WANT TO BE A REAL 'REPO MAN'? UNIQUE SCREENING, ROAD RALLY HAS FAMED CHEVY MALIBU AS THE PRIZE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

You can't kill a cult classic, nor, apparently, a '64 Chevy Malibu.

On Saturday, they'll spring to life with a downtown outdoor screening of the classic 1984 L.A. punk movie ``Repo Man,'' along with a road rally where the winner gets to take home an actual '64 Malibu like the one Otto (Emilio Estevez) and his auto-repossessing cronies hunt for in Alex Cox's film.

``Basically, what we're doing is giving people participating in the road rally repo sheets with five different cars on them, and you have to solve driving clues and word clues and logic clues to get to the end,'' says Tim League, owner of Rolling Roadshow, the company staging the event. ``The first team that finds the key, gets to that Chevy Malibu and drives it back to the screening location gets to keep it.

Cox and a half-dozen ``Repo'' actors, including Tracey Walter and Sy Richardson, are scheduled to attend.

The L.A. ``Repo'' show is part of a multistate traveling program. League and a crew of seven are visiting assorted Western locales with films that were shot there. Among the stops are Utah's Monument Valley with a print of Sergio Leone's ``Once Upon a Time in the West'' and Roswell, N.M., where a 3-D projection of ``It Came From Outer Space'' was moderately attended.

``I think that the people who live in Roswell are kind of tired of the whole alien motif,'' League cracks.

Of the hundreds of films made in and about L.A., why choose the zonky ``Repo Man''?

``It had a really great use of a very specific part of the city that hasn't really changed that much,'' League says, ``so the look and the feel of where we're doing the screening is just like being in the middle of the film.''

``It's a film that, I think, my daughter's generation has hooked onto as well as mine,'' notes Walter, who memorably played the repo yard philosopher Miller who didn't know how to drive.

By the way, all the repo men except Otto are named after beers, including Harry Dean Stanton's Bud.

British director Cox, who went on to make ``Sid and Nancy,'' is curious to see if Saturday's audience is indeed multigenerational or dominated by graying punks.

One thing he is certain of, though: He's not participating in the rally.

``I don't really know what I'd do with a '64 Malibu,'' Cox said. ``It would be sort of a liability, wouldn't it? You'd have to insure it and get gas for it and stuff.''

But fans of the film probably don't care. They probably know - and love - all the little things that makes ``Repo Man'' a cult classic, like: that all cars, including the cop's motorcycle, have Christmas tree air fresheners; or that the man driving around with the dead aliens in his car resembles Isaac Asimov; or that Otto gets a book called ``DIORETIX'' to ``help change your life,'' which sounds suspiciously like L. Ron Hubbard's ``Dianetics.''

Rally participants should meet at the screening site, a secured lot at the corner of East Third and Santa Fe streets, by 3 p.m. Saturday. They are instructed to bring a digital camera, L.A. road map and Central Los Angeles Yellow Pages.

The rally should take approximately three hours and wind through the warehouse district between the First and Sixth Street L.A. River bridges, where most of ``Repo Man'' was shot.

The screening will begin at 8:15 p.m. at Third and Santa Fe, preceded by rock 'n' roll shorts. A newly struck 35mm print will be projected on a 50-foot inflatable screen, with stereo sound. Food, drinks and beer will be available, but nothing to sit on, so bring your own folding chairs or blankets; you can watch drive-in style from your car, too.

The Rolling Roadshow is an outgrowth of themed location screenings that League has sponsored over the years in and around Austin, Texas, where he and his wife run the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Among these was a ``Jaws'' showing on a lake, where floating viewers got their legs tugged at by scuba divers.

For those who don't get enough on Saturday, the next stop on the Western States tour is a ``Bullitt'' screening and road rally in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Tickets for the screening only are $14 and can be purchased at www.rollingroadshow.com ($18 at the screening site, day of the show). The price to enter the rally will vary according to how many members your team has.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

After J. Frank passes out, Emilio Estevez takes over the wheel of the infamous 1964 Chevy Malibu in ``Repo Man,'' which will be screened Saturday in conjunction with a road rally celebrating the 1984 film.