DreamWorks dusts off Towne project

PROJECT DUSTED OFF:

DreamWorks has closed a deal to distribute "Ask the Dust," the Robert Towne-directed film based on the John Fante novel that will star Colin Farrell and Eva Mendes as immigrants whose plans to climb the social ladder is dashed when they fall in love in 1930s L.A.

"Ask the Dust" is one of several hot scripts that were gathering dust until the stars aligned. Consider that Peter Jackson was dropped from Universal's "King Kong" remake when "Frighteners" scared up scant opening weekend grosses. Seven years later, that same guy's directing the same script, but he's getting $20 million against 20% of the gross.

Oliver Stone's $150 million Intermedia-backed "Alexander" starts shooting Monday with Farrell, but Stone's ordeal goes back to 1979, when California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger was ready to conquer the world. "This was right after 'Conan the Barbarian,' and the film heated up again in 1995 with Tom Cruise," Stone said. The adversity was worthwhile, he feels, because it wasn't until the last year that he licked the script.

"Collateral" has Michael Mann directing and Cruise playing a charismatic hit man who traps a cabbie to escort him on a night of contract killings in L.A. Pic began 11 years ago when scribe Stuart Beattie was home in Australia, paying his cab fare. "We'd been chatting like best mates, and I thought, I could be some friendly homicidal maniac, and this driver has his back to me." It went nowhere and he waited tables, until a producer named Julie Richardson took it to Frank Darabont, Rob Fried and Chuck Russell when the trio set a deal to make low budget pics for HBO. Then the payweb dumped it. Salvation came when DreamWorks optioned it and Russell Crowe loved it. Mann followed, then enlisted Cruise after Crowe backed out.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are set to play married assassins in the Doug Liman-directed "Mr. And Mrs. Smith," but only after the pic nearly got rubbed out several times in the years since neophyte scribe Simon Kinberg first pitched it to producer Akiva Goldsman. "It was husband and wife assassins living false lives," Goldsman said. "It was a great metaphor for marriage and I thought an easy sale. Every studio passed. People were intrigued, but Simon was new and they all said this was 'execution dependent,' to come back with a script. At the last moment, Patrick Wachsberger paid Simon to write it." Goldsman, who won an Oscar writing the execution-dependent "A Beautiful Mind," still bristles at the rationale behind the early rejections: "The promise of material with risk has the most reward. Execution dependent, if executed well, will always be better than high concept."

YEARS IN THE MAKING: Robert Towne has got all of those hardship stories beat.

"I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but I started 'Ask the Dust' in 1970," he said. "I was researching 'Chinatown,' and it was the only book I found that suggested how people really talked in the time period." Towne enlisted Al Pacino and had Peter Sellers locked to play a role. Even though Towne followed "Chinatown" with "Shampoo" and Pacino did "The Godfather," they couldn't get a "Dust" deal.

Towne tried again in 1993: "Johnny Depp was desperate to do it. If my mother could have turned me down, she would have. Every studio sure did." Producers Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise and Jonas McCord shaved the budget by setting it in South Africa, but the key was simple: Towne bet on Farrell, and the Irish thesp got hot and Towne made a deal for a script he wrote 10 years ago.

"Some pictures are jobs but others become obsessions you cannot not think about," Towne said. "I grew up in L.A. and Fante's story affects me in ways impossible to articulate. John gave me a first edition of his book way back and wrote, 'To Bob Towne, in the hope he will take this to far places.' I never expected it to be 30 years later and in South Africa, but that is certainly a far place."

DON'T DRESS FOR "SIMPLY HALSTON": Killer Films has designs on "Simply Halston," with Alec Baldwin eyed to play the fashion legend and Jane Krakowski to play Liza Minnelli. But nothing is simple in the hardscrabble indie film game. "I've sent cease and desist letters, because while they keep announcing cast, their option to my book lapsed and they haven't renewed it," said "Simply Halston" author Steven Gaines. "I signed a new contract but never got a check or co-signed copy. I'm close to setting it elsewhere, but every casting announcement hurts me," Gaines said. Killer didn't comment.