Absolute beginners.

Three first-time directors take us behind the scenes of their fresh new movies

Boy toys and Tori stories

Where do you scout for the perfect actor to play a go-go boy in a gay-themed movie? If you're first-time feature-film director Jim Fall, whose randy romantic comedy Trick opens July 23, you pick up a New York City bar rag.

After auditioning a kick line's worth of muscular, talentless booty shakers, a frustrated Fall spotted his future star, John Paul Pitoc, in an ad for an "underwear play" called Timothy Leafy in Space. The production was forgettable, Fall says, but "J.P. was funny, and [when he came on] I paid attention for the first time that whole evening."

Afterward, Fall handed Pitoc a script--which the actor didn't read. "In L.A., actors will chase your car down if they think you've got a role for them," quips the director. "J.P. finally showed up at the audition, and he still hadn't read the whole script. But he did a good job." And as fast as you can stuff a dollar into a G-string, Pitoc was hired.

With a sharp screenplay by Jason Schafer and a wonderful cast led by Pitoc, Christian Campbell (actress Neve's button-cute brother), and Spelling, Trick shows all the signs of a sleeper hit. Taking place one Manhattan summer night, the film focuses on two gay 20-somethings--Gabriel (Campbell), a shy, aspiring musical theater composer, and Mark (Pitoc), a sexy go-go dancer--who just want to find a place to, um, get acquainted but, through a series of misadventures, find something deeper.

Fall, who jokingly calls himself "rampantly homosexual," says he was attracted by the script's "simplicity and its honest, nononsense approach to a gay stow. It wasn't apologetic. It wasn't a coming-out stow."

The director has few of the indie-film war stories many first-timers share. "We were kind of lucky," admits Fall, 36, a Hollidaysburg, Pa., native who has spent "17 long, depressing years" in New York, making short films and directing theater. "So far it's been a dream scenario. I found [producer Eric d'Arbeloff] who rode in on his white horse and financed the movie. Then came [a well-received festival screening at] Sundance and selling it to Fine Line. So I guess I did something right."

So did his cast--particularly Spelling, who plays Gabriel's self-absorbed best friend, Katherine, a would-be chorus girl of dubious talent. "When I met her I told her, `I've never seen Beverly Hills, 90210,'" the director recalls. "She goes, `Thank God!' She was so sweet." Impressed with Spelling's performance in The House of Yes, Fall asked her to read something from the script, and within a day "she basically had the whole monologue memorized. It had me in stitches."

The filming was not without its off-camera drama, however. Pitoc, for example, "can be a dizzy queen for a straight boy," Fall says. One day the actor had a little pesto pasta--not knowing that pesto is made with pine nuts, to which he's severely allergic. Pitoc "blew up like a balloon," recalls Fall with a groan. "It was horrifying. And this production assistant--who must be brain-damaged--got lost trying to drive J.P. to the hospital, came back, and left the car in the middle of the intersection, the doors hanging open and J.P. sitting there, incoherent. I was scared to death, but he was fine the next day."

Fall is less fearful about heading into his next project. "I'm not interested in making movies that are just entertainment," he states. "And I'm not limiting myself to straight or gay projects. It just depends on what's there and what comes together first."

Single and "actively seeking," he notes, Fall likens himself to the slightly awkward Gabriel over sultry stud Mark. "I'm certainly not a go-go boy, and I don't have that aloof killer-shark mystique that Mark starts out with," he observes. "Actually, I think I'm more Katherine. I'm the one singing songs despite my lack of talent."