Brothers Grim and Stylish

A few weeks ago, Albert Hughes could be found sitting on a couch at the tidy beachfront office he shares with fraternal twin Allen, laying out his dream plan for a Hollywood test screening: to show a Hughes brothers movie but tell the crowd that it was made by, say, Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese.

“They’d read way more into it,” says Albert, confident of what the responses would be. “If we say we’d made it, or even somebody else, they’d [dismiss the movie].”Are the 29-year-old Hughes brothers versatile filmmakers, or the sum of the gritty movies they’ve put out so far: the acclaimed ghetto tragedy “Menace II Society,” the black Vietnam vet saga “Dead Presidents” and the documentary “American Pimp”?

Well, in many eyes, both. So to dispel any notions that they were too narrowly experienced to make a Victorian-era movie, they knew they’d have to work harder. The result of their labors--”From Hell,” a grimly stylish Jack the Ripper whodunit filmed in Prague and starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore--will be released Friday nationwide.

From the brothers’ viewpoint, it’s their race (half black and, via their Armenian heritage, half white) and their voracious love of movies that validate their passports into this world. “The thing people forget is that the black culture is raised with white culture all around,” explains Albert, the slightly thinner sibling. “It’s a lot easier for an ethnic filmmaker to do a white movie, because it’s all you see.”

What the Hugheses knew was that even though the infamous 1888 slayings of five London prostitutes have fascinated people for more than a century, the definitive Ripper movie had not yet been made. (The Hughes brothers’ obsession with the topic dates to when they were kids and saw Leonard Nimoy host an episode of the TV series “In Search Of” about the killings.)

So when the Hugheses read Moore’s book and saw not only an exhaustive explanation for the murders but also one that implicated a city in its treatment of its underclass, they were hooked.

“To make this different and make you feel for the victims, we had to tell a little of their stories,” says Allen, the chattier Hughes, seated on a chair across from Albert.

“Actually, it would have been cool to make an independent version where you could live with [the women] and get to know them.”

Graham, who plays levelheaded harlot Mary Kelly, found their combination of diligence and playfulness winning. “They are so prepared, right?” she says. “Years of research and work on getting the mood right, the locations. And then you get to the set and they’ll play rap songs before the take. They’ll dance around, make jokes. They work so hard, but you feel like you’re at a party.”

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But while the completed film--inspired by everything from Alfred Hitchcock’s silent chiller “The Lodger” to David Lean’s “Oliver Twist”--is certainly no jamboree, the twins stress that they made every effort to tone down the violence that helped put them on the map.

Allen feels, however, that with people’s perceptions, sometimes you can’t win. “We did one test screening, and then we toned it down,” he says of the fleeting gore in “From Hell,” which consists of painstaking re-creations of the mutilated victims, “and then the last two [screenings], all they could talk about was how gruesome it was.”

The Hugheses are worried that “happy-go-lucky schlock” will be what audiences want in the wake of the terrorist attacks. But Albert, puffing on a hand-rolled cigarette, tries to take comfort in what their “From Hell” co-screenwriter Rafael Yglesias told them, that during wartime films can become more noir. “Hopefully, [it being] a hundred years in the past, people can escape,” Albert says of their film’s chances, “even though it’s a dark escape.”

Seeing “From Hell” and its ambitious construct to fruition has taken up the last six years of the brothers’ lives, as the project moved from Disney (where they made “Dead Presidents”) to New Line (their old “Menace” stomping grounds) to, finally--and most happily, they say--Fox. “I didn’t realize till we were at Fox, but it’s all chemistry,” says Allen. “We like them and they like us. We have seven or eight great relationships over there.”

Maybe it’s that the Hugheses have found a place where their inclination to counter studio interference with edgy humor at their own expense is accepted as part of the Allen and Albert package. According to “From Hell” producer Don Murphy, during a meeting with Fox executives, a senior vice president began to explain why the Hugheses’ film was having trouble getting off the ground. Albert interrupted, bluntly saying it was because the filmmakers are black--though he chose to use an offensive term for African Americans. The executive reportedly began stammering.

“It totally gave the meeting to Allen and Albert,” Murphy says.

Back when they were opinionated schoolkids being raised by a feminist mom in Pomona and Claremont, however, the interruptions were less welcome.

“We were considered troublemakers by the teachers, because every time they said something we didn’t agree with, we’d just speak up,” says Allen. “We always found ourselves sitting out in the hallway.”

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The well-documented story of their mother, Aida, giving her 12-year-old sons the video camera that kept them from selling crack is true. Kind of.

Their desire to become dealers was real, they say, but Allen admits that it was their mom’s reaction to this potential method of reaching economic parity with the rich white kids at school that saved them. “She went, ‘No-o-o-o-o! What do you want? A new car?”’ Allen says, laughing at the memory. “It was just the hurt and her fear that deterred us from doing it.”

As the twins’ homemade karate epics and Brian De Palma homages took over their lives, their career goals became clear. A score of rap videos for artists like Too $hort and KRS-One gave them the professional mien to accomplish “Menace” when they were 20, but the two are quick to point out that videos were a means to an end: features. They call themselves marathon runners, not sprinters, when it comes to their directorial pursuits, and they bemoan the lack of perspective in the more information-obsessed aspects of today’s entertainment world.

“I was talking to [one of] the DVD guys yesterday on ‘From Hell,”’ says Allen. “I said, ‘We’re not doing directors’ commentary.’ He goes, ‘It would be cool. Why?’

“I go, “Cause we’re 29 years old, dude. What ... do we have to talk about?’ You listen to some of these, even ours, and go ‘Why are they breaking down this ... ?’ If you’re under 40, you shouldn’t talk about your film.”

Adds Albert, ruefully, “There’s no mystery in Hollywood anymore.”

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How they operate creatively isn’t shrouded in secrecy: Allen deals with the actors, Albert the visuals. But the delineation of duties leads those who work with them to speculate about their individual ambitions, and what their 30s will hold.

“If Albert could figure out how to have a story be completely dynamic, without any restful pauses or gathering force, he would,” says Yglesias. “Whereas Allen might want to make a completely romantic film.”

When asked about doing a love story, the brothers wrestle with it. “I don’t plan on it,” says Albert.

“I want to do everything,” says Allen. “An erotic film like ‘The Lover,’ for instance. Where we separate now, is that he’s still into violent things ... ,” Albert interjects. “No, it’s not about that....”

“Wait, let me finish,” says Allen, holding up a hand. “I want to explore other things. I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of edginess out of my system, and I think maybe he still has a lot.”

Albert explains. “I would do a film that I wouldn’t really care if America would even see it. It could be low-budget, be brutal, but have a real point to it. The problem is, working in the studio system, you get a filtered version of us anyway. There are things I want to do where it’s not about pleasing America, because to please America, you can’t offend, you can’t make them think.”

In fact, they both want to move to Amsterdam, but not until their children--Allen’s 10-year-old Eric and Albert’s 7-year-old Adrian--are grown up.

Both kids already help out with home movies (the Hugheses are unmarried), and Allen’s beginning to wonder if his “let [the kids] do what they want to do” philosophy may be at odds with destiny. He tells a story of Eric’s recent stealth attempt to document his grandmother on tape.

“He goes knocking on her bedroom door, and she comes out with these Biore face strips and goes, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ He goes, ‘Grandma, it’s more natural! It’s more natural!”’ Allen starts laughing. “How does this kid know about this ‘natural’?”