The New Kids in Town

At 6 feet 4 and with an athlete’s build, Rick Famuyiwa looks like an overgrown kid sitting on top of a student’s desk in an Inglewood elementary school room, lazily swinging the white Nikes at the end of his shorts-bared legs. Just 25, he’s not far from actually being a kid himself, and though he dwarfs the handful of actual teens around him, he’s clearly at home with them, a gentle giant chatting easily about the day’s activities.

If it weren’t for the veteran members of the film crew around him, waiting for his signal, you might not guess that he was a movie director. But here he is one week into shooting “The Wood,” a touching and funny story based on his own ‘80s wonder years in this city. He, in fact, attended this very school--though it’s standing in as a high school this day. And the kids he’s talking to are actors, though several of them are real school kids with no previous acting experience.

That’s OK. Famuyiwa has never had any previous professional writing or directing experience. Six months ago he was selling expensive athletic shoes at Niketown in Beverly Hills. Sure, he’d been a star at USC Film School, but now he’s got a seven-figure budget in his charge--minuscule by “Titanic” standards, but hardly chicken feed. Yet he radiates a Zen-like calm that extends, remarkably, to the crew--no second-guessing or suspicions of this first-timer.

“It’s just filmmaking,” he says between shots, seeming more like he’s taking a break from a pickup basketball game than directing a cast and crew of a few dozen. “I figured I’d be doing this with loans from Dad and Mom, running around Inglewood away from the police. So if this doesn’t work out, I can always go back to doing it like that.”

But, for now at least, he’s doing it within the uptight studio system with full support from Paramount, no less. He’s not a Hollywood figure. His film--an African American coming of age tale--is not a Hollywood script. And his way of making movies, with no “name” stars, no explosions or shootouts, no high-concept hook, is certainly not the Hollywood way.

“Rick just inspires confidence,” says Van Toffler, observing the scene.

Toffler should know. He’s one of the people who was inspired to put Famuyiwa in this position. As the general manager of MTV and president of its MTV Productions, he’s overseeing the company’s start-up MTV Films division; “The Wood” is one of five movies the unit currently is making as it launches a serious attempt to be a filmmaking presence.

It’s a big test of the potentially powerful synergy that could be generated from the mating of MTV’s youth-culture leadership and access with the marketing power of its Viacom corporate sibling, Paramount Pictures, which is fronting the venture. Two years ago, MTV showed the world that power with the successful “Beavis and Butt-head Do America,” the big-screen journey of its very popular cable franchise.

MTV had already made the two cartoon losers the epitome of teen cool--ubiquitous figures on T-shirts and in the hip vernacular. With the movie, the combination of that demographic penetration and the marketing savvy of both MTV and Paramount added up to a healthy $63 million in domestic box-office business, plus much more in cable, rentals and licensing.

Even the dubious “Joe’s Apartment,” an expansion of a short that had aired on MTV featuring a cast of roaches and vermin, benefited in exposure--if not ultimately box office--from having the MTV brand name stamped on it, though the company wasn’t really involved in the film production.

Now, though, it’s a different story. No cashing in on established characters. No merely loaning the name out to add credibility to a project. The slate of releases that will commence Aug. 21 with the college comedy caper “Dead Man on Campus” is the payoff of taking the time to put together a staff, find and develop properties from the ground up, hire the talent to pull it off--and figure out just what the MTV name can mean in Hollywood.

In the world of cable it’s meant a lot--MTV in its 17 years has changed the face of pop music and pop culture, always seeming to be one step ahead of the curve. It practically defined the youth culture that Hollywood is mad for right now.

But can it harness that madness? Not an easy task.

“This is the very entity that bred a generation with a short attention span,” says an executive at a rival company. “And now they want these same people to sit and watch movies?”

In the two years since “Beavis and Butt-head,” others have taken the very success of MTV and used it to their own film advantage. It was Miramax, not MTV, that made “Scream,” arguably the definitive MTV movie of the last couple of years. And now everyone’s jumping into the pool.

“There are 57 teen movies in development, 12 already in production,” says the same executive. “You can’t even attempt to get [the hottest youth stars] like Jennifer Love Hewitt or Katie Holmes. They’re all booked up.”

