The Studio Shuffle : Sherry Lansing

Then: President of production, 20th Century Fox, 1980-1983.

Now: After 11 years as an independent producer, was named chairman of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group November, 1992.

*

After spending seven of the first 18 months of her marriage to director William Friedkin away on location, Lansing gave up producing for a studio chief post. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, she says, the position gave her more control over her life.

“I’m the only person who took this job so I could be home for dinner,” Lansing, 50, says. “I hardly ever travel. My stepson Jack does his homework in the alcove outside my office. Except for previews, I rarely go out at night. When I took the job, I told (former Paramount Communications President) Stanley Jaffe and (former Paramount Communications CEO) Marty Davis that if they were looking for someone who hangs out at Morton’s, they had the wrong person.” Still, it’s no walk in the country, Lansing hastens to add. “I’m lucky if I take off two weeks a year,” she says. “I get about 100 calls a day which I try to return within 24 hours. Far easier to deal with the lack of flexibility and spontaneity that comes with the turf if your personal life is in place. If I was still single, I would never have taken this on.”

For someone who loves making movies, Lansing says, being studio chief means being able to say yes to projects she believes in. It’s a vast improvement over her producer days when she saw “Fatal Attraction” and “The Accused” turned down twice by every studio--and over those days as Fox production chief when advertising and distribution weren’t part of her turf.

“Fox had the chance to pick up domestic rights to the (Oscar-winning) ‘Chariots of Fire’ for $1 million but the head of marketing said no,” Lansing recalls. “And they hated Martin Scorsese’s ‘King of Comedy’ so it was released in only four cities. I felt impotent, setting movies in motion and seeing them destroyed. Those two movies pushed me out.”

Overseeing between 18 and 25 films a year, Lansing says, is a huge responsibility. “As a producer, you have a beginning, a middle, and an end,” she notes. “You finish a movie, you fly off to France for a month. Now I’m planning two years ahead. You never get to go ‘whew!’ or savor a ‘Forrest Gump’ since you’re always worrying about next summer or next Christmas.

“But it forces you to move on from the disappointments, as well. This time out is much easier than at Fox when I was 35, a kid without any moviemaking experience. I have a much better sense of what’s possible now because I’ve been there. I still think of myself as a producer--and of Paramount as one huge production office.”

As a former actress, Lansing might be expected to have greater tolerance for the spotlight. Not true, she insists.

“The media scrutiny is the most painful part,” Lansing says. “There are so many truths and untruths to which you can’t respond, people you don’t know saying things about you. When it hurts a lot, you build a wall and tell yourself that’s the price you pay. The buck stops here, which is both good and bad since the hits and flops both come under your watch.

“ ‘Searching for Bobby Fischer’ was one of my favorites and, to this day, I don’t know why it wasn’t nominated or do a lot of business. You love your ugly children as much as the pretty ones, so it kills you.”

In any case, says Lansing, such attention is misplaced. “It’s not about me, but the talent,” Lansing notes. “If you had a chance to have lunch with me or an Academy Award-winning director, who would you choose? The parking place and the table at Morton’s . . . that all goes away. Your legacy, in the end, is the movies you help to make.”