It starts with a high whistle. The register drops, then amplifies, becoming lower and louder. After a few seconds, there's an explosion: a crinkly, bass-heavy crash.
Kiiiiieeeeerrrrrr-BOOOOMMMM.
It's just one of those things. The first time the universal sound effect for ''bomb'' explodes during an interview about a movie, it can be politely ignored. But the second time ... ? Deborah Kaplan -- the blond, dry-witted half of the writing-directing team behind Josie and the Pussycats -- flashes a wry smile at her skinny screwball partner, Harry Elfont, and cracks: ''That's the sound of our careers, I guess.''
Never mind the noise leaking from the studio where the Universal comedy is being mixed, Kaplan and Elfont have every reason to be as nervous as a pair of you-know-whats in a room full of rocking chairs. Because, of course, the corpses of projects like Josie are stacked like cordwood on the streets of Hollywood. For every Charlie's Angels there's The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. For every Addams Family, a couple of Mr. Magoos.
Then there's the property itself. Sure, Saturday-morning-cartoon obsessives might recall the jaunty theme song (Josie and the Pussycats!/Long tails and ears for hats!/Guitars for sharps and flats!), but those are probably the sort of folks who also think that Gleek the monkey was tragically underused on Super Friends. And after the $125 million success of Charlie's Angels, there's the question of whether this $24 million movie can live up to expectations. (''I don't know why we're being compared,'' jokes Elfont. ''Just because there are three hot female leads and it's based on a kitschy project from the 1970s, and uh, oh ...'')
But with a cheeky script, songs from hit-meister Babyface, and a litter of hotties in the cast, the studio thinks this pussycat can kill. ''We made a good movie,'' says Universal production executive Allison Brecker. ''It sounds basic, but you can't fool people. Once it hits theaters, the cat is out of the bag.''
Josie rocks. She just does. Flaming red hair licks over her eyes, an oversize guitar howls in her hands, and an urgent, sexy-sweet voice pleads into the mike.
But sitting under an orange tree in Los Angeles, Rachael Leigh Cook casts her eyes down. The 21-year-old, with perfect nails but dried-out hands, slowly tears the label off her Diet Coke as she talks; twisting it into almost-origami corkscrew arrows, squooshed frogs, and mutilated cranes. ''I was a fan of the comics,'' she says, almost whispering. ''I don't know about the movie. People are either going to love it or hate it.''
At the very least, people have always loved Josie, a character Dan DeCarlo cooked up for Archie Comics around 1960. ''It was originally for my wife, who is named Josie, for a cruise party,'' remembers the 80-year-old artist from his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. ''She wanted to go as a bunny and I said, 'Everyone's going as a rabbit.' So I designed the costume.''
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