THE BUZZ : Hollywood Insiders Know It, Spread It, Thrive on It . . . but Seldom Bank on It

The buzz swept through the crowd at an early screening of Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” The agent passed the word to the studio exec who whispered the tip to the writer: Influential TV film critic Gene Siskel had seen the movie--and flipped over it. “I hear he’s telling everyone it was the best movie he’s seen all year,” the exec said excitedly. “Take it from me--Warners has a big hit on their hands.”

A pair of development execs were having drinks at the Ivy, a popular show-biz hangout. “Can you believe what happened to ‘Innerspace’?”one said, raising his eyebrows. “That was a movie with heat--really big heat. But it’s a disaster. I hear the people at Warners are reeling--they don’t know what to do. They’re barely breathing over there!”

Universal’s “Harry & the Hendersons” wasn’t due out for another month, but a rival marketing chief relished the bad word he’d already heard about the film. “They’re calling it ‘Harry & Howard,’ ” he said, with barely restrained glee. “As in ‘Howard the Duck’ ” (a colossal bomb by Universal).

TALK OF THE TOWN

The Buzz . . . the Word . . . the Big Heat. . . . It’s all industry shorthand for the latest news from the Hollywood Grapevine, where movies earn a reputation--sometimes good, sometimes bad--long before they reach the theaters.

If you could eavesdrop on an hour’s worth of black Porsche car-phone conversations between Burbank and Culver City, you’d discover that the buzz verdict was “awful” on “Who’s That Girl,” “great” on “RoboCop,” “yucky” on “Summer School,” “delightful” on “Dirty Dancing” and “abysmal” on “Jaws: The Revenge.”

Are all these feverish predictions--stage-whispered at screenings, loudly gossiped at pool parties and studiously intoned at Morton’s--really on the money?

It seemed as if everyone in town bad-mouthed “Ishtar” for months before it hit the screens. And guess what--they were right. The Word was also on the mark with “The Believers,” which was getting negative buzz reviews long before it staggered into the theaters.

But sometimes the Hollywood big mouths have to eat their words. The same people who tap into the buzz circuit were all wrong about “Spaceballs.” It has emerged as a modest hit despite being dismissed as a “major disaster” by innumerable insiders.

“Innerspace” was another surprise--it got phenomenal Word, but took a nose dive at the box office. (For a rundown of some of the summer films, see chart on Page 7.)

If the buzz merely served as an early-warning signal, it might be little more than a curiosity piece. But after surveying a voluble mob of industry insiders, it became apparent that this obsession with hyping (and dismissing) movies tells us nearly as much about the psychology and mores of Hollywood as--well--the movies themselves.

In a town absorbed by the rituals of packaging, hustling and deal-making, the buzz is an aphrodisiac. For everyone actually working on a film, there are dozens of impatient players on the sidelines who get a vicarious thrill out of picking up the phone and passing along inside stories about the bombshells dropping on the front lines.

The fact that no one’s seen most of the films does little to dampen the passionate nature of these hushed conversations. In fact, freed from debating the film’s merits, buzz-mongers focus on a much juicier topic--the industry’s perception of an eagerly awaited film.

In the rarefied atmosphere of agents’ luncheons and studio production meetings, many upcoming projects project an aura--either of success or failure--which often owes more to the anticipation surrounding a film than its actual merits. That same anticipation makes the word great ammunition, either for cutthroat execs eager to see a rival fail or adrenaline-charged industry top guns hoping to get an edge on the competition.

With its deadly combination of superstar secrecy, inflated budget and distribution delays, it was inevitable that “Ishtar” would fall prey to a firestorm of negative word. Yet other movies, blessed with a hot young director or widely fancied starlet, soak up the heat like a bouquet of desert flowers.

So what does all this talk tell us about Hollywood?

INFORMATION IS POWER

“People love to pretend to know more than they do,” said “Black Widow” producer Lawrence Mark. “It’s like a badge of influence or clout. Hollywood is a very competitive community, where everyone is always trying to get the upper hand on everyone else. So anything that suggests that you have more inside information than whoever you’re dealing with at that moment implies that you have the upper hand.”

