The Kids and the Big Kahuna

“Five minutes!” the director’s assistant yells. “Then we put makeup on!”

Thirty minutes until curtain on opening night of “Gidget: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Musical.” The 61-year-old director, Francis Ford Coppola, stands in front of the stage in the auditorium of Los Alamitos High School.

Thirty minutes until curtain and Coppola stalks the stage for last-minute tweaks on the play he co-wrote. “John-Carlos,” Coppola thunders to Macho Cop No. 1, a kid with only a couple of lines in the two-hour play, “you gotta give it everything you got.”

Lights flicker, the five-piece house band warms up, crew members haul surfboards across the stage. A TV crew from NBC’s “Access Hollywood” holds out boom microphones. The man behind “The Godfather” is pumping up the “Gidget” cast, which includes students and alumni from the Orange County High School of the Arts, based at this campus.

Thirty minutes until curtain for Krysta Rodriguez, barely 16, who opens the play as Gidget in pigtails, a white strapless bra and gingham underwear, in front of a gilded full-length mirror. Krysta, a doe-eyed soprano with a Julia Roberts smile, sings the opening notes in a sweet, tender voice. A junior in the fall, Krysta has dreamed of Broadway since she was a little girl who never wanted to take off her tutu. At 6, Krysta saw a production of “Annie,” watched its young star glow in the stage lights and set her heart on a moment of her own.

Thirty minutes until curtain for D’Juan Watts, 18, a compact, muscular dancer whose back flips are so mighty that he inspires Coppola to fling his hands in overhead applause. Two years ago, at another school, D’Juan’s dance teacher told him he’d never make it. D’Juan, a 4.0 student who just finished his junior year, cried his eyes out and kept dancing--hip-hop, tap, ballet, jazz, anything--and now he’s about to shine with a lyrical pas de deux in a scene with the show’s stars.

Thirty minutes until curtain for 17-year-old Jeff Heapy, who’s so intense about his starring role as Gidget’s love interest, Moondoggie, that he sometimes grabs a skateboard during rehearsal and rolls away to escape his character. He keeps a journal of what he thinks Moondoggie’s days are like. He scribbles a list of his character’s likes and dislikes.

Jeff, very much the jock he plays, isn’t nervous. He never is. Just antsy. Opening night is always magic, even if it’s just your mom and dad and sister in the audience, but tonight. . who knows?

“It’s a chance of a lifetime for everybody,” says Jeff, who will be a senior in September. “The only reason I’m panicking is just because I don’t know who’s going to be there. It’s this huge chance. There’s a lot of like, ‘Oh, my God. I need to be good or else.’ ”

Thirty minutes until the first of six sold-out shows.

You never know who might be in the house tonight, the Hollywood types who want to see what Francisfordcoppola is up to, or guest star Dermot Mulroney of “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” All week, the kids trade rumors about who might come to the show. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. . .Cher . . . .George Lucas . . . Steven Spielberg . . . Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze. . ..

None of the kids wants to say that this could be the Big Break. Nobody wants to jinx it; nobody needs extra jitters, not these kids already armed with the tools of the trade: cell phones, beepers, agents, managers, private voice teachers and modeling portfolios. Nobody thinks they’re a shoo-in if Coppola takes the show to Broadway or turns it into a film, as he hopes to do.

But you never know. . .

In this business, you walk a skittish line between hope and heartbreak and right now, with Coppola at their side, the kids are teetering on the side of the bright lights.

*

The rumors began in the hallways during the last week of school before summer vacation. Francisfordcoppola is putting on some sort of surf musical. Here. Yes, Coppola, the five-time Oscar-winning director, writer and producer.

In the mid-1950s, as a theater major at Hofstra University in New York, Coppola sang and worked in musicals. He directed Fred Astaire in the 1968 film version of Broadway’s “Finian’s Rainbow.” (Never mind that his last musical, the 1982 film “One From the Heart,” flopped and helped plunge him into bankruptcy three times.)

