THE REAL KILPATRICK FOLLOWS NO SCRIPT.

Byline: RAMONA SHELBURNE  LOCAL

MALIBU - The moon was half full or half empty, depending on which side of the barbed-wire fence you were standing.

Just a few hundred yards up Mulholland Highway, a handful of corporate bigwigs and vacationers at Calamigos Ranch were getting ready for bed inside their deluxe cottages. On the hillside up above, someone looked out their 10-foot window at a million-dollar view of the Pacific Ocean as it glittered in the moonlight.

Inside the barbed-wire fence, though, it was well past lights out and time to get back to reality.

It's not often the wards at Camp Vernon Kilpatrick juvenile detention center are allowed to stay up past 9 p.m., but this was no ordinary night. Hollywood had come to town Monday to premiere ``Gridiron Gang,'' a movie that opens nationwide in theatres today and is based on the story of the 1990 Kilpatrick football team that advanced to the Southern Section Div.X final in its first year of 11-man football.

``I loved it,'' junior safety Nuuafea Sulu said. ``It was real, you know. It was what our lives are like.''

Football is a privilege here, not a right. Some would argue that the wards here don't even deserve that, that they gave up that privilege when they broke the law. But none of them have seen the look on Sulu's face when he talks about the interception he made in last week's game against Grace Brethren.

Friday nights aren't just the only time they ever see the moon from the other side of the barbed-wire fence. They are the only time when they feel like real high-school kids again. They ride the bus to games, see their parents in the stands and stop for fast food on the way home.

``You show them through sports what normal high school is like,'' said coach and former UCLA tailback Derek Ayers. ``They're allowed to go and be kids again. They're not out in the streets, trying to survive, worrying about making money because my mom needs help. Those issues are taken away here.

``I relate a lot to these kids. I grew up in Compton and I was just like them, at a crossroads. I just went left and they went right.''

For something held so dear, the athletic facilities here aren't outwardly impressive. The weight room is more like a bunch of rusted, old barbells outside the solitary confinement building. The football field is a rocky, unlevel patch of grass about 60 yards long, with a baseball backstop in the corner to practice field goals and extra points.

How somebody looked at this craggy space one day and saw a football field still is a wonder.

How somebody looked at the 112 juvenile offenders from the most gang-infested, crime-ridden parts of the city who are sent to the camp for three- to nine-month programs every year and saw a football team is, well, a small miracle.

Over the past 20 years, the program has helped countless teenage boys turn their lives around. Not everyone makes it. Some fall back into their old self-destructive patterns upon release.

The school doesn't keep official statistics on recidivism. But camp officials estimate that about 70 percent of Kilpatrick athletes do not re-offend. Approximately 75 percent of the general juvenile offenders in detention centers re-offend.

``Once they get to big-boy prison, and start serving 25 (years) to life, it really doesn't matter,'' said the film's executive producer, Shane Stanley, an Agoura High grad who worked with his father, Lee, on the 1993 Emmy-winning documentary of the same name as a teenager. ``When they're here, they still have a chance, they still have some hope.''

Camp Kilpatrick, tucked away in a sheltered canyon of densely growing shrub oak trees in the Santa Monica Mountains, might look like a summer camp. There are no bars on the windows. The probation officers don't carry weapons.

The locker room gives it away, though. Or rather, the lack of a locker room.

Every players' equipment must be placed in an orange crate borrowed from the dining hall. Each night after practice, it's returned to a manager, who places it in the appropriate cubbyhole inside the makeshift storage room that used to be the school gym (it has been yellow-tagged since the 1994 Northridge earthquake).

For the first two years, the basketball team at Camp Kilpatrick was known as the Chiefs. But in 1988, athletic director Duane Diffie switched the mascot to Mustangs. You really couldn't have picked a better name.

Each year, the coaches at Kilpatrick have to break in a new team. Summer football starts 30 days before the first game, giving the Mustangs about a tenth of the time most high schools have to prepare for the season. And that's just in football terms.

About 60 of the 112 wards participate in athletics. They live together in an athletes' dorm, study together and play together. It's not uncommon for teenagers from rival gangs to end up on the same team at Kilpatrick, and that wall doesn't always break down easily.

``If they met each other on the outs, they'd either be fighting or shooting,'' said longtime coach Jeff Fortes, whose JV football team has lost just two games in the past five years.

But inside these walls, they're forced to settle it on the field and become a team.

Two weeks ago, the Kilpatrick varsity team upset Brentwood 20-10 to win its season opener. Senior linebacker Briant Hicks had seven sacks, an interception and a fumble return for a 70-yard touchdown.

``The kid who forced the fumble,'' Hicks says, ``is rivals with me. But we worked together and that's why we got the touchdown. We can do our thing on the streets, but while we're here, we might as well just get along and work together, benefit each other.''

But what happens if former teammates from Kilpatrick are released back into their old neighborhoods, thrust back into old turf wars and exposed to all the same vices that led them here in the first place?

``If these guys saw each other on the outs,'' Fortes said, ``and they'd played with each other ... there'd be a recognition, like, `Hey, I played with you on Coach Fortes' team.' And if that guy was in the wrong area, he may get a pass that time. It would only be one pass, though.''

That might not sound like a lot. But multiply that over the course of a 20-year period and it says a lot more.

Sometimes the effect takes a little longer to show up, Fortes said. It might not sink in immediately upon release, or even three years from now. Just the other day, Fortes got a call from a player he'd coached about 10 years ago, thanking him for the experience and updating him on how he was doing.

You get the impression the wards here don't plan very far down the line. They worry about what their friends will say about them playing alongside rival gang members. They worry about the first day after they get out, maybe even the first week.

``In my mind, I want to change,'' Hicks said. ``But it's not easy. ... Last time, as soon as I went home, my friends and homies were like right there at the front door, pulling me in negativity already. My mom has moved out of the area now, so it'll be better for me. I can avoid it to a certain extent.''

Sulu's trying, too.

``If my homies were to say something to me, like, `He out there at Kilpatrick, peace-treating with everyone,''' he said. ``That's the point where I'd say, `So you're not supporting me on my goals then?'

``That should separate my homies from my real friends.''

Senior defensive lineman Terry Shook fell into that trap the last time he was released from a juvenile detention center. He was out 16 days before he was arrested. This time, he's making plans.

Shook already has earned his GED and wants to play at Moorpark College next year.

His long-range plan?

``I want to work here, to be a coach and PO (parole officer) here,'' he said, tentatively, as if he was afraid Hicks, Sulu and camp director Craig Levy would think he was joking and start laughing.

Levy's ears perked up.

``You want to work here?'' he asked Shook.

``Yes, sir.''

``I'd hire you in a second,'' Levy said. ``I'd hire all of you.''

Shook's face lighted up. Hicks beamed. Sulu looked just like he did when he was telling about his interception in the game last week.

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(1 -- color) ``I relate a lot to these kids,'' says Kilpatrick football coach Derek Ayres. ``I was just like them, at a crossroads.''

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer