The Fickle Glow of the Green Light

Eight months ago, Pete Jones was an unemployed house dad whose work uniform consisted of the boxer shorts he’d wear while writing screenplays in his Brentwood apartment at 3 o’clock in the morning. Today Jones, 31, sits in a Santa Monica editing room (fully dressed in shirt, jeans and black patent leather shoes) putting the finishing touches on his first feature film, which Miramax will release in February.

The transformation reflects more than his appearance.

“It’s tough to go from ‘Aw shucks, thanks for giving me this opportunity’ to ‘That’s not the way I want it,’” says the onetime Chicago insurance salesman.

But that’s precisely the position Jones found himself in after he won an online scriptwriting contest and began fighting to get his vision of the screenplay on screen.

Jones’ evolution from wide-eyed regular guy to hard-nosed film director is chronicled in HBO’s new documentary series “Project Greenlight.” The program, which debuts Sunday at 10 p.m. (with two back-to-back episodes), condenses 1,000 hours of footage into 12 half-hours featuring Jones as he struggles to make his first movie on time and on budget. Along the way are browbeating, backbiting, turf spats, grumbling about ungrateful talent, rife paranoia and the sorry sight of a hungry film crew growing crankier by the minute when the catering truck is delayed by a freeway pileup.

In other words, it’s show business as usual. What’s unusual is that a seven-person crew captured the whole messy business on videotape.

Jones’ adventure began last spring, courtesy of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and their producing partner, Chris Moore. Their LivePlanet company had launched Project Greenlight a few months earlier as a three-pronged experiment in meritocracy designed to give one rookie filmmaker with zero connections the chance to become an overnight auteur.

On March 1, Jones learned that “Stolen Summer,” his story about a Catholic boy who embarks on a spiritual “decathlon” to help his dying Jewish friend get into heaven, had been selected from among more than 7,000 scripts submitted to the organization’s Web site, projectgreenlight.com.

The reward: Jones, who had not attended film school or made a music video or short film or commercial, would get to direct his “Stolen Summer” script. The movie, budgeted at $1 million, would be financed and released by Miramax Films.

As if that weren’t prize (and pressure) enough, Jones agreed to let HBO documentarian Liz Bronstein and her crew turn his on-the-job training into a TV series about the making of “Stolen Summer.”

Affleck, speaking by phone from New York, says he and Damon wanted to do a “making of” documentary that offered more grit than gloss. “People are so used to seeing this pre-fabricated B-roll phony behind-the-scenes footage, and all that does, in my opinion, is make movies look tinny and take away the magic, without giving you any real insight....

“And we knew from our own experience that making movies oftentimes has a lot of drama in and of itself.”

It remains to be seen whether a broader audience will care about behind-the-scenes movie shenanigans; such shows haven’t always fared well whether the screens were large or small.

Jones, a ruddy-faced self-deprecating extrovert, said he didn’t feel terribly self-conscious about starring in the film-within-the-film. “Usually it was a cameraman, a producer, a light guy--between two and four people--all the time. And I had no choice but to get used to it.” He pauses. “Which is weird that somebody finds my boring life interesting enough to follow around 24 hours a day.”

When watching Jones and his cohorts in action, “boring” is not a word that comes to mind. Opinionated, cantankerous and anxiety-ridden, perhaps, but not boring.

Early in the series, contest judges Damon, Affleck, Moore, Miramax Film execs Jon Gordon and Meryl Poster and Billy Campbell, head of Miramax’s television division, frankly dissect the contest’s top three candidates. Jones’ script actually is not the unanimous favorite. Even Affleck concedes to his co-panelists, “It’ll play like the after-school special I made when I was 13.”

Only after pleading his case in person does Jones win over the judges, but talking his way into the top spot turns out to be only the first of many battles. Before long, Jones is on the phone with Miramax asking for a bigger budget.

Executive producer Moore, Jones’ cheerleader, coach and critic, observes, “Sometimes the reaction to Pete was ‘Hey, dude, quit fighting for stuff. You’re lucky as hell; you only won a contest.’”

“Stolen Summer” takes place in Chicago in 1976. Both the period and the location will add to the film’s costs, line producer Pat Peach explains to Jones. What about setting the story in contemporary times to save money?

“Over my dead body,” snaps a recalcitrant Jones, during a conference call with Miramax headquarters in New York.

