Susan Skoog's Whatever is a New Jersey beach girl's coming-of-age story as grittily melodramatic as it is matter-of-fact. It's 1981 and if Anna can make it through the last month of high school unscathed she's got her heart set on Cooper Union, the prestigious free art school in Manhattan. In search of adventure and life beyond high school, Anna throws herself into the fray with best friend Brenda. What comes next includes a road trip to New York and an inadvertent crime punishable by much more than detention.

"[Whatever depicts a] generation lost between the '70s and the '80s," says Skoog. "Reagan had just been shot and the country was poised on the brink of '80s conservatism and commercialism, before AIDS, before campaigns like ċJust Say No.' Anna makes lousy choices and she suffers the consequences."

Skoog, 32, has spent the last ten years producing and sometimes directing arts programming for cable networks like VH1 and TNT. She made her first short, A Dry Heat, last year. When she showed the screenplay for Whatever to former VH-1 colleague Ellin Baumel, a longtime PBS producer who'd just left an executive stint at Paramount TV, Baumel decided to join forces, and Skoog put up a hefty payday from a Turner job as seed money. She was bemoaning the expense of shooting in New Jersey in the summer to another friend, Cinewomen Screening Series director Michelle Yahn, when Yahn suggested Wheeling, West Virginia, her home town.

Yahn also hooked the fledgling filmmakers up with an in-law from the New York indie film world, Kevin Segalla, who'd spent the last five years producing and directing short films and television projects (The 28 Instances of 1914, A Counter Fancy, Notes). A veteran of IFFCON, Sundance and like events, Segalla structured production financing from private sources as two S-corps in a co-production. "It's a little different but it was a safe way to make sure we retained control of the film," he says.

Whatever's five-week shoot rolled right after Labor Day in Wheeling with cinematographers Michael Barrow (Heavy) and Michael Mayers (Spanking the Monkey) shooting Super-16mm color. At press time the producers were closing a deal on completion financing in the mid-six figure range; all rights remained available.

Cast: Liza Weil, Chad Morgan, Fredric Forrest, Mark Riffon, Catherine Rosseter, Gary Wolf, Dan Montano. Crew: Producers, Susan Skoog, Kevin Segalla, Ellin Baumel, Michelle Yahn; Screen-writer/Director, Skoog; Cinematographers, Michael Barrow, Michael Mayers; Production Designer, Dina Goldman; Casting, Adrienne Stern. Contact: Kevin Segalla, Anyway Productions, 214 West 17th St., 5th floor, New York, NY 10011. Tel/Fax: (212) 633-2000.

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