How ‘Double Take’ Got More Than a Second Look

I never thought I’d use Graham Greene’s and Eddie Griffin’s names in the same sentence, but the elegant British novelist and the sassy black comic have something in common: They’re key ingredients in “Double Take,” the Touchstone Pictures action-comedy due Friday that stars Griffin as a con man who exchanges identities with an investment banker (Orlando Jones), who’s on the run after being framed for murder and laundering millions for a Mexican drug cartel.

In Hollywood, where movies take years to get made, projects often undergo a few changes with a lot of twists and turns along the way. But when it comes to total transformation, it would be hard to top “Double Take,” which, during the last decade, has involved--at least briefly--everyone from Greene and Griffin to Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Chris Tucker and Chris Rock. (How’s that for the art of name dropping in one sentence!)

Among the few constants in the project were writer-director George Gallo, best known for writing the 1988 hit “Midnight Run,” and producer David Permut, a high-energy deal maker who would seem a lot more at home in a novel by Elmore Leonard. (As a young producer, Permut sold a remake of “Dragnet” by going into the office of then-Universal studio head Frank Price and humming the TV show’s famous theme song with Dan Aykroyd standing at his side.)

Without such an easy hook, “Double Take” was a lot more difficult to get made. But its progress from moody thriller to streetwise comedy offers a telling glimpse of the commercial realities of today’s Hollywood.

It also serves as further evidence that black comic actors have become a dominant presence in youth-oriented comic thrillers. After a crowd of studio insiders saw an early December “Double Take” screening, Griffin was deluged with offers of starring roles. Within a day, he’d signed with Imagine Entertainment to star in “Undercover Brother,” a film based on a Web-created comedy series.

It all started in 1989, when Gallo got a late-night call from his pal Frank Pesce, a movie buff and streetwise character in his own right whose life story provided the gist for the Gallo-directed “29th Street.”

Pesce told Gallo he had to see “Across the Bridge,” an unsung 1950s film noir based on a Greene story. It starred Rod Steiger as a crooked German industrialist who, while escaping to Mexico, exchanges identities with a man who turns out to be wanted for murder. He even takes the man’s dog, who turns out to be his only trustworthy friend.

“I started cracking up watching it because here’s this guy who’s in trouble for one thing, and when he tries to be crafty, his good idea just gets him into deeper trouble,” explains Gallo. “It’s a classic comic premise and I could really identify with it, ‘cause it’s like so many things I’ve done in my life, trying to be smart and just getting myself into worse trouble.”

When Permut saw the movie, he had the same reaction: It was a “gold nugget.” It’s no surprise that over the last six decades, 16 Greene novels and stories have been made into films; the novelist (and onetime film critic) had a natural cinematic touch. Permut acquired the rights to “Dolores,” a 1938 Greene short story that was used as the basis for “Across the Bridge.” (Dolores is the name of the dog in both films.)

One writer did a treatment for the film; a second writer began work on a full-scale script. By then the film was at New Line Cinema, where Permut had a producer deal. Gallo, having befriended De Niro while shooting “Midnight Run,” spoke with the actor about the project as a possible vehicle for him and Al Pacino.

But before the writer had finished his script, all hell broke loose. In 1994, believing that he’d been cut out of the making of “Dumb & Dumber,” a huge New Line hit that Permut had originally submitted to the studio, Permut filed a $35-million lawsuit against New Line. His projects there all went into limbo. For several years, a remake of “Across the Bridge” was a dead issue.

Then in 1998, Permut opened Vanity Fair’s Hollywood edition and saw an Annie Leibovitz photo of Chris Rock and Chris Tucker, posing with a tiny Chihuahua. Though others saw simply a Leibovitz celebrity shot, the savvy producer saw a poster for a new kind of buddy movie.

Thanks to the enormous influence of hip-hop, a generation of young white teenagers has become as colorblind about movies as they are about music. There was already box-office proof: “Bad Boys,” which launched Michael Bay’s career as a director, had been written for Nick Nolte and Jeff Goldblum, but the 1995 film became a huge hit when producer Jerry Bruckheimer cast two black TV comics, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

Permut showed the Rock-Tucker photo to Gallo, who had written the original “Bad Boys” script, and said: What does this remind you of? Suddenly “Across the Bridge” was alive again.

As luck would have it, Steve Longi, who runs Permut’s production company, heard “Rush Hour” director Brett Ratner on “The Howard Stern Show,” promoting his film and naming Gallo’s “Midnight Run” as one of his all-time favorites. Within weeks, Permut and Gallo took Ratner to a local cigar club, where the chain-smoking Gallo could pitch the movie.

