Getting Nastier : The Hughes twins wowed us with ‘Menace II Society.’ Now they’re making ‘Dead Presidents’: “We got more nasty . . . this time.’

NEW YORK —  The abandoned South Bronx block is empty except for the action at a run-down barbecue joint on this numbing winter night. The uptown No. 2 train rattles the overhead subway tracks. A brawl breaks out inside the restaurant, and without warning a body hurtles through the plate-glass of P. Daddy’s Rib Shack, hangs for a moment in mid-air, then lands with a thud on the sidewalk below.

The stunt man lies on nuggets of broken glass, his knees to his chest, writhing in pain. He’s holding his right shoulder, upon which he has apparently landed. “Cut,” yells a deep voice from under an Eskimo-style hood.

The voice belongs to Albert Hughes, who is seated next to his brother, Allen, dressed in an identical parka. They confer for a few seconds and join the medics gathered around the stunt man. Though the bruised actor is sent to a nearby hospital with minor injuries, the Hughes brothers are just starting a long night shoot at the reconstructed storefront for their new movie, “Dead Presidents,” which is due out this summer.

The dozens of onlookers who have congregated under the tracks have come out of their cozy living rooms to watch the Hughes brothers, the 22-year-old identical-twin directors, at work. In 1993, the brothers wowed audiences with “Menace II Society,” an unflinching look at life in Watts, which some critics initially tried to write off as just another ‘hood movie.

Clearly it wasn’t. Made for only $3 million, the skillful movie about a decent kid who gets caught up in drugs, robbery and murder grossed $28 million in the United States for New Line and earned the directors a two-picture deal with Disney’s Caravan Pictures, the studio that has financed “Dead Presidents.”

This time around, though, the young directors carry some clout, which, they say, has made all the difference. Albert, the technical side of the directing duo, talks less than does Allen, whose domain is the actors. But when Albert does talk, he gets right to the point.

“Nobody believed in ‘Menace’ the whole way through. The studio, the crew--there was just a whole bunch of (expletive) coming down,” says Albert, speaking from the brothers’ toasty trailer, about their first film’s 30-day shoot and limited resources and their lack of experience.

The brothers had been making videos since they received a camcorder from their mother at age 12 in Pomona. They had made music videos for acts such as Digital Underground and Too Short. But without a feature film under their belt, their first film was an uphill struggle.

T he budget for “Dead Presi dents,” on the other hand, which has grown slightly from its original $10 million, has allowed the ambitious brothers to do things right--like refusing to use crew members suggested by the studio. They hired David Brisbin, an experienced production designer (“Drugstore Cowboy”), to mix elements from “Mean Streets” and “Midnight Cowboy” for a gritty backdrop to the period piece, which spans the years 1968 to 1972.

“Dead Presidents” stars the baby-faced Larenz Tate, 21, who played the trigger-happy teen-ager O-Dog in “Menace.” Here he plays Anthony, 17, who leaves his close-knit New York neighborhood to serve in Vietnam and comes back a confused vet. The U.S. government has turned its back on him and when he can’t find a job, he and some other vets plan to rob an armored truck that is transporting worn currency to be burned. The film’s title, “Dead Presidents,” is a street term for cash.

But whatever you do, don’t call “Dead Presidents” a Vietnam movie.

“It’s about desperate people doing desperate things,” says Albert, who wears low-riding jeans and a scraggly goatee that matches his brother’s. Vietnam scenes, originally planned to be shot in Thailand, will now be filmed in Orlando, Fla., and will make up only 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, they say. The focus is on what happens to black vets after the war.

Adds Allen (the crew identifies him as “the one with the earrings”): “This government doesn’t take care of people; it contradicts itself every day. They bend the rules for certain people then they enforce them on others. That’s what the whole movie is: Instead of trying to do something about the problems, we’re constantly trying to cover them up, push them aside.”

Albert jumps in, challenging his brother. “Yeah, let’s not get into the whole social thing,” he says, wary of over-explaining. “I think the film stands for itself. Going into how it’s gonna help people is a bad idea--that’s like jinxing it.”

Both brothers are well aware of the sophomore jinx and the inevitable comparisons that will be made to their first movie. And while they say the similarities to “Menace” are few, Hughes fans will be happy to know there will be no shortage of blood and guts.

“I know people expect violence and all that crazy (expletive)--and they’ll get it,” says Albert, laughing. “But it’s not going to be the same kind of violence. I mean, if they thought that was graphic--” he says, referring to a climactic scene in “Menace” where a prolonged spray of bullets destroys everything in its path--”this is a whole other bag of graphic stuff.”

