Producing, up close and really personal

To hear Chris Moore tell it, part of the proof that “Project Greenlight” -- the HBO series he’s producing -- tells it like it is about making “The Battle of Shaker Heights” -- the Miramax film he’s producing -- is the day a chair collapsed under him during a script meeting, a moment captured in all its comic glory by the TV crew.

“Hey, I wish there hadn’t been a camera there,” admits Moore, whose lumberjack frame can now be said to work equally well for intimidation and slapstick. “The one thing I promised the people making the show is they will have all access, right? So when they showed me the chair footage, I was like, ‘Yeah, OK, that happened.’ ”

“Thank God for that,” says Jeff Balis, Moore’s fellow “Shaker Heights” producer, who along with Moore is being interviewed at the Miramax screening room, the site of so many notable confrontations in the TV series. This deadpan bit of needling causes Moore to scrunch up his face in a soundless laugh.

A nationwide TV viewership familiar with the love-hate relationship between two low-budget movie producers sounds absurd. Yet one of the ongoing pleasures for fans of HBO’s and Miramax’s let’s-put-on-a-million-dollar-movie series “Project Greenlight” is the middle-management-style interplay between the burly Moore, 36, and his curly-red-haired sidekick Balis, 28. With Moore the exasperated, badgering one and Balis the punching bag with a coating of dry wit, these two have the unmistakable air of an old-fashioned comedy team (albeit without the literal smacking around a vaudeville duo might have utilized).

Last season, while making the ill-fated nostalgia piece “Stolen Summer” -- the first “Project Greenlight” film -- Balis was a novice co-producer who had the unenviable task of going through a trial-by-fire experience, shepherding a beginner filmmaker through the minefield of a meagerly budgeted location shoot, in front of cameras. The culmination of his mistakes was a memorable berating, firing and rehiring by a hotheaded Moore during one particularly contentious 24-hour span. Great television, but a questionable reputation builder for both.

“I had only watched 10 minutes of the first season prior to signing on,” says Erica Beeney, whose screenplay for “The Battle of Shaker Heights” won her the screenwriting portion of this year’s contest. “My joke is that it’s probably why I signed on. But I knew all the rumors, which were that Chris was a monster and Jeff was a bumbler.”

When it came to her own experience, though, Beeney saw those reputations vanish. “I think Chris is a visionary and Jeff is great at executing the details of that,” she says. “I feel incredibly lucky that the first experience I had was with the two of them.”

Miramax is hoping that with the conclusion this weekend of the second go-round of “Project Greenlight,” which uses an Internet contest co-sponsored by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to give film aspirants the opportunity to kick-start their careers, this process might actually have yielded a movie people will want to see. (2002’s “Stolen Summer” was critically drubbed and barely released.)

A breezy coming-of-age yarn, “The Battle of Shaker Heights,” which opens Friday in Los Angeles, chronicles the maturing of a discontented teenager named Kelly, played with star-making verve by “Holes” star Shia LeBeouf. It’s a fitting complement to one of “Project Greenlight’s” own story lines, the maturing of Moore and Balis as a well-oiled team.

Learning curves

When Moore, who was also a producer on all three “American Pie” films, watched his tempest-filled footage from last season, some things crystallized for him. “Because I’m such a forceful person, I can be very disruptive to a process by coming in,” he says. “What you’re saying may be the right thing, but nobody’s listening to you.”

Moore says that on “Shaker Heights” he learned to not “kill the message” by yelling whenever he had to crack the whip. As for Balis, while he acknowledges it may have been ill-advised for higher-ups to marry his lack of producing acumen with a first-time director on “Stolen Summer,” the experience prepared him for the daily problems on “Shaker Heights.”

“The one thing I learned is to be able to step back and get some perspective on it,” says Balis, who produced two low-budget movies in between the “Greenlight” movies, and in last Sunday’s episode emerged as a last-minute hero, helping bridge a widening chasm between Moore and directing contest winners Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin. “I was more comfortable making bigger decisions and then stepping back, instead of micromanaging.

“Also, I worked with Chris a whole lot better,” adds Balis.

