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By late 1986, UNC graduates began arriving in Hollywood.

BY DAVID MENCONI

LOS ANGELES -- The University of North Carolina doesn't have a Hollywood campus, but it does have a center of gravity. It's the Toluca Lake house of 1986 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate David Palmer; the backyard pool is a magnet for his fellow UNC alumni. Many of them live nearby and also work in film or television.

"Dave Krinsky and I are literally neighbors," Palmer says, standing on his porch and pointing down the street. "Go another mile and a half that way, and it's where John Altschuler lives. Four more blocks and you're at Grady Cooper's house. Then up the hill with the Hollywood sign, John Schultz and Bill Martin are just off the first street you come to. Down the other side is where Peyton Reed lives. Two miles down from there is Norwood Cheek's apartment, and Dave Burris is just past him."

There's also Scott Sanders, UNC class of '91, who is couch-surfing between his friends' dwellings while awaiting the release of his much-buzzed-about new film "Black Dynamite" (due out next month). And that's not even the entire cast of UNC's Hollywood Mafia, a group of people who graduated between the mid-'80s and early '90s.

In Chapel Hill, many of the mafia had a connection to the local music community -- playing in bands, making videos or hanging out on the scene. Two decades after they were running around the Triangle with Super 8 cameras and big-screen dreams, they're still hanging out together in Los Angeles. And they're working on some impressive film and TV projects.

Reed has had the highest-profile career, scoring a No. 1 box-office hit with his 2000 directorial debut "Bring It On" and working with Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger on "Yes Man," "Down With Love" and other films. Schultz directed a half-dozen big-screen features, including this year's kid's movie "Aliens in the Attic."'

In addition to running Mike Judge's animated TV series "King of the Hill," Krinsky and Altschuler co-wrote Will Ferrell's 2007 comedy hit "Blades of Glory." They also produced "Extract," Judge's latest movie.

Martin wrote for "In Living Color" and is working on the new Kelsey Grammer series "Hank." Cooper directs commercials and has worked as an editor on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "The Office." And Burris, Cheek and Doug McCallie worked on the popular reality series "Survivor," among other credits.

It's a true film-geek crowd. But Palmer, who does creative marketing and editing for Paramount Pictures, might be the most avid cinéaste of all. He cues up a DVD he compiled of movies partly filmed in his neighborhood, calling it "Toluca Lake in the Movies."

"Spielberg's first film, 'Duel,' begins by pulling out of a house four blocks from here," Palmer says. "And the Cary Grant movie, 'The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer' -- that picket fence and the tree in the middle of the street are literally right down the block. Looks exactly the same today as when it was shot. That was written by Sidney Sheldon, who did 'I Dream of Jeannie.'"

It's late afternoon, and Schultz has arrived with his dog, so they take a walk, Palmer pointing out landmarks as they go. One corner was the site of a Verizon commercial with 200 bicyclists. And just as Palmer is showing the location of Toluca Lake (site of a boat race in a 1938 "Little Rascals" episode), a distant boom! makes everyone jump.

"That should be Universal," Palmer says, shading his eyes as he looks into the distance. "Their backlot's over there."

Tar Heel taught

Everyone in the UNC group took filmmaking classes, and they all learned at least as much from extracurricular projects -- especially from the student-run TV station the university started in the mid-'80s. By late 1986, UNC graduates began arriving in Hollywood.

Many of them landed their first industry jobs on the Universal backlot at ZM Productions, which did "behind-the-scenes" features to accompany movies released by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. Schultz's first director's credit was the making-of feature for 1993's "Jurassic Park." ZM became a key UNC pipeline into Hollywood. Many of the alumni learned to edit there -- and also how to network.

"We got to learn there and branch out to other companies that started rising," Palmer says. "There was a point where we were all just rotating among friends' projects."

Palmer and Schultz return from walking the dog and retire to Palmer's poolside patio. Soon, Cooper, Martin and McCallie show up. Beers are cracked, Chinese takeout is on the way, and it's getting to be a party.

McCallie, who left "Survivor" late last year, is in pitch mode. You have to have four or five possibilities cooking simultaneously to get anything happening. So it was that McCallie recently found himself flying in a MiG fighter plane (for a reality show that trains pilots).

"Went 800 miles an hour, under a tree," McCallie says, to chuckles all around. "This 40-foot-tall tree in a desert canyon. We went under it."

Meantime, McCallie can't help feeling appalled at some of the reality-show train wrecks that "Survivor" hath wrought.

"My God, there are some awful reality-show pitches going around," he says, shaking his head. "There was this one for ABC, 'Conveyor Belt of Love.' A hundred guys are going by, and she pulls off the ones she might want. Ugh. 'Survivor' always at least had narrative and story."

Talk turns to Martin's latest show, the Kelsey Grammer comedy "Hank."

"It's good it's at Warner Brothers," Martin says. "I can ride a skateboard over in about a minute and a half."

Just then Reed arrives. "Am I interrupting anything?" he asks, pulling up a chair.

"We were in the middle of talking about you," Cooper says. "So I guess we'll have to stop."

Reed blows him a kiss.

"We see a lot of each other out here," McCallie says. "It's unusual for friends from college to wind up in the same city doing the same thing. But life is nice when your friends from the past 25 years are your everyday life. Peyton's a big-time director now, and yet he's still a [expletive deleted]."

Sitting nearby, Reed merely smiles and nods.

"It's a group that all likes each other," McCallie continues. "Most everybody is funny -- except for Schultz."