Because they felt that New Line didn’t let them make “Menace” as violent as they wanted, the brothers plan to use their new autonomy to get as much gore on screen in “Presidents” as possible. “We got more nasty with everything this time. Now, anytime we deal with violence, we want to get it as sick as possible. It’s better to shock people with the real stuff than to shock them with the Hollywood b.s.”

Before it was edited, “Menace” was originally rated NC-17. Their “Dead Presidents” contract requires them to deliver an R-rated cut, but the brothers say they want it--because of the wider distribution available for R films--as much as Disney does.

“It’s (Disney’s) biggest concern with the movie,” says Allen, who says he thinks the MPAA ratings board is too sensitive. “We wish they’d just leave movies alone as long as they’re not porn or blowing guys’ heads clean off.”

T o make the movie realistic, they did their homework. They interviewed five black veterans from California and New York to get a better sense of their main character, Anthony. They were disturbed by what they heard. One interview still haunts them.

“This one guy we talked to said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I look OK now,” begins Albert, “but . . . I have a hard time going to McDonald’s--if I get into an argument with the clerk, I have to tell myself not to kill him.’ ”

They also surrounded themselves with a few people who had firsthand knowledge of war. Co-producer Michael Bennett fought in Vietnam, and stressed to the directors the sense of dislocation he felt afterward.

“It’s a feeling of not belonging--of not being home,” he says. His input, along with ideas from Keith David, who played King in Oliver Stone’s 1986 Vietnam film, “Platoon,” helped them round out the story. In “Dead Presidents,” David plays a Korean War veteran named Kirby who acts as a father figure for Anthony.

Even though the action takes place before the directors were born, they say they were attracted to the script because, in a way, it was new. They’d never seen a movie about a black Vietnam vet before.

And that’s saying something for the Hughes brothers, who are unofficial scholars of American cinema. Their favorite pastime is speaking with their friends in snippets of movie dialogue.

“We barely ever watch whole movies,” says Allen, who recorded his favorite Vietnam scenes from his collection at home in Pomona and keeps them all on tape in his trailer for inspiration. “When we get a movie home, we start breaking it down scene by scene. I don’t have the patience for (whole) movies, especially if I’ve seen it.” Names that come up often in conversation are their biggest influences, Martin Scorsese and Sergio Leone.

A few weeks after the stunt man flies through the window in the South Bronx, the brothers are inside a soundstage in Queens to film a scene in which Anthony has a run-in with a neighborhood thug named Cowboy, played by Terrence Howard. Production designer Brisbin has created Kirby’s bar, a seedy pool hall where rust-colored paint is peeling off the pipes and the tin ceiling is oxidized to look authentic. The set dresser is busy spraying an aging solution called Rotten Stone on the checkered floors to make them look dusty and old.

As crew members set up the next shot--a low angle of Cowboy holding a knife to Anthony’s throat--Allen plays a good-natured game of pool offscreen with the costume designer.

The mood tonight is relaxed. Tate laughs with Allen, as Howard broods across the room. The two don’t speak to each other off-camera to keep the animosity between their characters alive.

Allen picked up on the offscreen dynamic and encouraged it, keeping the actors on the same van rotation, and even egging them on privately before filming a scene. One actress, Rose Jackson, who plays Juanita, Anthony’s girlfriend, described Allen’s directing technique: “He plants all these seeds in your head. It’s like lighting a match in a room full of gas. You roll the camera, it’s going to explode.”

Allen tries to start the pool-hall scene several times, but the shot is difficult, and Howard’s wristwatch keeps creeping into the frame. Albert yells “cut” on four consecutive takes. “You should have let him do it all the way through,” says Allen, worrying about his actor.

Howard is getting frustrated, and the smoke from his cigarette is stinging his eyes. But somehow, it only seems to feed his performance. Allen walks over and talks to the actor for a few seconds. When the director yells “action,” Howard is livid, and the scene is perfect.

Tate, who has worked with the twins before, needs only “tweaking,” says Allen, who often lets him listen to a tape of Isaac Hayes or Al Green to get him in the mood for a scene. “Anthony’s completely in sync with us,” says Allen.

Since “Menace,” says Tate, the directors have become more confident in their roles as directors. “They broke down the responsibilities before, but now it’s even more clear-cut,” he says. “They both know each other’s jobs, but it’s not two people talking at once. It’s more efficient. They don’t fight about who tells who what.”

If it weren’t for the lights, cameras and smoke machine that is spewing chemicals, you might mistake this roomful of young people for a college common room or frat house--environments the Hughes have skipped entirely.

Do they ever yearn for college life--the dorm rooms, the football games, the fraternities?

“(Expletive) no,” says Allen, laughing. Then he pauses, trying to think of something he might miss about college. “I wish I could be lazy for four years, that’s what I wish--and still be paid.”*