Female Screenwriters Face the Writing on the Wall : Movies: There’s a perception that it’s an all-male occupation, but three women don’t buy the stereotype.

The message is unmistakable: The all-male, cigar-chomping photo of screenwriters in Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue; the bidding wars that erupt over certain scripts--usually written by a man named Eszterhas or Black; a recent issue of Variety that listed the top 30 “sizzling” screenwriters--only two of whom were women.

You’d think “E.T.,” “Thelma & Louise” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” all of which were written by women, had never happened. You’d think every screenwriter out there was a younger version of Billy Wilder, wouldn’t you?

Maybe--but you’d be wrong.

“There are a lot of women out there selling screenplays and getting work,” said Randi Singer, who shared screen credit on the blockbuster “Mrs. Doubtfire” with Leslie Dixon (“Outrageous Fortune”). “Typically it’s a very liberal field that’s conducive to equal opportunity for all.”

And, in fact, while there have been notable female screenwriters from Anita Loos to Nora Ephron, there is a dynamic young contingent of women taking Hollywood, if not quite yet by storm, then by serious downpour. They don’t smoke cigars; they don’t wear tweed jackets. But they have all found success and six-figure incomes.

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Consider, for example: Helen Childress, 25, who wrote “Reality Bites” and is now working on “Friends for Life,” to be directed by Rosie O’Donnell and produced by Nora Ephron and Lynda Obst; thirtysomething Kate Lanier, whose Tina Turner biopic, “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” garnered an Oscar nod for Angela Bassett; and Carol Heikkinen, 27, who can claim cult status for having written the last River Phoenix picture (which also starred Sandra Bullock), “The Thing Called Love,” and this summer’s “Empire,” a Warner Bros. release starring Liv Tyler.

“I always thought that because writing is about a product, that people don’t really look at the gender,” says Childress, still bristling at the all-male Vanity Fair photo. “I wonder who picked those writers?”

“I know that I was naively optimistic,” Heikkinen recalls of her first attempts at screenwriting. “When I didn’t sell my first script, I just sort of figured I’d sell the next one. And I did. If nothing happens with one, you just have to write another one.”

Once an assistant at Columbia, Heikkinen learned the business from a vantage point that sometimes turns into a creative pigeonhole for women: reading other people’s scripts. She also attended a UCLA Extension class and won a writing award there for one of her screenplays. “Empire,” which sold for $500,000, is, in her words, “a day in the life of a record store,” with a heavy Gen X appeal.

Former New Yorker Lanier recently finished a script called “G-Dog: The Father Boyle Story,” about an East L.A. barrio priest, for Wendy Finerman. She has racked up eight assignments in the wake of “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” including a remake of “A Star Is Born” for Warner Bros. with Herb Ross directing, commanding fees of up to $500,000.

Nonetheless, Lanier sees plenty of room for personal growth. “You’re talking about an industry where all the money is made by men,” she says. “As far as I’m concerned, women [should be] on top because their stories have changed consciousness.”

Writers Guild statistics show that 80% of the registered writers are men, but that the percentage is on the decline. According to Childress, “There are a lot of women who are directing now, who are writing their own things. Maybe they can’t get into the conventional Hollywood mainstream, but maybe they really don’t care. They are going about it under the radar.”

Heikkinen agrees: “I suspect that if there are female writers who are in it for the money and who are making it an ambition of theirs to make the big payday, they’re probably not the best writers.”

In general, gender has not been a drawback for any of these scripters, although the implication of the recent male roundups has been unsettling.

“It’s very disturbing, though I don’t think I have personally really experienced that much hardship in finding work,” Childress says. “I don’t see that it would be easier if I was a guy.”

When Childress agreed to develop “Reality Bites,” she dropped out of USC at age 20. The compensation arrangement was structured so that she drew “salary” over a three-year period up to its 1994 release date. Now, she routinely makes $175,000 to $200,000 for rewrites; her quote for an original script is much more than that figure, but, as yet, Childress has not felt the need to venture into the spec market.

Heikkinen, on the other hand, sells only specs. “I feel, for what I write, what I’ve been paid is fair. I don’t think about how much something is worth when I’m writing it. [But] it’s good for [high-profile male] screenwriters to make a lot of money; I’m happy they’re making money, because I don’t think they’re going to get more respect, so they may as well have money.”

Nobody disputes the fact that most of the high-budget movies, in Lanier’s words, are “male-oriented, male-written and male-driven.” Or even that the Hollywood schmooze network puts the emphasis on male-bonding activities and all the ersatz testosterone that they imply. But that doesn’t mean it will always be that way, or that there aren’t other ways in.

“Professionally I haven’t felt stopped by that,” Childress says. “That’s more of a social stigma. There’s a lot of socializing that goes on. I do think that I’ve heard more about male writers going out to dinner and being invited to parties.”

Though the three agree there still exists an industry notion that “women’s stories” are often perceived as “softer,” they have been able to work around this bias.

“If it’s a ‘soft’ idea,” Heikkinen says, “I would rather have placed it somewhere where they understand it completely, no matter how strong it is or how soft it is. I can’t argue with what’s at the top of the box office.”