"What?" Schultz asks with a start, looking up.

Several regulars are missing from the Palmer house gathering. Burris and Cheek are in Samoa devising ways to torment "Survivor" competitors next season. Altschuler and Krinsky are in town but otherwise occupied. It's opening night for "Extract," the Judge-directed comedy starring Jason Bateman. So Altschuler and Krinsky are doing what producers do on opening night, driving around to check on the crowds.

Keeping busy

Altschuler and Krinsky have been writing partners since they met at UNC in the early '80s, writing "The Half-Hour Comedy Show" on cable-access and selling manuscripts to National Lampoon magazine.

They graduated from UNC in 1985 and came west the next year, taking whatever jobs they could as production assistants or drivers. Eventually they caught on with Judge's "King of the Hill," which brought them in as writers midway through the first season. They hit it off with Judge and wound up running the show for its final seven years.

"It's so hard to get on a show at all," Krinsky says. "To get on one you like, that's even harder. If it's one you like that lasts -- and 'King of the Hill' lasted 12 years -- that's a real rarity. We know how fortunate we are."

Krinsky and Altschuler came to "Blades of Glory" under similar circumstances. When they were hired, the "script" was little more than an idea and a few scenes. The script went through a long and painful birthing process, with an additional 13 writers brought in at various stages. But about 70 percent of the finished movie was based on their script (and they've got the arbitration ruling to prove it).

During their early years in Hollywood, Altschuler and Krinsky's Burbank apartment was an unofficial home for wayward UNC alumni. Schultz and Palmer lived upstairs in the same building, so it was Tar Heel central.

"Yeah, everybody from North Carolina who came out here would start out on our floor," Altschuler says. "The Connells, too, when they were on tour. That's where all our Thanksgivings were, where we'd watch Tar Heel games."

Music 'keeps me sane'

Reed lives on a hill with a spectacular view of Los Angeles, in a house furnished like the sort of art-deco masterpiece you'd see in a magazine spread. One of the most notable things about the house, however, is the garage. Reed has turned it into a space to play music.

"Music totally keeps me sane," Reed says. "Movies involve hundreds of people, and it's totally chaotic. But music is just easier to stay on top of."

Music also keeps Reed connected to his Carolina mates. He and Cheek have been playing together for decades, lately in a band called Cardinal Family Singers. They mostly play in Reed's garage, sometimes venturing out to play live with former Connells drummer Peele Wimberley (another Triangle expatriate in Los Angeles).

"I'll meet non-North Carolina people, and none of them seem to hang out with their people from back home the way we do," Reed says. "There's still camaraderie. We haven't had knock-down fights, estrangements."

Reed and Schultz had barely arrived in Los Angeles, soon after Krinsky and Altschuler, before winding up back in the Triangle as drivers for the 1988 Kevin Costner movie "Bull Durham." When they returned to LA, Reed worked at ZM, made videos for the Connells and Superchunk (some of which got late-night play on MTV) and directed a few TV movies.

Reed made the most of his first shot at a big-screen feature, a low-budget cheerleader movie called "Bring It On" starring a then-unknown Kirsten Dunst. Improbably, the movie debuted at No. 1 at the box office.

"Our producer told me, 'Open your eyes and ears, because you'll never feel this way again,'" Reed says.

"I've had other hits, but there was something about that scrappy little movie that made it special."

Reed dreams of another low-budget project, a ghost story set in North Carolina. The UNC expatriate crew started talking about it a few years back at Burris' wedding on Oak Island. Everybody wants in, and they agree that Palmer needs to direct.

"David Palmer was making Super 8 short films at the same time Schultz and I were in college," Reed says. "But his were so much better that they blew us away. Palmer's a filmic genius, very into Hitchcock and Spielberg, so his films are very smartly shot. It would be great because, A, I don't want David Palmer to die never having done a feature; B, it would be in North Carolina, where I've always wanted to make a movie; and C, it would be cheap.

"We need to gang up on Palmer to do it," Reed concludes.

Waiting on 'Black Dynamite'

Back on the patio at Chez Palmer, Scott Sanders has arrived. He is very much in the midst of his moment with his second feature, "Black Dynamite," widely described as an instant cult classic. But it's done nothing yet for Sanders' bottom line.

"You got a bed in there, David Palmer," Sanders says, eyeing the poolside cabana. "I might be coming over. I'm homeless right now, you know."

"Why?" Palmer asks.

"I moved, and I ain't got no money!"

"You just made a movie," McCallie says, incredulous. "How can that be?"

"It just is," Sanders says with a shrug. "Still waiting to get paid. I've been going to cities where it's opening, so that will put me up for a while. Going to France next week, too."

The food has arrived, and conversation pauses long enough for everyone to load up plates and start eating. Reed sees his opening.

"Hey, Palmer," he says. "What's the deal with your ghost movie?"

"There was a lot of talk about Altschuler financing it," Palmer says. "But now that they're between projects, I don't know."

"Is that your only avenue?" Reed asks. "You should bankroll it, and just do it."

"Yeah," Sanders says. "Can you just do it on no budget?"

"With careful planning," Palmer says, "it could work. Two characters, one setting. A ghost story, so you don't need stars. Low-budget all the way."

"Is this porn?" McCallie deadpans.

"If I do it right, yeah," Palmer says, and everyone laughs. But there's a brief pause during which everybody seems to be thinking.

"Dave," Reed says, "we've got to make that movie somehow."