No wonder studio executives thrive on the word. “It’s total gamesmanship,” said a young studio production exec. “If you’re at the commissary with some agents or an exec from another studio, and you can tell them something that hasn’t surfaced in public yet--maybe who was going to succeed (then-studio chief) Frank Price at Universal or that (director) Joyce Chopra was just fired off ‘Bright Lights, Big City’--then they’re wondering, ‘Hey, what else does he know?’

“Everybody eventually has access to the same information. But if you know it three weeks before everyone else, you’ve a big edge.”

Once you have an alluring nugget of information, it’s almost impossible to resist passing it around.

“When I was working with Mel Brooks at (20th Century) Fox, I remember one day we ran into (then-studio head) Alan Ladd and (then-distribution chief) Ashley Boone as they were coming out of a screening of ‘Star Wars,’ ” recalled Stuart Cornfeld, producer of “The Fly.”

“These guys were beaming, I mean really beaming, like they wanted to rush out and buy some more stock. So Mel asked them what was going on. And they didn’t say that ‘Star Wars’ was great or spectacular or anything. They said they’d just seen a movie that was going to change the nature of entertainment as we knew it.

“Now that makes quite an impression. I was on the phone right away, telling everyone I knew that ‘Star Wars’ was going to be incredible.”

In Hollywood, where access equates clout, it’s not enough to just go to movies--you often have to go to where people talk about movies.

“The Hollywood party circuit is a major buzz forum,” said Lynda Obst, one of the producers of Disney’s summer film, “Adventures in Babysitting.” “Most people at these parties have trouble carrying on a conversation for more than two or three sentences, so you don’t hear about any great theories of film making. You hear the gossip.

“You can get a reading on almost all the new movies just in one circuit around the room. In one corner, someone is saying, ‘Ishtar’ is Arabic for ‘Howard the Duck.’ Across the way, someone else is giving the latest box-office report, saying, ‘Did you hear about ‘The Untouchables’? It did nine (million dollars) last night.’ ”

Sometimes all this talk masks a massive dose of creative insecurity. “Let’s face it--Hollywood really is just like an egomaniacal version of a boys high school locker room,” said a prominent screenwriter. “The only difference is that you talk about movies instead of girls.

“In high school, you wanted to be seen with the cutest girl. Now, every studio exec wants to be associated with the hot new project or director. The psychology’s the same--everyone’s terribly unsure of themselves and they all hope the glamour will rub off on them.”

BAD NEWS TRAVELS FAST

“There’s a dedicated group of people in Hollywood--a very large, dedicated group--who just love to see other people fail,” said writer-director Tom Mankiewicz, who watched his “Dragnet” travel the buzz circuit this summer. “It’s just much more delicious to pass on a rumor of impending disaster than success.

“If I believed all the reports I got over the past few months, I would’ve assumed there wasn’t one decent movie out there this summer. I heard ‘The Untouchables’ was hated by the exhibitors . . . ‘Roxanne’ was soft . . . The last 45 minutes of ‘Witches’ was a total disaster . . . ‘Jaws’ was supposed to be terrible . . . ‘Innerspace’ didn’t work. . . .

“And of course I heard that my movie was really in trouble. And who tells you all this--your friends.”

In Hollywood, it isn’t always easy to separate friends from enemies. “This town is filled with people who wish failure on everybody--especially their closest friends,” said Richard Donner, who directed “Lethal Weapon,” and exec-produced the just-released, “The Lost Boys.”

“That’s why I hate doing these word-of-mouth screenings. You invite people who are supposedly your friends, but after they see the film they go around and tell everybody--’Hey, I hate to say it, but that movie’s terrible. I wonder what happened?’ ”

Arnold Stiefel, an entertainment manager whose client roster includes Matthew Broderick and Rod Stewart, sees it this way: “It’s very simple--good word of mouth is started by strangers, bad word of mouth comes from your friends. If they don’t like your movie, they go out the next night and say, ‘Oh, I feel terrible, but I just saw . . . and boy, it was just awful. What a shame!’ And then those people tell their friends at the party the next night, who tell their friends . . . and hey-- that’s bad word of mouth.”

The guilty pleasures of negativity seem deeply ingrained in the community’s infrastructure. As producer Mark acknowledged: “We do seem to work in a very venal business. You get the feeling that a lot of people just aren’t happy with other people’s successes.”

