The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 273

CALENDAR MOVIES (his two previous writing credits were "The Wiz" and "Car As a newcomer to the directing ranks, he was a less expensive investment than Lumet and far less costly than the two-man team of Nichols and Goldman. Schumacher was signed to write and direct in mid-1979. At the same time, Tanen brought aboard Allan Carr, the promotion-minded producer who had enjoyed fantastic success converting "Grease" to celluloid. Schumacher handed in his finished screenplay on Jan. 31, 1980.

Tanen got back to him several weeks later, says Schumacher, with congratulations for "cracking the project" What Schumacher had done was open up the structure of the play. He moved into the private lives and homes of the characters, focusing on the tempestuous romance between Zach (the director) and Cassie, the show's oldest and most prominent female dancer. Schumacher's script steered away enormous escalation of costs to come." The royalty deal cut into the profits of not only Universal but those that Goldman and Nichols had negotiated for themselves as well. While Goldman was still writing, Tanen made the first of several overtures to renegotiate the original deal The creators were asked to "push back their points" retaining their 20 share, but upping the $30-million figure. Tanen hoped to hike the figure closer to the film's theoretical break-even point Papp and Hamlisch have been eager to compromise, Tanen says, but "certain of the others" have refused.

Goldman and Nichols became increasingly disenchanted with the financial situation. Their partnership with Universal wound down, and Tanen began looking for a cheaper way to make the movie. As he did, the revolving door at Universal began to spin faster. In late 1978, Tanen signed Sidney Lu-met to both write and direct "A Chorus Joel Schumacher Bo Goldman Michael Bennett Mike Nichols 'A CHORUS LINE' -STILL NO MOVIE Continued from First Page Line" grew, so did its price tag. Universal finally bought the rights in February, 1976, for $5.5 million, matching the then-record sum paid for "My Fair Lady." But that wasn't the key figure on the deal.

Overshadowing the sale price was an unpublicized clause giving 20 of the film's gross earnings to the show's original creators producer Papp, Michael Bennett directorchoreographer James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante (authors), Bob Avian (co-choreographer), Marvin Hamlisch (composer) and Edward Kleban (lyricist). The clause was unusually generous, and its figures would come back to haunt Universal At the time, however, the studio was in no position to bargain. The financial details were quickly forgotten amid the euphoria of acquiring such a phenomenal property. "A Chorus had it all inspired song and dance, indelible characters, and exhilarating drama. It was regarded as the perfect Broadway musical.

There was only one question: Would it make a perfect movie? Any doubts along that line were set aside when Universal announced that Bennett, the creative wizard behind "A Chorus Line," had been signed to recreate its magic on screen. The arrival of Broadway's hottest young talent in Hollywood was lushly heralded. But the fanfare quickly fizzled. After six months, Bennett packed his bags and headed back to New York. The exit was prompted by creative conflicts on "Roadshow," Bennett's first project at Universal he was scheduled to develop three movie projects before "A Chorus Line," allowing the stage show, time to cash in on its popularity).

Bennett says now he just wasn't cut out for Hollywood. "I realized very quickly that my first love was the theater," he recalls. Universal Pictures and its president Ned Tanen had lost more than a director; they had lost the chief architect of "A Chorus Line" and the man best suited to bring it to the screen. For the first time, they were forced to take a long hard look at their prize property. The original structure of "A Chorus Line" as developed by Bennett and his collaborators was brilliantly simple.

In the course of a two-hour audition, 17 young performers vie for eight places on the dancing line of a Broadway musical. They dance and sing; speaking in turn, they describe their inspirations and aspirations. An omnipotent director watches, prods and finally selects. With Bennett gone, Universal faced the challenge of adapting to the screen a work deeply rooted in the life and lore of the theater. And that wasn't the only problem.

"A Chorus Line" lacked a conventional narrative; it melded 17 different stories. Which characters should be focused on? Should they be trying out for a movie instead of a play? Should the time span be limited to one afternoon? Should the action be confined to the stage? To the theater? Tanen turned for answers to writer Bo Goldman and director Mike Nichols, a top-notch creative team befitting a picture with blockbuster potential. Goldman had won an Academy Award for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and later collected a second for "Melvin and Howard" (his writing credits also include "The Rose" and "Shoot the Nichols directed numerous Broadway stage classics along with such movies as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." A deal was signed and Goldman went to work. The basic idea, Tanen says, was to cast unknowns rather than stars and stick as closely as possible to the original work. "It never occurred to me to do anything else," Tanen says.

