A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : BEYOND ‘CRADLE’ : He’s Still in a Family Way

The usual ambition for a Hollywood producer flush with success for making a sleeper hit like “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” would be to move up the ranks with a more prestigious project the next time. An all-star cast. A bigger budget. A deal that includes a percentage of the box-office grosses.

But not David Madden, who has just acquired one of the longest monikers in filmdom; writer-director-producer-studio executive.

Madden, a partner at Interscope Communications, which made “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” for Walt Disney Studios’ Hollywood Pictures, has decided to gamble his reputation and $1 million of Interscope’s money on a vanity project. The film is “A Part of the Family,” a semi-autobiographical story that he wrote and directed and that stars his wife, the actress Elizabeth Arlen, among others.

The setting is affluent suburban Chicago, “Ordinary People” territory--a social environment of Madden’s youth that he says still tries to project a placid appearance and surface warmth, as if everything is always fine (even when it isn’t).

With his name as producer on six prior films and on-set producer on four others, he maintains: “You can only spend so much time sitting on the sidelines before wanting to go out and do it yourself.”

The vehicle he hopes to carry him forward as a writer-director is not unlike “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” in sensibility--how a loss of trust can destroy a family--with one distinction. Madden chooses to characterize his picture as “a bloodless psychological thriller” where the other was not.

“A Part of the Family” explores the deep undercurrents working against a young newlywed couple by their in-laws under the guise of gentility. Arlen plays a research doctor who returns home from New York to introduce her husband, a tabloid reporter (Robert Carradine) to her mother (Shirley Knight) and doctor father (Ronny Cox), not realizing that her parents are intent upon reshaping their lives in subtle but damaging ways.

Madden said he had interest from several film companies outside Interscope to make his picture--one offer would have allowed him an $8 million budget though those who became serious asked him for “a blowout finale” of the “big chase through the house with a lethal weapon”--variety instead of what he wrote.

Madden then turned to Interscope’s other partners, Robert W. Cort and Ted Field, for funding--setting the cost ceiling of $1 million--a risk they agreed to take. In the past, Interscope, one of Hollywood’s more successful independent production companies, has kept a check on its downside by financing most of its projects with outside investors and lining up a distributor later. Both “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “Three Men and a Baby,” the company’s other major blockbuster, were handled this way.

Calling on a few favors with friends, Madden got the actors to work for less than scale. He hired a trimmed down, non-union crew that agreed to adhere to a tight, 12-hour-a-day, five-week shooting schedule mostly in Glendale.

In fact, the total “above-the-line” cost for the six principal actors, seven day players and nearly 300 extras was $80,000. Madden took no salary himself. He said the production went $10,000 over budget, a laughably low amount when considering the excesses on many other Hollywood productions.

Having spent 12 years in the film business--including as vice president of production at both 20th Century Fox and Paramount--the director solicited the interest of several key filmmakers he had come to know by sending them a copy of his screenplay: Cinematographer James Glennon (“Smooth Talk,” “El Norte”), editor Caroline Biggerstaff (“Days of Heaven,” “9 1/2 Weeks”) and production designer Carol Winstead Wood (“Mr. Saturday Night,” “Backdraft”).

“A Part of the Family” is now in post-production and is expected to be finished by December when it will be decided whether Interscope or some other company will distribute the movie.

Madden hopes that critics will appreciate a psychological drama based on “pure performance” and the careers of its stars will be enhanced--notably that of his wife, who has played mostly supporting roles in such films as “D.O.A.” and “National Lampoon’s European Vacation.”

“(She) had to prove that she got the part for more reasons than that she was married to me,” he said. “I hope she will come out of this process as the film’s discovery.”

Laughing, he said that at least he expects that “everyone will be proud to have (the credit) on their resume--as opposed to ‘Killer Sluts From Venus.’ ”