COVER STORY : The Filmmakers vs. the Crusaders

Screenwriter and independent producer Jonathan F. Lawton did not realize he was asking for trouble when he created a character in his script “Red Sneakers” who leaves her older female lover for a man. But two prominent actresses rejected the role, saying the story line might be deemed offensive to lesbians.

The actresses feared a reprise of last spring’s assault on the allegedly homophobic screenplay for the upcoming movie “Basic Instinct,” said Lawton, whose credits include the 1990 mega-hit “Pretty Woman” and the current “Pizza Man.”

Unable to get a star for the leading role, Lawton brought his script to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, one of several entertainment media watchdog groups that have sprung up in the last few years. He hoped the organization would applaud the script for including some positive gay characters.

But to his dismay, GLAAD agreed with the actresses (whom Lawton will not name), saying the screenplay promoted the view that a lesbian can be “cured” if she finds the right man. After a heated discussion, during which Lawton accused the organization of being “as bad as Jesse Helms,” the screenwriter reluctantly agreed to make some changes.

In the revised script, the heroine is clearly a bisexual who relates to the older woman more as a daughter than a lover, and a romance between the older woman and another lesbian has been added. These modifications have “improved” the screenplay, according to GLAAD executive director Richard Jennings.

Said Lawton, who has temporarily shelved “Red Sneakers” while he writes an action picture for director James Cameron: “Without a doubt, there’s an enormous pressure to be politically correct, but it’s very misserved. It ends up hurting projects more than it helps.”

First circulated widely on college campuses a few years back, the term “politically correct” was initially used to disparage the movement to ban “hate speech,” or language offensive to women and minorities. Reaching far beyond academia, it is now a catchall way to refer to anything that smacks of liberal or leftist pieties.

When it comes to political correctness in Hollywood these days, gay groups are perhaps the most visible but hardly the only advocates getting into the act. Among other recent developments:

Producers of movies with American Indian themes are working closely with Indian groups to head off the kind of criticism heaped on the recently released “Black Robe.”

Animal rights proponents, concerned about what one described as “an anti-wolf statement” in the Disney film “White Fang,” persuaded producers to tone down a particular scene and include a disclaimer stating that there is no documented case in North America of a healthy wolf or pack of wolves attacking a human.

Dubbing Spike Lee “a petit bourgeois Negro,” a prominent black intellectual declared that the black filmmaker had no right to turn Malcolm X’s life into a “commercial property.”

An advocate for the disabled warned Steven Spielberg in a letter released to the press that “Hook” may heighten children’s fears of amputees. (But the film gets P.C. points for its ethnically diverse Lost Boys.)

From gays to American Indians to Asians to the disabled to environmentalists, Hollywood at the end of 1991 seems besieged by interest groups clamoring to put in their two cents, to register their disapproval, to redress historical wrongs and to help shape (or reshape) public images through the entertainment industry. Sometimes the advocates ask for--and are granted--the right to examine a screenplay; at other times they rely on sympathetic studio insiders to circulate copies.

Protests by aggrieved minority groups are almost as old as the movies themselves--dating back at least to “The Birth of a Nation,” which sparked angry protests by the NAACP when it was released in 1915. And almost since the beginning of talkies, Hollywood has been prey to outside influence from conservative forces. The guardians of public morality began bearing down on the movie industry in the 1920s, leading to the creation of the Motion Picture Production Code. Strengthened in 1934 under pressure from the Catholic Church and other groups, it survived in one form or another until the 1960s.

In more recent years, the attempt to influence has traveled across the political spectrum. In 1979, for example, gay groups staged violent protests during the filming of “Cruising,” William Friedkin’s movie about the world of leather bars.

In the 1990s, there’s evidence that these groups are gaining ground.

Although some filmmakers feel stifled, others say listening to various interests is part of the cost of doing business in a democracy. They say the influence of groups such as GLAAD is a welcome development after years in which minority groups have either been neglected or negatively portrayed. One person’s “politically correct,” they point out, is another person’s attempt to be sensitive.

The case made by gay groups, for example, “falls on receptive ears, because it’s consistent with the values of this community,” said Marty Kaplan, a screenwriter and producer for Walt Disney Studios.

Not surprisingly, critics on the right, who have long complained that filmmakers’ values are out of sync with the American public’s, say the movies are a captive of politically correct thinking, not only on matters of sexual orientation, race and feminism but also when it comes to attitudes toward religion, business, the military and foreign affairs. “Try to imagine a film in which a blacklisted writer is portrayed in an unfavorable light,” said Santa Monica-based critic Michael Medved. “This will never happen.”

Still others say the concerns about political correctness pale when pitted against Hollywood’s general reluctance to take on weighty contemporary subjects. “Look at how little is done with feature films that is challenging at all,” said screenwriter Roger L. Simon, whose films have included “Enemies, a Love Story” and “Scenes From a Mall.” “The problem isn’t being politically correct. The problem is being relevant.”

Nevertheless, the watchdog groups have been hard to ignore, especially in the last year.

Attracting the most attention was the confrontation over Joe Eszterhas’ script for “Basic Instinct,” starring Michael Douglas as a psychologically unstable policeman who falls in love with a bisexual female novelist suspected in an ice-pick murder. Two lesbian characters are also murderers.

The film was so heavily protested by gay activists during shooting in San Francisco last spring that producers got a court order barring further disruptions. In response to criticism, Eszterhas offered to alter his script, but director Paul Verhoeven and producer Alan Marshall rejected his proposals.

“They were not improvements at all,” Verhoeven said, complaining that the revisions were “non-organic . . . (by) bringing in elements that you feel are coming from the outside.”

Verhoeven, who is braced for further attacks when the film opens in March, had fled the frustrations of working in the Netherlands, where filmmakers must rely on substantial government financing--and with it, considerable government interference.

Citing his films, “Spetters,” “Flesh and Blood” and “The Fourth Man”--all of which had homosexual characters--he tried, without success, to persuade gay activists that he was on their side.

“He just wasn’t getting it,” said GLAAD’s Jennings. “This (“Basic Instinct”) was not a script that he wrote; this was written by someone without any sensitivity. It was a heterosexual man’s fantasy about lesbian killers.” Eszterhas refused to comment.

Earlier in the year, GLAAD had picketed an industry screening of “The Silence of the Lambs” to demonstrate anger over the portrayal of a markedly gay man as the savage serial murderer. More recently, the group has criticized the treatment of the gay figures in Oliver “JFK,” especially a brief scene of homosexual sadomasochism that Jennings considers “gratuitous.”

“This reinforces the idea that sadomasochism and bondage are more prevalent among the gay community than among heterosexuals,” said Jennings, who attributes the increase in gay bashing in part to the negative images conveyed by the entertainment industry. Stone did not respond to a request for comment.

On the other hand, GLAAD claims credit for modifications in the current action picture “The Last Boy Scout,” which originally called for Milo, the character played by Taylor Negron, to be an effeminate gay man who makes snuff films and is mocked for “talking like a fruit,” according to Jennings. As released, however, Milo is “not apparently, stereotypically gay,” the GLAAD official said. Spokesmen for Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, did not offer any comments.

Demonstrating the clout GLAAD wields, producer David Permut, who hopes to begin shooting a film called “Three of Hearts” early next year, said he plans to involve “one of those groups to make sure (the film) has nothing they would find offensive.”

Like Lawton’s “Red Sneakers,” Permut’s film features a triangle consisting of a man, a bisexual woman and a lesbian. William Baldwin has been mentioned for the lead male role.

Aware of the “flammability” of his subject, “Three of Hearts” screenwriter Adam Greenman said: “You have to make double, triple sure that you’re not insulting a whole group of people.”

Lawton said he was chagrined that the group refused to grant him a “seal of approval” once he agreed to tinker with “Red Sneakers.” Instead, he believes the group exerts a negative influence by providing “studios with an easier way to say no.”

Next to gays, American Indians have been most vocal in expressing their unhappiness over films such as Robert Redford’s upcoming “Dark Wind,” based on a Tony Hillerman novel and set on Hopi and Navajo reservations, and Australian director Bruce Beresford’s recently released “Black Robe,” the story of a Jesuit priest’s attempt to foist Catholicism on Indians in northern Quebec.

Redford ran afoul of the American Indian Registry for the Performing Arts when he broke his pledge to cast a full-blooded Indian in the lead role in “Dark Wind” and instead hired Lou Diamond Phillips, who is part Cherokee.

Religious leaders in one particular Hopi village also complained that the script maligned them and portrayed their rites in a sacrilegious manner, prompting producer Patrick Markey to agree to make changes. At the same time, the Navajo Nation came to the film’s defense, saying it would cooperate with the production.

In another well-publicized incident, Beresford was “taken aback” last month to find himself under attack for what was described as a one-dimensional, unbalanced portrayal of Indians.

“Indians are about the environment, sensitivity and culture,” said Bonnie Paradise, director of the American Indian Registry, complaining that the film depicted her people as savages.

Beresford said he believes the film showed Indians as courageous and brave without idealizing or romanticizing them. “I had no drum to beat; my only interest was in getting it as accurate as possible,” he said.

