Hey, It’s a Small World--and He’s Adjusting

Life is not easy for a genetically enhanced human prototype on the run in the bleak 21st century.

Loss and fear and corruption seep through the world in which Max, a 20-year-old bicycle messenger, tries to survive. Possessing a wounded beauty that stops men--and women--dead in their tracks, she doesn’t suffer fools lightly. She has attitude, the kind that angry teens drape themselves in for protection, and deadly martial arts skills that she’s unafraid to use.

But about halfway through the two-hour pilot of the new Fox science-fiction drama “Dark Angel,” Max (Jessica Alba) displays a rare moment of vulnerability. Asked by a frightened accomplice about how she will handle a dangerous felon, Max replies, “This isn’t my usual line of work. I’m making this up as I go along.”

The same could be said of James Cameron, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who is leaving behind his usual line of work for the moment to develop and produce “Dark Angel,” his first project for television.

After an impressive string of larger-than-life hits such as “Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and his last film, the most successful movie of all time, Cameron is going from “Titanic” to the tube.

For Cameron and Fox, the future is now. The setting of the series is the world in the year 2020, a bleak and unsavory remnant of an electromagnetic pulse set off by terrorists that renders technology virtually useless.

“Dark Angel” represents a considerable risk for the network and for Cameron. The series features an unknown female lead and has a dark tone that initially made studio executives squirm nervously. Fox has failed with previous attempts such as “Millennium” and “The Visitor” to build a sci-fi franchise that works in concert with the aging “The X-Files.”

Cameron’s name alone, Fox hopes, will be enough to attract hordes of moviegoers, and the series is being advertised as “James Cameron’s Dark Angel.” But even his marquee value may not automatically overcome the jinx that has victimized other high-profile filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer when they tried to make the transition to television.

Fox is putting a huge promotional push behind the series, showcasing it with a special two-hour premiere Oct. 3. And Cameron is more than aware that his involvement has created great expectations. But while the medium may be a new one, the creative terrain is one that he knows well. After all, this is the man who dreamed up extraterrestrials wiping out the world with mile-high tidal waves in “The Abyss,” indestructible androids turning into liquid and other shapes in “T2,” a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger snarling “I’ll be back” in “The Terminator,” and a tragic, three-hour love story that had movie audiences weeping and coming back for more in “Titanic.”

“That expectation is a minus,” said Cameron, relaxing in a work shirt, jeans and boots while sitting in the living room at his rustic, sunny home in the hills of Malibu. “I can never completely fulfill it in the TV medium because my background is in features. But I do believe there’ll be some excitement generated about it, and people will show up, at least in the beginning. If we can deliver on what TV does, then we’ve created traction in the audience and they’ll show up the next week. But I know television is a tough game, a brutal game.”

He created the series with veteran producer Charles “Chick” Eglee, who co-wrote the pilot with Cameron. The two have developed story lines for the entire season and hired a writing staff to flesh them out. Cameron has no immediate plans to direct an episode but insists he will be intimately involved with the drama.

“Dark Angel” has already sparked enthusiastic but cautious buzz in Hollywood because of Cameron’s notorious reputation as a controlling perfectionist whose budgets spiral into the stratosphere. Insiders have wondered whether Cameron is too big for TV, and whether Fox is crazy for teaming up with a creative force whose vision can be as huge as the cost of his movies (“Titanic” cost around $200 million).

A question about whether his reputation for high budgets may have caused some corporate anxiety provokes a deep, rich laugh from the 46-year-old filmmaker. “Gee, you think?” he quips. “Oh, that would be leaping to a conclusion. They would never go there.”

But seriously, Cameron says he is ready to play by the financial and creative rules of weekly TV drama. He notes that the two-hour pilot for “Dark Angel,” which was budgeted at $10 million, came in for less. Still, it cost more than twice as much as a typical two-hour pilot.

He says he has enlisted the perfect partner in Eglee, a former executive at Steven Bochco Productions who was an executive producer of “Murder One,” “The Byrds of Paradise” and “Total Security,” and a co-executive producer of “NYPD Blue.” Eglee and Cameron had earlier collaborated on another project, co-writing the cult film “Piranha II: The Spawning.”

