COURTENEY COX: NOT JUST `FRIENDS' : WITH A FILM CAREER ALREADY IN PLACE BEFORE SHE HIT IT BIG ON NBC SITCOM, SHE LOOKS BEYOND - BUT ENJOYS - TV ROLE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Courteney Cox wants you to know that she's not obsessive. She's really interested in obsession in a kind of passionate, analytical way, but hardly like Monica Geller, the needling neat freak she plays so convincingly on the hit sitcom ``Friends.''

``I love what Monica's doing right now,'' Cox says of third-season developments in the most intense Friend. ``I don't care about the neat thing so much - we've done that, we know that and sometimes they can write funny stories around it - but I love that she's so controlling. I'm having such a good time.

``That Thanksgiving show, where she had to play football against her brother (David Schwimmer's Ross), that was Monica if I've ever seen Monica, at her best. She was competitive, controlling - nothing to do with being neat, this was just getting the job done. I love her obsessive nature right now.''

A little bit of that Monican egocentrism finds its way into Gale Weathers, the tabloid TV reporter Cox plays in ``Scream,'' her first major movie release since ``Friends'' made her a television superstar. As far as Weathers is concerned, the world is only about her concerns: getting intrusive interviews with tragedy survivors, selling her book about a particularly heinous, true crime, ensuring that she's one of the few left breathing when a new series of killings hits a small California town.

But the similarities between Gale and Monica are otherwise pretty few. And the resemblances between ``Scream'' and ``Friends'' are nonexistent. A half-serious send-up of teen slasher movies by the creator of Freddy Krueger, Wes Craven, ``Scream'' is actually one of the better-acted entries in the subhuman subgenre it makes brutal fun of.

That, and the fact it was not a romantic comedy, is what hooked Cox. Unlike fellow Friends Schwimmer (``The Pallbearer'') and Jennifer Aniston (``She's the One''), Cox made a conscious decision to appear in a film as different from the TV show as possible. And unlike Matt LeBlanc (``Ed''), she held out for something better-written than a sports farce that co-starred a chimp.

And there was also the fact that Cox enjoys a good, bloody mess.

``I knew that I wanted to do something different, something that wasn't like Monica,'' explains Cox, done up all in tight but casual black and looking fresh and bright, even though she's fighting off the last vestiges of an autumn cold. ``And I've always been attracted to these kinds of movies. Not necessarily to be in, but I love to watch thrillers and scary movies.

``It wouldn't be something that I would normally think I'd want to do, but when I read the script (by newcomer Kevin Williamson), it just flew by. I was like, `Wow, this is great! It's funny, it's scary, it's just everything in one.' Before it even got to my character, I thought it was really well-written.''

And although Gale was a cheesy tabloid journalist, Cox viewed the role as more of a chance to have fun than an opportunity to get revenge.

``I loved making her a total cheese ball, in a good and campy way,'' Cox says. ``I played it based in reality, but I like that she wears bright green suits and it's all about the way she looks, that everything begins and ends with Gale Weathers as far as she's concerned.

``But there's no way to really get revenge on the tabloid media,'' adds Cox who, since the breakup of a long-running relationship with actor Michael Keaton last year, has had her dating life pretty exhaustively chronicled - and, often, fictionalized. ``I mean, suing them and getting money wouldn't be revenge; it doesn't matter to them. It's just an annoyance, the one drag about this business.''

Well, maybe not the only one. Somewhat surprisingly, the sharp and otherwise well-informed Cox seems to have missed the growing controversy about the television content ratings system that's being unveiled Thursday - and that ``Friends,'' an unabashedly risque show that's broadcast at 8 p.m. Thursdays, has been central to.

``They're gonna start rating television shows?'' she asks. ``I might have heard that, but I thought someone was joking. Well, I agree that our show is too adult to be on at 8 o'clock (most of the ``Friends'' creative team was against NBC's decision to move the show up from its 9:30 slot behind ``Seinfeld'' last season). But I would never want to change it. What I love about the show is that we have the freedom to do stuff, to say things, to tell the truth.

``I was so afraid that the network was going to change that stuff (when the show began airing earlier). And I hate when we have something really funny in it, and we have to call Standards and Practices to get it approved. But maybe a rating system is not so bad. It's going to be good to know what you're about to watch - as long as they don't block the show.''

Ironically, ``Scream's'' satire is built upon another aspect of the content controversy: the concept that teen-agers who see too many violent movies are doomed to act out the same scenarios.

``There's a line in the movie that I think is right: `Movies don't make psycho killers, movies make psycho killers more creative,' '' Cox says with a laugh. ``I don't think it'll make you a crazy person or a killer or anything to watch a scary movie. I don't know - if I had kids of a certain age, I wouldn't want them to see a scary movie, but that's not because I think it's going to give them ideas. I think it's just going to keep them from sleeping at night.''

Cox and her ``Friends'' co-stars reportedly had Warner Bros. and NBC losing sleep last summer when the six cast members collectively announced that they wanted to be paid $100,000 each per episode. There was no impact on production for the new season as negotiations proceeded; it's widely reported that they finally settled for around $70,000 each per episode.

But the actors' not-exorbitant demands - many stars of hit sitcoms earn substantial six-figures-per-show salaries - set off a media frenzy.

``It wasn't like a holdout or a holdup,'' Cox explains matter-of-factly. ``I don't know why people got so interested in talking about, `Look what they're doing!' There's not a show that goes on the air that doesn't renegotiate, especially when the show becomes a hit. But even the ones that aren't a hit, that's what you do, it's just part of life. There were never any hard feelings between the producers and the actors. It's just business.''

Cox's casual pragmatism has steered her through an unusual but well-managed show business career. The youngest of four children raised in Birmingham, Ala., she initially got into modeling through the connections of a ``stepcousin,'' IRS Records president Miles Copeland Jr.

Cox soon was appearing on teen magazine covers and in commercials, where she made history in a Tampax ad, where she uttered the word ``period'' for the first time on television (in that context, anyway). Her big break came when director Brian De Palma and Bruce Springsteen chose Cox as the girl picked out of the crowd to join the Boss onstage for the ``Dancing in the Dark'' video.

She had a recurring role as Michael J. Fox's girlfriend on the hit sitcom ``Family Ties,'' and, also different from the other ``Friends'' stars, had a steady film career in place before their show took off. True, most of her movie work was in forgettable stuff such as ``Masters of the Universe'' and ``Cocoon: The Return.'' But it was quite a coup, even if she didn't know it at the time, when Cox signed on as the love interest for another TV comedian's goofy-sounding stab at movie stardom. ``Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'' has arguably introduced her with a whole next generation of future ``Friends'' fans.

Cox's next film release will be the dark drama ``Commandments,'' in which she plays the romantic partner of a disillusioned man (Aidan Quinn) who decides to break all Ten Commandments out of anger with God.

But that's his obsession, not hers. Indeed, while Cox freely admits that, yes, she dislikes clutter, is something of an exercise freak and has a compulsive interest in refurbishing and selling houses, the only thing she's really obsessive about is letting the world know that Courteney Cox exists separately from Monica Geller.

``It's hard to branch out when you're identified with such a big hit, absolutely,'' she says. ``I used to have the problem that people - and producers - knew me from `Family Ties,' so they thought they knew me. Now, it's `She's Monica.' Well, no, I'm not.

``That's why I like to do these little roles where I can show that I'm different. Yes, it's a problem; but it's not once you do another kind of movie that's a hit.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) She's a `Scream'

Courteney Cox trades in her Friendly persona for a shocking one

(2) no caption (Courteney Cox)