‘Mod’ for Our Times

Three young people--late teens, early 20s--saunter into a seedy North Hollywood diner. The girl, a blond in a red leather jacket, with more than a hint of attitude, is confronted by a junkie in need of a fix.

A slender white guy with a brush cut steps in to explain that they’re undercover cops. The junkie thinks this is a joke. “He ain’t lyin,’ baby,” says the third member of the trio, a no-nonsense black dude with a goatee and tight leather pants.

“Hand-picked,” says the girl, smiling. “One black. One white. One blond.”

Welcome to “The Mod Squad,” ’90s style: Linc, Pete and Julie, three kids in trouble who avoid jail by agreeing to work as a secret team on the side of the law. But this is not your father’s “Mod Squad”: It’s MGM’s $20-million feature film starring Claire Danes, Giovanni Ribisi and Omar Epps that opens Friday.

And, the producers take pains to point out, this isn’t just another TV show-turned-movie. Fearing the kind of critical and audience indifference, even hostility, that greeted “Sgt. Bilko,” “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Avengers,” they are trying to position “The Mod Squad” as not just reconstituted but as redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up.

It is, most acknowledge, a gamble. “The Mod Squad” has little meaning for contemporary teens or even Gen-Xers, so though there are no prior expectations to meet, the term also triggers no automatic want-to-see response. For baby boomers, the images of Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III are so indelible--and so locked into the late ‘60s-early ‘70s time frame--that the hurdles for a new “Mod Squad” may be insurmountable.

“The Mod Squad” was one of the first big hits of a budding TV mogul named Aaron Spelling. It premiered on ABC in September 1968, the era of hippies and flower power and the youth movement. Counterculture was in; establishment was out. Spelling, whose previous series (including “The Dick Powell Show” and “Burke’s Law”) leaned toward the traditional, bought the idea from a former Los Angeles cop named Buddy Ruskin.

Spelling cast unknowns as the leads. Cole played Pete Cochran, who had walked out on his wealthy Beverly Hills family; Lipton was Julie Barnes, the runaway daughter of a prostitute; and Williams played Linc Hayes, an angry Watts kid who had been arrested in the ’68 riots. Tige Andrews played Capt. Adam Greer, who discovered the three and teamed them up to infiltrate L.A.’s underground in search of adult criminals preying on the young.

“The Mod Squad” finished among TV’s top 25 shows during three of its five seasons and received multiple Emmy nominations, including one for dramatic series and four consecutive best actress nods for Lipton.

But it has not fared well in syndication, perhaps because of its dated title and undeniable connection to an era in which today’s young people have, apparently, little interest. It’s not even on any of the cable channels devoted to classic TV (although several episodes of the series have been released on home video).

Spelling is still very proud of the show, especially the idea that the trio never carried guns or ratted on their own crowd. He says the idea for the movie wasn’t his and that he was skeptical about it “until I saw a news report where the cops were hiring young kids to go into liquor stores to buy booze so the cops could arrest the people who were selling booze to kids. That’s ‘The Mod Squad,’ isn’t it?”

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Contemporizing a TV show that is so rooted in a very specific arena of American pop culture is no mean feat. That job fell to David Ladd, initially in his capacity as an MGM studio executive and later as executive producer (with Spelling) of the film.

The series, Ladd explained, “was about three kids who were able to get into places that normal police weren’t. They dealt with issues of the day, everything from the war in Vietnam to drugs and on and on--almost a political laundry list. They became a kind of voice for their own generation.”

Thirty years later, the issues are obviously very different, Ladd says. “What we tried to do was find a voice that was true to this generation. There is not the same political agenda, but there is a sense of nihilism with kids today that, in fact, becomes what our squad is dealing with.”

Enter Scott Silver. The 34-year-old American Film Institute graduate, whose low-budget L.A. hustlers movie “johns” drew acclaim in 1996, had written a screenplay that caught Ladd’s attention when he was still an executive at MGM.

“It had the voice that we wanted,” Ladd recalls. “An adult with a young voice, if that makes sense. He seems to understand their world. He’s our maven of hip.” Silver was hired as co-writer and director.

The studio wanted a strong conventional police drama, Silver says, “and we felt that the way to make that work in the ‘90s was to make it very irreverent. Not in the way that ‘Scream’ was, but in the way that ‘Trainspotting’ was, aware of what it was doing.”

Once the script was in place, Ladd and Silver scored a casting coup when Danes came on board. Silver credits her with “legitimizing” the movie and attracting the rest of the cast. Suddenly, says Silver, “it became ‘The Mod Squad with Claire Danes.’ It was what Tom Cruise brought to ‘Mission: Impossible’; there was no way it was going to be a cheesy movie.”

On the set last summer, the 19-year-old actress explained that she decided to do “The Mod Squad” after her stint in the Philippines making “Brokedown Palace,” the upcoming Fox film about innocent Midwestern girls wrongly convicted for heroin trafficking and thrown into a Thailand prison.