Beresford, who has tangled with gay and aboriginal activists in his homeland over his “Barry MacKenzie” movies and “Fringe Dweller,” respectively, said political correctness is “not something that would ever worry me.”

“If you buckled under to it, you’d come up with something very namby-pamby and silly,” he said. “It never occurred to me to do it.”

Even “Dances With Wolves”--which might seem at first blush the epitome of a politically correct film--was not universally cheered, according to Paradise, who explained that some Indians were displeased with it for showing so many “stone-faced” characters. “When are we going to be portrayed as happy Indians?” she asked.

Inspired by the huge success of “Dances With Wolves,” filmmakers are descending on the reservations, this time to tackle modern Indian themes. Not only are they seeking Indian actors but they are also hiring them as consultants.

On the Tucson location of “Rope of Sand,” for example, John Proudstar represented the American Indian Registry. He was given a copy of the script for the film, which will star Scott Glenn, and suggested changes to help writer-director J.C. Cardone “see (things) through the Native American perspective.”

As with gays, spokesmen for Indians say their involvement is justified because of the damage done by years of negative stereotyping.

“Any time the Indians have a controversy, the (movie) industry learns a little more,” Paradise said. “They want the project to be good, and of course, Indians want it to be good also.”

Like gays and American Indians, Asian-Americans have long objected to the way Hollywood portrays them. Now they, too, are fighting back.

Beulah Ku, executive director of the Assn. of Asian-Pacific-American Artists, said various spokesmen for Asian causes approached British director Alan Parker to make sure his film about the internment of Japanese-Americans, “Come See the Paradise,” steered clear of stereotypes.

Initially reluctant to deal with the Asian groups, he eventually came around, Ku recalled.

Parker, whose “Mississippi Burning” was widely criticized for minimizing the role of blacks in the American civil rights movement and making heroes out of white FBI agents, has acknowledged that he was determined to avoid similar problems in dealing with another sensitive subject.

The director, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said he sought out the opinions of thousands of Japanese-Americans across the country before finishing his script.

In these racially touchy times, it may seem like playing with fire for David Mamet to be planning a film called “Charlie Chan.” But producer Brian Grazer said this time the title character will be portrayed by an Asian actor who will be just as brainy as his predecessor but will not speak a word of pidgin English.

Political correctness reared its head in the African-American community last summer when Amiri Baraka, the former LeRoi Jones, expressed the fear that Spike Lee’s film about Malcolm X, now in production in New York, would turn the black nationalist’s life into “a comic strip.”

Lee refused to bow to pressure from Baraka and other black leftists, who had not read his script but based their forebodings on his previous movies. “I’m going to make the kind of film I want to make,” Lee told the Amsterdam News, a Harlem newspaper. He also wondered: “And who appointed Baraka chairman of the African-American arts committee?”

That a subject of such consequence to African-Americans should be entrusted to an individual filmmaker instead of a committee may well have been the crux of the problem, according to Barry Alexander Brown, editor and second unit director for “Malcolm X.”

“People who want a committee are people who don’t make movies,” Brown said. “You can’t make a movie that way.”

Lee himself may have opened the door to these criticisms by earlier raising objections to director Norman Jewison’s planned Malcolm X movie. A white director could not do the story justice, Lee asserted.

In the current climate, are white filmmakers flirting with danger when they seek to make films about blacks?

This problem was faced by Henry Bean and Michael Tolkin, screenwriters for “Deep Cover,” a film now in production starring Larry Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum and directed by Bill Duke, who is black. Bean, also a co-producer of the film, was worried that his story about a young black man’s efforts to resist the pull of a criminal life might mistakenly be construed as a racist statement suggesting that all blacks are crooked.

To avoid such misunderstandings, it was necessary to be “precise about what we wanted to say. There was political correctness all over the place in small and subtle ways,” Bean said. Still unresolved is the question of whether to end the film with some ambiguity about Fishburne’s character. “I think if the character were white there’d be a lot less of a problem,” Bean said.

Beresford said he is about to start shopping a project about the life of singer Bessie Smith, based on a script by Horton Foote. Both he and Foote are white. While he cannot predict how the proposal will be received, the prospect of a cold shoulder is daunting.

“It’s absurd to think that just because I’m not black, I can’t make films about blacks or anybody else,” he said.

For whites, the fear of offending blacks or other racial groups may have disastrous consequences, as was evident in the widely panned “Bonfire of the Vanities.” To offset the negative black characters in the film, based on Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel, producer and director Brian De Palma transformed the upstanding Jewish Judge Myron Kovitsky into a black jurist played by Morgan Freeman.

