MARTHA COOLIDGE / DIRECTOR

From the youth culture of “Valley Girl” (Nicolas Cage’s first starring role) to the, um, non-youth culture of “Out to Sea” (with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau), director Martha Coolidge has covered a lot of ground. But at 50, she still feels hemmed in by Hollywood conventions that even her passion for horses--she co-owns a ranch specializing in the Pacifino breed--can’t help her escape.

MODERN MATURITY: “It’s great rediscovering [older] actors. In ‘Out to Sea’ we have Olivia de Havilland, Donald O’Connor, [the late] Edward Mulhare. . . . Jack and Walter called me the Kid.”

ONE TO WATCH: “Brent Spiner--millions of people know him as Data on ‘Star Trek,’ but he had that great part in ‘Independence Day’ and he shows in my film that he’s a deeply talented man. He plays the heavy so to speak, but he’s made for comedy. He sings and dances all the way through the movie.”

THE WRONG STUFF: “[Hollywood is] cutting out character development in the interest of speed and adrenaline rush in movies. It’s promoted by previewing [unfinished films]. You want feedback, but when a film’s not finished, it’s often longer and slower and the audience says it’s long and slow, and the director’s told, ‘Get rid of all the talking scenes.’ So you get rid of the scenes that make you care about the people.”

GENDER GAP: “It’s still much more difficult getting the jobs [as a woman]. They just send you everything about women and their problems, comedy or drama, and they tend to be small films. I’d love to do pictures like ‘The Fugitive’--big adventure, action, paranoid pictures. I tried for several years to do the picture that John McTiernan is shooting now, based on a Crichton book [‘Eaters of the Dead’], a big Viking movie.”

TOP OF THE POPS: “I like music, but with this picture I drifted a little away from what’s currently happening. My 8-year-old son, Preston, though, has replaced his favorite band with a new one. Three years ago his favorite was the Cranberries. Now it’s Nine Inch Nails.”

THE POST-SWING ERA: “You can go salsa dancing every night of the week in L.A. It is seriously the most fun subculture in L.A. since the [rock] club scene when I did [1983’s] ‘Valley Girl.’ ”

HAPPY TRAILS: “I have a lot of people in the [film] business who come to our ranch. I also ride with the Cowboy Lawyer Assn. There is a whole subculture of lawyers and judges who ride. They think of themselves as cowboys.”