Cable Beckons the A-Team : Box-office giants like Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola are finding cable a friendlier--and cheaper--medium for their pet projects

“Prisoner of Honor”: “Richard Dreyfuss wanted to do this story since he was a teen-ager, and the studios wouldn’t give us the money to make it. HBO did.”--Judith James, Dreyfuss-James Productions.

* “Women & Men”: “I didn’t think the networks would be interested in literary short stories, and trilogies are never that successful as features, notwithstanding ‘New York Stories,’ so I approached HBO.”--David Brown, Academy Award-winning producer of “The Sting.”

* “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse”: “We could have made this as a feature film or a home-video project, but Showtime stepped up and showed great faith in the material, so they made it.”--Fred Fuchs, president of Zoetrope Studios.

* “The James Brady Story”: “We all have pieces in our drawer we really love and can’t get off the ground as features.”--David Puttnam, Academy Award-winning producer of “Chariots of Fire,” who made this one for HBO.

For years, cable’s pay-TV channels have been wooing Hollywood’s top talent. First to cross the line were actors, always eager for the next job. Heavyweight producers and directors were more cautious, however. They watched. They talked. They waited.

But no longer. After huddling at the starting gate like skittish thoroughbreds, cable’s starting gun has sounded for such box-office giants as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Donner, Gale Anne Hurd, David Puttnam, Barry Levinson and David Brown.

Why are they now turning to HBO, Showtime, TNT and, to a lesser extent, Bravo and the Family Channel? Money is usually the least consideration. It has more to do with fun . . . passion . . . opportunity. With budgets tightening at the studios, even proven filmmakers are sometimes finding it hard to get backing for their pet projects. So cable is picking them off.

“It’s like the old days, when TV would give you a shot and you could try things you never tried before,” says producer-director Richard Donner, whose series “Tales From the Crypt” returns to HBO June 19. “Cable is a return to that golden age.”

“When a studio says, ‘Are you crazy?,’ we go somewhere else,” says Judith James, Richard Dreyfuss’ producing partner. “You go to cable instead of a network because you’re looking for a lot more permission in terms of story, character and passion. Cable, and particularly HBO, is willing to go a little further for you.”

James and Dreyfuss were recently in London completing “Prisoner of Honor” for HBO, about the famous French affair in which Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly accused of spying and sent to Devil’s Island at the turn of the century. In Los Angeles, Gale Anne Hurd is overseeing HBO’s “Lovecraft,” cable’s first creature fantasy film. In New York, David Brown is shooting HBO’s next “Women & Men” trilogy, with Jonathan Demme producing the first segment.

This fall, Barry Levinson (“Rainman,” “Avalon”) will make an HBO miniseries about CBS’ late founder and chairman William S. Paley. Francis Coppola is developing a movie about Lenny Bruce for the channel. Martin Bregman and Michael Apted also have HBO projects pending.

At Showtime, Coppola is overseeing a documentary, “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival this month. (See Film Clips, Page 20).) George Lucas is mounting a Showtime film about Edgar Cayce, America’s most celebrated clairvoyant. Zalman King has a film and a limited series of four half-hour episodes in development.

“These creative minds need outlets,” says Steve Hewitt, Showtime’s vice president of original programming. “In years past they might have gone to PBS. Now they’re coming to us, not the networks, because here they can get ideas done in a pure way. We’re increasing our financial commitment to films, and we have no program-practices censoring hoops.”

Explaining why Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios has begun making product for the small screen, Zoetrope president Fred Fuchs says: “Feature films today all have a tendency to look similar to each other. The most innovative work is being done in television. We’re very excited about television, and we’re moving into it strongly.”

Like Spielberg, Lucas and Levinson, Zoetrope also is working with the broadcast networks, but many of the filmmakers are drawing a distinction between them and cable. “Our network projects are primarily series,” Fuchs says, “and our cable projects are film-oriented. They have controversial content that wouldn’t work on a network because of standards-and-practices issues or the need for a larger audience.”

While Zoetrope is still in the talking stage with TNT about several movies, former Coppola colleague Lucas is already set to make a TNT film about inventor Nikola Tesla, and Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment will produce six TNT movies based on screenplays by playwrights Arthur Miller, Bruce Jay Friedman, Horton Foote, David Mamet, Keith Reddin and Art Washington.

“The project did originate with us,” Amblin spokesman Marvin Levy says. “It came out of Steven’s good experiences with (playwrights) Tom Stoppard and John Patrick Shanley, with whom we’ve done films (“Empire of the Sun,” “Joe Versus the Volcano”). He’s had an affinity to working with writers like that.”

Linda Berman, TNT’s senior vice president of original programs, says: “Our intention was to get into business with Amblin. They produce terrific features. At some point they wanted to get into TV, and we figured we were good partners. We give talent a lot of room to do what they want to do without too much ‘network interference.’ For the most part it works. It attracts a lot of good people.”

HBO has a similar approach. “It seemed obvious if we wanted to be a network that looked different, we should start with the producers,” says Robert Cooper, senior vice president at HBO Pictures. “Feature producers help us get access to top talent, and we’ve aggressively pursued those who would bring tone, look and access. The job gets easier every day because there’s a mushrooming effect.”

One reason they come, he says, is that “no one else will buy the projects. Network advertisers are getting skittish because programs are controversial. Since we have to be different from the networks, we can do what the golden age of television did--be pioneers, experiment, take risks. A good example is ‘The William Paley Story.’ Networks won’t examine their own navel. We will. We brought the project to Barry Levinson because we’d heard of his interest in the whole area of television.”

