'O,' WHERE ART THOU? AFTER A YEAR ON THE SHELF, CONTROVERSIAL FILM TO SEE LIGHT OF DAY.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

The first time director Tim Blake Nelson had a bad feeling about the prospects for his movie ``O'' came last spring when a publicist for Miramax Films called to tell him that the first press screening of the film had been canceled.

``They called at 3 o'clock to tell me the 6 p.m. screening had been called off,'' Nelson remembers. ``And I thought, 'OK, there are press screenings all week. Maybe they had a problem with the room.' But no, they canceled all of the screenings.''

And thus began the long and winding saga of ``O,'' Nelson's teen drama adaptation of Shakespeare's ``Othello,'' a movie that was completed and delivered to Miramax on March 17, 2000, and is just making its way into theaters today - courtesy of Lions Gate Films.

In the intervening year and a half, Miramax moved the film's release date seven times, prompting a breach of contract lawsuit from ``O'' producer Eric Gitter that alleged, among other things, that Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein threatened Gitter. According to the suit, Weinstein told Gitter that if he pressed ahead, ``he and his brother (Miramax co-chairman Bob Weinstein) would see to it that no one in Hollywood would do any future business'' with Gitter again.

The lawsuit was settled in April with Miramax selling the domestic rights to Lions Gate. But the studio retained the international rights, which would seem to indicate that the Weinsteins found something to like about the movie.

Into the Lions Gate

``I remain convinced that Bob and Harvey admired the film,'' Nelson says. ``They simply feared the audience.''

The Weinsteins refused to comment directly on ``O.'' Miramax spokesman Matthew Hiltzik says the studio believes that `` 'O' is a great project'' and that Miramax ``wanted to increase its opportunity for success'' by licensing the movie to Lions Gate.

``There are people who are opponents of films like 'O' who would like to create distractions and focus on our involvement rather than the film itself,'' Hiltzik says. ``Such distractions can derail a film, and we didn't want that to happen with 'O.' ''

That's not exactly how Nelson sees it. But more on that later.

On the surface, ``O'' might seem to be the latest attempt to cash in on the teen market, following previous pop Shakespeare adaptations like Baz Luhrmann's ``William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet'' and the ``Taming of the Shrew'' knockoff ``10 Things I Hate About You.''

There's a little more to the movie, though. Writer Brad Kaaya developed ``O'' in 1997 partly as his response to the shootings that were occurring at various schools in the United States. (The Columbine shootings were still two years in the future.)

In Kaaya's version of ``Othello,'' the action moves from the battlefield to the basketball court. Here, Hugo (``Pearl Harbor's'' Josh Hartnett) conspires to bring down the team's star player, Odin (Mekhi Phifer) and poison his love affair with the beautiful Desi (Julia Stiles). Hugo's motivation: His basketball coach father (Martin Sheen) pays more attention to Odin than he ever did to him. (Shakespeare kept the character's motives hidden.)

As anyone familiar with the play knows, none of the characters lives happily ever after.

``With all the tragedies in high school, it seemed like a believable place to set a contemporary telling of the play,'' Kaaya says.

The stuff of tragedy

Nelson - an actor who last played one of George Clooney's chain gang companions in ``O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' - was at first skeptical. (His initial response: ``No way!'') But upon consideration, he didn't think transferring the action to the high school world was as big a leap as it seemed.

``Passions in high school are very serious,'' Nelson says. ``You're talking about first love and a deep need for parental affection. In fact, I dare say that teen violence in our country is the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. And that's what makes the movie seem credible.''

Perhaps too credible for its own good. Nelson says Miramax began getting antsy after the April 1999 shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School. Nelson was editing the movie at the time and began test screening it shortly afterward.

``To me, when Columbine happened, I thought, 'This is why we made the movie,' '' Nelson says. ``I wanted to hasten the film's release, not delay it. I felt that in its small way, the film could be part of the dialogue about teens and violence in this country.''

Adds star Phifer: ``You can understand why they delayed it - at first. You don't want to be seen as capitalizing on other people's mishaps. But for them to keep delaying it ... I don't know. You want it to come out some time, you know what I mean?''

Victim of politics?

Producer Gitter believes that the subsequent delays through last year had more to do with election-year politics than squeamishness over high school shootings. Harvey Weinstein publicly supported the Gore-Lieberman presidential ticket as well as Hillary Clinton's New York Senate campaign, and the candidates were making a lot of noise about violent movies marketed to teens.

``Harvey didn't want to be construed as a hypocrite,'' Nelson says. ``He was really frank with me in explaining his reluctance. I never thought I was dealing with a reactionary or a maniac. I didn't agree with him, but I could see that he had given a lot of thought to the issue.''

Says producer Gitter: ``If this had been a movie that had giant aliens blasting people with laser beams, racking up a huge body count, nobody would have blinked. But it isn't. This movie doesn't pull any punches.''

Whether ``O'' will draw an audience on the traditionally slow Labor Day weekend remains to be seen. But the long delay to theaters might actually work to the movie's advantage since Hartnett and Stiles (``Save the Last Dance'') have both become hot young actors in the intervening years.

``The movie seems about a half a lifetime ago,'' says the 23-year-old Hartnett of the movie he made three springs ago. ``If I made it today, I'd be like one of those old guys playing high-schoolers on '90210.' ''

Nelson, 36, feels like an old guy just from having gone through the whole process of getting ``O'' into theaters.

``I'm incredibly relieved, to tell you the truth,'' the soft-spoken Nelson says. ``I was really afraid we would never get there.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Tragic consequences

Making a teen drama out of `Othello' was one thing, but, after Columbine, getting it released was quite another

(2) Josh Hartnett, right, Julia Stiles and Andrew Keegan star in ``O,'' a retelling of Shakespeare's ``Othello'' set in a high school. The story's violent ending made studio executives wary of releasing the film in the wake of real-life high-school shootings.

(3) Director Tim Blake Nelson, left, instructs Mekhi Phifer on the set of ``O.'' Says Nelson, ``When Columbine happened, I thought, 'This is why we made the movie.' ''