An independent producer put it more bluntly: “A lot of the bad-mouthing you hear is often the result of enormous career pressures. For example, after ‘Flashdance’ became a hit, everyone in the world tried to take credit for it. So when they all went on to their next project, they had a vested interest in seeing everyone else from that film fail. That way, if they succeeded again and the others flopped, it would appear that they were really the key to the equation.”

Then again, it’s possible that sending along bad tidings is just irresistible. “I think it was Walter Cronkite who once explained that it’s not news if a fireman climbs up a tree and saves your cat,” said Mankiewicz. “But if your cat dies--well, that’s a story.

“So when ‘Ishtar’ comes along--well that’s when people’s wildest dreams come true.”

THE WRONG WORD

“The Witches of Eastwick” was still in the midst of shooting when insiders began proclaiming it an impending disaster. Rumors scudded through Hollywood that there was strife on the set, personality clashes and blow-ups. When the film was still unavailable for screenings just weeks before its release date in June, the buzz began in earnest--”Witches” was a stinker.

“The word was horrible. Everyone was saying it was a mess--that it was over-budget, over-schedule and even worse, that Warners didn’t know what to do with it,” said a prominent producer. “The funny thing is that Warners really did think it was a mess. They were petrified. They kept screening it in the executive screening room and everyone would say, ‘Oh no, this is laughable. This will never play.’ Then the movie comes out and surprise--audiences are laughing with the movie, not at it.”

However, the movie gods giveth--and taketh away. The same Warners execs who were pleasantly surprised by the warm reception to “Witches” were astounded by the chilly response to “Innerspace,” which the studio had been counting on as a major summer hit.

“Warners couldn’t believe the great buzz they were getting on that film,” said a rival studio production exec. “Not only was everyone at Warners saying it was going to be a hit, but everyone at our studio was saying it was going to be a hit. So the word said it was a smash, the research said it was a smash and guess what--it’s doing a belly-flop.”

And, of course, sometimes people--especially the press--are so desperate to get a big celebrity story that they prefer to ignore the buzz. “For all the bad advance word ‘Ishtar’ got, you have to remember that the film’s publicity people did a great job of bamboozling certain key magazines,” said a major studio publicity chief. “I can’t imagine that Life or American Film are going around boasting that they put such a dog on their covers. Whoever got all that space for such an awful movie should get the Publicist Guild Award.”

(Calendar, too, published an interview with “Ishtar” star and producer Warren Beatty a month before the film’s release. It was followed by an article on the film’s controversial $40-million-plus budget a week after the film opened.)

THE WRITE WORD

Amazing things happen when your script gets the big heat. In 1984, S. S. (Steve) Wilson and Brent Maddock were a pair of total unknowns, taking a UCLA Extention script-writing course. Within a matter of months, their screenplay--”Short Circuit”--earned them an A in class and a $360,000 movie deal.

“Boy, was that a script with a lot of buzz,” recalled producer David Foster, whose production company handled both “Short Circuit” and “Running Scared” last summer. “My son Gary discovered the script when Steve and Brent were in the UCLA class. They got an agent, who realized how interested we were and how hot the script was.

“And boom. Within 24 hours the buzz was out. It was like a runaway locomotive. Warners wanted it. United Artists wanted it. MGM . . . Fox . . . you name it. In fact, Tri-Star wanted the script so much that they had a six-figure cashier’s check drawn up as a down payment-type option for the script. It became a total bidding war.

“We ended up making the picture with PSO (Producers Sales Organization). But these two completely obscure kids got $360,000 for their first film script--and largely because of all that buzz.”

The heat hasn’t quit yet. Though “Short Circuit” was considered a modest hit--Foster says it grossed “about” $50 million--it will have a sequel, which begins shooting in September. The original writing team will be back to do the script. And guess what--their price has gone up. “Oh, yeah, they’re getting more money for the sequel,” Foster said. “A lot more.”

WHO’S BUZZING

Who spreads the word the quickest--and the farthest? According to many insiders, agents get the nod. “They have enormous influence, because they usually get an early look at a picture,” producer Obst said. “In a way, every agent is like Paul Revere, spreading the word about a new film.”

