Postage Due Producer Believes ‘The Postman’ Has All The Qualities Of A Major Hit

“The shattered storefronts of the deserted town gave way at last to Eighteenth Avenue and the University of Oregon campus, the broad athletic field now overgrown with aspen and alder saplings, some more than 20 feet high. There, near the old gymnasium, Gordon slowed down, then stopped abruptly and held the pony still.

“The animal snorted and pawed the ground as Gordon listened, and then was sure.

“Somewhere, perhaps not too far away, somebody was screaming.”

From “The Postman” by David Brin

If you’ve been to the movies lately, you’ve likely seen trailers for the new Kevin Costner movie.

It’s called “Waterworld 2.”

Just kidding.

Actually, the new movie is called “The Postman.” Filmed last spring and summer in various western locations - including Metaline Falls, Wash. - it’s based on a 1985 novel by Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin.

But you can understand why there might be confusion between it and “Waterworld,” an original screenplay that was filmed primarily in Hawaii.

Despite the vastly diverse locales, similarities abound.

Both movies, for example, star Kevin Costner. Both are set in the near future. Both feature “Dances With Wolves”-type production values, including running times that push three hours.

But the main resemblance involves plot.

“Waterworld” involves a loner who travels through a post-holocaust world, struggling to survive against formidable odds and who, almost against his will, provides inspiration for the second coming of humankind.

In contrast, “The Postman” involves a loner who travels through a post-holocaust world, struggling to survive against formidable odds odds and who, almost against his will, provides inspiration for the … well, you know.

But maybe you don’t. Because according to “Postman” producer Steve Tisch, the two films couldn’t be more different.

The difference, he says, comes from the heart.

Speaking by phone from Los Angeles, where the film’s stars and producers are busy promoting the Christmas Day release, Tisch is high on a project that, he says, has occupied his attention for the past 12 years.

It was those dozen years ago that Brin’s novel, sent to Tisch as galley proofs, struck the movie producer as both “original and very compelling.”

“I have sort of a formula that I follow when I look at material,” he says. “First, even before I ask myself whether I want to produce it, as someone who loves movies and has gone to movies for the better part of 40 years, I ask: Do I want to see this movie? And in the case of ‘The Postman,’ the answer was yes.”

What attracted Tisch to Brin’s sci-fi novel was the same impulse that drew him to another film project, the multiple Oscar-winning “Forrest Gump.”

“They’re both stories of people who I care about, on their own unique journey,” he says, “and their stories are full of humanity and hope and commitment.”

Humanity and hope are Brin bywords.

Set in the year 2013, “The Postman” tells the story of one Gordon Krantz, a 30-something veteran who has spent the past decade and a half since the collapse of civilization wandering in a vaguely westerly direction.

“Sixteen years chasing a dream,” he says.

Yet Gordon is hardly a mere dreamer. Having survived a cataclysmic world war, which saw nuclear and biological weapons wipe out much of humanity and virtually all organized government, he clearly can take care of himself.

Even in a world full of horrors, most of them man-made. When he is robbed and nearly killed by a band of survivalists, Gordon takes refuge where he finds it - namely in the rusted-out ruin of a U.S. Postal Service vehicle.

The prizes he finds there - government-issue clothing, leather bags to hold his remaining gear, etc. - boast added benefits. When Gordon approaches a small settlement in western Oregon, people are unaccountably nice to him. And it doesn’t take long for him to figure out why.

Since he is wearing the clothes of a postman, the settlers figure he is one. And as such, he is seen as a representative - a symbol, even - of the government that most people can just barely remember.

He is a living reminder of a time long gone when people took for granted such societal fundamentals as light, heat, grocery stores full of food and someone official to carry their written words across the country.

At first, Gordon is thrilled by this development. A natural actor, he bluffs his way through such towns as Oakridge, Cottage Grove, Eugene and Corvallis, caging free meals, lodging and the occasional woman when he can. But then he begins to realize something else.

When you carry the hopes and dreams of so many people, what starts out as fantasy gradually becomes real. The irony that Brin constructs involves the ultimate loner and scamp becoming the very thing that he pretends to be - the thread that is serving to reconnect the very weave of society.

If he can just keep the dark forces from killing him before it happens… His overall message, Brin has said in interviews, involves this “ultimate irony.” Which, as he explains, is “that we’re cantankerous individuals because of a warm, decent, generous, terribly imperfect society that taught us those values and created circumstances allowing self-righteous individuality to thrive.”

Messages such as that carried producer Tisch through the years of development hell, through various drafts of the screenplay and up through the time when the final deals were brokered.

Deals that became contracts when Costner first agreed to star, and then agreed to double as director.

“In the case of ‘Gump,’ it took nine years for the elements of (Tom) Hanks, (Robert) Zemeckis and a good screenplay to come together,” Tisch says. “And it took 12 years for a good screenplay to develop here, for Kevin to sign as the lead and then for him to say, ‘You know, no one is going to direct this picture better than I am.”’

And that’s the big difference, Tisch says, between “The Postman” and “Waterworld”: From the beginning, cast and crew were committed, and ready, to do what needed to be done.

The “Waterworld” crew - which was headed up by director Kevin Reynolds, a former friend of Costner’s who had given the actor one of his early career breaks by casting him in the film “Fandango” - may have been committed. But it was hardly prepared.

“Let me sort of quote Kevin,” Tisch says. “One of the reasons he feels there were so many problems on ‘Waterworld’ was that he didn’t direct the picture. He was just the lead. And he felt that the picture went into production before the script was ready.”

Ultimately, Reynolds suffered from two kinds of luck: bad and worse. A storm ruined the expensive floating set. Production costs ballooned to $150 million and more. Pre-release stories described the production as “Fishtar” and “Kevin’s Gate.” And while the final product wasn’t horrible, neither was the polished product that viewers had every right to expect.

One review likened it to “‘The Man From Atlantis’ meets ‘Mad Max.”’

“One of the reasons why there was no coverage on ‘Postman’ was because there were no problems,” Tisch says. “This production started with a finished script, and Kevin had a tremendous amount of time to rehearse and work with his actors.”

And, according to at least one report, he did it for a relatively modest $85 million.

The script does take some leeway with Brin’s book. For starters, the holocaust is something other than a nuclear winter. Tisch and Costner were afraid that 1985’s no-nukes sensibilities would seem dated in 1997.

“But in terms of the emotional themes that David had in the novel and the nature of the confrontations and the consistent struggle between good and evil, I think we really preserved all that David intended,” Tisch says.

And, ultimately, intent may make all the difference.

“We made a movie, we didn’t want to make headlines,” Tisch says. “We didn’t want to do anything other than work hard, make a movie for a price, and I think we made a damned good one.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo