Discovering Directors in a Training Program

The production of “Moab”--with its professional cast and crew, 35-millimeter Panavision cameras and busy set--looks pretty much like any other Hollywood film shoot. Until an actress, rehearsing as a beautician, mists a coiffed head with a prop can of hair spray.

“Do we have to use that spray?” complains a real-life makeup artist from behind the cameras. “It’s awfully expensive.”

“We’ll get you some more,” says a producer soothingly. “We’ll work out a product placement.”

You wouldn’t hear that exchange on your average movie set, where frills and waste are as common as fancy cheese-and-fruit plates in stars’ air-conditioned Winnebagos.

Welcome to the Discovery Program: short films with professional polish shot on shoestring budgets. Roughly $72,000 covers the basic production costs of 20- to 30-minute films--shot in about six days--that look as good as many studio features or network TV movies.

The Discovery Program is the brainchild of producers Jonathon Sanger and Jana Sue Memel, grandfathered by David Puttnam when he was chairman of Columbia Pictures. It provides aspiring directors with extensive experience in other areas of movie making a chance to get behind the camera on their first films.

Begun in late 1986, the Discovery Program had generated 14 films when it ran out of money and was on the verge of extinction two years later. It was rescued by Showtime Network Inc., which agreed to augment corporate and private contributions in exchange for broadcast rights.

“Moab,” a drama about a young mother breaking free of a confining, small-town existence, from writer-director Mark Krenzien, is the latest Discovery film to wrap production. It will air later this year on the cable channel.

In the meantime, the latest trilogy premiered last month. The films will be seen at various times throughout January on the cable channel, shown alone or in pairs, as “The 30-Minute Movie.”

By the end of the month, a total of 30 films will have been shot over four years--and 30 new filmmakers given extraordinary opportunities in an industry notorious for its crushing competition and closed doors.

“I had kind of given up trying to break into feature directing when the Discovery Program came along,” says Johanna Demetrakas, 50, a documentary director, film editor and CalArts instructor whose first dramatic film, “Homesick,” was financed through the Discovery Program. “It’s so unbelievably difficult for a woman in this town, especially one not working in the mainstream. If you’re not 25 years old, just out of film school, with a razzmatazz project under your arm, it’s very difficult. . . .”

“Homesick,” about a grandfather who fakes senility so that he can remain in an old-age home with his sweetheart, was based on a script by Robert Gordon, one of Demetrakas’ students. It premiered at the U.S. Film Festival in 1989, later airing on PBS and Showtime. Her showcased work got Demetrakas “an important agent,” meetings with producers and network TV directing assignments, including prestigious “L.A. Law.” She’s currently developing a feature project with producer Robert Newmyer (“sex, lies and videotape”).

Simply put, a director was born through the Discovery Program whom time would have otherwise passed by.

“It got me in the game, sitting at the card table,” Demetrakas says.

When they founded Chanticleer Films four years ago, Memel was a former attorney, agent and co-producer (“Tough Guys”). Sanger, a producer (“Frances,” “The Elephant Man”) and executive producer (“Flight of the Navigator”) had directed for TV.

Almost immediately, they heard from writers who wanted to direct their own scripts. But the two partners realized that such budding auteurs would never get their shot without a quality sample reel as a calling card.

When they mentioned to Puttnam their idea of backing the short films of such neophytes, recalls Memel, “he literally leapt out of his chair.”

With the Coca-Cola Co., Columbia’s parent firm, as the primary underwriter, Chanticleer added the Discovery Program to its activities. Other corporate sponsors included Eastman Kodak, Panavision, Sony and DeLuxe Laboratories, which donated equipment and facilities. Countless established professionals have volunteered their time or worked for SAG-required scale (among the dozens of names: actors James Earl Jones, Hector Elizondo, Powers Boothe, Elizabeth Perkins and Ruben Blades and cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Phillip Lathrop).

As part of its arrangement with its directors, Chanticleer owned the completed films, with a “first look” at all other projects written or developed by the director during the ensuing year. Additionally, one of the director’s first three feature film projects was to be produced by Chanticleer and distributed by Columbia, a policy no longer in effect.

The program had an auspicious start: Its first film, the 21-minute “Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall,” written and directed by Bryan Gordon, has been screened at more than two dozen film festivals worldwide. Gordon’s wry fantasy about a club where businessmen spend lunch dancing with one another in a ritual of gamesmanship and networking has also won a spate of prizes, including the 1987 Academy Award for best live-action short film.

“I was the guinea pig,” says Gordon, who has since directed “Career Opportunities” for writer-producer John Hughes (due out this year from Universal) and is now casting his own feature, “Pie in the Sky,” at Samuel Goldwyn Co. “I actually didn’t want to go first. I thought I’d get killed.”

A TV and stage writer in his mid-30s when he applied to the program, Gordon saw himself languishing lucratively but without creative satisfaction.

