MOVIES : ON LOCATION : Concept: The Player Loses His Job : Michael Tolkin, who wrote the book on Hollywood with ‘The Player,’ turns to recession, death of an L.A. dream and the ‘90s. (But wait, ‘The New Age’ is supposed to be funny too.)

It was Melrose Avenue, says Michael Tolkin, that provided the inspiration for the follow-up to “The Player,” his critically acclaimed novel-turned-screenplay that made him something of a player himself. Daily walks on Melrose between Fairfax and La Brea, where he lived until a couple of months ago, served as a font of stories and dreams.

“I saw Melrose turn from a strip of furniture refinishers and reupholsterers to a bunch of high-fashion boutiques to a cheap-shopping, T-shirt street not unlike the Boardwalk in Venice,” the director recalls, taking a huge bite out of an overstuffed tortilla in his plasterboard, industrial-carpeted office. “Stores were offering deeper and deeper discounts . . . 10% off, 70% off . . . everything must go! You saw the economy crumbling. This is the story of area code 310’s fear of becoming 213.”

Determined to write about the Los Angeles he saw, Tolkin, 42, came up with “The New Age,” which he has been shooting in and around town for the past two months. A humorous take on a modern-day melodrama, the story tells of a fast-track couple (Peter Weller and Judy Davis) forced to reassess their lives and their love when economic hardship sets in. By opening a boutique, ironically called “Hipocracy,” the characters hope not only to avoid the “humiliation” of 9-to-5 jobs but to raise enough money to divorce. Dealing with their internal crisis brings them face to face with such external realities as the AIDS epidemic, the right-to-die movement, telemarketing overkill and the New Age quest for spirituality in a world defined by materialism.

A high-end boutique on Robertson Boulevard has been transformed for the day into a “New Age” set. Though Tolkin’s script for “The Player’ snagged the Writers Guild of America award for best adapted screenplay late the night before, the director shows up at 6 a.m. Was he surprised to win out over such strong contenders as “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Enchanted April” and “Howards End”?

“I knew I had a leg up since so many of the people in the audience were at my bar mitzvah,” Tolkin quips--an allusion to friends of his father Mel, who wrote for Bob Hope, Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows “ and “All In the Family.”

Though it is halfway through the 43-day shoot and the $7.5-million project is on budget and on schedule, Tolkin is a bit on edge. The seemingly prosaic action contains emotional undercurrents that must be captured on film. And for a director who describes himself as a “neophyte,” the movement and the camera angles are daunting.

Peter Weller is cast in the role of Peter Witner, a cool, impeccably dressed talent agent (outfitted in Donna Karan for Men) accompanying his father (Adam West, TV’s “Batman”) and his father’s sleek young girlfriend du jour (Kelly Miller) on an afternoon of shopping.

“You look too much like a Del Taco franchise owner who lives in Palm Springs, goes to the mall, walks into a store for guys who cruise the disco in the Holiday Inn, and got talked into buying something too slick. . . . But if you like it, buy it,” a gum-chewing Witner comments as his father dons a pastel-colored sports jacket and looks in the mirror. His father doesn’t, but moments later, to his dad’s obvious displeasure, Witner tries on the same jacket in a smaller size, decides it suits him, and charges the $925 to his credit card.

Keith Addis, who, with Nick Wechsler, is producing the film, finds the moment quintessentially “L.A.” “Everyone in this town is either selling something or shopping for something or both,” he observes. “So many of the lives are about nothing but production design. Looking successful, being seen in the right places is seductive and intoxicating--like a transfusion--but it ultimately leaves little else in the veins. There’s very little real blood here.”

Wechsler, who counts “The Rapture”--Tolkin’s first directorial outing--and “The Player” among his credits, says the initial goal was to make “a ‘La Dolce Vita’ for Los Angeles in the ‘90s.” “Michael and I are Fellini fanatics and, though we ended up with an entirely different movie, this one also deals with people trying to survive,” he observes. “It’s incredibly timely. In the past three weeks, I’ve gotten calls from five well-paid film executives, out of work or about to be, who sound angry and desperate as they consider the next step.”

