FILM; 'Falling Down' Takes Its Cues From the Headlines

The last thing one expects of a major Hollywood studio is a $30 million movie that might have been torn from the ugliest of newspaper headlines about divorced fathers who murder their children or tormented men who shoot up fast-food restaurants.

Hollywood, leery of reality, usually channels apocalyptic rage into fantasies like "Die Hard" and "Lethal Weapon." "Falling Down," a Warner Brothers movie opening on Friday, tells of an ordinary man, played by Michael Douglas, who breaks down one hot Los Angeles morning in a freeway traffic jam and blazes a trail of violence across the city. It is a movie filled with fury, human scum and hatred in the metaphorical urban sewer that the city of the angels has become.

The first remarkable thing about "Falling Down" is that it was made at all. The second is that it was made quickly, moving from finished script to public exhibition in 14 months. The third is that the mild-mannered, diffident creator of its fierce anger, Ebbe Roe Smith, is a first-time screenwriter whose movie, except for added explosions, is strikingly similar to his original script.

Wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a gray plaid shirt, Mr. Smith is a man of medium height, medium weight and medium age -- just the sort of unremarkable man of whom the neighbors say afterward, "I can't believe he killed all those people; he was so quiet."

Says the 43-year-old Mr. Smith: "I think my script came out of the frustration of looking at the city and looking at the world and seeing all the rage we're directing at each other. I started off with an image -- a guy stuck in traffic and leaving his car. When I sat down to write, I didn't know who the guy was or why he did that odd thing."

Mr. Smith was haunted by two newspaper stories. One chronicled the rage of a truck driver who started to ram the drivers in front of him. "He was driving this huge machine and physically didn't have to take it anymore," says Mr. Smith. The other was a small article about a crime spree. "It was pretty minor as crime sprees go," says Mr. Smith, "but it sparked me to think about the difference between run-of-the-mill crimes and a crime spree where you turn a corner, go through a doorway that means you don't have any hopes of getting away. That was the genesis of the 'D-FENS' character."

Called D-FENS because of his vanity license plate, Michael Douglas begins his crime spree when a Korean grocery store owner refuses to give him change for a dollar to make a phone call. The grocer insists that he buy something and then charges him 85 cents for a Coke, leaving him 15 cents for a 20-cent call. Says Mr. Smith: "D-FENS is someone who bought the American dream, and it's blown up in his face. He's a guy who believed the unspoken promise of America that if you worked hard and were white and a man, you were safe."

Steeped in hatred, "Falling Down" flings intolerable ethnic and homophobic insults, with one character proudly showing another a can that once held the Zyklon B gas the Nazis used to exterminate Jews in death camps. With eerie timing, the movie was being filmed on a downtown Los Angeles street the day last spring's riots began.

But long before then, says Joel Schumacher, the director of "Falling Down," "there was this new nastiness everywhere.The thousand points of light have become shots in the dark."

Mr. Smith's bleak script -- a black comedy as dark and bitter as three-day-old coffee in which the comedy comes out of the frustrations of daily life in a big city -- was turned down by all the major studios at least once. Says Jon Klane, Mr. Smith's agent, "One studio said, 'Not only will we not make this movie, but we hope no studio will make it because it is socially irresponsible.' "

Yet the script was irresistible to Arnold Kopelson, the producer of "Platoon," to Mr. Schumacher and to Mr. Douglas. "In the cold war, it was easy to direct anger outward," says Mr. Douglas. "Now we don't know who to get angry at. And traffic jams are an equalizer no matter how rich you are."

Mr. Kopelson, one of the many producers of "Falling Down," says: "Just look at this morning's paper: 'Man Throws Daughter, 3, Off Bridge, Then Jumps.' This is scary stuff." Mr. Kopelson arranged a deal with HBO. Warner Brothers reconsidered after the studio heard a new pitch from Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris, two of the movie's other producers.

Now Mr. Smith sits in a funky fast-food restaurant that advertises the world's best pastrami and eats fries off waxed paper. In his movie, Mr. Douglas goes berserk when the Whammyburger restaurant won't serve him breakfast at 11:33 because the breakfast menu ended at 11:30.

"I've had a Cinderella experience," Mr. Smith says. "But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Mr. Smith's pessimism comes from 22 years of being an actor: "Acting is a miserable profession. Auditioning and auditioning and auditioning and getting rejected over and over for some cheesy role in a lousy series. I remember sitting on the floor and crying because I didn't get a two-day role as a drug addict. To cry because you missed out on a good role is all right, but I was crying for something I didn't even want."

After college, Mr. Smith, the son of a career naval officer, joined a San Francisco guerrilla theater group that performed in the basement of a church. His right ear is pierced, but he hasn't worn an earring for 15 years. "If you had seen me then, you would have sworn I was a hippie," he says, "but how rebellious can little theater be?"

Rarely more than a bit player in movies, he created the role of Wesley in Sam Shepard's "Curse of the Starving Class" at the Public Theater in New York in 1978 and won a few awards when the first play he wrote, "How Much Would Chuck?," was performed in Los Angeles in 1987. In "Falling Down," he plays a tiny role as the man stuck behind Mr. Douglas on the freeway. "As the writer, I could wander on the set and grab a cup of coffee," he says. "The day I was an actor, I was like every other piece of equipment."

Mr. Smith is described by almost everyone as enigmatic. "After making a movie with him, I don't think I know him any better than I did the first day," says Mr. Schumacher. "The majority of people in this business want to tell you everything in the first five seconds -- who their analyst is, when they had their hemorrhoid operation. Ebbe is elusive."

At the moment, Mr. Smith is quietly focusing his gray eyes on the restaurant's parking lot. "I've got to check this out," he says, sliding out of his seat. Through a picture window, a teen-ager wearing the loose-fitting clothes that signify gang membership is being handcuffed. Mr. Smith watches as seven policemen search his car for a gun.

Life appropriately imitates art. California license plates bear a random combination of three letters and several numbers. From the plate of the car leap the letters: MAD.