“What the Discovery Program did for me was to allow me to show my own tone on screen,” he says. “What more could a writer want?”

Discovery Program directors completed five short films in 1987, nine the next year. But with Puttnam ousted, Columbia ended its financial backing in late 1988.

Sanger and Memel scrambled for financing. At one point, a leading talent agency proposed to five major studios that they each pitch in $200,000. The effort failed, and Memel and Sanger took out personal loans to keep the program going, putting up their houses as collateral.

Last year, with the producers about to lose their homes, former Columbia executive Robert Fried stepped in. He contacted Showtime, which recognized the value of quality alternative programming for its flexible schedule, at a relatively low cost.

What was most attractive, says Showtime senior vice president Steve Hewitt, was the program’s “rigorous” selection process. It effectively eliminates--for the cable network--the high overhead usually required to develop original programming.

“What appealed to me so much was that it wasn’t just student or avant-garde filmmaking, not just a creative experience. The (completed) films I saw had commerciality, broad appeal. I was very impressed with the range of subjects, as well as the performances.”

Showtime agreed to underwrite the bulk of Discovery Program production costs in exchange for 20 cable play dates over a two-year period. More than a million homes tuned into Showtime’s first debut trilogy on Aug. 19, Hewitt estimates.

Meanwhile, Fox/Loerber, Inc. has set foreign TV or theatrical distribution deals in about 10 countries, according to one press report.

Publicity materials for the Discovery Program emphasize that it’s “not-for-profit,” a “labor of love” for all involved. But with the new participation of Showtime and Fox/Loerber, money could become a touchy issue.

Hewitt will only say that Showtime’s contribution is “very close to seven figures for six films.” Sanger and Memel discuss Fox/Loerber’s involvement reluctantly, and decline to reveal their own salaries either as executive producers of Discovery films or as chairman and president, respectively, of Chanticleer. (Fried also shares executive producer status on each film.)

“I’m earning a half to a third of anyone else in my position in this business and Jonathon is earning a quarter,” Memel says emphatically, during an interview in Chanticleer’s cluttered, threadbare offices overlooking Sunset Boulevard.

While the Discovery Program lacks tax-exempt, nonprofit status, it returns all earnings to the program, Sanger and Memel insist.

“(Skeptics) can look at our books,” says Memel. “They’ll see there are no profits. We’re still paying my aunt and uncle back!”

“It is not a profit situation,” says Hewitt, who foresees an eventual production output of 12 films a year. “Any profits go back into the program. I don’t want this conversation misconstrued so that donors and sponsors think that Chanticleer is double-dipping or making a profit, and then dump out. I’m very concerned about that.”

And what if the program realizes commercial success in expanding ancillary markets, including TV syndication?

“We are hopeful there is a syndication life” for the films, Memel says. “We hope we’ll be able to put together a syndication package, but we’re not even close to exploring that yet. Our most passionate hope is that somewhere down the line, we (break even). But our commitment is to putting everything back into the program.”

Discovery Program staff and volunteers began sifting through the first of some 600 applications for six new directing slots on Dec. 1 (the submission deadline is Feb. 1). That number will eventually be pared down to 24 semi-finalists, who must cast, plan and direct a scene on video--10 hours allowed from the start of taping to final edit--all working with similar material and the same crew, with the support of the Discovery Program production staff. A panel of judges that includes several established directors then selects six finalists.

It’s the proverbial break of a lifetime, and for the unlucky, says Memel, “It can be very devastating. There’s a lot of crying.”

Most of the directors are between ages 39 and 42. At least half the applicants are women, though only five of the 30 directors chosen so far have been female. Only one black has been selected to direct, and no Latinos or Asians, despite outreach efforts to the minority community. One problem, the program directors say, is that relatively few minority persons have extensive film industry experience to begin with, a vital prerequisite.

“A number of minority scripts came in,” says Thomas Conroy, who began as an unpaid production assistant at Chanticleer, was production coordinator of the 1989-90 Discovery Program, and is now a staff producer. “We’re not blind to them. But the candidates were not at a level of development that we would have wanted for a director.”

Social issues and other serious ideas turn up among the completed films--homelessness, the futility of violence and the humanity of the disabled have been among the themes. But as a rule, overtly political material is rejected.

“We don’t want to use the program to make statements of our own political philosophies,” Memel says. “It’s designed to help people get jobs.” (Nearly 80% have.)

For all her long hours and sacrificed income, Memel seems to thrive on the program’s exhausting process and challenge, which includes “constantly begging” for donor support. As a savvy producer, she also knows that working with so many future filmmakers now will pay off in years ahead.

But making their special contribution to the film industry also presents a built-in frustration for Memel and Sanger.

“What’s heartbreaking,” Memel says, “is that we can’t do it for more people, because we know they’re there.”