STONE COLD FOX
The stars of Fox's new skein "Skin" pay homage to "Scarface," an appropriate referencwe point for a show - and a network - intent on pushing the boundaries this fall.

by Ted Johnson | Sep 01 '03

Olivia Wilde left the audition for Fox's new skein "Skin" certain that her competition Dominique Swain would get the lead part, that of the teenage daughter of a Valley porn mogul. "As I was leaving, I actually said to her, 'Have fun with the show,' " Wilde, 19, recalls.

They hired Wilde the next day. That they went for an actress with few credits, compared with the one-time star of "Lolita," speaks to what Fox is up to this season.

Not since the days of "Beverly Hills, 90210" and "Melrose Place" has the network been so bent on introducing so many new sexy, stylish women for the teen and 20-ish set, the ones to whom Ally McBeal looks like a crazy old aunt.

Their characters are feisty femmes who inspire temptation, who come with baggage, who have a past. Mischa Barton is the girl next door on "The OC," but she smokes and drinks like a sailor.

Others are surrounded by an aura of mystery. Eliza Dushku, in her first lead role in "Tru Calling," speaks to the dead. Caroline Dhavernas talks to gift shop trinkets in "Wonder Falls." Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie try to talk to hicks on the reality series "The Simple Life."

These shows' sexually charged plots and premises are just the ingredients that Fox needs to do what it does best: push boundaries.

This was the network that once drew fire for featuring Shannen Doherty and Luke Perry in bed on "90210." Now "OC" shows teens doing a striptease, snorting coke and having a threesome.

"We need to be relevant and authentic to our audience," says Fox entertainment president Gail Berman. "On the other hand, we are responsible broadcasters."

McG, executive producer of "The OC," calls his show a freaky hybrid of "90210" and "Six Feet Under." "What we were trying to do is a credible snapshot of youth culture in Orange County," he says. "It can be an X-rated world for kids. There are some crazy things that they do."

Ironically, "Skin" has less titillation than its title may suggest. Berman assures everyone that there will be no naked bodies trouncing around, ala pay cable. The show is essentially a play on "Romeo and Juliet," in which Wilde falls for the son (D.J. Cotrona) of the district attorney who's trying to put her dad out of business.

But never has a show on the broadcast networks had the porn business as its backdrop, in what has already been deemed another example of the mainstreaming of adult entertainment. That in itself has generated heat, just the type of publicity Fox craves. In July, with critics gathered at a Hollywood hotel to grill the show's cast with puritanical questions, Wilde says she felt like asking, "How many of you staying at the hotel will go back to your rooms and watch porn tonight?"

"Porn has become so mainstream," she says. "It is such a part of our culture that it's kind of ridiculous that it is still viewed as an underground cult. I never consider it scary and dark. I consider it like the modeling industry, only more amusing."

Next year, Wilde will play a bitchy classmate in a feature film about a 17-year-old high school jock who dates a woman with a past --- a porn past. It, too, may inspire some heat, for it is aimed at the same teen audience weaned on "Dude, Where's My Car?" The title of this movie: "The Girl Next Door."

These days, nothing is as it seems.

Had Shakespeare lived today he'd probably be developing primetime soaps like this, just as Mozart would be scoring "Pirates of the Caribbean" --- both under the aegis of that renowned patron of the arts, Jerry Bruckheimer. Granted, even the bard would be challenged to transform "Romeo & Juliet" into a Fox sudser set against the porn industry, but "Skin's" producers have pulled it off about as well as can be done despite inherent limitations. Buoyed by Ron Silver's presence, this watchable series should benefit from "Joe Millionaire's" lead-in, the question being how its serialized format will fare against NBC's own skin-drenched ode to style over substance, "Las Vegas."

If "Romeo & Juliet: The Series" sounded like a swell pitch after the contemporized Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes film version in 1996, it's worth remembering that those star-crossed kids die at the end, as opposed to extending their tortured romance over 22 weeks.

And while D.J. Cotrona and Olivia Wilde are extremely attractive, watching them coo at each other starts to grow tiresome by the end of the second hour screened.

As updated for Fox, the Montagues and Capulets take on a modern-day twist. She's the doesn't-look-Jewish daughter of Jewish adult-film mogul Larry Goldman (Silver), while he's the Mexican/Irish Catholic son of hard-charging district attorney Thomas Roam (Kevin Anderson), looking to make his rep by bringing the pornmeister down.

The kids meet at a swank Hollywood party and are soon rolling around on the beach a la "From Here to Eternity" (that's an old movie, for any of you in the target audience), about the same time Roam arrests Goldman in his posh manor, triggering the war between their feuding houses.

Most interestingly, Goldman is a family man with principles --- a smut peddler with a heart of gold, loyal to his wife (Pamela Gidley), dedicated to his kids and outraged to learn that kiddie porn has found its way onto some of the company's Web sites.

The part finds Silver at his seething, sleazy best, while Anderson doesn't fare nearly as well as the harder-to-read D.A., whose crusade appears to be as much the product of ambition as legitimate outrage.

As for the kids, Adam (Cotrona) clearly feels neglected by his folks, while Wilde's Jewel (get it?) suffers from both rich-kid angst and fact that dad produces porn. When the show begins, she's a 16-year-old virgin, a disclosure treated as if that makes her the last chaste gal in her demo.

Filled with swooping aerial shots of the L.A. freeways, the series possesses a distinctive visual style courtesy of director Russell Mulcahy, who cut his teeth on musicvideos before segueing to films like "Highlander."

Writer-producer Jim Leonard also concocts a fair amount of intrigue, including a money-laundering scheme involving a criminal (Clarence Williams III) that could be the DA's entree into Goldman's empire. He doesn't help the show's cause, however, with whiny teen dialogue like Adam saying, "The less my parents are home, the more rules they make."

What's still lacking two hours in, is a sense of whether the show can sustain its central tension --- namely, the crazy-in-love kids caught between two hostile camps.

"Skin" also seeks to have it both ways by essentially glorifying porn while simultaneously questioning its adverse effects on society, as Roam does on more than one occasion.

Nevertheless, it at least represents an attempt at turning out a quality, character-driven drama --- a welcome departure from the Bruckheimer factory's steady output of crimeshows, which have left a trail of clothed but decapitated bodies all over primetime.

Already heavily promoted during the network's sports coverage, "Skin" fills an hour where "Girls Club" struck out last fall and has the chance to feed off "Joe Millionaire's" ratings largesse. If it doesn't work, expect Fox execs to fall back on another reality show --- maybe one inspired by "Hamlet," set in the restaurant industry, assuming NBC doesn't beat them to it.