He’s ‘O.C.’s’ fresh breeze

For one of the very few times in her media-saturated life, Paris Hilton is turning down a chance to appear on television.

What might be great news for the rest of the country proves mildly distressing to Josh Schwartz, the creator, producer and principal writer of Fox’s exceedingly popular new drama series, “The O.C.” Schwartz had written a small part in this Wednesday’s episode for the all-pervading party girl, but Hilton’s representatives are balking at his offer, telling Schwartz over the telephone that Hilton isn’t interested in a self-parodying spoof.

“Paris Hilton won’t play herself on TV,” Schwartz says after he gets off the phone in “The O.C.’s” Manhattan Beach production offices. “Who does she want to play? Lady Macbeth?”

In the scheme of grinding out a weekly show tracking the affairs of stunning Orange County teens and their parents, the Hilton holdup is but a minor inconvenience. Many producers would forget it, cook up a different casting idea and move on. But Schwartz has written the part specifically for Hilton and repeats aloud the dialogue he has scripted on her behalf: “Orange County?” Hilton is to say after meeting the show’s character Seth Cohen. “Ew.”

It may seem a reach to describe a prime-time soap opera as having a vision, but “The O.C.” has won over audiences and critics alike thanks to Schwartz’s deceptively complex design, a scheme that demands tiny cameos like Hilton’s be cast exactly right. Although the show employs a staff of as many as six writers, Schwartz will write, co-write or ghost-write about 21 of the show’s 27 episodes this debut season, a level of involvement typically reserved for series supermen like Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”) and David E. Kelley (“Ally McBeal”).

“The O.C.” certainly overflows with scandal, wealth and sex, yet underneath all the prerequisites of its genre lurks dialogue so witty and references so obscure that the Writers Guild of America recently nominated Schwartz’s pilot script for one of its annual screenwriting awards.

Over the course of a few days with the 27-year-old Schwartz, it becomes apparent that “The O.C.” is distinguished by its relentless determination to balance soap-opera trash with pop-culture smarts. In the very same afternoon that Schwartz considers the means by which one more of his characters might try to kill himself and how to invent yet another love triangle, he also is correcting an actor’s pronunciation of Azerbaijan and fighting with Fox to save a joke about the People’s Choice Awards being rigged. As for Paris Hilton: Schwartz won’t give up until he somehow changes her mind.

Giggles on the set

“The O.C.” is primarily focused on the lives of four teenagers in Newport Beach, but during filming one recent day on a Manhattan Beach soundstage, it’s actually three of the show’s grown-ups who are behaving like adolescents. Production is already hours behind schedule, and director David Barrett is trying to stage a simple scene in the kitchen of the show’s central family, the Cohens.

As soon as the cameras roll, stars Peter Gallagher, Kelly Rowan and Tate Donovan burst into hopeless giggles, take after take after take. Schwartz, watching from behind a bank of monitors, eventually loses his patience. “Go over there and kick some butt,” he quietly says to Barrett, who quickly regains order. Schwartz then prepares for a meeting with senior executives at Fox up at the studio lot, where there’s much less tension in the air.

Launched last August, “The O.C.” is currently television’s second-highest-rated new drama, behind “Las Vegas,” attracting an average weekly audience of 9.3 million. The show is also a launching pad for alternative rock bands, with the first in a planned series of “O.C.” soundtrack albums arriving March 30.

Part of the show’s popularity can be traced to its surprisingly strong appeal to men, who typically avoid shows of this kind. Shows of this kind, though, don’t typically have Schwartz’s wry point of view.

At the show’s center stand wisecracking high school student Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) and his parents, real estate developer Kirsten (Rowan) and selfless lawyer Sandy (Gallagher). In the first episode, Sandy takes pity on a misguided joyrider from Chino, Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie), inviting him to move into the Cohens’ pool house. Ryan and Seth become friends, and then burn considerable hormones trying to hook up with local girls Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton) and Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson).

