Neal H. Moritz Launched Joshua Jackson as a movie star by putting him in three films. Ryan Phillippe, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Cellar have each made two Moritz films. Paul Walker has made one and Wes Bentley and Leelee Sobieski are about to take the plunge. No wonder the producer is considered Young Hollywood's secret weapon.
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In Hollywood right now, nobody bats an eye when a twenty something actor lands a multimillion-dollar studio production deal. Or when an actor with a scant three movies to his credit gets thrust into the lead role in an $80 million movie. Or when a teen movie/TV star becomes the linchpin of a billion-dollar industry. Even five years ago, such occurrences would be unheard of. But thanks to a bloodless revolution led by people responsible for such phenomena as the Scream trilogy, "Dawson's Creek," "South Park," The Blair Witch Project and American Pie, Young Hollywood is preeminent in the minds of studio executives. The name Neal H. Moritz doesn't strike as instantly familiar a chord as the name Kevin Williamson does, but Moritz has had at least as much to do with the palace coup, and as time goes on his influence seems to be on the rise. He is the producer behind both I Know What You Did Last Summer movies (which put together Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Cellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr. on the big screen); Cruel Intentions (which changed the perception of Sarah Michelle Gellar and enhanced the status of Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair); Urban Legend (which, though not a blockbuster, rented like crazy and worked magic for Rebecca Cayheart, Tara Reid and Joshua Jackson); the recently released The Skulls, which could make movie stars out of Joshua Jackson, Paul Walker and Leslie Bibb; and the upcoming Soul Survivors, which stars American Beauty hottie Wes Bentley and Casey Affleck. And now he's busily at work on the thriller The Glass House, starring Leelee Sobieski, while gearing up for Racer X, the car racing movie he believes will send Paul Walker into the stratosphere.
Moritz is no Gen Y-er himself-- he's a trim, black-clad guy who just turned 40 and speaks in the rapid-fire, confident tones of someone with an allergy to small talk--but he is a prime architect of Young Hollywood. It was and wasn't always meant to be this way. As a UCLA student in the early '80s, he developed a successful business making and importing ladles' handbags, but by 1990, he'd had enough, and sent himself back to school--film school (at USC). "After graduating, I basically hung up my shingle and said I was a film producer,"he says. "I found young, often unrepresented writers, and though I had no credits and no power, I was able to convince them to write screenplays for me, a lot of them based on my ideas." Without actually selling a project, Moritz got a modest production deal going at Paramount. All of this with no influence and no previous connection with the movie business? Well, no. "My family had always been involved with the movie business. Like most kids, I'd grown up wanting to get as far away from the 'family business' as I could. My grand-father, a Polish immigrant, owned a lot of little businesses, one of which was a downtown L.A. movie theater. One of his ushers was Jim Nicholson, who borrowed $5,000 from him to start a distribution company with Sam Arkoff. My dad became the head of marketing and publicity and my grandfather was the treasurer. That company became American-International Pictures."
American-International, for those too young to remember, made a mint cranking out modestly budgeted movies aimed squarely at date-night audiences. Today the company is fondly remembered as the spawning ground for such talents as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola, as well as beloved, if less critically defensible, types like Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. In other words, it was a company that grew hugely successful by filling theater sears with young moviegoers attracted to seeing young stars in vehicles that were created by brash young writers and directors. Moritz is nothing if not a latter-day proponent of the AIP master plan. "I'm very much a product of my roots," he asserts. "What they did at AIP is absolutely similar 10 my philosophy. There, they would create the poster before they would make the movie. Here, I have to know how I'm going to sell a movie before I make it. The only things I want to make are things I know are going to get people off their couches and into the theater on Friday night. The adult audience? It's hard to even get them out of the house. My audience is young, and some-thing I know about them is that they want to get out of the house.
"The only way I'll get to keep doing what I love is by making money for the studios or the people who finance my movies--that's all it's about. I'm trying to create a brand here," Moritz continues, elaborating on his manifesto. "I want all my movies to fit that brand. I love to see art movies, but I'm just not the best guy to make them. We make genre movies while always trying to van those genres and change them up. What I always say is, 'I want my movies playing at every mall across America.'"