Three years ago, Coppola came upon his 10-year-old granddaughter and her friends, who were mesmerized by the 1959 film “Gidget,” starring Sandra Dee. He watched it with them. A girl’s “Catcher in the Rye,” he thought. He read Frederick Kohner’s book--a coming-of-age story about a wannabe surfer girl--and decided that “Gidget” as a musical might work.

Coppola got together with composer John Farrar, who wrote “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and “You’re the One That I Want” for “Grease.” The two co-wrote 12 songs and talked about how they might work out the kinks through a theater workshop with young people. Farrar mentioned a performing arts school he knew, attended by the children of friends. A public charter school brimming with talent.

In mid-June, Coppola pitched his idea to the school’s executive director, Ralph Opacic, and musical theater director David Green. He would direct the production, cover costs (more than $15,000) and work with the school’s professional associates--a stage director, choreographer and musical director, who would earn a small stipend.

And he wanted their kids.

After auditions, the kids noted excitedly, Coppola took their pictures and resumes with him. “That’s what keeps these actors going--dreaming,” said Green, 39, “that their break is around the corner.”

And you never know, said 21-year-old Chad Doreck, who plays a “Gidget” surfer. He’s a 1997 graduate and professional actor brash enough to have called the William Morris Agency and suggest their agents sign him. (They did.) Chad invited more than 70 people to the shows, including 12 agents for film, TV and print ads, four casting directors, four producers and his hair stylist, whose partner is a Disney executive, because . . . well, you never know.

And why not? Chad gave up three huge auditions to do this play, including one for Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man movie, and they’re casting an unknown for the lead, so. .

Doesn’t hurt Chad’s confidence, either, that Coppola cast him.

“This is something that people, huge people, Sharon Stone people, try to do, work with certain directors, and the fact that I’ve accomplished this in my brief career. . .,” says Chad, who can slick back his curly hair to look like he walked out of “Grease.” “It’s like, you’re in the game.”

*

Coppola came to every rehearsal--Monday through Friday from July 5 on--in untucked, half-open Hawaiian shirts and mussed hair. The kids said he reminded them of Santa Claus, this jolly, white-bearded, rotund man in owlish glasses. No sign of the erratic film director whose brilliant, manic style was captured in a 1991 documentary on his near breakdown while making “Apocalypse Now.”

On the “Gidget” flier, he didn’t get top billing; the school did. He turned off his cell phone during the full-time rehearsals and walked in from lunch like everyone else, carrying bags of El Pollo Loco from a black Audi that a dealership loaned him. He stayed at a Los Alamitos hotel and flew home on weekends to his Napa Valley estate and vineyard. When he’d leave, the girls would hug or kiss him good-bye.

For fun, one cast member, known as a musical theater geek, would throw out the name of an old Broadway show that no one else had ever heard of--and Coppola would belt out a number from it. Only pre-”Hair,” though. He doesn’t much like the later stuff.

Although the kids called him “Francis,” they thought of him as Francisfordcoppola, too focused to deal with pesky things like errands. (Opacic, the school’s executive director, picked up his dry cleaning one day.) Without a script, he shouted the lines when an actor blanked or belted out the lyrics with the abandon of someone singing in the shower. He signed off on each costume for the 37-member cast: “Not sexy enough,” he told a girl at dress rehearsal who wore a belted brown dress.

One night a couple of weeks ago, he packed the cast off to Bolsa Chica State Beach. He roasted hot dogs with them, made s’mores, danced around a bonfire. Then he got down to business. You can’t just act like you’re partying on the beach, he told them. Feel the sand. Splash in the water. Breathe deep and remember how the air smells. Improvise, jump rope with seaweed. Link sense and memory.

On most days, he tended to suggest, not direct. In a fight scene between Moondoggie and another surfer, for instance, he didn’t tell the actors to throw harder punches. Instead: “Let me really believe that fight comes from previous rivalry . . . like you’ve got a little bit of a turf thing going on.”

For days, one key scene between Gidget and Moondoggie bothered Coppola. The two start to admit their feelings for one another, but the scene felt flat. Coppola turned to the choreographer. What if we got a couple of dancers in there, he said, to interpret what the young couple is saying. With the dance between D’Juan and his partner, the scene suddenly took on texture.

“I was watching him work a scene,” said Jeff (Moondoggie), “and the way it looked from the start, and the way it looked after was hugely different. I don’t know how he does it. He doesn’t push on the actors. He lets them find their own course but he guides them through it. And suddenly it was something that was not there before. When I saw that, I knew, this is Francis Ford Coppola, and he’s an amazing director.”

This is a director who knows how to make Moments. Big ones, like the arresting scene in 1979’s “Apocalypse Now,” in which Robert Duvall’s character plays Wagner’s triumphant “The Ride of the Valkyries” to scare the hell out of Vietnamese villagers as he leads a fleet of helicopters in an explosive attack.

And small moments, like one between Moondoggie and his cocky idol, Kahoona. Coppola stopped a scene in which the two talk about Moondoggie’s future. What if Kahoona opens two beers, Coppola suggested. Say Moondoggie reaches out, thinking one beer is for him--but Kahoona pulls both bottles back.

Texture.

And realism.

In the days before opening night, Krysta, 5-feet-3 and 105 pounds, doesn’t think she’s quite there with Gidget. She has to stop acting and just be.

“Sometimes it never really comes out until opening night,” Krysta said. “You get the adrenaline of the crowd and everything and then you just do it and you don’t know how.”

*

Twenty minutes until curtain.

D’Juan, who wears a silver nipple ring, keeps “Romeo and Juliet” in mind for his interpretive dance. Be real, feel in love. Twice, he saw Brian Stokes Mitchell in the musical “Ragtime” and was blown away by the power in the man’s voice, how he lets you feel every beat in your body like the scene is really happening. That’s the way D’Juan wants to dance tonight.

Ticket holders start to fill the 400 seats. Krysta rushes barefoot from a TV interview to the cluttered dressing room, stopping to hook a bikini top for a cast member.

Fifteen minutes until curtain.

In the band room backstage, the choreographer leads the cast through a warm-up. The kids whoop and holler, with huge grins. Krysta jumps up and down, holding her strapless bra so it doesn’t slip. They do bicep curls and throw out giddy chants: “Gidget! Gidget!”

Ten minutes until curtain.

Coppola enters. They join hands in a circle. There’s one thing we have to do, he says. He has done it before every movie, “The Godfather,” all of them. Everybody shout, “Pawooba!” three times, he commands. The room shakes with their cheers.

“Sense-memory, the whole way,” Coppola calls over his shoulder as he heads to the auditorium.

In front of a mirror, D’Juan keeps practicing, pirouette, turn, turn, sharp, sharp.

And now, show time.

Spotlight on Krysta, whose girlish voice is so true that people smile when they hear her first notes.

The audience chuckles at the words of Gidget’s friend, who stopped ironing her curls because her father “hates the smell of burning hair in the morning”--a nod to Duvall’s famous “‘Apocalypse Now” line about napalm.

Jeff’s scuffle with the other surfer is so heated that it draws “Ooooohs” from the crowd. They catch Kahoona’s subtle move with the two beers, and laugh.

D’Juan back flips his way through a luau scene, winning cheers, and then dances his heart out through the pas de deux to lingering applause.

When it’s over, the kids get a standing ovation.

Filing out, the audience buzzes: “I love that little girl . . . Pleasantly surprised . . . It’s great . . . “

During the performance, Coppola stands in the back of the auditorium. He doesn’t address the crowd or take a bow.

Thirty minutes after the show, he gathers the cast.

Wonderful, he says. “I’m very proud of you.”

Privately, the levity leaves his voice. Too many technical kinks, he grouses to a visitor. Lights not coming on and off like he wants. But by Sunday, the last performance, he vows, it’ll be perfect.

The kids? A joy.

They bask in the praise and don’t mind much that the only celebrity in the crowd was Neve Campbell.

To these kids, aglow with possibility, that so doesn’t matter anymore.

*

Staff writer Vivian LeTran contributed to this report.

Renee Tawa can be reached at renee.tawa@latimes.com.