“Look,” Jones says in between bites of a chicken salad sandwich, “it’s all checks and balances. My job is, I’m just going to keep asking for as much as I can. It’s the producer’s job and the studio’s job to say, ‘Here’s the line, pal, go do your job.’”

Affleck and Damon lend their star power to the first few episodes of “Project Greenlight.” Affleck, the rambunctious one, does a wicked impersonation of Jay Leno one minute, then violates protocol when he phones Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein directly to lobby for a bigger “Summer” budget, much to Gordon’s chagrin. Damon comes across as a witty straight-shooter, snorting contemptuously when someone suggests a scene set in Lake Michigan could be shot more cheaply in a swimming pool.

“Stolen Summer” cast members Aidan Quinn, Bonnie Hunt, Kevin Pollak and Brian Dennehy plus two young Chicago actors named Adi Stein and Michael Weinberg are shown in a few brief scenes. But the real stars of this warts-and-all soap opera are the casting directors, studio suits, line producers and assistant directors who would normally give their most dramatic and amusing performances in relative anonymity.

Presiding over the “Stolen Summer” crew is Moore, a drawling Maryland native who’s been involved in producing 11 feature films in five years, including “Good Will Hunting,” “American Pie” and the recent “Joy Ride.” Moore’s star turn in the documentary comes when he flies to Chicago and chews out just about everyone, including Jones, for failing to run a disciplined set.

Moore said it was a “jolt” to watch himself in action. “I was more embarrassed than anything. The documentary was fair in the sense that I’m usually right, but being right isn’t an excuse to go in and be a jerk. On the flip side, having an [aggressive] personality is what gets things done.”

Speaking by car phone, Moore said the struggles depicted in “Project Greenlight” are par for the course. In fact, Moore said, some of his colleagues worry that the production clashes portrayed in “Project Greenlight” will strike industry insiders as old news.

“HBO and Miramax TV kept fighting me about what to put in the show because they were like, ‘Look, that stuff is pretty common; you’re not showing the viewers this huge great original thing.’ And I said, ‘It’s common to me and you, but it’s not common to everybody else.’”

In 1996, Jones moved to Los Angeles from Deerfield, Ill., a Chicago suburb, with his wife, Jenny, a schoolteacher. Determined to have a career in movies, Jones made a tough decision after their first child was born two years ago: He quit his job as a TV production assistant and went into debt to focus full-time on writing.

So even though he lacked formal training, Jones was dead serious when he finally got his break. “What you see in the documentary is an edited version of me,” Jones says.

“I think I was at times mischaracterized almost as if I were a country bumpkin who’s going to learn a lot of lessons, but you know what? You learn a ... lot of lessons growing up in a big Irish Catholic family. I got four older brothers, and one thing you learn is how to persuade, how to get what you want without getting beat up. And I think these lessons help you out when you’re making a movie.”

Jones concedes he’s not entirely objective about his portrayal. “I have to laugh, because when I watch the documentary and see things that I like, I think, ‘Oh, that’s how it was.’ When I see things that I don’t like, all of a sudden, I go, ‘Oh, it was edited that way.’”

Will there be life for Greenlight after “Stolen Summer?” That depends. HBO and Miramax Films have options to renew their deals for four more years.

The final episode of “Project Greenlight” has yet to be completed. It will cover Jones’ trip to the Sundance Film Festival in January for “Stolen Summer’s” first public screening.

But Jones is already shutting down his office at the LivePlanet headquarters, which is vacant but for some cardboard cartons filled with film dailies and a couple of presents for his newborn daughter.

Looking back at his trial by fire, Jones says, “It’s like taking that family trip when you’re a kid in the car. It’s hell when you’re doing it, but it’s a blast to look back at it. That’s what filmmaking is to me: difficult and stressful. But that’s exactly what makes it so worthwhile afterward, looking back and having the stories to remember.”

If nothing else, Jones has a calling card when it comes time to pitch his next project, said Moore. “Pete’s still in the same game he was March 1, getting people to give him work in Hollywood over other people. But he has a much better resume now, and he’s got a few more people in his Rolodex he can call.”

As for other young filmmakers, Jones hopes “Project Greenlight” will give a shot of confidence to any novice who sees the series. “I think this documentary is going to demystify the movie-making process. Young filmmakers out there are going to see ... if you’ve got a good story and you’ve got good people around you ... anyone can direct a movie.”