Mind If They Smoke?

Actress Gaby Hoffman, dressed in every color known to punk rockers in the early ‘80s, looks up at the street sign in New York’s East Village and stops short.

“I’m not moving from this corner,” she screams in a thick Long Island accent to her friend crossing the notorious Avenue B. “Something terrible is going to happen if you cross that street!”

“I’m going to that party!” yells back Christina Ricci, in the same Long Island accent and dressed in equally cheesy style.

“But you said we were going to SoHo!” whines Hoffman, stamping her foot like a child.

“I said NoHo!” comes the reply.

We are far downtown in Manhattan and we are supposed to be back even further: to 1981, the time when Avenue B still connoted something slightly menacing (today it’s trended up with hip eateries and bars). The movie being shot is “200 Cigarettes,” and it helps to think “American Graffiti” meets “Desperately Seeking Susan” meets “After Hours.” The action all takes place on one New Year’s Eve as a dozen or so characters--played by a cast that also includes Ben Affleck, Courtney Love and Paul Rudd in bite-sized roles--head for the same party. If there is a link between them, it is the sassy and streetwise cabdriver played by comic Dave Chappelle.

The movie is in the hands of first-time director Risa Bramon Garcia. For years she has been one of Hollywood’s top casting directors, and with this project--a script she has followed closely for some five years as it traveled from studio to studio--she is crossing over into the big time.

Well, small big time, anyway. “200 Cigarettes” is being distributed by a major studio (Paramount) and has a flock of production entities behind it (like MTV Films and director Mike Newell’s company Dogstar). But the truth is, it acts, feels (and pays) like an independent. Total cost is less than a superstar’s salary these days.

“We’ve always wanted to keep it true to its independent spirit,” says Alan Greenspan, Newell’s partner at Dogstar. Newell, best known for “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” considered directing it himself but in the end agreed it was the passionate Bramon Garcia who cared most. “She just had the best take on the material,” says Greenspan, “and because of her casting background and reputation, she was a great asset in terms of getting actors to do it.”

People like Affleck, who, as she says, “first talked to me about the film a year and half ago, when he was still Ben Affleck with a little B. He mentioned that he had just sold a script and he had a film called ‘Chasing Amy’ coming out. But he said he wanted to be part of this project no matter what, and he was good to his word. He read for all the parts and we decided on the bartender.”

Affleck shot his small role quickly and in between two other movies currently in production, “Dogma” and “Shakespeare in Love.” His younger brother Casey is also in “200 Cigarettes,” playing a punker hovering around Ricci and Hoffman as the two Long Island teenagers venture to the big city for New Year’s Eve. The younger Affleck admits he hardly remembers 1981: “I was a 5-year-old into break-dancing,” he says and laughs.

The folks behind the film hope to reach both his generation, who don’t recall 1981 but will still relate to its free-wheeling hipness and will like the heavy MTV-flavored soundtrack, and baby boomers, who probably remember exactly where they were and what they wore.

“It doesn’t feel dated at all,” says David Gale, senior vice president of MTV Films. “1981 was like the last year of unconsciousness since it was the year before AIDS. It was also the year MTV started. This is really about the last gasp of the ‘70s and the freedom of the period.”

On another night of filming--all six weeks involved late-night shooting--Love and Rudd are sitting in what is called the Disco Cab, which Chappelle’s character has adorned with tiger skin velveteen interior lining and exterior green and red crepe paper. There is a full moon over one side of the scene and, on the other, the Empire State Building in appropriately neon pink.

For Love, this might seem an odd choice following her bravura performance in “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” She says that was the point.

“I needed a break from epic, culturally important things,” says Love. “I have this heavy record coming out [“Celebrity Skin”] and some big movies ahead, so I wanted to do this irreverent little thing that wasn’t going to change the world. I mean it’s no [expletive] ‘Titanic,’ you know? And you know what? I ended up having a blast and it ended up being kind of profound.”

It also gave the singer-actress a chance to show her lighter side, something even Bramon Garcia may not have noticed in the past.

“Risa never cast me for anything my whole life,” says Love with a laugh, “and I went up for lots of stuff she was casting. I loved working with her. I mean I like having babies and making out with men, but for working, women are great. There’s no b.s., no daddy thing, it’s very straightforward. Cameron Crowe once told me I could be Carole Lombard, and this was a chance to do romantic comedy. Just like Meg Ryan is always looking for her inner tortured soul, I’ve been looking for my inner tortured Meg Ryan.”

In the film, Love plays Lucy, who starts off as best friends with Rudd and ends up as more. They are passengers in the cab driven by Chappelle, a stand-up comic-actor in the Chris Rock mold.

Taking a break one night, Chappelle described his character as “a guy stuck in the ‘70s. He’s laid-back and happy and a nice cat to hang around with.

“Like most cabdrivers, he’s also got a million philosophies, half of them contradicting the other half. He’s like a stand-up in one key way: He gets to feel the party life without really going to the party.”

Just about every movie, especially one of this kind, has its breakout stars (think Richard Dreyfuss in “American Graffiti”), and with “200 Cigarettes” it may be one Kate Hudson, who happens to be the daughter of Goldie Hawn. Bramon Garcia calls her “the biggest movie star I’ve ever seen.”

Hudson, 19, is more cautious. “I try to take one step at a time,” says the young actress, who has two other films yet to be released. “I grabbed at this one because it was such a great script and it felt like it could be a cult movie.”

Hudson plays Cindy, who loses her virginity and basically falls apart comically throughout the long night. “It was physically really hard,” she says, “to play this girl who deteriorates over the course of the movie but eventually comes out much more natural and attractive.”

Even those in the cast who were youngsters (if even born) in 1981 can relate to the frenzy and even desperation of New Year’s Eve. “Last year on New Year’s Eve, I was wandering around the village trying to find a party I’d been told about,” recalls Hoffman, who is 16 and, like everyone else here, smokes in between takes. “I got totally lost, and at midnight I was stuck with my boyfriend on an elevator.”

“My New Year’s Eves are always crazy,” concurs Ricci, who at 18 already has 19 films under her belt. “But at least I usually know where I’m going, unlike the character I play in this.”

Ricci says small as the part is, it’s a tougher challenge than her last role, the rebellious daughter in “The Ice Storm.”

“I didn’t really have to think much to play that girl,” she says, wolfing down a cheese sandwich at midnight. “Even though this part is more of a caricature, I don’t really know girls like this, and I have to be sure I stay on the accent.”

“200 Cigarettes” may sound dark and downtown but the filmmakers insist it’s going to be funny, colorful and emotional. “It’s about desperation,” says Bramon Garcia, “but not about paranoia.”