Toffler doesn’t dispute this. “It’s absolutely true that Hollywood has wakened up to this demographic, and as our research says, it’s the most active movie-going population and the fastest growing,” he says. “Having said that, part of the reason MTV got into film is we have a knack for finding talent, creating stars before others have caught up to them.”

That’s exactly what the company is doing, placing its crucial first full production run in the hands of Famuyiwa and others who don’t have much more feature experience. “Dead Man” was directed by Alan Cohn, a co-creator of MTV’s popular docu-soap “The Real World.” Coming over the next year or 18 months will be “Election,” the first studio film by “Citizen Ruth” director Alexander Payne; “Varsity Blues,” a high school football comedy produced by the team whose only previous feature was the Nickelodeon spinoff “Good Burger,” and “200 Cigarettes,” a moody ensemble piece directed by Risa Bramon Garcia, whose feature experience is as a casting director (see accompanying story).

They’re all creative people whose projects cover a wide range of styles and tones. It’s not exactly the mainstream kind of crew you’d expect to find launch a company with ambitions to be a big player in Hollywood.

But then, MTV--the home of the claymation “Celebrity Death Match” pitting putty versions of your favorite media figures against each other in animated battle and the venue that (forgive them) made Jenny McCarthy a national star--has never done things the expected way.

“Challenging is not a word most studios want to hear,” says MTV Films senior vice president David Gale, himself a neophyte at running a company with a full production slate.

But it’s a word welcome in the executive suites at Paramount. “Yes, it’s brave and terrific,” Sherry Lansing, chairman of Paramount’s Motion Pictures Group, says of the enterprise. “The network success did not happen because of luck. It happened from brain power.”

Of course, it’s not like Paramount is risking “Armageddon”-league money. The budgets for the five films in production range from about $2 million to about $12 million. A big-screen version of MTV’s visually dazzling fantasy animated series “Aeon Flux,” currently in development, would cost more, but not much.

The reliance on new filmmakers and general avoidance of big-bucks stars are part of the game plan. Ben Affleck signed up for “200 Cigarettes” before he hit it big, and other cast members, including Courtney Love and Christina Ricci, are in it for scale because they like the project. The other films feature a mix of film veterans and rising young talent--Jon Voight and “Dawson’s Creek” star James Van Der Beek in “Varsity Blues,” Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon in “Election,” Tom Everett Scott of “That Thing You Do!” in “Dead Man on Campus,” Omar Eps in “The Wood”--supplemented with eager unknowns.

And box-office expectations are fairly moderate, as well--though having had a taste of success with the “Beavis and Butt-head” film and to a lesser, but still solid, extent with kid sister channel Nickelodeon’s theatrical releases “Good Burger” and “Harriet the Spy,” Paramount has high hopes for MTV as a steady producer of worthwhile films.

“What they’re saying is, ‘OK, we’ll make these movies, and at a [low] price, and make them for our target demographic,” Lansing says. “That doesn’t mean they won’t expand beyond that audience. But if they just reach that demographic, we make tens of millions. We’re judged on profitability, not market share.”

And MTV Films has one thing going for it no one else has: MTV.

“It’s a film division with a terrific brand name attached to it,” says one film executive who worked on the Paramount lot while MTV Films was being set up there. “There’s a tremendous synergy with the MTV name. It’s instant advertising, instant recognition, and you can’t get it better than that.”

The name certainly was an attraction for Gale, who joined MTV in 1996--shortly before the “Beavis and Butt-head” movie premiered--after managing Gale Anne Hurd’s Pacific Western production company for four years. “Disney is the only company that through it’s brand name gives people an idea of the product,” he says. “You don’t go to a movie because it’s Paramount or MGM.”

So what should people expect from an MTV film?

Says another executive who used to work at a Paramount company, “One of the good things of them coming from essentially the music world is expectation that they’ll be rebels. That gives them a certain freedom of motion that I think the rest of us don’t enjoy.”

Exactly, echoes Lansing.

“MTV stands for counterculture,” says Lansing. “The minute they do something that looks like an establishment movie, we’re in trouble.”

Gale doesn’t exactly scream counterculture. A boyish 40, he’s the first to admit that he’s not representative of the MTV target demographic--though his tastes might be closer to that than most studio executives, judging by the plain T-shirt and jeans he chooses over Armani for work clothes and the cartoonish colors and angles of the office he runs on the Paramount lot with his young staff.