“I felt if I were going to be viable in TV, I would have to have a partner who has done this stuff and done it for cost,” he said. “Chick has run a number of shows and knows the ins and outs of that. Hopefully, people will not be expecting ‘T2’-quality special effects every week. We just can’t do it.”

Cameron already is learning to frame his television projects in ways that are unique from film.

“When I do a film and it goes over budget, I’m putting myself in the position of responsibility of saying, ‘You know what? This film was viable at what you thought you were going to spend, and I still think it’s viable at what we’re now spending.’ And I’ve been right every time. But I can’t do that in television. So we were absolutely steadfast in doing this under budget. That way, the decision is theirs.

“That way, if the series fails,” he said with another laugh, “it’s not my fault. Or being over budget is irrelevant.”

Added Eglee of the pilot: “This is the first Jim Cameron project to come in under budget. Yes, this show is in a future world and has the veneer of science fiction. But ultimately it’s about the beating heart of the characters. Science fiction gives us a story, and Max gives us a back story. But it’s not about flying robots and androids.”

Still, Eglee said, “I know it was like a blind date for the studio to get in bed with us. It must have been like, ‘What are they going to do?’ Jim has quite a reputation. There was a degree of apprehension and it was well-founded.”

*

Whatever initial worries may have shadowed Fox executives over Cameron’s reputation on budgets or control seem to have subsided as the production continues in Vancouver, Canada, where the drama is filmed. “We’ve gotten real support on their end,” said Eglee.

There is a realistic edge to the hyper-enthusiasm Fox TV executives have when talking of the Cameron project.

“We have always had nothing but total excitement about working with Jim,” said 20th Century Fox Television President Dana Walden. “He is nothing less than completely responsible. No, it’s not a cheap show. But it’s driven by quality, which never comes cheap. The budget is all on the screen.”

“Dark Angel” revolves around Max, who deals with the bleak, underground, everyday world of a post-apocalyptic (or as Cameron and Eglee term it, “post-info-calyptic”) society while eluding the government that created her and her escaped “siblings.” She reluctantly joins forces with Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a crusading cyber-journalist. Also featured is John Savage as Lyedecker, the main scowling government operative pursuing Max.

The show’s premise--terrorists setting off an electromagnetic pulse--is not far-fetched, said Dan Johnson, assistant editor of the Futurist, a journal of forecasts, trends and ideas about the future.

“It’s a good hook,” Johnson said. “There are viable futuristic fears about terrorists doing a lot with just a little bit of technology. With the political landscape that may exist, it’s a credible threat.”

Johnson added that the show’s concept falls in line with films like “Blade Runner” that predict a cold and cruel future: “It’s much easier to imagine a dark and despairing world than it is to sustain a positive image. It’s easy to darken things up. And people like to be scared.”

The world of “Dark Angel” is filled with despair but is offset by Max’s lack of fear and cocky one-liners. At its most fundamental, “Dark Angel” is a story of how humans, even genetically altered ones, survive and adapt to crushing hardship.

“It’s the depression, people have to band together, having a code of honor is most important,” said Cameron. “People have to abide by their own set of rules.”

At Cameron’s production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, the focus was initially almost solely on film. But over time, he and executives there began to explore a move into television. As it does for film studios, television can provide a steady stream of revenue that helps in riding out the ups and downs of filmmaking. And syndication, which has long produced a rich economic afterlife for television shows, is only getting more lucrative as more markets open up around the globe. In contrast to filmmaking, television is also a fast-moving industry, where an idea can go from development to pilot to network prime time in less than a year--a process that has considerable appeal to feature filmmakers who often spend years on a project before it ever hits the theaters.

“We’ve been thinking about getting into television at Lightstorm for about six years,” Cameron recalls. But there was no rush. “We’re a pretty self-contained company, and we didn’t know television. We didn’t want to jump in and muck around and make a bunch of public mistakes.” The two formed Cameron/Eglee Productions to produce “Dark Angel.”

