Making movies their own way

Paul Clinton

Mark Richman has always been business-minded.

But after quitting as a stockbroker in the mid-1990s, Richman

plugged himself in to a creative outlet. He enrolled in film school

at the University of Oklahoma.

“I have always chosen a profession where I thought I would make

money, instead of something that gave me personal satisfaction,”

Richman says.

Now, Richman and his wife, Roberta Pacino, with degrees in hand,

have set up a production office at their ritzy, Mediterranean-style

Newport Beach apartment. They plan to begin rolling cameras in

October on the first of three feature films to be made on a

shoestring budget.

Richman says he will shoot and edit the first feature for

$375,000.

“We’re going to make ultra-low-budget movies with big-budget

quality,” Richman says. “It’s going to look really hot.”

In conversation, Richman divulges few details about the plot of

the perhaps ironically titled “Born Again,” which he says will carry

a pro-science message, but says it will be a “present day

science-fiction thriller.”

And Richman is clearly pushing at the edges of film financing.

As is the custom on many indie projects, he’ll pay his cast and

crew only minimum, or scale wages.

To sweeten the deal, he’s making them partners, offering them an

ownership stake in the company. He hopes the approach will attract

higher-tier talent to his productions.

Richman has enlisted his wife to open doors with film

distributors. Pacino also wrote the “Born Again” script.

“I just wasn’t comfortable acting,” Pacino says. “I was always

interested in the producing side of things.”

The couple is coming off a 2 1/2-year documentary project they

worked on, after completing graduate degrees in film production at

Oklahoma.

“Behind the Rain,” taken from the state song inspired by Oscar

Hammerstein’s musical, traced a natural history museum’s efforts to

build a new home for its collection.

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History reopened in May

2000. The documentary is now screened there daily. It was produced

under the Quarter to Three Films banner, their now-defunct company.

They’ve set up shop in Newport Beach as Richman Pacino Films.

In 1999, the two made a quirky 45-minute documentary “about

outhouses,” Pacino says. “Shiver Shack,” as it was titled, featured a

string of interviews at nursing homes, where residents shared their

memories of less hygienic times.

Before enrolling in Oklahoma’s film program, Richman and Pacino

took the more traditional route toward producing. They accepted an

offer from New Line Cinema in the early 1990s to produce a $1-million

film from a movie star who had ambition to direct.

The deal collapsed when they failed to find someone who would

accept the budgetary limit.

Frustrated and angry, Richman headed to film school to learn how

to make movies so he wouldn’t have to “rely on the major studios to

do my deals.”

By basing the new company in coastal Orange County, Richman hopes

to draw from a wealthy local investment pool.

As a former surfer -- he grew up in Ventura County -- the

51-year-old Richman says he feels at home in Newport Beach. Pacino,

50, dubs it “paradise.”

Several dozen other production companies are running their

operations out of Newport Beach, said Joe Cleary, the city’s film

liaison.

“It’s a prestigious address,” Cleary said. “We’re the hot area

right now.”