"The intimacy of the original was the key to its success, and that intimacy would have to be the key to the movie. The problem is that in a film you have a screen between the audience and the actors." Goldman presumably had an idea for surmounting that obstacle, but neither he nor Nichols is willing to discuss the screenplay. According to Tanen, Goldman's script opened up the original drama in a limited fashion and focused on the "relationships and personalities among the characters." The results were excellent, he says. A different assessment is offered by two others who worked in development on "A Chorus Line." Both say that while the screenplay contained rich characterizations and dialogue Goldman trademarksit did not work as a script for a movie. Goldman struck so closely to the original story that "it felt like you were reading the play," says one.

Meanwhile, trouble was brewing on the financial front The projected production budget on the Goldman script was $10 million to $15. million (an expensive film by 1978 stan-dars, says Tanen), and costs could have easily gotten out of hand. "Musicals are like special-effects movies," Tanen says. "You have to see them through to the end, but you don't know what they'll wind up costing." Why was Universal so nervous about costs on a film with the enormous potential of "A Chorus Line?" The problem, Tanen says, was the generous royalty clause in the play's purchase deal In similar contracts, the creators of the original work usually don't earn profits until the studio does. The royalty clause comes into effect only after the film has earned enough money to cover its costs.

"A Chorus Line" was different Papp and company were entitled to their 20 share of the gross revenue as soon as the movie had earned $30 million regardless of its costs. The 20 figure was high, but the real catch was the $30 million figure. To break even at that sum, Universal needed to make the movie for under $12 million. In reality, the studio figured to spend at least $28 million (including the $5.5 million for rights, $12 million for production costs, and $10 million for prints and promotion). According to the accepted formula for calculating a film's break-even point (multiplying costs by 2V4), Universal wouldn't have started earning money until "A Chorus Line" had grossed $70 million.

By then the original creators would have been rich. "We were giving away too much, too early in the game," Tanen says. "Unfortunately, when we made the deal, none of us foresaw the huge inflation and the John Travolta Sidney Lumet James Bridges Allan Carr IN from the play's downbeat moments (which Goldman had dwelled on, according to some who read it) and emphasized the childlike innocence of the performers. His most innovative addition was a series of surreal re-enactments of the childhood moment when each dancer first fell in love with performing. Despite Tanen's rave review, participants in the project say that Schumacher's script was much too sentimental.

He introduced his own concept but it muddled the original story and created more problems than it solved, they believed. Schumacher was thrilled when he heard Tanen's reaction. But he hardly had time to enjoy it In the same breath, Tanen gave him the bad news: "A Chorus Line" had been sold. Polygram Pictures, the new owner, offered Universal $7.8 million for "A Chorus Line," covering the full cost of the rights and all fees paid to Goldman, Nichols and Schumacher. The temptation was too great for Tanen, who felt stymied by the project's financial knots.

"It got more expensive to make the picture every day," Tanen says, "but the $30 million figure stayed constant" He'd lost four years of sleep on "A Chorus Line," but financially the studio came out Line." Lumet had just finished "The Wiz" for Universal starring Diana Ross. Like Goldman and Nichols, he was a heavyweight His 29 film credits include "Network," "Prince of the City," and "Deathtrap." Although the "The Wiz" was an overblown artistic flop, Tanen says he believed that Lumet, a New Yorker, was ideally suited to the "New York feel" of "A Chorus Line." Tanen also had confidence that Lumet could bring the movie in on time and on budget Lumet never had the chance. According to Tanen, Lumet met several times with Michael Bennett Some promising ideas developed, but no screenplay. Tanen says he's not sure why the script fell through. According to one person connected with the project Universal had second thoughts about Lumet directing another musical after "The Wiz" quickly disappeared from movie houses.

Tanen says "The Wiz" had nothing to do with the events. Lumet would not return several phone calls from Calendar. With two strikes against the project Tanen surprised observers by turning to a relative unknown Joel Schumacher. A former costume designer, Schumacher had just finished directing his first feature, "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" OS 2 a..