MOVIES : Their Scripts Are the Victors

Even for a city in which for tunes change faster than the makeup of the O.J. Simpson jury, the saga of Eric Champnella and Keith Mitchell is impressive.

Sitting down one afternoon for a preliminary interview, Champnella and Mitchell were basking in the success of having sold two scripts in one year: “Eddie,” starring Whoopi Goldberg as a fan off the street who is hired to coach the New York Knicks, which goes before the cameras this month, and “3,000,” about a retired baseball legend who stages a comeback when a statistical error reveals he had fewer than the precisely 3,000 hits that he has based his entire post-baseball career on.

It is slated to begin filming in the fall through Richard Gere’s production company; his participation remains uncertain. (Coincidentally, a previous Gere hit, “Pretty Woman,” was originally titled “3,000.”)

A week after that conversation, they sold a pitch for a film about the late University of Michigan football announcer Bob Ufer, who, Mitchell says, “made Robin Williams’ character in ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ look sedate.”

A week after that , they signed a two-picture deal with Hollywood Pictures. All within a year of selling their first script. And all within two years of sitting down to take a whack at screenwriting in the first place.

“They’re very talented guys,” says Charles Hirschhorn, executive vice president of production for Hollywood Pictures. “They have a genuine ability to combine emotion and comedy in a non-manufactured sort of way.”

Things have happened so fast, the two have scarcely had a chance to let it all go to their heads. Champnella still lives in a self-acknowledged dumpy apartment adjacent to North Hollywood and drives a Ford Festiva. His one concession to success was buying a “big-screen TV”--until friends explained to him that in Hollywood, 27 inches hardly qualifies as a big screen.

Champnella, 29, and Mitchell, 27, became friends while attending the University of Michigan. “I had taken a screenwriting course my senior year, but I dropped out because it seemed like too much work and I wanted to have a good time,” Champnella says. Mitchell played on the football team; both remain rabid Michigan fans today (and it’s not just a coincidence that their scripts all have sports themes). Their rapport is punctuated with a series of high-fives they give each other when one makes a joke:

Mitchell: “I was voted most likely to do Miller Lite commercials in high school.”

Champnella: “He’s probably as proud of that as he is the sale of the script.” Laughs and high-fives all around.

Mitchell’s love affair with L.A. began when he visited during spring break of his junior year and returned with a new car courtesy of “The Price Is Right.” Champnella was a stand-up comic whose trek to L.A. was delayed when he got a job hosting the PBS series “Club Connect” in Michigan.

Both made it to Hollywood by 1990, Mitchell as a production assistant on direct-to-video movies and later as a tape librarian at the E! cable network, and Champnella as a stand-up comic who made his rounds of the cable-comedy shows and appeared in a direct-to-video movie of his own.

In those lean times, the two shared a two-bedroom apartment with two other people--living conditions resembling those of a frat house or a bad sitcom.

“There were four of us--three guys and a girl,” Champnella recalls. “The girl gets her own room. There’s three of us in the other room, and [Keith] is huge. We didn’t all fit in the room, and he was [working] nights on the ‘Maniac Cop’ movie, so he needed a dark place to sleep during the day. He moved into the walk-in closet. Every morning I’d walk in and say, ‘Hey Keith,’ and get my clothes.”

Mitchell: “And I’m laying on the floor.”

Champnella: “But we gave him $25 a month off on rent. The sad thing is, when my girlfriend came to town, it was, ‘Keith, can I borrow the closet, man?’ ” High-fives.

After the two sold “3,000” on spec, producer David Permut asked them to look at “Eddie,” a project that for any number of reasons had simply refused to come together. Recalls Permut, “They delivered a shooting script in six weeks, which I didn’t have for 5 1/2 years.”

Says Hirschhorn: “The problem was it always lacked authenticity, there was no empathy for what it means to be a fan of a team. They’re real fans--their team means everything to these guys. Whenever they come to these meetings, they’re decked out in Michigan clothing from head to toe. They’re walking logos for the University of Michigan. They’re smart, and they’re enthusiastic.”

Champnella concurs: “It became a passion; it wasn’t just for a check. We were working seven days a week, 12 hours a day to get this done. We really wanted to see it work. That shows through. If you’re just doing it for the check, that shows too.”

Deadpan, Mitchell adds, “Plus, I didn’t want to lose my courtside seats at the Clippers.” High f--oh, well, you know.

Their collaborative methods can be unseemly to the outsider, they say. Writing consists, at times, of equal parts screaming matches and video gaming.

“There are times when my neighbors must think, ‘God, what’s going on in there?’ ” says Champnella, whose loquaciousness is balanced by Mitchell’s laconia. “We know at the end of the day, we’re going to be friends, but we disagree on things, because we’re trying to write the best script we can. We literally yell at the top of our lungs at each other over stupid things.”

“We’re face to face, veins bulging,” Mitchell adds. “But eventually, we realize that something works.”

“They offered us an office, an assistant to type for us,” Champnella says. “I said, ‘That would be no good because first of all, we’d be sitting there saying, “Man, I can’t believe we have an assistant.” ’ Secondly, they’d kick us out because we’re always yelling at each other.”

In navigating more rarefied L.A. social circles--Champnella’s younger sister Julie joined him at a party in which she met Tom Arnold; they’re marrying later this month--Champnella concedes that his Ford seems out of place and that, yes, he should pony up money for a car that’s more reliable.

But their success hasn’t sunk in. “We were going to a meeting with a director and spent 20 minutes looking for a street parking space instead of leaving the car with the valet. Everything has happened so fast, then I realized, ‘Keith, I think we can afford to valet now. We’re meeting with the director of a $30-million film, and we’re looking to put money in the meter.’ ”

Ultimately, the duo say that luck has been as much a factor in their change in fortunes as talent has.

Marvels Champnella: “It’s like we hit the secret knock on the door and everybody’s opened up and said, ‘Hey, where you been?’ ”

Mitchell reflects: “It really is a fine line separating somebody’s who’s made it and someone who hasn’t.”