Filmmaker With a Strong Pulse : Movies: Eriq LaSalle steps out of ‘ER’ and behind the camera for a story he wrote and will direct for Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions.

After four years of trying unsuccessfully to sell a screenplay the conventional way--shopping it around through his agent--Eriq LaSalle thought he would try a more unorthodox approach.

LaSalle, a regular on the top-rated TV show “ER,” took out a $140,000 loan, got some help from Steven Spielberg, NBC and Warner Bros. in securing equipment and filmed a 35-minute version of “Psalms From the Underground.” LaSalle wrote, directed and had a supporting role in the short film, which he screened last month in the elegant Steven J. Ross Theatre on the Warner Bros. lot. (The studio produces “ER.”)

Now, just a few weeks after showing his film to about 700 friends and industry insiders, La Salle--who was nominated for an Emmy this year for his role as Dr. Peter Benton on the NBC hospital drama--has sold his script to Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions for an undisclosed amount. The project--with LaSalle attached as director--will then be shopped around to the studios.

“I’m an admirer of what he’s doing,” Gibson said Thursday. “I think he’s really passionate and smart and the movie was absorbing and watchable. . . . When you see what he’s done with a shoestring, it’s pretty amazing.”

Rather than sit back and count on the ephemeral security of a popular TV show, LaSalle has pushed himself toward his goal of making movies.

“The minute the show really took off I was focused that this is what I needed to do,” LaSalle, 33, said in an interview at his modern, airy Westside home, accented with family photographs and African artwork. “When the show goes off the air in, let’s say, five years, if I haven’t done anything--and this is something minority artists really need to understand since we can’t play by the same rules--if I’m not careful, I’m a forgotten entity. I could end up as this actor who used to be on this show. There are no guarantees [that] when this show is over I get to do a film.”

The screening of LaSalle’s short film drew representatives from studios and production companies, who said they were drawn by the promise of what a first-time celebrity director would turn out.

“I think as a director he’s very talented,” said Tamara Gregory, a story editor at Hollywood Pictures. “I thought the production values were fantastic and the performances were great, which is a reflection of the director. He had good use of the camera, nice movement.”

But, said another film executive, LaSalle’s directing talents may surpass his writing.

“I don’t know if he was quite as successful in that regard. It wasn’t a fresh look at the troubles of [the 1960s and ‘70s],” he said. “[But] I think he’s going to jump on a lot of people’s directing lists, even in the feature world. And certainly within the cable world and the television world. I wouldn’t be surprised if the producers of ‘ER’ gave him a directing shot.”

But directing “ER” is not what the serious yet engaging LaSalle has in mind.

“I don’t really have an interest in directing ‘ER’ because I think that’s directing by committee and the last thing a young director needs is people telling him what to do,” LaSalle said. “With this film, I had the freedom to fall on my face. As an artist you never grow until you fall on your face.”

Besides, he said, he would rather work on meatier subject matter than episodic television.

“The type of filmmaking I’m trying to do are things that get under your skin,” LaSalle said. “I’m not in this to perpetuate the same safe b.s. that other filmmakers have put out there. I want to do some very challenging, confronting filmmaking, but not just for the sake of doing it. But, because that’s who I am: I want to tell personal stories and be someone who challenges old images and old stereotypes.”

With “Psalms From the Underground” LaSalle tells the story of Sojourner Bluridge, the daughter of a black civil rights activist, who is forced by the murder of her father to take on the leadership of a fictitious African American activist organization he founded. The very premise, he said, is based on knocking down old stereotypes.

“Who’s to say that a woman--black, white or whatever--cannot run a revolution? A female in this role is much more intriguing to me, because to run a revolution is not just muscle, not just brawn,” LaSalle said.

The lead character is faced with a struggle between nonviolence and arming oneself, prompting a few at the screening to make global assumptions about what LaSalle considers a very personal story.

“It’s really about a woman and her journey to accept her destiny, even the ugly things about her destiny,” LaSalle said. “What I’ve found as a filmmaker who happens to be black is that I’m not afforded the same luxury [as white filmmakers]. If I tell a simple story about an individual, somehow that becomes indicative and representative of an entire group of people. One reporter at the screening walked away with the fear that I was advocating violence and telling people to take up arms.

“We’re not allowed, in general, to tell our story and when we do we’re so limited to telling the whole gangbang thing, limited to the type of images that white America feels comfortable with,” he says.

Though he is happy about the sudden surge of interest in his script, LaSalle also finds it ironic that people are lauding him for the perceived timeliness of his story.

“People were shoving microphones in my face [at the screening] and talking about how timely it is. Racial injustice has been an issue for a long time, but it’s not validated--I hate to say this--until white folks say it’s an issue. People were trying to draw parallels from O.J. to this film and I’m saying, ‘What? Look, I wrote this thing four years ago.’ So either I am ahead of my time or these are issues that have been around, but people just didn’t choose to deal with them. It is funny that I’m being heralded as this visionary. I find a lot of irony in that.”