“It was four months of being surrounded by complete poverty, and it was really hard,” she said. “I was so afraid to stop working. It was such a traumatic experience, I just wanted to keep going. I didn’t want it to sink in. So I was just in the mood for a bit of levity, and I thought I’d be able to taste some of the good life while I made this movie in cozy L.A.

“What I realized was that movies are hard no matter what kind of story you’re telling. But it’s been fun, and I haven’t had to sort of plumb the depths of my soul too much, which is refreshing. I thought it would be really neat to be involved with something that was groovy and hip and young and a bit flashy.”

Danes, who sports startlingly short blond hair for this role, laughs about the weird time juxtapositions that went on. “We’ve developed our own language completely--’Solid, baby!’ and ‘Right on!’--like we’re talking French or something. I keep saying it’s a lighthearted movie, but it’s about drugs and sex and kids being exploited. It’s totally peppered with the most foul language, and we’re constantly redoing takes for television.”

Her Julie, by comparison with Lipton’s, is “a bit more strong-willed and a little more aggressive, which is good, a positive change.” The character is dealing with somewhat heavier psychological baggage, too: In the movie, Julie’s a recovering cocaine addict.

The other principals are Ribisi and Epps. Ribisi received strong notices for his work as the medic in “Saving Private Ryan” and was previously best known for a recurring role on NBC’s “Friends.”

Ribisi’s role is the most altered, as Silver and co-writer Stephen Kay completely redrew the part of Pete Cochran. “Michael Cole was really cool for the time, the leader of the squad, very handsome, sort of a classical leading man,” Silver says. “I don’t know if that sort of character translates to today, so we decided we needed a completely different Pete for the ‘90s.”

The new Pete, says Silver, “is just a goofy kid who acts impulsively and is sort of ‘out there.’ Pete gets in everybody’s face. He’s also funny, and the way Giovanni plays him, he’s incredibly likable.”

Ribisi, 24, researched the role, spending time with homeless teens on Hollywood Boulevard, witnessing first-hand their aggressive attitudes and troubled lives. “I keep trying to bring it back to that grounded reality for myself. Hopefully that’s what I’m about in the movie,” he says.

Casting Linc was difficult. “Every young black actor wanted to play Linc,” Silver says. “Linc is Michael Jordan. He’s Miles Davis. He’s just cool, and everybody wants to hang with him.” Epps, 25, was among the last to read for the part.

Epps was widely seen in “Scream 2” and has had more substantial roles in such other films as “Higher Learning,” “Juice” and “Daybreak.” He never met Clarence Williams III but he watched a few of the old “Mod Squad” episodes to draw on. “Clarence Williams had a lot of attitude, a real stoic demeanor,” he says. “It’s the intensity. Linc is level-headed. He’s fashionable, witty, basically a cool guy.”

Don’t look for cameo appearances by Cole, Lipton or Williams in the new “Mod Squad.” “We began to explore it,” Ladd says. “And then we came to terms with the fact that it might be a distraction. What are we going to do, have Peggy show up as a waitress in a bar? It was insulting to them.”

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The marketing challenge for “The Mod Squad” is to introduce the concept to people who may never have heard of the original or, if they have, think it’s hopelessly passe. That’s where the music comes in. A cornerstone of the campaign is its soundtrack, which includes songs by such contemporary artists as Busta Rhymes, Everlast and Bjork.

It’s not just a case of licensing existing songs of the day, as so often happens in movies. According to music supervisor Randy Gerston (“Titanic”), the unique nature of the film--a late ‘60s idea reborn in the late ‘90s--demanded that fresh voices be brought in to cover old classics.

“I realized that the one requirement of the songs, the one thread that could give the film a musical consistency, was groove,” Gerston said. “That rhythm and beat would give an old song a contemporary feel. That was the formula for mixing the late ‘60s with the ‘90s.”

For example, at an emotional moment for Julie, Alana Davis sings the old Steve Winwood tune “Can’t Find My Way Home”; even more commercial, Gerston had the hottest woman in music, multiple-Grammy winner Lauryn Hill, produce a new version of Curtis Mayfield’s “Here but I’m Gone.”

Hot young cast, potentially big soundtrack, little competition right now in the action-film marketplace. If this “Mod Squad” is successful, could there be a sequel? Could it work as a franchise?

Maybe, Ladd says. “If this becomes, God willing, a popular movie, we’d be crazy not to think of it that way.” But, he admits, there is some concern about whether “we could afford the kids” for a sequel. “If I had my druthers, I think I’d recruit a new group of kids and try to get that same magic that we have with Claire, Giovanni and Omar.”

Spelling offers another suggestion. “If the movie works but doesn’t create the excitement to make sequels, I’d love to do a new series. And I like to discover new talent. The new studios are looking for ‘young shows’--Fox, WB, UPN, they’d buy ‘The Mod Squad.’ UPN bought our ‘Love Boat.’ Did you ever think that ABC would be doing a new ‘Fantasy Island’?”

Where Are They Now?

*First “Mod Squad.” Page 8.