Reel power

As a child, he was a film fan, but was more interested in the business of making movies. He engrossed himself in books about the old studio system, reading the biographies of Darryl F. Zanuck, David O. Selznick, and Louis B. Mayer -- the men who created Hollywood in their own images.

"I was very interested in the silent films and how the business really started and how it was financed and the ups and downs," Jarchow says. "I really have never been that interested in the lives of the stars or anything like that."

Perhaps Jarchow says it best when he offers this simple explanation of how a real estate investor ended up in the movie business. As he watched the images dance in front of his young and impressionable eyes, the child wondered only one thing:

"Who paid for this?"

And a movie producer was born.

Regent may well be the most schizophrenic movie company in existence, capable of turning out thoughtful fare such as Gods and Monsters one minute and cotton-candy crap like Kiss of a Stranger (starring Dyan Cannon) the next. Other than that, the bulk of Regent's roster reads like the cast list of Love Boat 2000, which is appropriate, since a handful of the nearly dozen films Regent has produced since it became a functioning "studio" in 1996 were made strictly for television, usually the Fox Family Channel.

Movies such as Panic in the Skies!, Loyal Opposition, Storm Chasers: Revenge of the Twister, Doomsday Rock, and When Time Expires have boasted performances by the likes of The Actor Formerly Known as Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill; former Charlie's Angel Kate Jackson; ex-hunk Richard Grieco; Hill Street Blues' Ed Marinaro; and Ponch himself, Erik Estrada. Beverly Hills Cop Judge Reinhold recently appeared in Regent's Teen Monster, which the company advertises on its Web site as "a frightening and funny contemporary take on the meaning of life and death."

Some of the company's titles sound like parodies of real movies, among them Crash and Byrnes, a just-in-production cop-buddy film intended as the pilot of a proposed TV series; and Britannic, an action film about the Titanic's "sister" ship that stars Jacqueline Bisset. You can almost see the movie posters on Tim Robbins' office wall in The Player.

Jarchow and Colichman both speak with pride of the just-finished I'll Remember April, a film about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II -- starring Mark Harmon, Mork and Mindy's Pam Dawber, and Happy Days' Arnold, Pat Morita. They'd like to see the movie get a proper theatrical release, but know deep down it's going to be a hard sell. Jarchow suggests Regent might have had a better shot with a cast of unknowns. Sometimes, it doesn't pay to make TV movies too good.

But, as Colichman and Jarchow point out repeatedly, that's where the money's at -- in television, not in the theaters. It's easy to make a cheap-o TV movie and sell it to the Fox Family Channel or USA Network, then turn around and sell the hell out of it for broadcast on French or Spanish television. After a while, those movies are pure profit. There's no publicity to deal with, no distribution; just turn on the tube, and there you have it -- the once famous Kelly McGillis chasing tornadoes in a movie that smells like Twister.

Jarchow and Colichman do not see any contradiction in making lowbrow TV fodder and prestige art-house films; they scoff at the notion that one is better than the other. The fact is, without Doomsday Rock, there would be no Gods and Monsters or Sixth Happiness. The TV movies pay for the "real" movies. It's a frightening point, but one well taken.

"There's an international demand for good-quality TV films that can play prime time internationally," Jarchow explains. "That's something that we can sell. That's something we are now known for...I think some of our choices were not as good as they could have been early on, but if you pay attention, you try to get better at your job."

Then again, Regent began as nothing more than a name Jarchow could use to recycle barely released U.S. movies in the foreign market. The company began in the early 1990s, when he owned the Studios at Las Colinas with his then-partner Chris Christian. Jarchow, once a partner in locally based Lincoln Properties, bought the studio because it was a steal: a $12 million property he picked up for $1.25 million.

Buying the studio mostly as an investment, Jarchow figured it was also his way to learn more about the business of moviemaking. He had little to do with the studio's operations, which were marginal at best. In fact, only one movie was filmed there during Jarchow's ownership, the Steve Martin born-again dramedy Leap of Faith. But because he owned the studio, movie folk mistakenly believed Jarchow was in The Biz. They sent him scripts and offered him their back catalogs at bargain prices. One locally owned distribution company, Media Home Entertainment, unloaded its inventory for next to nothing: $25 million worth of titles for $150,000. Jarchow later bought another local distribution company's stock of films -- nearly 2,000 titles at a bankruptcy sale -- to build up Regent's catalog for future Internet use.