Pretty Good for a First Job Out of School

May 1999: Film student Jesse Wigutow spends 11 days dashing off the first draft of a screenplay on his laptop at the Beverly Hills Public Library--in time to get his last class critique before graduation.

September 1999: Wigutow sells “Urban Townies” to Warner Bros. as part of a development deal worth in the “mid to high six figures,” if both “Townies” and a second script are made into movies.

October 1999: Brad Pitt expresses interest in playing the lead, an unpublished novelist who returns home to deal with his dying father and alcoholic mother.

January 2000: Pitt submits to Warner Bros. a list of directors he’d like to work with, including Cameron Crowe and Mike Figgis.

It sounds like every aspiring screenwriter’s Hollywood fantasy. But it really happened to Wigutow.

No wonder, then, that Wigutow, 26, who graduated from the American Film Institute in June with a master of fine arts degree in screenwriting, can’t stop smiling--at least not when a newspaper photographer treks to his hilltop home and asks for a serious pose. “I don’t feel like I’ve found fame. I feel like I’ve found a nibble of success,” says the curly-haired Wigutow, who throws his feet up on a wicker coffee table, olive-green striped socks peering out from his blue slacks, and attempts a poker face.

Warner Bros. bought the script for Baltimore/Spring Creek partners Barry Levinson and Paula Weinstein, who will co-produce with management company partners J.C. Spink and Chris Bender.

Mark Romanek, known for his edgy music videos, had been attached to direct the project but later dropped out after changes in the script made the troubled lead character more unsympathetic.

Figgis, after meeting with Pitt, was attached as director, and a source said the film could start shooting as early as July, although no contracts have been signed. Guiding actors into the heart of dark characters is not unfamiliar territory for Figgis, who directed Nicolas Cage’s Oscar-winning performance as a terminal alcoholic in “Leaving Las Vegas.”

In the meantime, Pitt may tackle an ensemble role in the remake of “Ocean’s 11,” which like “Urban Townies” has not been green-lit yet. The “Ocean’s” role would take about a week to shoot, the source said.

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For his part, Wigutow remains an unpretentious guy who feels awkward when former AFI schoolmates ask about his earnings. Even this interview takes getting used to. “Talking about myself makes me uncomfortable,” Wigutow says, shifting on the couch. “It feels a little vain.”

It began as a story Wigutow had been mulling about someone who can’t escape his past and it becomes his downfall. He based the character partly on an upper-middle-class acquaintance who jumped out the window of his Park Avenue apartment.

The script, which he started writing in May, follows the emotionally repressed Artie, who drinks and drugs his way through a visit to New York as his dying father attempts to connect with him and Artie tries to rekindle a relationship with Jackie, his high school sweetheart.

In late August, Wigutow decided to test the waters by giving a draft to his friend, Toby Babst, an assistant at United Talent Agency.

Babst loved it. “Jesse wrote something that blew me away,” Babst said.

Since his boss, agent Marty Bowen, was on vacation, Babst passed the draft on to Bender-Spink. Early the next week, Wigutow called his machine and heard Spink plead: “I need to meet you right now. I’ll call you every hour on the hour until I hear from you,” Wigutow recalls.

Spink said he loved how the script played with time and that he was particularly moved by the inexorable downward spiral of the hero, who in trying to cope with what’s going on around him manages to write a novel--in longhand. “The wasted potential, that was what hurt, knowing something good was snuffed out,” Spink said.

“The great thing about it was that he couldn’t express himself,” Spink said. “The only way he could is through the book. But we’ll never know ‘cause we’ll never see the book.” By Thursday of that week, Bender-Spink had decided it wanted to manage Wigutow, who signed the following week with UTA as his agency.

Over Labor Day, Warner Bros. senior vice president of theatrical production Jeff Robinov read “Townies” and made an offer, as did Artisan, Wigutow says.

Then came meetings with entertainment lawyers. “At times I had to bite my lip from laughing, thinking, ‘Why do you care about me?’ It was surreal. Three weeks earlier I was sitting in the library, working off a friend’s script notes and [now] I’m entering law firms and they’re saying this law firm is for you.”

Despite his newfound success, the low-key Wigutow has no plans to trade in his collection of Hawaiian shirts--he’s sporting a checked shirt today--nor his 7-year-old Honda Civic.

He’s also staying put at the top floor of a house perched high above Sunset Boulevard. The cozy place has the feel of a student pad, with mismatched furniture, Mexican rugs on the floor and poster-sized reproductions of Wigutow’s beloved Blue Note jazz albums lining the staircase.

“It’s quiet and removed,” says Wigutow, lighting a cigarette and staring out at the smog-shrouded scenery. “When I come up the hill, I’m not in L.A. anymore.”

As a child growing up in Manhattan, reading screenplays came naturally to Wigutow, the son of Dan, a producer, and Sally, a small-business consultant. “I always knew I wanted to write,” Wigutow says.

But curiously, it wasn’t film that inspired him, although he allows, “I’m a big Woody Allen fan.” Like Allen, Wigutow infuses his work with a love of New York. “I romanticize it so much,” says Wigutow. “In Manhattan, every single corner has a memory . . . , whether it’s buying a Snickers or getting mugged.”

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Wigutow majored in English at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He then interned at Children’s Television Workshop for “Sesame Street.” One of his duties was to tuck loose feathers back in Big Bird’s costume. He also worked for a time in the cartoon department of the New Yorker before landing a job as assistant to the producer of the TV show “Early Edition,” in its first season.

While toiling 15-hour days as an automated dialogue replacement supervisor--he sometimes had to coax recalcitrant actors to rerecord lines they considered “too dumb”--Wigutow churned out two episodes and his first feature script.

He sent that feature to AFI when he applied in 1997. “In my mind, AFI was always the best,” says Wigutow.

Wigutow was known at AFI for turning out multiple drafts and serving brutally honest critiques to his classmates, which, he says, were inspired by his mother, who is “fanatical about the truth.” And the thick-skinned writer took as good as he gave. “I got out of AFI much more than I ever bargained for,” Wigutow says. “I became a much better writer.”

It was oddly disorienting, he says, to receive his first paycheck.

“It’s more money with my name on it than I’ve ever seen. I can’t just put it in my checking account,” he says, but he pretty quickly got used to the idea. “I’m doing what I want to be doing. I feel comfortable where I am.”

Still, “it’s a weird industry,” Wigutow says, stubbing out a cigarette. “I could write five crappy scripts and it could all go away, even though I wrote one script that’s generated so much hype.”

But even if his success proves evanescent, “No one can stop me from writing. I just hope I have something to say.”