“They really love to talk,” agreed director Richard Donner. “If they see a movie with their client in it, then they can talk up his performance and get him better parts. Or if they see an actor they’d like to have as a client, then they’ll bad-mouth that guy. The whole idea is for everyone to think--geez, if this guy was handling him, what a better job he’d do with his career.”

Personal managers don’t do such a bad job either. “I had a client (Rod Stewart) who was up to do a song for the film, so I saw ‘Innerspace’ almost four months before it opened,” recalled Arnold Stiefel. “I loved it so much that I couldn’t stop talking about it. I mean, I talked up (the film’s director) Joe Dante to everybody--(powerful CAA agent) Michael Ovitz, guys at the studios, even people I’d just see at lunch.

“Whenever I was on the phone with someone at a studio, I’d say, ‘If you can get me Dante, then Matthew (Broderick, another client) will do your movie. For a couple of weeks there, whoever I talked to heard about ‘Innerspace.’ ”

Naturally, the press is great at spreading the word--both good and bad.

“Oh, I hear about the buzz all the time,” said KABC-TV film critic Gary Franklin. “(Rogers & Cowan publicist) Ronni Chasen will corner me at a dinner and start whispering in this conspiratorial tone, like she’s really not telling this to anyone but me. And she’ll say, ‘This movie is going to be the big one.’

“And I will get excited, if someone with a good track record tips me to a new film. If (producer) Ray Stark or (Orion Pictures exec) Mike Medavoy calls me and says, ‘We’ve got something we want you to see,’ then I tend to listen.”

Much of the early word on a film comes from theater exhibitors, who not only see lots of movies, but have a major impact on the initial perception of a film’s commercial potential.

“The exhibitors talk their brains out,” said a studio development executive. “If something’s bad, word really gets around. I remember talking to some exhibitors who’d just seen ‘The Untouchables,’ and they were all saying, ‘Costner is soft, Costner is soft.’ (Translation: the film’s leading man, Kevin Costner, didn’t seem strong enough to carry the picture.)

“And sure enough--that was the word on the movie, for months afterwards--Costner’s soft. Of course, the joke is that when real people saw the movie, obviously they didn’t care.”

Studio executives talk incessantly--and much of the time to agents. “The day after we first screened our film for the Disney people the phone started ringing off the hook,” said “Adventures in Babysitting” producer Obst. “We got 45 calls, almost all from agents, who’d heard the studio people going on and on about the movie. Suddenly I was getting 18,000 pitches and writers’ submissions from everywhere.

“That’s how can you tell if you’re movie’s really got a lot of heat. People who weren’t sure if they liked you or not have suddenly become your best friends.”

THE SCREENING

Show an eagerly awaited film to 800 movie insiders all at once and--presto--instant buzz. Maybe that’s why nearly every industry veteran can recall a horror story about what’s known as an “Academy screening”--those invitation-only previews at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theater in Beverly Hills.

“They are scary,” said producer Stuart Cornfeld. “Barry Levinson and I once went to a preview there. Afterwards, everyone filed by the director, telling him how much they loved his movie. But when they got out to the street, they were all trashing it, saying how horrible it was. I remember Barry turning to me and saying, ‘This is too much. I’m never going to one of these again.’ ”

Others have equally bad memories. “Those Academy screenings are a great way to get the word out, but boy are they vicious,” said one production official. “At the most moving or emotional moments of a film, you’ll hear someone in back of you say, ‘Can you believe the billing Bruce Willis got?’ or ‘Will Cher ever speak to Susan Sarandon again after the way she stole that scene?’ ”

Many early previews have been responsible for a huge blast of positive Heat. Why did ABC News “Nightline” producer Gary Shepherd put together a major report on “Platoon”? One reason--he was invited to a rough-cut screening held specially for Vietnam War-era journalist vets like Shepherd, CBS’ Morley Safer and Calendar’s Jay Sharbutt.