Cameron has kept a relatively low profile since his “king of the world” proclamation at the 1997 Oscars, when “Titanic” won 11 Academy Awards, including best picture. In the years since, he’s gotten divorced from actress Linda Hamilton and recently married “Titanic” co-star Suzy Amis. Meanwhile, Lightstorm now is “developing projects for me to produce, a couple to direct,” he said, though nothing yet, beyond “Dark Angel,” is on the front burner.

Contrary to earlier rumblings, he will not be directing or be involved with a new version of “Planet of the Apes” (Tim Burton has that job), or the features “Spider-Man” or “Terminator 3.” A sequel to “True Lies” is possible--a script is being written, and all the principals of the original 1994 film--Cameron, Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis--are interested.

Once “Dark Angel” gets on its feet, he’ll be involved “on a week-by-week basis,” he says, while Eglee will have daily responsibility.

Cameron’s entry into TV evokes memories of other major filmmakers who attempted to make the jump from big screen to small, with little success.

Steven Spielberg’s underwater sci-fi drama, “seaQuest DSV,” sank in 1995, and his 1998 cops-on-the-beat drama, “High Incident,” shot blanks with viewers. In addition, NBC last week booted Spielberg’s latest, the boot-camp drama “Semper Fi,” from the midseason schedule. Jerry Bruckheimer was unable to make his hit 1995 film “Dangerous Minds” into a hit TV show the following year. Joel Silver, of “Lethal Weapon” fame, didn’t strike pay dirt with last year’s UPN drama “The Strip.”

“Spielberg is a great example of someone who has been spectacularly successful in movies and yet does not have a successful track record on TV,” said Tim Brooks, co-author of “The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946 to the Present.”

Fox ran into a wall in 1997 when it rushed to make a series deal with filmmakers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who were still flush from the success of “Independence Day.” The team failed to take creative or financial advice on the series “The Visitor.” Fox canceled the show shortly after its premiere.

Said Brooks: “TV and movies play by very different rules. Filmmakers make things larger than life. The personalities they develop on screen can be large and unrealistic. TV is much more personal; these are people we welcome into our home. We would not want Dirty Harry in our living room every week.”

Cameron believes television and film offer distinct storytelling opportunities. He compared the uniqueness of “The Godfather” with the evolving drama of “The Sopranos,” and how each was perfect for its respective medium.

“As great as ‘The Godfather’ is, you can’t stick it in and watch it every week,” he said, of the traditional structure of beginning, middle and end that characterizes most films. “I look upon [“Dark Angel”] as a 14-hour movie”--a story that can play out over time, without having to be compressed into a single two-hour story.

The two creators dreamed up “Dark Angel” during a brainstorming session at Cameron’s home. Several hours passed and various concepts were batted around: some sci-fi ideas, a sitcom even, as well as shows in more traditional dramatic genres such as police or law.

But they kept coming back to the idea of a series called “Experimental Girl.” “We thought, what about a girl on the streets who is fending for herself alone? She has a lot of enemies, a strong network of friends and is genetically engineered, who is faster, smarter than anyone. Whenever it veered toward classic comic-book territory, we tried to pull it back to relationships.”

Eglee wanted to add a hip-hop sensibility to their landscape. He hired Public Enemy’s Chuck D. to do the title song and other rap artists to contribute tunes that will add to the intense, urban environment, which he hopes will be both foreboding and glamorous.

“We wanted to key into this broken world 20 years from now,” Eglee said. “But we didn’t want it to be off-putting or cold. We want the audience to feel like they want to be a part of it. It’s definitely not fresh and newly painted. These are not shiny happy people.”

Indeed, the streets are filled with people with worn faces and wearing weathered clothing. Flea market vendors and the hulks of burning cars are everywhere. The streets are mostly dark and wet. But bright colors, like remnants of other days, find their way in.

The team hired production designer Jerry Wanek, who developed the looks for TNT’s “Houdini” and CBS’ “The Magnificent Seven,” to create Max’s world.

