Steinem Tries Film Producing : Issues Come Alive in Lifetime’s ‘Better Off Dead’

Gloria Steinem has never played it safe. And the renowned feminist and founder of Ms. Magazine certainly doesn’t disappoint with “Better Off Dead,” a new Lifetime movie on which she was executive producer.

“Better Off Dead,” which stars Mare Winningham and Tyra Ferrell (“Boyz N the Hood,” “White Men Can’t Jump”), tackles such volatile subjects as abortion, the death penalty and race relations. Winningham plays Kit, a racist con woman--her father is a neo-Nazi--who is sentenced to death after she murders the black policeman who killed her partner. Ferrell is Cutter, an ambitious African-American deputy district attorney who succeeds in having Kit convicted and sentenced to death.

Seven years later, Kit is now pregnant and her execution is nearing. Meanwhile Cutter has decided to delve back into Kit’s case--and into the future of Kit’s unborn child. The issues of abortion and capital punishment collide.

And that’s what made her do the film: Steinem said over the years she has discovered that people who are against legal abortion are “almost always in favor of capital punishment. ... The script itself is more all-encompassing than that, but for me that was the beginning of the idea.”

Steinem said she and her partner Rosilyn Heller, the film’s producer and executive producer, took “Better Off Dead” to Lifetime because the network is geared toward women and women’s issues. Lifetime quickly green-lighted the project.

“We wanted it right away,” said Linda Fishman, a Lifetime vice president. “We responded to two women--one who is black and one who is white who form a bond despite their differences and work together to help each other. We responded to the underlying racial tone of the movie, the contrast between capital punishment and abortion and the fact Gloria was behind the movie.”

Steinem said she and Heller wanted a black director for the project. They selected the Emmy-winning director, Neema Barnette (“Frank’s Place,” “The Cosby Show”), one of the few black women TV or film directors.

“I felt strongly about it especially with a story about a black woman and a white woman,” Steinem said. “It is kind of a love story between them. It was very important to have a black woman director because the less powerful group always knows the powerful better than vice versa, if you know what I mean. Women know men better than men know women, and blacks know whites better than whites know blacks. So that a black woman director was far more likely to understand in depth the white woman and black woman.”

Barnette said she was hesitant at first to take the project because “there was a very strong racial story there that was quite underdeveloped because originally the character of Kit was a black woman and Cutter was a white woman,” Barnette said.

“The problem was the black character was underdeveloped,” Barnette said. “Basically, the writer (Marlane X. Meyer) could not write for black characters.”

Barnette said she rewrote all of Cutter’s scenes. “I wouldn’t take the job if Cutter was just used as a tool with no background, no reason to go back to Kit, that she was just an Uncle Tom,” Barnette said. “I put a lot of humor into the script. Where there is tragedy there is humor as well.”

These changes, Barnette said, lead to trouble with the cable network. “I think primarily they wanted another image of Cutter,” she said. “I wanted to cast someone who made the audience feel a little bit uncomfortable, who was attractive, quick-witted and who was somewhat of a bitch. If you have seen the Lifetime films who have black women in them, you know what kind of comfortable kind of black (actresses) they hire.”

She believes the female executives at Lifetime initially gave her a difficult time over the depiction of Cutter because “because professional black women, like Cutter’s character, are basically invisible on the screen, particularly in TV. I think they were going by the images they created of black women. I was telling them the truth. Tyra and I were trying to give them the truth.”

Steinem, who is preparing a film about the pornography industry, said it’s rare to see a TV movie in which different women work together for a common cause. “We still have the token woman or we have women fighting with each other,” she said. “I don’t see women really working together.”

Still, Steinem said, she believes television will tackle the tough topics feature films now shy away from. “It is very important to get real life on television,” she said. “It does really help people sitting in their living rooms that they didn’t make up these problems. It is not entirely their fault.”

“Better Off Dead” premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Lifetime . Itetime repeats Jan. 19 at 9 p.m. , Jan. 23 at 6 p.m. , Jan. 25 at 9 p.m. and Jan. 28 at 9 p.m.