Filmmakers who create handicapped characters can expect to hear from Ira Zimmerman, advocacy chairman of the National Stuttering Project. Zimmerman has complained about stutterers in movies such as “A Fish Called Wanda,” “Oscar” and “Dead Again.”

Zimmerman is also an advocate for people with other disabilities, such as amputees. “I’ve seen youngsters cringe when they meet people with hooks,” he said, expressing disappointment that Spielberg did not accompany the release of “Hook” with a public service campaign on behalf of the disabled.

Perhaps surprisingly, while there is much grumbling about the absence of strong roles for women in Hollywood films and growing concern about the titillating role of violence against women in major movies such as “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Cape Fear,” feminists have not been lobbying filmmakers in organized fashion.

“When we speak out in a negative way, we’re seen as the women’s movement was 20 years ago,” said Harriet Silverman, executive director of Women in Film. Instead, the organization prefers to honor films that meet its standards and “hopefully raise consciousness as well if not better.”

In some quarters, that approach appears to be working. In “JFK,” perhaps as a counterpoise to the homebodyish Liz Garrison played by Sissy Spacek, New Orleans’ prosecutor Jim Garrison’s all-male team has acquired a female assistant district attorney.

Screenwriter George Kirgo said he encountered a roadblock in dealing with a woman director who thought his principal female character in a particular script started out as too much of a doormat. Even though the character eventually becomes liberated, the director, whose name he will not disclose, “didn’t want to have this initial dependence. . . . I didn’t back down but it took me a lot longer to sell it.”

While advocates for minority groups must still plead for access to the film industry, animal rights supporters and other environmentalists already have it. “You can’t make a movie about a tiger eating peasants unless you’re on the side of the tiger,” joked conservative screenwriter John Milius.

In 1980, in the wake of widespread criticism of director Michael Cimino’s treatment of animals while filming “Heaven’s Gate,” the American Humane Assn. was granted access to movie sets. Its mission is to safeguard the animals used in the film, but officials will speak out if they sense that a particular scene is likely to offend animal-lovers.

In “White Fang,” based on the Jack London novella, the script originally called for a scene showing a wolf attacking a man. “I was very concerned about that being an anti-wolf statement,” said Betty Denny Smith, director of the Humane Assn.’s Los Angeles office. The scene was changed so that the attack takes place off-screen and a disclaimer from Defenders of Wildlife saying healthy wolves do not attack humans was included.

“What we tried to do was minimize the violence of the scene and yet preserve the underlying story,” said Adam Merims, who was Buena Vista Pictures’ production executive on the film. “As filmmakers we tend to be pro-environmental.”

But the disclaimer drew a protest from ranchers, who do not agree that wolves are benign. The president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver urged Disney Chairman Michael Eisner to remove the statement “for the sake of factual accuracy, as well as for the sake of those children who come in contact with animals.”

Eisner, however, happens to be a board member of the Environmental Media Assn., an advocacy group created by some of the industry’s heaviest hitters that lists three dozen leading environmentalists as advisers. EMA encourages filmmakers to promote environmental causes in small ways--showing characters engaged in recycling, for example--and through movies about such issues as the destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

“On some projects we’re out there brainstorming with the producer . . . ,” said EMA President Andy Spahn. He foresees more movies about “environmental criminals” and “a lot more films that deal with the impact of environmental degradation, much like we used to see films warning of a nuclear holocaust.”

Despite his misgivings about political correctness, film critic Medved has no problem with EMA’s environmental message. “It’s like motherhood,” he said.

But other conservatives object to what they see as EMA’s anti-business stance. By presenting only one side of environmental disputes, Hollywood is “brainwashing the American public,” said Alan M. Gottlieb, president of the Seattle-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

It is not environmentalism but rather the perceived assault on religion that seems to most rankle conservative media watchdogs such as L. Brent Bozell, chairman of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va. He points to such movies as “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Rapture” and “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” as evidence that Christianity is fair game.

To S. Robert Lichter, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs, this is evidence that “some groups are more equal than others and some are more offendable than others.”

Many filmmakers, however, say conservatives’ fears and complaints are vastly overblown. “Most Hollywood movies are very, very mainstream--in many ways conservative,” said writer and director John Sayles. “But only the ones that aren’t mainstream are called political; the others are not.”

Nevertheless, there is a worry that too much sensitivity may result in an overdose of blandness, just as earlier compliance with the production code led to an idealized version of mainstream America.

“When art becomes frightened of offending, it becomes institutionalized and bourgeois,” said screenwriter and novelist David Freeman. “There’s nothing worse than polite art.”