But in truth, Balis figured his being asked back for Season Two was so he and Moore would go at it again, even though the two had resolved after “Stolen Summer” to stop fighting. That’s probably because the pair have been notorious head-butters on many projects together for six years. They met at Harvard, where the Florida-born Balis was studying film and Maryland-born Moore, a Harvard graduate in the middle of producing the Boston shoot of “Good Will Hunting,” was giving a talk.

When Balis moved to L.A. after college, he became an employee for Moore’s Fusion Films and later LivePlanet (the company Moore formed with Affleck and Damon). But throughout Balis’ apprenticeship, from intern to assistant to producer, his and Moore’s arguments were legendary.

“We’d have staff meetings and clear the room ‘cause we were fighting over something inane for 25 minutes,” says Balis. “I’m stubborn; he gets fired up. We’re passionate. Hey, look, Chris publicly stuck his foot in my [rear] last year on the television show, but I still think he’s made me so much better at what I do.”

Moore is generous about Balis’ abilities, too. “I’ve never seen a day where Jeff hasn’t been incredibly psyched about a project, and that to me is the best quality,” Moore says. “What’s saddest for me is to see people who have decision-making roles on movies who just don’t care anymore, like they’re working at the shoe factory. And Jeff just loves it.” For Moore, bringing Balis back was about ability. “I said going in, ‘I’m not doing it unless Jeff does it.’ ”

Creative tension

Not that the lack of fireworks between Moore and Balis has made for a tension-free season. The combo platter of arrogance and willfulness from Potelle and Rankin made for plenty of communication breakdowns this time around, but don’t try to convince Moore that what “Project Greenlight” is doing is generating bad buzz for its own baby.

In fact, the mere suggestion brings out the entertainingly patronizing tone that has made imitating Moore -- his drawly rhythm and whiskey-pitched growl -- a favorite pastime for Affleck, Damon and, well, anybody who spends an hour with him. (Even Potelle does an amusing riff on the Moore persona in the most recent Greenlight episode.)

“A good process doesn’t mean you’ll get a good movie, and a bad process doesn’t mean you get a bad movie,” Moore insists. “In fact, I would say it’s usually the inverse. If you have people genuinely battling about how scenes should be or how a character is played, it means people really care about the movie. Out of that tension usually comes the right decision.”

Balis’ assessment is, surprisingly, more blunt. “Kyle and Efram certainly come off as pains on the show, but I certainly believe they’re talented pains.” Mention that Moore and Balis have themselves become media stars, and they show obvious discomfort. Balis, who recently started his own company, Weisenheimer Films, worries that the filmmaking community will view him as “playing” a producer on TV, not the real thing. Moore concurs with regard to himself, adding, “The thing about producing is, ultimately, you’re trying to push people forward who are in front of the scenes: actors, directors, right? You’ve gotta be careful that if you become the biggest person in the room, a lot of people aren’t going to want to be in that room.”

Moore bristles at the idea that strangers think they know him. “Some people don’t like me, some people say I’m the voice of reason, and that’s nice, but that kind of thing I don’t think benefits you being a movie producer.”

In the end, Moore wants “Greenlight” to be seen as a process show, not a personality show. Sure, he’d like to see more in-jokes and cutting up included, but the standard that’s applied to each 28-minute installment is whether the footage relates to filmmaking. Potelle and Rankin making everyone laugh by sneaking up on people unsuspectingly? Nope. Potelle and Rankin wanting to fire a boom mike operator for insubordination? Absolutely. Balis, who isn’t involved in assembling the series, defends against charges that “Greenlight” only highlights the bad. “It’s the moments that are serious, where there’s an issue we’re dealing with,” he says.

Wait, Balis says. There is a moment he wishes had made it into the show. “We’re in pre-production, and Chris broke a chair.”

Moore falls for his colleague’s deadpan set-up. “That made it,” he clarifies.

“Oh, that made it, OK,” says Balis, whose sly grin speaks volumes -- excoriated in Season One, vindicated in Season Two. Moore, his chain yanked, breaks into laughter.