“We wanted to treat this show like a period piece, bring a lot of grit and hardship to it,” said Wanek. “We had to take contemporary objects 20 years into the future, then add 15 years of age because of the destruction of the electromagnetic pulse. There’s no electricity. We created strange entanglements of wire where people are hoarding things. We took stuff that is popular and tried to tweak it a bit.”

*

The new security guard wandering the “Dark Angel” set in Vancouver approached the petite, dark-haired woman standing nearby and asked, “Is Jessica Alba, the Dark Angel, working today?”

Alba smiled and said, “I don’t know. She might be working tonight.”

Right now, Alba says, she can walk down the streets of Vancouver without being recognized, but that is likely to change for the relatively unknown actress at the center of this still-unseen series.

When the grown-up Max is first seen, she is sitting on top of a graffiti-scarred and abandoned Space Needle in Seattle, looking as if she might leap off in a burst of flight. It’s hard not to see that as reflective of both Alba and “Dark Angel”--such a leap can end in two ways, success or failure. It is a definitive time in Alba’s career, and her prominence in the drama means that both Cameron and Fox are counting on her appeal to young viewers Fox needs to court.

Finding the right Max was not easy.

“We wanted physicality for the part,” he said, noting that the pair looked at more than 1,000 young women, including athletes and gymnasts.

“Jessica emerged as the most interesting,” said Cameron. “I just wanted to see what she was going to do next. Every time we did a take on video, she was different, and she could readily accept the input.”

Max is very much in the tradition of physically and emotionally strong Cameron females such as Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) of “The Terminator” and “T2,” Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) of “Aliens” and Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) of “The Abyss.”

There was also her dark-skinned and exotic appearance.

Alba says, “I’m a little bit of everything. I’m all mixed up. I’ve been told I’m too exotic for a lot of roles. I’ve missed out on a lot of things.” Her mother has a Canadian, Italian, French and Danish background. “But she looks fair-skinned,” she adds. Her father’s family is from Mexico, “but he grew up in California.”

Adds Cameron: “This is supposed to be the genetically engineered super-girl of the future. We didn’t want to fall into the trap of what happens all the time when science fiction deals with this, where all of a sudden you have this tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan super-person. So we actively looked for a young woman who you really couldn’t tell what her background is. She is to be the best of everything we are in one person. In a way, she is the whole human race.”

Despite a commanding presence on screen that mixes a sultry athleticism with a haunted world-weariness, the 19-year-old Alba off-screen has the tone and personality of a teenager who is excited yet pragmatic about being at the center of a network series.

“I would be a disappointment to people who met me,” Alba said in a brief break from a demanding day in which she had to perform several stunts.

“My whole outlook on fame and success is that everyone is normal, and you just get lucky,” said Alba, whose recent film credits include “Never Been Kissed” and “Idle Hands.” “I mean, like that security guard. He’s asking about Jessica Alba as if she’s some entity. It just shows that people build you up to be this untouchable, weird thing. But I’m not all dressed up in real life. I wear sweats all the time.”

Even though she often wears form-fitting outfits and has done a layout for the risque men’s magazine Maxim, Alba dismisses the notion that major sex symbol status is on the horizon.

“My Maxim spread is clothed,” says Alba. “I could personally care less about a nudie men’s magazine. I’m not trying to be a sex symbol in any way. Girls have used Maxim to show they are also sex symbols, but I could care less about that sort of career. It’s too much of a stereotype. I wouldn’t want to be wearing lingerie in some magazine. I might as well do Playboy.”

Max, however, she has no qualms about.

“I just love her cockiness,” she says. “Girls can’t usually get away with that. They’re considered bitchy, while guys are called charming if they’re cocky. Max doesn’t care. She has no fear of death. She is so hyper-aware, and she doesn’t have to apologize for who she is.”

Asked whether she shares Max’s traits, Alba said, “I do have a little bit of a smart mouth sometimes. But I don’t get away with that. It has to do with my family.”

Even before the show’s premiere, before the first Nielsen ratings marking initial audience reaction, Cameron and Eglee have been looking at the second season, hopeful that “Dark Angel” will draw a loyal following. And television is where Cameron wants to be.

“I’m like a batter who hits home runs,” he says. “Now I’m being asked to run the bases.”