HOLLYWOOD DISCOVERS WOMEN AS BEST BUDDIES

Several years ago, car manufacturers noticed that women bought cars, and Toyota, Pontiac and Chevrolet began advertising in women’s magazines. Now the film industry is coming to the realization that women go to the movies, too.

Because of the success of “Desperately Seeking Susan,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Crimes of the Heart,” “Outrageous Fortune” and “The Witches of Eastwick,” stories built around women are becoming commercially attractive.

An informal survey of the studios and networks shows that nearly 30 feature-length projects in which two or more women dominate the action are in various stages of development (Please see list on Page 12). Twelve of them have already completed filming, and a 13th--”Big Business,” starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin--is under way at Disney.

The reason is simple: money. “I think people went and watched the girls and had a good time,” director-writer Joan Tewkesbury says. “Ticket sales dictate what’s going to be made.”

Female friendship stories have popped up every now and then--for instance, “Stage Door” (1937); “The Women” (1939); “Caged” (1950); “The Group” (1966); “Julia,” “Three Women” and “The Turning Point” (all 1977); “9 to 5” (1980); “Foxes” (1980); “Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (1982).

But the trickle has become a flood.

“There are more female ensemble and buddy pictures in development than ever before,” observes Roberta Kent, a literary agent at STE Representation. “Hollywood (executives) used to feel young women didn’t identify with young women stars, but the stage phenomenon of Madonna has changed their minds.”

Lois Bonfiglio, Jane Fonda’s partner at Fonda Films, agrees. “Just like there’s an audience for books about the relationships among women,” she says, “there’s an audience for films about them. Guys have their subjective experiences and so do women. And when strong, forceful women say, ‘This is what I want to do,’ you get an ear.

“The new generation of younger women has so many additional priorities. The idea and necessity of friendship and bonding with other women has become part of their lives. They’re not just housewives sitting around together having coffee.”

And there’s a new generation of actresses to play these roles. “I see so many young female stars today,” veteran producer Dorothea Petrie says. “A few years ago you had women stars but not such a range.”

Freddie Fields, 65, a former theatrical agent and studio executive and producer of numerous films, including “Crimes of the Heart,” offers a historical perspective: “Most of the roles in most films are for leading men, and material has generally not been written for women.

“However, audiences are begining to relate to leading women, so we’re getting pictures like ‘Baby Boom,’ which has one leading woman. There’s also the tendency to use women more often. James Bond, for instance, never repeated a leading lady. Now we’re finding film relationships that can build into a sequel--like Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in ‘Romancing the Stone.’ So women are getting more identity.”

Fields connects the end of the studio star system in the late 1940s with the decline in multi-actress films. “Distributors began depending on male pictures aimed at a female audience,” he says. “When a couple went out, it was generally accepted that the woman chose the movie. She chose the movie the man wanted to see.

“Now, however, that’s become a little more equalized. Men are enjoying women in leading roles and women are enjoying male-oriented movies. It just takes time for the studios to catch up.”

While the studios dither, independent film companies are now rushing to fill what they perceive to be a gap in the marketplace. In the past year, three female ensemble films--”The Whales of August,” “Sweet Little Rock and Roller” and “Shag”--and two female buddy films, “Casual Sex?” and “Sticky Fingers,” have quietly gone into production. Disney’s “Big Business” with Midler and Tomlin spent most of last month shooting in New York.

“Five years ago, a studio would have said of the teaming of Bette and Lily, ‘That’s a good idea,’ and then they would have let it lay there on the curb,” Tewkesbury quips.

Even Barry Levinson, the acknowledged master of male ensemble films--he wrote and directed both “Diner” and “Tin Men’--is thinking female. “I’ve been slowly developing a piece that would deal with women’s lives,” he says, “but it’s a few years away.”

“Female relationships are an untapped resource,” says Alan Greisman, vice president of motion pictures at Aaron Spelling Productions. Spelling’s ensemble film “Sweet Little Rock and Roller,” about a girls’ rock and roll band, will open via 20th Century Fox in early 1988.

“I’m personally looking for more projects like this,” says Greisman, who is married to actress Sally Field. “There are so many terrific women actors, and I’d love to see a lot of them together in the same movie. Being married to Sally has made me more attuned. I’d love to find a movie for Goldie Hawn and Sally or Sally and Sissy Spacek.”

Independents like Aaron Spelling Productions have more flexibility than studios. “They can make a movie for a much lower budget,” agent Roberta Kent explains, “and thus can take a shot at an audience they’re not sure of. A small studio picture will probably cost between $15 million and $18 million by the time they market it. If they’re at all unsure of their audience, that’s a lot of risk.”

All that risk too often forces major studio executives into commercial predictability--and a cycle of self-fulfilling movie-making prophecy, says Susan Merzbach, president of Field’s company, Fogwood Films.

“When you work at a studio, you listen to sales and marketing people who tell you your big audience is 14- to 20-year-old young men and women,” Merzbach says. “You look at movies as the perfect dating medium. I assume the guys still pick the movie. Therefore, you find movies to suit their interests. Then the thinking becomes, ‘Well, movies for over-30s will make less money.’ ”

Merzbach, a former executive at 20th Century Fox, will co-produce with Annie Willette and Janice Yarbrough, a 60- to 90-minute female ensemble film called “The Bridal Shower” for Home Box Office.

Producer Julia Chasman began developing her female ensemble film “Shag” four years ago at Columbia. “There was some enthusiasm,” she says, “but after two years, I became aware of a reluctance to finally proceed with the project. It didn’t fit exactly into a genre and it lacked elements that would guarantee a commercial opening.”

