Partnership Proves It Can Produce

“I’m giving birth today to my first baby!” exclaimed an excited Drew Barrymore on a car phone from New York, rushing to the airport last Friday on her way back home to Los Angeles.

The “baby” the 24-year-old actress was referring to is “Never Been Kissed,” which debuted as the second-highest-grossing movie of last weekend. And it’s more than just the latest leading role for one of Hollywood’s most popular young stars.

The $25-million romantic comedy is Barrymore’s first-born production.

While many celebrities have so-called vanity deals, Barrymore and her partner Nancy Juvonen were intent on being taken seriously as producers ever since they met and decided to form Flower Films. By all accounts, they met the challenge with their first film.

They spent the last two years learning everything they could about the movie business--poring over scripts at their Sunset Boulevard offices, meeting with agents and studio executives. They also dissected and analyzed their own tastes in movies to try to determine what young audiences want to see.

“We spent two years learning to speak the language and really educating ourselves,” said Juvonen, an engaging 31-year-old who isn’t too jaded to admit, “Our first director’s list, bless us, had people on it who weren’t around, like Hal Ashby, who we didn’t know had died.”

Juvonen and Barrymore have come a long way since then.

“Everyone wants that producer plaque on their door, but it takes an extraordinary amount of work to get there,” said Barrymore, who at age 6 starred in the classic “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and, more recently, in “The Wedding Singer,” “Scream” and “Ever After . . . A Cinderella Story,” all of which grossed more than $100 million worldwide and were huge video releases.

“It takes education and research and really going to the college of film and production,” said Barrymore, likening the experience to studying math (learning what the numbers mean), history (learning the background of film) and geography (learning how to navigate the Hollywood landscape).

“Never Been Kissed,” which was directed by Raja Gosnell, grossed nearly $12 million on its opening weekend, a respectable debut behind the popular special-effects movie “Matrix.”

In “Never Been Kissed,” Barrymore portrays a young newspaper copy editor who relives her painful past as a geeky adolescent when she goes on an undercover reporting assignment at a high school.

Juvonen, who was introduced by her brother to Barrymore 4 1/2 years ago, said that a week and a half after the two met, the actress left a message on her answering machine daring her to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles to join her in starting a production company.

“The first three months was getting groceries, picking out tiles, redoing her house and cleaning the pool,” said Juvonen, recalling how she was tiring of the “grunt work” and told Barrymore she was going to concentrate on reading the scripts that were piling up.

A compulsive organizer who keeps lists and binders on every imaginable subject--from orange skirts to child actors--Juvonen converted one of Barrymore’s rooms into an office with a fax machine and Rolodex, and they were “off to the races.”

Barrymore said her partner was “so focused, and we motivated each other. . . . I learned so much from her and her systems.”

In many ways, Juvonen and Barrymore couldn’t be more different. Juvonen, born in Connecticut, enjoyed a rather traditional upbringing in San Francisco, living with her divorced mother. Barrymore’s growing-up years as Hollywood royalty (John Barrymore was her grandfather) were anything but traditional. She started drinking at age 9, was using cocaine by the time she was 12 and, at 14, was in rehab after a failed suicide attempt. All of that is far behind her now.

Barrymore and Juvonen share a common passion to be successful movie producers.

“We wouldn’t have the wholeness without each other,” said Barrymore.

Before they signed a studio deal 18 months ago at Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox run by Laura Ziskin, the young producers amassed a number of scripts, books and pitches they wanted to develop into movies.

Likening their first meeting at Fox to a “job interview,” Barrymore suggested, “They took us on because we had something to offer them.”

Juvonen said she and Barrymore, after their two years of studying the craft as “pee-wee producers,” finally felt confident enough to meet with Ziskin and Fox’s movie chairman, Bill Mechanic, with nine proposals.

“We pitched them like any producer would and told them what we were looking at for the future, and they invited us to have a first-look, two-year deal,” said Juvonen.

They had been at Fox for less than six months when they received a phone call from a fellow producer, Sandy Isaac, who also had a production deal with Ziskin.

Isaac told Juvonen he had the perfect script for Barrymore to star in and suggested their two production companies join as partners on the movie.

Juvonen said she loved the script the moment she read it last February. That night, at a party with “The Wedding Singer” gang, she said, “I couldn’t hold back. I had to pitch Drew the story.” Barrymore read the script the next day and shared Juvonen’s enthusiasm.

“This is sort of our homage to John Hughes,” said Juvonen. “We really set out to give that feeling of heart and fun.” The movie, also starring David Arquette, is in Juvonen’s view “an exaggerated version of ‘what if you had to go back to high school and it was a huge nightmare.’ ”

Once Barrymore committed to star in the project, Isaac recalled, “it became a movie,” meaning Fox was then inclined to green-light it for production.

The producers said the filmmaking process was surprisingly smooth.

“It was awesome, a great experience,” Isaac said. “We came in on time, under budget.” And, he added, “it was criminal how fun it was.”

Juvonen said Fox executives kept cautioning the producers: “This isn’t how movies get made. You know most of the time there are a lot of hardships and pain, and you guys are having fun.”

Noting how “dedicated, smart and focused” Barrymore and Juvonen are, Ziskin said: “It was a wonderful experience, one I’d like to have many more times.”

Juvonen said the biggest production bump came when one of the actors (playing the most popular guy in high school) had to drop out of filming a day before finishing his scenes.

“It took us so long to find the right guy, and we were in an absolute panic rushing tapes back and forth to our casting director about who we could get,” said Juvonen. It turned out the actor had a twin brother who is also an actor.

“He came in and was perfect,” said the producer, adding gleefully: “That was our biggest drama, if you can believe it.”

Barrymore said that although she and Juvonen certainly hope their movies make money for the studio, “we really want to tell fun, purely entertaining stories.” Lamenting that the business today “is not about the art and soul of film right now,” the actress-producer acknowledged, “It’s a game you choose to play.”

Barrymore said that what concerns her most about Hollywood is that “the industry is focused on the opening weekend and not the playability or longevity of movies or, God forbid, the body of your work.”