Though Tolkin works quickly, limiting himself to six or seven takes of each scene, the shoot doesn’t wrap until nearly 9 at night--two hours later than scheduled. Rolaids accompany the food on the catering table. An exhausted Weller sits with his eyes closed, head in hand.

“At the end of the day, you want to slit your throat for something you should have done,” admits the director who has long since shed his sport jacket for shirt-sleeves. “But you have to move on, hoping that as you build it all fits together. Making a movie is a operation of chance.”

The panache of “The Player” made peddling “The New Age” somewhat easier. But mainstream Hollywood still dragged its feet. Two of the major studios turned the project down flat. A leading independent film company said it had no chance of success.

“Money people feel uncomfortable talking about matters of spirituality,” Wechsler concludes. “With them, it’s all about ‘entertainment’--and this movie doesn’t have the usual violence and car chases. ‘Fascinating,’ they told us. ‘Interesting.’ We knew that was the death knell.”

Enter Oliver Stone, whose Ixtlan Corp. became executive producer within days of reading the script. Arnon Milchan’s New Regency Productions is financing the movie. When it is released, at an as yet unspecified date, Warner Bros., where New Regency is based, will be marketing and distributing it.

Stone, a fan of Tolkin’s since “The Rapture,” took an active part in revising the screenplay. The Academy Award-winning director (“Platoon”) also watches the “dailies”--footage from each day’s shoot. Though he and Tolkin are said to see eye-to-eye on the project (“Both of them like to stir up the dust, get people talking,” says Addis), the two approach their filmmaking very differently.

“Michael is more cerebral, a man who sees the world in a prismatic way and makes himself almost invisible,” says Janet Yang, Ixtlan vice president of production and “New Age” co-producer. “Because he has no agenda, he’s hard to pin down. When I first read the script, I had some nagging questions that I posed to him over dinner. What, I asked, was his relationship to the material? Where is he in all this? Michael has a deep spiritual base so his tone is both reverent and irreverent.”

Tolkin understands the confusion. In “The Rapture,” the director (a guy whom Weller refers to as a “born-again Jew”) presented an evenhanded view of fundamentalist Christianity. This time, he refrains from disparaging the New Age movement--whatever his personal reservations.

“I want people to watch the thing itself . . . not a version of it,” explains Tolkin, a man given to punctuating his conversation with references to William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg and writer Patricia Highsmith. “Besides, I find the New Age tenet of ‘finding the power within you’ an extremely American creed. When I find myself practicing one variety of religion and others following another, best to follow the advice of Walt Whitman: ‘Argue not concerning God.’ I didn’t want to take the predictable position of superiority.”

Casting choices are never made in a vacuum. Economics always enter in. Wechsler says the movie’s modest budget precluded a deal with French actress Isabelle Adjani, who was initially approached for the Judy Davis role.

“Because we couldn’t afford big stars, we had to ‘rediscover’ actors just as we did with Andie MacDowell in ‘sex, lies and videotape,’ Matt Dillon in ‘Drugstore Cowboy,’ and Mimi Rogers in ‘The Rapture,’ ” he recalls. “Though Judy Davis is one of the great actresses in the world, she still has no mainstream commercial stature. I always had Peter Weller in mind but selling him wasn’t easy . . . he’s not one of the usual eight names. And Adam West looks a lot like Peter but isn’t so much of an icon, like Kirk Douglas or James Coburn, that it smacks you over the head.”

Weller is a relative newcomer to Los Angeles, a Texan-born, New York-based actor (“RoboCop”) who arrived three years ago with the intent of getting married. (The relationship fell through, he says, but he loves his house.) Though he has mixed feelings about the town (“the best and the worst, heaven and hell”), both he and the filmmakers believe he’s tailor-made for the part. Tolkin recalls: “Peter read the script early and was like a dog on my calf with his teeth sunk in.”

The actor maintains that the role is as tight a fit as any he’s played. “Much of my life is in this part,” he explains, lighting a cigar (“my only vice”) at an outdoor cafe next to the movie set. “Starting with the name . . . how close can you get? Without going into the yawn of my life, we’re all afraid of being broke, sick, old and ugly. It’s a universal condition.”