“We were very nervous about it, because we had no idea how the film would be received in such rough form,” said publicist Andrea Jaffe, who got so much coverage for the film that director Oliver Stone thanked her on TV when he picked up his Oscar. “I kept telling Oliver that it might be too early to show it. But he kept saying, ‘Andrea, let’s roll the dice.’ ”

The gamble paid off. KABC critic Franklin recalls his reaction to seeing a work print of the film, also long before it was released. “I was stunned,” Franklin said. “In fact, I was so astounded that I started talking about it on the air--right away. I gabbed about it so much that I think it really annoyed some of my anchors. Whenever they’d see that look in my eye, they’d say, ‘You’re not going to start talking about that film again!’ ”

THE HEAT AS HYPE

Every Friday, all over Hollywood, studio execs and producers take home an armful of hot scripts known as “weekend reads.” By Monday, someone has to decide whether the script’s worth bidding for. Sometimes the script’s Heat can be traced to one source--the writer’s aggressive agent.

“One of our production associates came in this morning and told me I had to read this incredibly hot script that we’d just got our hands on,” producer Foster said the other day. “The whole idea was that the agent was supposedly offering us a first look at the script--and if we didn’t do something about it, someone else might get their hands on it.

“Then, barely three hours later, one of our other development execs comes in--with a letter from the same agent about the same script. I can even read you part of it: ‘Dear Wendy, here’s the brand new, hard-edged available thriller. . . . I suspect this will go right away, so please let me know your thoughts. . . .’ Now I’m not knocking the script, but the big word on the script is coming from the agent, who’s hyping it like crazy. I mean, we got the script first--along with 50 other people.”

The buzz has already started for “Bright Lights, Big City,” the Michael J. Fox film due this Christmas from United Artists. And once again, most of the buzz is coming from one noisemaker--New York-based publicist Peggy Siegal. Because magazines have long lead times, Siegal has already been cajoling editors into assigning stories that could hit the news stands just ahead of the film.

“I’ve been on the phone to editors everywhere--Vogue, Harpers, Esquire, Premiere, Elle, GQ, Interview and Playboy,” Siegal said. “I tell them I’m not a film maker, but that what I saw of the dailies looked terrific.”

(Asked what the editors have been saying about the film’s original director being fired a month after shooting began--an event that normally signals negative word--Siegal insisted, “Not one editor has mentioned the director change. It’s not an issue.”)

Actually, “Bright Lights” has a double-scoop of buzz since it’s based on a novel that hit the best-seller list with a blast of heat of its own. “All of the magazine editors loved the book--they’ve been to these late-night spots, they’ve all done drugs, they all work at the kind of magazines that are in the book,” Siegal said. “So they’re naturally talking up the movie. They want it to be terrific ‘cause it’s all about them.”

ORCHESTRATING THE WORD

What do beauticians, cab drivers and dentists have in common? They talk a lot, which makes them a perfect target group for one of Hollywood’s oldest, and most obvious, buzz stratagems--the opinion-maker screening.

When Disney was preparing to release “Outrageous Fortune” last Christmas, the studio held a promotional screening--in conjunction with a beauty salon hair product--at a hair dressers’ convention in Hawaii. (As part of the package, co-star Bette Midler also appeared at the convention.)

“Whenever you say, ‘Let’s have a hairdresser screening,’ it sounds like a joke,” said Disney marketing vice president Gary Kalkin. “But these people do talk to 20 strangers every day. In fact, I happened to run into my gym instructor, who doesn’t even see many movies, yet he told me he’d heard that ‘Outrageous Fortune’ was really a good movie.

“Naturally, I was curious how he’d heard. When I asked him, he said, ‘Oh, my hairdresser saw it as this convention in Hawaii.’ ”

Publicist Josh Baran is handling a film due out this fall called “Russkies,” about a trio of “Rambo”-influenced teens who capture a shipwrecked Soviet sailer. To get the buzz rolling, he’s screening it for teachers, church groups and-- voila-- members of Congress. “They’re great at spreading the word,” Baran said. “They all go home for the Labor Day recess, so they’re spending a lot of time back in their districts, talking to constituents. If they enjoy a movie, think of how many people they could tell.”

Publicist Harry Clein used a similar strategy on “Places in the Heart.” “We invited all sorts of clergymen--ministers, rabbis, plus school board members and elected officials from small towns around L.A. And we really hit the jackpot. We even got a letter from a rabbi who told us he liked the movie so much that he was making the film the subject of his High Holy Days sermon.”