With each supplier, Cooper tries to find the right button to press. “Marty Bregman, who produced ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and ‘Sea of Love,’ wants to own the negative. That’s not a standard thing, but it’s something we’re pushing now. With that approach, it’s up to the producer to raise the financing and deal with the deficit. David Puttnam, on the other hand, wasn’t willing to put up a large deficit, so we own the negative (on his projects).”

Puttnam, whose feature film work includes “Chariots of Fire,” “The Mission” and “Memphis Belle,” has completed two films with HBO and is developing a third, a female version of “My Dinner With Andre.” His “Josephine Baker Story” became HBO’s most-watched original movie in nearly five years when it aired in March.

Due June 16 is “The James Brady Story,” starring Beau Bridges as the former presidential press secretary who suffered brain damage and paralysis when he was shot during the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981. Brady and his wife have since become outspoken proponents of gun control.

“The Brady piece was too slight for a feature and too tough for (network) television,” Puttnam says. HBO allowed him to keep creative control. “The whole point is to make it in an uncorrupt form,” he says. “I’m not doing it for money, and that’s OK if you can be proud of the end product.

“Cable is a very interesting medium,” he adds. “I’ve never found nirvana in our business, but being able to bounce between features and cable is pretty close.”

Richard Donner, whose credits include “Superman” and the “Lethal Weapon” films, is equally enthusiastic about his producing and directing work on HBO’s “Tales From the Crypt.”

“Cable does seem to be the only place where actors and directors can experiment with their talent--get out there and be a little bold,” he says. “It’s a beautiful respite. If I get a week or two off (from features), it’s like a vacation.”

Although Donner got his start in network television more than three decades ago, he disdains that outlet now. “I have no desire to work for a network again,” he says. “God willing, I’ll never have to. I find compelling mediocrity there. There are such terrible controls. At times, ‘Tales From the Crypt’ is R-rated. That’s the fun of it. Last year when I directed a ‘Tale’ with Don Rickles and Bob Goldthwait, I did everything I wanted to do without anyone looking over my shoulder.”

Even though Donner does this work mostly for fun, he and his “Tales” partners, Joel Silver, Bob Zemeckis and Walter Hill, are hoping for an eventual financial payoff. “I won’t lie to you,” he says. “I enjoy money, and I look to the back end. If we get enough episodes, we’ll syndicate them.”

Money--or perhaps the thought of not losing money--also can make working in cable attractive. Producers of series are often out of pocket until the show goes into syndication. “On our series, production companies seldom carry deficits,” says Paul Krimsier, the Family Channel’s vice president of programming. “We’ll order a full season of 22-26 episodes upfront, frequently without a pilot.” The Family Channel just renewed “Maniac Mansion,” its half-hour comedy series provided by Lucasfilm TV Ltd., and is considering several other Lucas shows.

John Landis’ half-hour comedy series “Dream On” runs on HBO, but many Hollywood feature producers interested in series programming have opted for the networks instead. John Sayles’ “Shannon’s Deal” is currently airing on NBC. Lucas is preparing an ABC series “Young Indiana Jones,” while Amblin is working on three cartoon series--”Family Dog,” “Back to the Future” and “Tiny Toons.”

Barry Levinson recently signed a multi-series commitment with NBC. But his longer-format programs, including the Paley miniseries, will be for cable.

“HBO has made us feel extremely wanted,” says Mark Johnson, Levinson’s producing partner. “They pursued us aggressively and asked us what we were interested in. People we respect a great deal are working in cable. We’re looking forward to the challenge of producing with limited funds and schedules.”

Gale Anne Hurd, producer of “The Terminator” and “Aliens,” turned to cable to prove that “special-effects films can be made for a price, on budget and on schedule.” Her film “Lovecraft,” to air in the fall, depicts creatures using complicated miniatures, yet had a budget of just $6.2 million. Her last special-effects feature, “The Abyss,” cost almost 10 times as much.

“Because these films are so expensive, not a lot are being green-lighted,” Hurd says. Although her HBO budget was restrictive, she admits: “No matter how much money you have, you always feel you’re compromising. We had tremendous constraints on ‘Lovecraft,’ and there was no court of appeal. The budget was the budget. . . . But I never had the sense we were making something other than a feature. No one ever said, ‘This is for cable. We don’t have to get this bit right.’ ”

From science fiction to literary short stories, cable wants to fill niches ignored by the networks. “In some ways, cable is a more hospitable place for the arts because it’s more elitist,” says David Brown, producer of “The Sting,” “Jaws” and “Cocoon,” about why he approached HBO with his proposal to film short stories by renowned writers.

The first “Women & Men” trilogy, starring Melanie Griffith, James Woods, Molly Ringwald, Peter Weller, Elizabeth McGovern and Beau Bridges, aired last August. The second trilogy went into production this month.

Jonathan Demme, who directed this spring’s hit movie “The Silence of the Lambs,” will produce an upcoming episode of “Women & Men,” Carson McCullers’ “A Domestic Dilemma.” “Lambs” production designer Kristi Zea will make her directorial debut, and Ray Liotta and Andie MacDowell will star.

Mike Figgis (“Internal Affairs”) will direct another episode, Henry Miller’s “Bertha,” with Scott Glenn and Juliette Binoche, and Walter Bernstein (screenwriter of “The Front”) will direct the third, Irwin Shaw’s “Return to Kansas City.” When the next trilogy goes before the cameras in the fall, Demme will be one of the directors.

“We’re able to attract top talent because they’re not accustomed to getting these kinds of stories,” Brown says. “We all work virtually for scale. There are no big trailers and no limousines. But these pieces take just six days to shoot, plus two days’ rehearsal, so you don’t have to spend your life filming them. I find it totally satisfying work. It’s not declasse in any respect.”

Brown says he has kept quiet about his cable connection up to now. “I want to keep my pals out. I tell them, ‘It’s terrible. Stay away.’ I don’t want the competition.”