Weller’s peripheral vision kicks in as two spandex-clad blondes drive by in a red convertible. The glance is enthusiastically returned. “ ‘Naked Lunch,’ ” they shout, recalling the actor’s last movie, in which he also appeared with Judy Davis. For this, they are rewarded with a wave. Five minutes later, the women return. They’re British models on holiday, they explain, looking for a little work. Would the actor consent to autograph their head shots? “By Jove, you’re gorgeous,” Weller scribbles obligingly. As Kirstin rests her head on his shoulder and flashes an iridescent smile, her friend records the moment on film.

“In real life, I feel less like a relationship these days, much more like being alone,” the actor says as the models zoom off. “But, since taking this part, I’ve never felt so flirtatious. I find myself chatting away, waving at every pretty woman I run into. You just saw the character at work.”

Wechsler, a good friend of the actor’s, isn’t so sure. “Peter is only 20 degrees off where the character is,” he suggests with a grin. “He’s extremely charming and thinks he has a lot of style.”

For Adam West, the role of an aging womanizer is a welcome opportunity to put some distance between him and “Batman,” which still airs in more than 100 countries worldwide.

“How long can you be a bat?” he asks. “The show was a classic, a lot of fun, but that chapter in my life is over. For 20 years, I’ve been trying to get out from under it all. I’ve done a lot of turkeys over the years. Such a pleasure to be running with poets for a change, attached to a prestige project.”

West, who lives in Ketchum, Ida., with his wife and six children (“his, hers and ours”) acknowledges that the role strikes a chord.

“The script dredges up all those feelings of being a less-than-perfect father,” says West, who says he still feels some guilt about his lack of involvement with his children after a divorce 25 years ago. “The character is smart, financially comfortable, a man caught up in the Casanova syndrome and an unending quest for pleasure--from which I wasn’t immune. It was kind of fun to take a little drink at the troth, to dibble and dabble. Fortunately, I reformed. I didn’t get immersed.”

Davis, a mass of auburn ringlets framing the palest of complexions and the reddest of lips, denies any personal connection to the material. With a 5-year-old son, she insists, her concerns are practical rather than spiritual. Her humor--already taxed by the presence of the press on the set--sours at the suggestion that getting older generally makes one reflective, more inclined to re-evaluate choices, both personal and professional.

“I’m only 37,” shoots back the actress, a best supporting actress Oscar nominee for her work in Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives.” She bristles visibly when informed that, by some definitions, that’s the cusp of “middle age.”

“Bull----,” says Davis. “That’s not middle age . . . and this story has nothing to do with that.”

Tolkin acknowledged that age leads to deepening preoccupation and obsession, notes the reporter. If he was younger, he said, he might have written a skateboard movie.

“Oh,” Davis says. “That’s Michael.”

What does she think the story is about?

Davis pauses. “It’s about wealthy people, the king and queen on top of the mountain,” she replies, straightening out the skirt on her black Issey Miyake outfit. “They have a beautiful house. They lose their jobs. Then what happens?”

It’s just a story, then?

Davis loses any remnant of composure. “I’m not saying it’s just a story,” she says with a clipped delivery and an icy smile. “I guess I’m not good at these nifty phrases. That’s what you journalists do so well.”

The actress slides off her “Judy Davis” chair and marches off onto the set.

Hipocracy, Peter and Katherine’s trendy boutique, is an operation so up-to-the-minute that the merchandise changes weekly. At the opening night party scene, 80 glamorous extras mill around another Robertson Avenue set, this one created in an empty store by production designer Robin Standefer. She’s one of a number of women--the associate producer, the line producer, the first and second assistant directors, and the editor--in the crew.

In a story about style, Standefer points out, visual cues and symbols are especially crucial, reinforcing a sense of time and place, the narrative as well as character development. Putting shag carpets in the all-glass home of Peter’s father suggested that he made his money in the ‘60s. Shooting an important scene in a massive Moroccan-style castle on Los Feliz Boulevard heightened the feeling of human isolation.

