'LEMONY' GOODNESS.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

A telemarketer once asked Daniel Handler his name. Not fancying the idea of being on any unwelcome mailing lists, Handler chose the most ludicrous moniker he could think of: Lemony Snicket.

``I felt sure they were going to say, 'Don't be ridiculous,' '' recalls the San Francisco novelist. ``Instead they said, 'Is that spelled like it sounds?' ''

Years and more than 25 million book sales later, Handler watched as a film crew constructed an indoor lake inside an abandoned aerospace warehouse in Downey. That was because ``author'' Lemony Snicket had described a Lake Lachrymose in one of his ``Series of Unfortunate Events.'' The first three books of the 13 edition series are the basis of the film ``Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events,'' opening Dec. 17.

``I keep expecting to get used to what has happened, but I don't,'' says Handler. ``I thought I might have a tiny cult audience that you could comfortably fit into one room. I never thought there would be enough people who would buy the book as there were people building that lake. It really has been astonishing.''

``Lemony Snicket,'' which is looking to lure the holiday season's family audience, is a fantastical adventure story about a trio of orphaned siblings. As the title suggests, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire encounter all sorts of mayhem and disreputable characters, most notably their villainous uncle, Count Olaf (played in the film by Jim Carrey). Meryl Streep, Cedric the Entertainer and Catherine O'Hara also star, and the ubiquitous Jude Law supplies the voice of Lemony Snicket.

As is the case with that other adventure-packed kid lit franchise - ``Harry Potter'' - ``Lemony Snicket'' has an enormous fan base among the young adolescent set. Soon after signing on, the film's director, Brad Silberling, held a kind of research town hall meeting with his art department and a bunch of young Snicket-ites - ages 9 to 13 - to gauge priorities. Gloom was sort of a given. The tone of the ``Snicket'' novels is all about menace and disrepute: If you're looking for cheery tales with a happy ending, it promises, go elsewhere.

The novels have illustrations (by Brett Helquist), but no predefined ``sacred look,'' according to Silberling.

``Daniel Handler's brilliance is that the novels feel incredibly descriptive and they're really not,'' says Silberling, whose previous credits include ``City of Angels'' and ``Moonlight Mile.'' ``It's just they're smart and the language is great and there's a tone to them, but when you have to stop and go back and look for deep description of Count Olaf's home or what exactly did Lake Lachrymose look like, he leaves much to the imagination.''

Brought in to help create the visual world of ``Lemony Snicket'' is production designer Rick Heinrichs, an Oscar winner (for ``Sleepy Hollow'') and frequent collaborator with Tim Burton. Rather than going overseas, producers shot significant portions of ``Lemony Snicket'' on the lot at Paramount Pictures and at a specially constructed tank in Downey built to house four sets. A perilous scene - not from the books - where the Baudelaire children are trapped in a car on a railroad crossing, was filmed on a stage with special effects added in.

According to Heinrichs, the film has a period feel to it with anachronistic and present-day touches co-existing in a kind of parallel universe. So Count Olaf's car and the vehicle belonging to family friend Mr. Poe, for example, will be from completely different ages and countries. And both contain reel-to-reel tape players. Cell phones and computer parts might turn up as well - the eldest Baudelaire, Violet, is an inventor - even though the costumes will more likely suggest the Victorian or Edwardian era.

``In real life, you have an amalgam of period and contemporary stuff anyway,'' says Heinrichs. ``It felt to us that the world of Lemony Snicket was almost a parallel, contiguous society to our own, but somewhat separate at the same time.''

``You had to commit to creating your own world where you could have textures collide and anachronisms collide,'' adds Silberling, ``and the only way to do that was sort of take yourself out of existing locations and out of anything that sort of became too easily familiar to an audience.''

Silberling joined ``Lemony Snicket'' after an earlier pass at the film - to be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (``The Addams Family'') - fell apart amid reported discord between Sonnenfeld and producer Scott Rudin. Silberling, at the Berlin Film Festival with ``Moonlight Mile,'' received ``two almost simultaneous phone calls'' from Paramount and DreamWorks inquiring whether he would be interested in directing ``Lemony Snicket.''

Unfamiliar with anything ``Snicket-y,'' Silberling - who has a 3-year- old daughter with his wife, actress Amy Brenneman - picked up the first three books. After finishing them, purely for ``research purposes,'' he read the remaining novels in the series as well. (The 11th, ``The Grim Grotto,'' was published in September. Handler plans to conclude the series after book 13.)

``I was fascinated that someone had gotten away with these books,'' says Silberling. ``Daniel had the smarts and the courage to write what's really ... very playful and subversive and, at the same time, trusting literature. He does not play down, which is why adults can read these things and enjoy them. I just got why kids couldn't keep their hands off them. I got hooked too.''

He's not alone, says Susan Rich, a senior editor at HarperCollins Children's Books and Handler's longtime friend and editor. It was Rich who, newly hired at HarperCollins, suggested that Handler take a shot at a series of middle-grade stories. Handler came back with an idea about the terrible things happening to orphaned children. To author and editor's surprise, the idea took hold.

Based on the fan mail and correspondence that Snicket receives, Rich believes that young readers buy into the ``Unfortunate Events'' premise to the point that they want to help bring Count Olaf to justice and aid the unlucky Baudelaires.

``It's refreshing to bump into a book that doesn't promise you a happy ending,'' says Rich. ``I also think that 8- to 12-year-olds are intelligent and are refreshed by a narrator that speaks to them as if they were intelligent. There's a 'Lemony Snicket' world where children are good and smart and clever and resourceful and adults are bumbling idiots for the most part.''

And on Dec. 17, whether good or drastically unfortunate, that world moves to the big screen.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

``Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events'' Dec. 17

Emily Browning (holding baby), Liam Aiken, Jim Carrey.