That isn't all Moritz learned from AIR "I've tried to control my own destiny," he says. "Cruel Intentions financed myself and I licensed it to Sony for domestic distribution. The new one, The Skulls, I financed myself and licensed to Universal for domestic distribution, I want to control the asset, to own the negative and create a library that keeps on giving."
In the process of giving young moviegoers what they want, Moritz has also given major young actors what they want--big-screen careers. How does he sniff out talent that will make an impact? "When I'm watching an actor's audition or a tape, all I want is to not be able to take my eyes off that actor. That doesn't happen often. I look for youthful vitality, energy. Upbeat attracts me. It isn't much different with scripts or when I'm meeting directors. I read 10 to 12 scripts a week and when I'm doing that, it's like, what can I not possibly stop reading? That's the intangible I'm after. A lot of young actors have done their first movies with me, and 75 percent of the movies I've done have been with first-time directors. Roger Kumble directed Cruel Intentions. We're trying to work together again, as we are with Rob Cohen, who directed The Skulls. We like to work with the same people again and again. I try to break new ground with new talent and keep a little familial factory going here. I like to think of them as under contract without a contract because we provide a really good environment for them to work, which is why they like to come back and work with us again."
OK then, let's run down a few of the most notable young actors who've made Moritz's final cut, Sarah Michelle Cellar, who did I Know What You Did Last Summer and Cruel Intentions? "She had the most challenging role in Cruel Intentions, an adventurous movie out on the edge, and she was amazing in it. We were a little concerned about whether she could do the role. She was way better than we could have ever expected. She shocked the hell out of us. Since then I've offered her a couple of things that she didn't want to do, and I'd love to do something else with her." Her costar Ryan Phillippe, who broke out in I Know What You Did Last Summer? "He has an intensity not many of the young actors do. He fully immerses himself in his characters. He's great looking, and he has a toughness but also a sensitiveness to him.' Joshua Jackson, who had smaller roles in Urban Legend and Cruel Intentions before starring in The Skulls? "When I read The Skulls, I knew I wanted him for it. To me, he's Tom Hanks, Incredible comic timing, really grown up and a great kid who doesn't take any of this for granted. His personality is so warm and inviting; you can't help but love him." Paul Walker? "I wanted him for The Skulls as much as I wanted Josh. And the minute I read this new script were doing, Racer X, it was Paul. I didn't audition anyone else. I think he's a megastar about to happen. He's amazing looking, but very relatable. Women find him very attractive, but he's also a guy's guy." Freddie Prinze Jr., from the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies? "Young girls love him. A very nice guy, too, with a lot more range than the parts he's had so far. He'll do very well." Jennifer Love Hewitt? "Everybody's girl--amazingly beautiful and the girl next door." Leelee Sobieski, the star of his next film, The Glass House? "Huge potential. She's already a terrific actress and she has great reliability. Besides, you can't take your eyes oft that face." Wes Bentley, who stars in his upcoming Soul Survivor? "He says so much without saying a word, his gaze is so compelling. Wes is really smart and my sense is he'll make very good choices for himself as an actor who doesn't always need to be in commercial hits." Any opinions on stars he hasn't cornered yet, like josh Hartnett? "I want him in Racer X. He's got an attitude and quality that says: 'I am a movie star.' He's going to be amazing in movies." Katie Holmes? "I've tried to work with her several times. I think she's going to be a major star. People empathize with her." Julia Stiles? "She's terrific. A very fine actress. She's not the cookie-cutter model in any way." Heath Ledger? "There's a guy with a Mel Gibson feel to him. He's rugged, and a terrific actor."
Has working so closely with so many hot young actors required Moritz to employ tough love on any occasion? "When I did Juice, which was Tupac Shakur's first movie, I went through hell getting that kid to actually be there each day and deal with it all. He was a smart kid, but definitely a handful, though well worth it. I think he would have been a huge movie star and leader down the line.