As in similar shows before it, everyone is beautiful and most all are rich; some of the adult actors are too young to have teen children, and a few of the young actors are too old to play teens. In any given episode, Seth or Ryan might get into a fight, try to thwart a gun-wielding classmate, accidentally burn down a house, or get into another fight. Other characters overdose, get tossed in jail or relapse as strippers. There are as many romantic missteps and love triangles as there are alcohol-loaded parties and spectacular sunsets.

Yet for all his adherence to the conventions of the serial, Schwartz isn’t necessarily shackled by them. The show has veered away from the dramatic pyrotechnics of its first episodes, and is now more comfortable with heartfelt banter. Where you once had a quick look at “O.C.” teens in a hot tub, now you have a glimpse of them struggling to express their emotions. “As much dramatic and bad stuff befalls some of our characters, I think there is an underlying optimism to the show,” Schwartz says. “There’s a core of this loving family, and that’s the anchor that allows you to do some of the more outrageous things.”

Rather than concoct “Dynasty”-like backstabbing plots, the primary parents in “The O.C.” typically have meaningful conversations with their partners and their children. What might be a platitude in another show can be fodder for a glib comeback here.

Sandy: Since the minute you were born I knew I would never take another easy breath without knowing that you were safe.

Seth: So ... I’m like asthma?

The show is simultaneously campy and droll, a leap not only for the genre but for a network whose lineup has included “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance.”

“When I was in high school, all the other kids were watching ‘Beverly Hills 90210,’ ” says Schwartz, who grew up in Providence, R.I., and moved to Los Angeles as a film school undergraduate. “I was watching ‘Seinfeld.’ ”

A show’s quick evolution

Affixed to Schwartz’s office walls are two posters. One is covered with photographs of everything Orange County, from surfers to South Coast Plaza. The other features reproductions of movie posters such as “American Beauty,” “Election” and “Rushmore.” Schwartz took the collages into his first pitch meeting, and while they reveal his influences, they don’t illustrate how quickly his show has changed in less than a year.

In the pilot episode, Seth was a video game-playing geek, Summer a heartless despot and Marissa’s then-boyfriend, Luke Ward (Chris Carmack), a homophobic bully. Now Seth is among the coolest guys in prime time, Summer is his generally adoring girlfriend and Luke, whose dad has since come out of the closet, strums a guitar and offers love advice to the forlorn.

“That’s one of the amazing things about a television series,” says Schwartz, who in 1997 as a USC junior sold a movie script to Sony for nearly $1 million. The movie, about a post-high school romance, has not yet been made. “You have a chance to really evolve characters, grow with them, and knock them down a peg and have their lives turned upside-down.”

Which is exactly what Schwartz and his “O.C.” writers are doing in a production office conference room. People who create soaps alternate from construction to demolition: They build up relationships, only to tear them down. And Seth and Summer are about to get bulldozed.

Schwartz has decided he wants to split the couple apart one more time, and is thinking about doing it before the show’s hiatus begins in May. But there’s a catch: The show’s audience, like its writing staff, is partial to both characters. So how can Seth and Summer break it off without somebody’s being to blame?

“We can’t make Seth unlikable,” co-executive producer Allan Heinberg says.

“We could go down the ‘Friends’ road, where one of them has an affair,” Schwartz says.

Executive producer Bob DeLaurentis and story editor J.J. Philbin don’t seem to like the idea. There’s a few seconds of silence, and then Schwartz suggests a potential solution: Perhaps a third party drives the couple apart. Maybe Summer’s self-medicated stepmother? More silence. The show also is introducing Marissa’s trashy aunt around the same time.

“The problem is we have two terrifying women,” Schwartz admits. “And they cancel each other out.” He then wonders aloud if perhaps the disruptive force could be Summer’s dad.

“He’s very good-looking and popular and rich,” Schwartz says, getting more excited about the idea.

“Maybe her father could dismantle Seth at the dinner table?” Heinberg says.