And he very clearly believes he has a mandate to do his job in ways that run counter to Hollywood culture, at least. And that means working with people who don’t seem to fit the system.

“It’s a very filmmaker-driven company,” says Gale, a former lawyer and agent who in his spare time runs a camp for kids with HIV. “If you take a chance, you might find the next Woody Allen or Spike Lee. But you might fail.”

That, he points out, is the history of MTV. It’s the company that took a chance on Mike Judge with “Beavis and Butt-head,” who has since moved on to a network hit with “King of the Hill” on Fox. Several of the films MTV is working on, in fact, could find no home before--a point repeated by enough people involved to make it practically a company mantra.

“What Paramount is doing with MTV and Nickelodeon is allow themselves to take more chances,” Gale says. “They may have made ‘Varsity Blues’ without MTV, but they wouldn’t have made ‘Election’ or ‘200 Cigarettes.’ ”

Indeed, Albert Berger, who with partner Ron Yerxa is a co-producer of both “Election” and “The Wood,” were stymied trying to find interest in “Election,” a book by Tom Perrotta that posed some real challenges, including being told in several different voices and chock full of sardonic twists and subtle humor. Even with hot Payne attached, doors were not opening.

“Nobody else wanted to take a chance with this,” Berger says.

“200 Cigarettes,” a chatty, proto-slacker ensemble set at the dawn of the MTV age in 1981, floundered for even longer before Gale was in position to give it a green light.

“I first read it seven years ago,” says co-producer Betsy Beers. “David and I were both at Pacific Western, and this was everybody’s favorite script. But no one knew what to do with it. ‘Must be filmed in New York, it’s all at night, 400 story lines. . . . What are you, high on crack?’ ”

Then Gale went to MTV, and the chemistry clicked.

“You’d have to be an idiot not to want to work with MTV on this,” Beers says. “They have the access to music, and this is a pop movie. And they brought to the picture power at the studio.”

The biggest concern facing MTV may be the first of its upcoming releases. While the executives say they like “Dead Man,” they’re afraid that, with its intentionally sophomoric humor, it might give the wrong idea about the nature of just what an MTV film is.

Around Hollywood, judgment is already harsh, even though in general the film community seems to be rooting for the company.

“I think it’s their least impressive piece of material,” says one executive at another company. “I read the script and it was a d-o-g. I would consider, if it was feasible, holding it and making something else the first release. ‘Election,’ ‘200 Cigarettes,’ ‘The Wood,’ those are all better ones to hang the name on.”

But Toffler has given it considerable thought.

“Quite candidly, in my ideal world, I probably would not have chosen ‘Dead Man’ as the one to follow ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ under the umbrella of MTV Films,” he says. “But it definitely has a prominent place in our slate. People would kill to have an ‘Animal House’ type comedy in their slate. But because you don’t always control when and where films are released, things just happen.”

Still, Gale and Toffler feel it’s crucial to get out the message that this is only one kind of MTV film.

“We have movies that appeal to different segments of the audience,” Toffler says. “ ‘200 Cigarettes’ may appeal to the higher end, ‘Dead Man’ more to the lower end--and I’ll say nothing against that end, being a great fan of ‘Austin Powers.’ ”

And, they hope, many will appeal to the whole range, and perhaps beyond.

“If it’s a great movie, I don’t want to narrowcast it,” says Gale. “ ‘Election’ or ‘200 Cigarettes’ I think will be of broad appeal. People who wouldn’t even turn on MTV I hope would come to these.”

Which adds up to what?

“We’re still in the process of defining what MTV Films is. The channel is always changing. It’s not just one thing.”

‘I don’t sit there saying, ‘Let’s do quick cuts and fisheye lenses and you need Puff Daddy dancing in the background in shots,’ ” says Brian Robbins, 34, a former cast member of the ‘80s sitcom “Head of the Class,” co-creator of Nickelodeon’s “All That” kids series and its spinoff film, “Good Burger,” and now director and, with partner Mike Tollin, producer of “Varsity Blues.”

If he’s a bit defensive, it’s understandable. Mention MTV Films to many people, and the image they conjure will be of productions straight off the video channel. In fact, the people making these movies, save perhaps for young Famuyiwa, are not even part of the MTV audience.

