and studied business, transferring a year later to Cal State Fullerton, where he majored in communications. There, he wrote and directed a short parody of student films that won him his first awards. Disenchanted with his school’s curriculum because it was “more administrative than creative,” he spent his senior year abroad at the University of Florence. He attended graduate school at USC.

Castellaneta took a full-time teaching position at Wilson Junior High School in Glendale but ultimately decided to devote his time and energies toward a writing-directing career. Then 27, he quit teaching and accepted an entry-level clerical job at Warner. Two months ago, he was promoted from story librarian to story supervisor, but he says he still views his studio work as a day job.

When asked whether he expects to return to that job after his leave expires, he said he’s planning to return at least temporarily to fill in for his boss when she vacations--then, “Who knows? We’ll see.”