PROFILE : Duo Shares the Ups and Downs of Cinema Life : Film director Gregory Nava and his wife, producer Anna Thomas, have learned to juggle personal lives and professional demands.

Even though cooking plays a central role in the family life of director Gregory Nava and producer Anna Thomas, these days the busiest piece of hardware in their pantry is the fax machine.

On a recent Saturday, it was serving up a 40-page draft of the credits for the Ojai couple’s latest movie, “My Family.” Nava directed, Thomas produced and they share writing credits for the multi-generational saga about the trials and triumphs of a Chicano family living in East Los Angeles.

Right now, the husband-and-wife team is looking forward to some triumphs of its own--the May 3 premiere of “My Family” and a special benefit screening in Ventura County on Wednesday--but is also sharing some trials as well.

“Look at this,” Thomas said, snatching up a cascade of paper the fax machine had burped up. “People think movies must be fun to make. They’re fun to go to so (people) associate movies with a great time, but (filmmaking is) such a grueling, demanding process.”

Doubly so given that the couple can’t escape work by leaving the office. “When you come home, you have all the same stuff on your mind,” said Thomas, 46.

The natural tension between a director and producer resulted in what the two characterize as spirited exchanges.

“Typically, producers and directors have lots of fights every time money comes up,” Thomas said. “The director wants to spend more and the producer has to keep it in the budget. Like if we’re going into overtime three weeks in a row, I just go to Greg and say that after 12 hours, I’m going to pull the plug on the generators. Otherwise, when we get to the last week of shooting, we’re not going to have a last week of shooting.”

Nava, 46, said that working on “My Family” with a budget of just $5.5 million left little margin for error.

“It was like a coiled spring,” he said. “We’d be shooting a night scene and the sun would be coming up while we were still shooting, but we had to finish. We had to deliver that scene.”

The budget for “My Family” was generous compared to the couple’s best-known film, “El Norte.” The 1984 movie, about two Guatemalan teen-agers fleeing their country for the United States, cost $800,000 and earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

Despite the nomination, Nava and Thomas had no success pitching “My Family” to the studios; a story about a family is, by Hollywood standards, low concept.

In desperation, Nava approached Francis Ford Coppola in late 1993. Coppola said he liked the script, and when he learned that every studio had said no, he asked Nava, “Who came the closest to saying yes?” Nava told him New Line. The next morning Coppola made a call and Nava had a deal.

Casting was another problem. Thomas said that there are many Latino actors who are household names, but none can guarantee big box office. And in cases in which studios took a chance on Latinos to carry a film, the results were poor.

“We went to Universal with ‘My Family,’ ” Thomas said. “They told us no because they had just taken a bath on “American Me.’ ”

Some critics point to “American Me,” a 1992 prison drama starring Edward James Olmos, as an example of how Hollywood stereotypes minorities by presenting them as criminals. But Nava said studios can be insensitive toward minorities in other ways. For “El Norte,” movie executives actually wanted Nava to cast Brooke Shields and Robby Benson in the lead roles.

“That’s a true story,” Nava said, guffawing at the absurdity of a blue-eyed man and a statuesque, pale-skinned woman playing the roles of indigenous Guatemalans.

Nava was able to cast Latino actors David Villalpando and Zaide Silvia Gutierrez in “El Norte,” and he was determined to have an all-Latino cast for “My Family.” He got Olmos, Jimmy Smits and Esai Morales to lead an ensemble cast.

Cinema is not the sole focus at Nava and Thomas’ Ojai home. Food is big, too. After a recent preview of “My Family” at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater, a film student in the audience asked Nava to tell the cookbook story.

As Nava recounts it, both he and Thomas were studying film at UCLA as undergraduates in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Thomas was struggling to find the $3,000 it would take to make the short film required to earn her degree. She had a friend in the publishing business who told her that cookbooks sell well. Maybe she could write a cookbook.

So she put together a manuscript and eventually got a $3,000 advance. “She never expected to see another dime from the book,” Nava told the audience of 500. “But the book has sold over 1 million copies so far. Its name is ‘The Vegetarian Epicure.’ ”

The audience broke out in a spontaneous “oooooh” at the mention of the kitchen classic.

A second “Vegetarian Epicure” also sold over 1 million copies, Nava told the audience. A third book should be out at about this time next year.

As it turns out, there is some connection between writing a screenplay and good cooking.

“A good menu is like a good story,” Thomas writes in the foreword to the second book. “It must have the proper balance of dramatic elements, sorted out and arranged in such an order that each new course fulfills the promise of the one that came before while setting the scene for the one to follow, and everything must be resolved in the end, for unlike some stories, all meals should have a happy ending.”

Details

* WHAT: “My Family” benefit screening.

* WHEN: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

* WHERE: Edwards Camarillo Palace 12.

* HOW MUCH: $25 for the screening; $125 for the screening and reception afterward.

* FYI: Proceeds will go toward a project to construct a gymnasium at Rio del Valle Junior High School.

* CALL: Rosann Gallien Baker in county Supervisor John Flynn’s office, 654-2706.