“I’m MTV emotionally, VH1 chronologically,” says Beers, 40, like most of the other producers and directors a baby boomer, not a Gen-X-er.

Not that there isn’t some sensibility overlap--most profoundly in an orientation to music. “Dead Man on Campus” is stuffed with music, and has spawned a soundtrack album overseen by hot production duo the Dust Brothers (who have squired hits for Beck, Hanson and the Rolling Stones). Among the selections for this project: Marilyn Manson singing David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” And you can bet that videos from the album--using “Dead Man” clips--will be getting heaving rotation on MTV’s channel.

“There are something like 60 source music cues in this,” says frizzy red-head Cohn, 38, wrapping Fathers’ Day ties for his crew in a Burbank sound mixing studio. “Normally 30 would be a lot. I don’t like to tell people what to feel with music. But I know that when I was feeling sad [in college] I had a sad song in my head.”

What Gale hopes the company will reflect most from the channel, though, is a knack for staying ahead of the pop culture curve. But the curve is much longer in the film world than in cable, where you can go from concept to airing in a short span, and have the opportunity to develop it over time, building word of mouth and a core following before anyone outside even hears about it. Plus, if it flops, few people ever notice.

Toffler, though, says that’s all been part of the learning curve for the company during the time that’s been spent gearing up.

“We’ve had to go through a re-education process,” Toffler says. “In TV you can be much more responsive to trends. In film, the trend may be here and gone.”

Payne didn’t imagine he was the kind of talent MTV was looking for when he first met with the company about “Election,” the project he’d chosen to follow “Citizen Ruth,” his wicked indie socio-comedy that featured Laura Dern as a pregnant paint-sniffer who becomes a pawn for both sides in the abortion debate.

But Payne, 37, was pleasantly surprised.

“They weren’t scared when I said things like, ‘I’m not making a high school movie’ and ‘I don’t watch MTV. An MTV movie? What’s that mean?’ ” he says, a little rumpled in the wake of a late-night editing session at a funky old Larchmont house that’s Mission Control for the production. “But they were open to me. And I got in early enough that they were still figuring out what an MTV movie was.”

But he knows what an Alexander Payne movie is, and that’s how he’s proceeding on this. He set the movie, like “Citizen Ruth,” in his hometown of Omaha (as opposed to New Jersey, where the book takes place) in part to shoot away from studio eyes, but even more to further a personal crusade against coastal biases in the entertainment business. He went so far as to fill out the cast with untrained locals, including teen Jessica Campbell in one of the most crucial roles. He also retained the book’s modus operandi of shifting back and forth between several main characters as narrators--a tricky feat for film.

“If they saw my previous movie and hired me, they’re stupid if they think they got something else,” he says. “They’re asking for trouble if they want something else. I’d sabotage it every chance I had.”

His defiance, though, remains sheathed.

“I haven’t had that experience,” he says. “So far, so good. They’ve offered very good suggestions. Don’t always take them, but they’re not imposed. At least I trust them.”

Again, that’s exactly what Paramount’s chiefs say they hope happens with MTV.

“The only thing I can tell you is if you bet on talent and originality, even if you don’t succeed in a giant way, you have a better chance of success,” says John Goldwyn, president of Paramount Motion Pictures. “We would all love to do every Steven Spielberg movie. But the thing they [MTV] do is bring new talent into our universe.”

Gale, unlike Famuyiwa, seems acutely aware of the pressures of his job. As he sits in his office, anxieties just below his easy-going surface provide easy buttons to push.

“You can’t afford to make two or three bad movies in a row--it will hurt your credibility,” needles Robbins.

Gale gives him the look of a frightened child. “Thanks for reminding me of that . . . again!”

The thing is, he stresses, he’d rather fail with good movies than sell bad ones. Toffler takes the notion a step further. The credibility of MTV is at risk, not just from potentially using it to sell bad movies, but even good movies, if they’re inappropriate.

“I would kill myself if we made ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ and tried to promote it on MTV,” he says. “Doesn’t make sense. And we don’t want to underestimate our audience. They have a very low b.s. barometer, and if they sense something is being shoved down their throat, they run screaming.”