After Ratner signed on to direct, Permut took the Tucker-Rock-Ratner concept to Tom Rothman at 20th Century Fox. He gave Rothman the Leibovitz photo and told him he had Tucker and Rock attached to the project, even though Permut now admits, “I didn’t have Tucker at all, but I figured as long as we had Brett involved, I was as close to getting him as anyone.”

What happened next is the murkiest chapter in the film’s history. Gallo wrote the script, but Permut’s producer deal never closed, in part because of problems involving the underlying rights to the movie. When the deal collapsed, Gallo went into a funk: He’d written a script for a busted project without ever getting paid.

“Of course, David saw it as a great opportunity,” Gallo recalls. “He said, ‘What are you so worked up about? Now we’ve got a spec script.’ David is the kind of guy who can be on a plane where all four engines flame out and say, ‘Hey, this is good for us!’ ”

With Fox out, Permut drove to Burbank and gave the script--and the photo, which was by now part of the sales pitch--to Todd Garner, then co-president of Disney Films. Garner canceled his lunch and read the script. By mid-afternoon, he’d agreed to make the picture. Ratner was out, having committed to make “Family Man.” The Tucker-Rock pairing never materialized either, but the studio went ahead, keeping the film in the $25-million budget range by hiring lesser-known talent. (Griffin and Jones are each making $500,000 for the film.)

Gallo saw that as a chance to throw his hat into the ring. He pitched himself to then-Disney chief Joe Roth, who had made “29th Street” at Fox. Roth told Gallo that if he could persuade Garner he was the right man, he could direct the movie. Gallo went in and pitched his heart out. On his way home--he was so jittery that he had a friend drive him to the studio--his agent phoned to tell him Disney was calling for his quotes. He’d gotten the job.

Of course, three days later, Roth left Disney. Then Gallo had a tooth removed and ended up in bed for a month with serum sickness after a bad penicillin reaction. Two weeks before filming started, Garner left the studio too. Gallo thought the picture was doomed, but new Disney chief Peter Schneider got solidly behind the film.

“Peter has been great throughout the whole process,” says Gallo. “When we had our first test screening, he came up to me afterward with Michael Eisner and they both said, ‘It’s a riot. Don’t change a thing.’ ”

Disney has been promoting the movie heavily with both young moviegoers and African American audiences, hoping it has a hit similar to “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” the studio’s PG-13 Rob Schneider comedy. “When kids see Eddie Griffin and Orlando Jones, the last thing they think about is race,” says Gallo. “This movie isn’t about two black guys. It’s about two funny guys who happen to be black.”

Permut believes in good omens. Vacationing on a tiny Caribbean island over the holidays, Permut ran into Hollywood research guru Joe Farrell walking on the beach. The producer yelled, “How we doing, Joe?” and says Farrell gave him a hearty thumbs up. “Comedy can come from the strangest places,” says Permut. “It’s like when Michael Eisner asked me about the movie at our test screening, I said, ‘Hey, it’s another Graham Greene knee-slapper.’ ”

Gun Control: Disney’s original poster for “Double Take” had Griffin and Jones with Dolores the Dog, who, as a comic twist, had a gun in its mouth. But last fall, when the studio submitted the artwork to the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which handles the ratings for films and advertising material, the MPAA rejected the poster, saying the gun had to go. The new poster artwork has Dolores sans gun.

Why did the MPAA ban “Double Take’s” gun yet allow Sly Stallone to carry a gun in ads last fall for “Get Carter” and let Martin Lawrence wave a gun in outdoor ads last summer for “Big Momma’s House?”

“Traffic” has a gun in its current ads and even Sandra Bullock has a gun, albeit in a holster, in “Miss Congeniality” ads.

Is it possible that the MPAA came down on Disney because the studio submitted its ad right after the Federal Trade Commission issued a scathing report in September blasting Hollywood for marketing violent movies to teenagers? And does the reappearance of guns mean the MPAA has softened its anti-gun policy now that the furor over the report has faded?

MPAA chief Jack Valenti didn’t return my phone calls, but my studio sources say the MPAA makes decisions on a case-by-case basis. I’m not in favor of ad restrictions, but my feeling is: If you can’t show a breast, you shouldn’t be able to show a gun.

Should the MPAA be restricting guns in posters and ads? Should PG-13 movies be treated differently from R movies? Does political pressure have a healthy or unhealthy effect on Hollywood marketing standards? Let me hear what you think.

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“The Big Picture” is published every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.