“That’s good,” Schwartz says, adding that he knows a “friend” (clearly himself) who once realized a relationship was doomed the first time he met his girlfriend’s family.

“People ask me, ‘Do you write your own life into the show?’ ” Schwartz says a few minutes later, down on the “The O.C.’s” soundstage. “And I say, ‘Of course. What else would I write about?’ ”

Soon after Schwartz sold his movie script to Sony, he made a series of deals for television series pilots and dropped out of college. ABC bought his boarding school drama “Brookfield,” and the WB purchased “Wall to Wall Records,” a drama about the music business. Both shows were filmed, but neither was broadcast. Schwartz also sold “Alphabet City,” a drama about a New York tabloid, to Fox, but it was never produced. While all of these shows focused on subjects close to Schwartz, “The O.C.” is perhaps the most autobiographical.

The Cohens are loosely based on his parents (except Schwartz’s mom can cook, he notes), and Seth shares much of Schwartz’s wit and erudition. “The Seth and Sandy relationship is very similar to the relationship I have with my dad,” Schwartz says. “It’s very loving, but we very rarely are overt with our emotions. Instead, we give each other a lot of [grief].”

He also gives his cast a lot of leeway. “Josh is confident enough of his point of view that he does not feel jeopardized by my comments and observations,” Gallagher says. In a recent episode, Schwartz wanted Gallagher’s Sandy to ground Ryan. Gallagher, a father, said it would never happen. So Schwartz rewrote the scene into something more believable. “Josh creates an environment on this set where really good things can happen,” Gallagher says.

The show also gives Schwartz a chance to embellish his own personal history. In a previous episode, Seth brought a humidifier on a Palm Springs road trip. “I used to get bloody noses from dry air, so there was a period in high school where I used to carry a humidifier with me,” Schwartz says. “But now I get to write it so the guy with the humidifier has two girls fighting over him.”

The Paris connection

“We closed Paris Hilton!” Kristen Campo, Schwartz’s assistant, says as she ducks her head into the writers’ room.

It took a week, but Schwartz was able to accommodate Hilton’s several requests. She won’t play herself (she’s now an American literature graduate student focusing on Thomas Pynchon and magical realism), her character could return (she gives Seth her phone number), and she gets to kiss one of the boys (which was cut from the show).

Schwartz hasn’t won every “O.C.” tussle. He wasn’t initially willing to make 27 episodes this season and worries the volume may have compromised some of the series’ story lines. He wants to film more than three days on location for every episode, but Fox won’t pay for it. And Schwartz struggles sometimes to maintain the show’s cheeky humor.

In the wake of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl incident, Fox has asked Schwartz to tone the show down, insisting that Marissa and Ryan not have sex this season. Off-limits too is some double-entendre dialogue that once sailed past Fox’s censors. “It’s kind of scary what’s going on now,” Schwartz says.

Supervising producer Stephanie Savage wrote one scene in which Summer, trying to come on to Seth, promised him: “You don’t even have to do anything. You can just lie there like a buffet, and I can serve myself.” When the episode was broadcast, all Summer was allowed to say was: “You don’t even have to do anything.” Fox also nixed Summer’s first orgasm -- she will have to wait until next season, or beyond.

Just as his characters have matured in the first season, Schwartz himself has developed quickly.

“I wasn’t concerned about his age,” Gail Berman, president of entertainment for the Fox Broadcasting Co., says about hiring Schwartz to helm the series. “I was concerned about the fact that he hadn’t run a show before.

“You need somebody who can appreciate the scope of the job, be able to have a creative vision, and still keep the trains running on time. It’s a left-brain and a right-brain job. It’s not often that people can do it well. But Josh does it very well,” Berman says.

Says Schwartz: “I’ve never had a real job like this before, where I had to go to an office every day. I was always just kind of writing. This year for me is really about getting a real job, and becoming an adult.”

John Horn can be contacted at john.horn@latimes.com.