Screenwriter Takes the Reins of ‘Black Beauty’ : Movies: ‘Homeward Bound’s’ Caroline Thompson makes her directorial debut with the girl-meets-horse story.

Working in England on the set of “The Secret Garden” taught Caroline Thompson how to make a movie, or, as the writer and associate producer put it, “how not to.”

Whether shortening scenes or tendering her opinion on costumes for director Agnieszka Holland, Thompson said she learned “the value of having the rhythm of the movie before making the first shot, how long things take to get and how patient you must be, how to be flexible and manipulative.”

Holland, in turn, said she found working with Thompson a “happy” situation. Thompson has her own imagination, Holland said, “but is open to the director. Independent people can easily collaborate when you aren’t worried about ego. Caroline is strong, but doesn’t need to prove every time she is right.”

Thompson’s experiences will, no doubt, stand her in good stead on yet another venture. Thanks largely to the success of last year’s “Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey,” the heart-tugging Disney remake starring two dogs and a cat for which she shared script credit with Linda Woolverton, Thompson once again is in England--this time directing her first picture, a $18-million remake from her own script of the classic girl-meets-horse story “Black Beauty.”

“It (“Homeward Bound”) made animal movies,” Thompson, 37, said. “Everyone wants them again. When Warners approached me about writing ‘Black Beauty,’ I said only if I could direct the script.”

It didn’t hurt either, said Thompson, that she had written the smash hit “The Addams Family” with collaborator Larry Wilson.

In her new endeavor, Thompson says she has enough good friends to turn to who are directors “that I can feel comfortable asking them stupid questions.” One she hopes to be able to tap is Tim Burton, who directed “Edward Scissorhands” (1990) from her script.

It was at Burton’s suggestion in 1985 that Thompson, a horse lover and owner, moved to the Burbank neighborhood a bridge away from the riding trails of Griffith Park. “In this community, everybody is into everybody else’s business, just like in ‘Edward Scissorhands,’ ” said Thompson.

Thompson grew up in her great-great-grandmother’s house in Washington, D.C., where her mother read tales such as “Wind in the Willows” and “Alice in Wonderland” aloud at the dinner table. Studying classic Greek literature, Thompson graduated from Amherst College--”I loved Homer more than life itself,” the writer recalled.

Thompson was living in Los Angeles when her epistolary novel, “First Born,” was published in 1983. The story of a young married woman who has an abortion and is later sought out by the misshapen child who survived it, is, she reflected, “a furious little book” written as a black comedy but with a lot of anger underneath: “It’s a perverse autobiography about feeling unwanted.”

The book was crafted as a classic Gothic novel, an homage to Thompson’s youthful admiration of the Bronte sisters and Mary Shelley.

Thompson wrote a screenplay for “First Born”--”Most people wanted to meet me because they were so appalled,” she recalled with a chuckle--and it attracted director Penelope Spheeris and producer Edgar Scherick. Although the deal fall apart, it left Thompson established at the William Morris agency where her agent, John Burnham, introduced her to Burton because, she explained, “they didn’t know what to do with either of us.”

The pairing was felicitous and has borne much creativity. In December, Disney will release “Nightmare Before Christmas,” an animated musical produced by Burton and written by Thompson. “The process between us works almost psychically,” she marveled. “So many people try to tell the writer what to do. Tim wouldn’t think of it.”

In fact, a steely autonomy partially accounts for Thompson’s success in the macho jungles of Hollywood. “It’s the playground skills that count,” she confided. “I never was in awe of authority. It’s always, ‘How far can I go?’ I’ve made some people pretty angry--and I enjoy it. If I don’t think something’s good, I say so. I have an idea of what’s good and what’s not. If that’s difficult, so be it.”

With her move to directing, Thompson has high hopes for other projects in development, including “The Geek” at Disney, an off-beat script written with Wilson about a boy raised as a chicken, and “Rouge,” her adaptation of a Chinese movie about a woman who travels through time and place to reunite with her lover.

Now at Dolly Parton’s Sanddollar production company, “Rouge” would propel Thompson from the children’s fantasy genre in which she’s often put.

“I declined to be on a fantasy panel at the Writers Guild,” Thompson said. “I don’t want to be stuck in that genre because it’s limiting, not expanding.”

As one of Hollywood’s most successful woman, Thompson said she’s occasionally expected to fulfill other women’s expectations.

“Some women have been angry at me for not creating better role models for their daughters. By my life, I hope to express to young women that it’s certainly possible to do what you want with your life. I’ve done what I want. I make movies.”