"At the end of the day," Moritz continues, "most of these kids say, 'Thank you for giving me this chance,' which to me is really cool. I haven't dealt with that many big stars, but the ones I have, you're basically begging them to do your movie and paying them a lot of money to do that. Actors who come into it at a young age are doing it because they want to, not to make the house payment or something."
Fresh young actors also come into a project costing much less than stars with a few hits on their résumés. "I want the movies to be the stars so that I don't necessarily have to depend on getting one of these $20 million stars," says Morirz. "The people who are worth the $20 million form a very short list. Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey." What about Leonardo? "I don't want to be quoted on that," he insists. "I'm sure the final figures on The Beach will tell us a lot. He's a very talented guy I'd love to work with, and obviously, he's a huge star worldwide." He adds just after a moment, "But movies are a lot like rock music these days. Tastes change so fast. Audiences are so fickle."
Moritz knows what it's like to have a big star in a big-budget film that tanks in a very public way. "With Volcano, we were in that race with Dante's Peak, It was a tough movie to make. It was like going to war. Bur it made me confident in my abilities to do any size budget movie." On a smaller scale, he experienced failure with the quickly aborted TV version of Cruel Intentions, "Manchester Prep." "Fox was kind of in a state of flux while it was going on. I'm actually really proud of the show. I've bought back the footage and I'm turning it into a movie prequel to Cruel Intentions." So there.
Since he's 40, not 30 or 20, Moritz is very methodical about making sure he stays in the loop with pop culture, "I keep my eyes and ears open to the world beyond Hollywood. It's such an insular world here comprised of the same 200 people, basically, who are making the decisions and making the movies. I talk to a lot of young people. I listen to a lot of music on the radio and watch MTV a lot. I read a ton of magazines, go on the Internet. I see five movies a week. My favorite thing to do on a Saturday night is to go with my fiancée to Westwood Village and see movies. And she's from Louisiana, nor from the movie business, although she's a lawyer with Paramount's television department."
Morirz is bullish at the moment on the prospects for his upcoming release Soul Survivors, the self-described "The Sixth Sense meets Jacob's Ladder" written and directed by Steve Carpenter, who had earlier worked with Moritz on the script for Blue Streak. "I'm very happy with the film I've seen so far," he says of the movie about a college coed who finds herself suspended in a world between the living and the dead. "It has a story of lost love that is compelling and visual aspects that are really interesting. What's more, any of the young people in it could break out. Wes Bentley is hard to take your eyes off of. Casey Affleck is an interesting actor who makes interesting choices, Eliza Dushku, who I'd liked on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," has great sensuality in addition to being a very good actress. And it's a first movie for Melissa Sagemiller, who's really strong the first time out on cam-era. I'm very excited about this."
Moritz has just started production on The Glass House, a thriller written by Wesley Strick in which Leelee Sobieski plays a recently orphaned girl sent with her brother to live with mysterious relatives in moneyed Malibu, "Like The Skulls, this is a very different movie from what I've done before. It's kind of like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle--a very adult thriller. The second I read it, I knew I was going to make it." Racer X will probably come after that with Paul Walker (and maybe Josh Hartnett) in a souped-up, modernized Rebel Without a Cause centering around rival gangs racing high-powered cars. Moritz is also involving himself in the Internet, albeit with caution. "There's a dot-com traffic jam going on out there," he says. "The only way any of these companies is going to be able to distinguish themselves from the rest is by making their sites the only place you can watch, rent, see, buy or hear something. For instance, if 'South Park' had been done originally for an Internet site, that site would have been great. We're talking with a number of people about aligning ourselves to make material specifically for a site, all different kinds of things."
But with the big screen as his main interest, are there any dream projects he's nursing? "There's a big-canvas Viking project called The Northmen that I hope I'll be able to do someday," he replies. "And I would die to make I Am Legend, which was remade back in the '70s as The Omega Man. They're my projects, but they're controlled by studios. But the important thing is finding the right material. I used to just want to get a movie made. Now, I want to get the right movie made. Not making a movie is less dangerous to my career than not making the right movie."
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Stephen Rebello wrote about filming on location in coastal Italy for the April issue of Movieline.