When Columbia lost interest in “Shag,” Chasman says, “I became convinced a film like this would have to be made outside the studio system.” “Shag’s” director, Zelda Barron, introduced Chasman to Steve Woolley of Britain’s Palace Pictures, the company behind “Mona Lisa.”

Woolley wanted to make it, and when Hemdale agreed to distribute, “Shag” went into production in South Carolina.

“There is still a very entrenched sense of male concerns in Hollywood that tend to color what you’re seeing,” Chasman says. She believes that type of thinking may be changing with the new crop of female-bonding movies.

But the old-boy network is still picking its own films. “How many times have you seen a film starring four teen-age boys?” Chasman asks.

Film maker Henry Jaglom started his Women’s Film Co. three months ago in order to help women make “high-quality, low-budget films for the serious adult market,” he explains. “We will put together the financing (as much as $1 million) and arrange distribution. So far, hundreds of scripts have come in.”

Why is Jaglom, who has directed six films and whose personal cinema style has been compared to Woody Allen’s, doing this? “I don’t want my film choices to be between ‘Rambo’ and ‘My Science Project.’ I’d like more ‘Rooms With a View,’ and I think women are much more likely to make them. We haven’t seen enough on film about what women deal with and talk about when they’re together. I’m doing this because I’m selfish. I want to see these films.”

What the public has seen in this vein, they’ve probably seen on television. Nancy Bein, vice president of motion pictures for television at CBS, cites the 1982 TV movie “Games Mother Never Taught You,” about a woman breaking into the all-male executive ranks at a company, as starting the trend.

“There was basically no belief in this film during the development process,” she says. “When we screened it at the press tour, some people were concerned that the men would fall asleep. We got the opposite reaction.”

Since then, series like “The Golden Girls,” “Designing Women,” “Cagney & Lacey” and “Kate & Allie” have proved there is a large audience for stories about female friendship. “Traditionally, the TV audience is more women,” Bein says, “so we’ve always geared a lot of our movies toward women.

“We can move faster (than the film industry). For instance, two years ago we started developing a movie about a woman who has it all, can’t stand it any longer and quits her job. Then we started reading articles about women dropping out. ‘Drop Out Mother’ (starring Valerie Harper and Wayne Rogers) will be on this fall.

“It’s interesting to me that a movie like ‘Aliens’ can do so well, and yet it didn’t start a trend. Why are there no more movies with a strong female heroine?”

If Bein has her way, there will be one on CBS.

Acknowledging Bein’s impact on programming, Virginia Carter, a former executive at Embassy Television and now an independent producer, says, “I think the increased opportunity for women to be buddies on screen is directly traceable to the burgeoning numbers of women executives and producers in the business. There’s also beginning to be a slight track record that shows you can attract an audience with these projects.”

Another reason may have to do with the actresses themselves. “Actresses have come to a place where they can do ensemble work and not feel threatened,” observes Alexandra Rose, who has an ensemble project, “Lunch,” in development at Warner Bros. “There was a time when fewer than five actresses could be considered bankable. Now there are 10.”

A spot check among actresses confirms Rose’s view.

“I’d like to direct a comedy about female friendship set in Atlantic City,” says Diane Keaton, 41, who last appeared in the female ensemble film “Crimes of the Heart” and made her directing debut in the nonfiction film, “Heaven.” “I’m trying to develop it, non-union, with my friends. It’s hard to get a good script.”

“I would love to do a ‘Diner’ for women,” says Daphne Zuniga, 23, who starred in “Spaceballs.” “I have so many friends who are good actresses, and we want to work together. We’re different types.”

“I think it’s fascinating how women act when they’re together,” notes Jennifer Grey, 27, who stars in the newly released “Dirty Dancing.” “Why aren’t there films about women’s relationships with each other? What about my instincts to have a family and children and my real drive to have a career? There are four movies there.”

The atmosphere has clearly changed since “The Women’s Room,” a TV film based on Marilyn French’s popular feminist novel, aired in 1980. Screenwriter Carol Sobieski, who adapted the book for television, recalls the casting problems surrounding the project:

“Actresses flocked to us eventually because they realized it was an important book and it would make fabulous television. But they all said that normally they didn’t like to share scenes with other actresses.”

Nor do studios necessarily encourage it. “They seem to think that if you don’t have a strong male lead you don’t have anything you can advertise,” Sobieski says. “Look at ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ (which stars Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson). That’s Jack’s picture. In John Updike’s book, the women were much more interesting. But the choice was to go away from the book.

“I’ve only been in this business for 25 years. I don’t know what their thinking or lack of thinking is. I wrote one female bonding picture--a comedy/caper called ‘Searching.’ It’s about two women in Texas who decide to leave their awful husbands and go in search of Robert Redford, who’s making a movie on location.

“It has yet to be made. The reluctance came from the studios. Actresses and directors were lining up for it. Cybill Shepherd was the last one who said she’d love to do it. You’d think after ‘Outrageous Fortune,’ somebody would want a film like this.”

Leslie Dixon, author of “Outrageous Fortune,” the Bette Midler-Shelley Long buddy picture that became one of the spring’s surprise hits, says she wrote it “because I felt there was a void in the marketplace. It was a distinct attempt to reach that audience.

“I’ll always be thinking about women’s roles, but not to the exclusion of a good story. I don’t think there’s a prejudice in Hollywood. They just don’t think in terms of great female roles.”

From now on, maybe they will have to. “Outrageous Fortune: Part II” is already in development.