Hipocracy is done up in a collage of styles: neoclassical columns and lamps interspersed with modern baroque and rococo--a bit overdone for an economy such as ours, notes Standefer, on the border between decadence and good taste. Since the 5,000 square feet contain just six racks of clothes, three ladders of shoes and a table of jewelry and hats, the space serves as a metaphor for the story itself.

“Style over substance, decor over clothes,” explains the production designer. “The product is almost incidental. Though Michael is more literary than visual, he has incredible powers of description. As a director, he’s more concerned with what the gold couch means than with what shade we ultimately use.”

As a director, he’s also extremely hands-on, conferring with director of photography John Campbell about lighting and camera placement, appearing in a cameo as a pony-tailed BMW driver, planting his Nike Air athletic shoes a mere arm’s length from the actors rather than holding vigil at the flickering TV monitor. “Michael’s chair is frequently empty since he wants to be where the camera is,” observes production assistant Johnny Protass. “It feels more like theater than film.”

“Action!,” yells the director, muttering under his breath to no one in particular “What ever happened to “roll ‘em?” Weller darts through the party crowd to intercept a phone call. It’s Tolkin, off-camera, on the other end. “Connnnn-grat---u---la---tions,” barks the normally low-key Tolkin, sounding like a cross between Ed McMahon and W. C. Fields. “You’ve been selected as a grand prize finalist in a nationwide contest!”

The lines, says Tolkin, downplaying his star turn, are second nature to him--remnants of a three-week stint as a telemarketer in the early 1980s. “People never got the TV or the trip to Hawaii,” he recalls. “Just a grandfather clock covered with imitation wood-grain wallpaper . . . and a single triple-A battery. I did it to keep from starving but was never very good at it. You have to lie to people all day long.”

Tolkin’s just-published novel, like “The New Age,” deals with the precariousness of existence: life and death, sanity and insanity, wealth and poverty as different but closely related parts of the same coin. Frank Gale, the self-absorbed, self-doubting protagonist of “Among the Dead,” is counting on a Mexican vacation to heal the wounds of infidelity. The hope of redemption is lost, however, when the airplane carrying his wife and child crashes, killing all aboard. Gale, who missed the flight because of a farewell lunch with his lover, has a conscience--unlike Griffin Mill, the soulless studio executive at the heart of “The Player.” Besieged by the media and money-hungry litigators, he begins a descent into madness.

Tolkin knocked out the story in the production offices of “The Player”--a film he didn’t want to direct. “I’d already written the novel and the screenplay and didn’t want to make a career out of Griffin Mill,” he explains. “Besides, there’s a certain beauty in writing a book which can sit on the shelves alongside other authors.

“Writing a book is an act of vanity--as in ‘vain effort,’ since no one pays attention to books anymore,” the director continues. “But if you’re not happy with it, you can throw the first two months of work out. Though it takes awhile to get your sea legs on a movie set, you can’t scrap everything you shot in the first week. Watching dailies is just a way of seeing if your hunches were right.”

From all indications, say the film makers, they were . . . particularly when it came to casting.

“Judy (Davis) understands modern despair, depression, anxiety and the flood of conflicted feelings better than anyone else,” says Tolkin. “And she, like Peter, is not afraid of looking bad. Both have the courage to expose themselves instead of distancing themselves from the material. You won’t catch either of them posing or winking.”

Davis, cautiously picking up the pieces of the interview over an 11 p.m. “lunch break,” calls her character deluded rather than dislikable. Certainly in line, however, with the choices she’s made in the past. “A lot of parts are designed to be utterly sympathetic,” she says. “But I find those parts hard to relate to. Why take them on, I ask myself, when the reason I became an actress is to learn more about life?”

If the movie takes off, says Wechsler, allowing himself the luxury of the thought, they could use their clout to “sneak” other off-center projects past the studio front lines. Tolkin, for his part, visualizes a broader palette.

“I’ve always been interested in the way people behave,” the director acknowledges, taking off his headphones as the day winds down. “But two or three pictures from now, I’d like to combine a character study with a spectacle film--a blend of (German director Rainer Werner) Fassbinder and ‘Thunderball.’ Time and budget constraints often dictate the style of a movie and I’ll be ready for something ‘epic’ by then.”