Director Tries His Wings at Corporate Life

Over the years many film makers, individually or in partnership with other film makers, have launched their own production companies. The hope, always, was to have a freer hand in what they filmed and how they filmed it--and a fairer division of the spoils, if any.

What does not come to mind from recent times is an instance of a director graduating from the ranks of film maker and being hired to run somebody else’s very large and well-financed production-distribution company. But now Frank Perry has undertaken the role.

In March, Perry was named president and chief executive officer of Corsair Pictures, a subsidiary of United Artists Communications, which is the largest exhibition chain in the United States, with some 2,600 screens and still growing. It was a spinoff from the original United Artists and is headed by a 32-year-old Scot named Stewart Blair.

“Stewart said, ‘If we’re the largest chain of gas stations, we’d better know something about oil production,’ ” Perry said during a quick visit to Los Angeles a few days ago. Corsair is headquartered in New York, where Perry has always lived and prefers to work.

Perry made a memorable debut with “David and Lisa” in 1963 and followed it with a potent anti-nuclear film called “Ladybug, Ladybug.” His other credits include “Diary of a Mad Housewife,” “Last Summer,” “Rancho de Luxe” and, for television, a wonderful telling of Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.” His latest film was “Hello Again,” with Shelley Long.

His initial intentions for Corsair are modest: three films a year, probably, in the $3-million-to-$10-million range. His first production, Beth Henley’s “The Miss Firecracker Contest,” began shooting in Mississippi at the end of May with Holly Hunter, Mary Steenburgen, Alfre Woodard and Scott Glenn in the principal roles. It is budgeted at a slim $5 million, with Thomas Schlamme directing Henley’s own adaptation.

Under its previous ownership the corporation had financed two of Perry’s films, “Compromising Positions” at Paramount and “Hello Again” at Disney. “A year ago,” Perry says, “I presented Blair with a proposal. I said we can make carefully chosen, passionately felt material, and with financial rectitude. I fancied myself a poet and a general, and I thought the general might have more fun.”

The key question in a time when major studio film budgets average more than $20 million is how to keep costs down where Perry says they can be kept. “In the first place, we’re talking about the station-wagon film versus the limo film. You don’t put all the executives on private jets and have the kids on the bus. And you don’t have to pay those engorged salaries.

“ ‘Firecracker’ was a Holly Hunter package. Her producer has offices on my floor. She’d done it Off Broadway and wanted very much to make the movie. The actors are on a favored nation basis, which means nobody gets rich at everybody else’s expense.”

Perry says he has watched the new Disney/Touchstone admiringly. “They believe in economy and discipline, and making the script the locomotive that pulls everything. Then you get the director and then you get the actors. Otherwise you all end up working for the star.”

Looking ahead, Perry has a deal with David Mamet to write and direct two films. Corsair has also acquired the rights to Donald Westlake’s sharply funny new mystery-satire “Trust Me on This,” set at a Florida-based tabloid expose weekly.

The corporation includes its own distribution and marketing arm, Taurus Entertainment, which is also now under Perry’s wing. But he says that, at least initially, Corsair will make distribution deals on a project-to-project basis. The UA theaters hold a dominate position in 18 of the top 25 U.S. markets and with those 2,600 screens expected to be 3,000 by year-end, you’d think Corsair might not have a problem finding exposure time.

Perry also insists that being linked to a theater chain will make it easier for the film makers to get a fair count at the box offices. “I’ll tell you why no one gets a fair count,” Perry says. “It’s because it takes a contract as thick as a phone book to define net profit. I’ll have one paragraph,” he says brashly. “We can do it because we have the theaters.”

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas also head production companies, of course. Lucas built his own, largely with his own money, and at the moment does no directing himself. Spielberg’s arrangement at Universal is more directly comparable to Perry’s, although Spielberg’s own films are the principal attraction for the studio.

Perry has a three-year contract at Corsair and he will not be directing any of the films. “Running the company and directing are mutually exclusive; you can’t do both. But I’ll be involved with all the projects. My fingerprints--what a terrible image--will be on all of them.

“I’m also prepared to suffer. I can hear those cries when somebody wants another $25,000 to acquire music rights. ‘Frank, you of all people know how important they are.’ ”

Perry sighs. “And I do.”