Shooting for a Role in a Male Film Genre

A nuclear warhead detonates in rural Russia, and actress Nicole Kidman--as Dr. Julia Kelly, a White House expert on weapons smuggling--suspects terrorists are to blame. In an early scene in “The Peacemaker,” the fast-paced action picture that opens Friday, Kidman asks the Pentagon to assign her a military intelligence officer to help solve the crime.

“And . . . make sure,” she says pointedly, “he’s willing to take orders from a woman.”

In the largely male world of national security, it’s tricky to be a woman in charge. The same is true in the almost exclusively male realm of action filmmaking, which is part of the reason why “The Peacemaker”--the first feature from the fledgling DreamWorks SKG studio--is being so closely watched in Hollywood.

Its director, Mimi Leder, is a San Fernando Valley mom.

“Especially in Eastern Europe, some of the crew looked at me like, ‘She’s the director?’. . . But now, everybody calls me ‘Action Woman!’ ” Leder said with a laugh, offering herself as proof that “you don’t have to have big muscles to make a muscular film.”

Each year, a litter of high-velocity, testosterone-choked movies hits theaters like a fleet of Mack trucks. Featuring loads of firepower and high-tech hardware, these pictures have huge budgets--this year’s “Con Air,” for example, cost $80 million. They are aimed at male audiences and are directed, almost always, by men.

So, many women filmmakers rejoiced when Leder, a veteran director of television shows such as “ER” and “China Beach,” was tapped by Steven Spielberg to make “The Peacemaker”--a $50-million project starring Kidman, George Clooney and several kilotons of nuclear explosives. It is the biggest-budget picture ever directed by a woman.

That Leder has been entrusted with such a blockbuster--and, for her second film, with “Deep Impact,” a $75-million sci-fi thriller about a comet hurtling toward Earth--is important on several fronts. Among women directors, even those who have no interest in action films, there is hope that Leder--who came in under budget on “Peacemaker”--will make studio executives more comfortable about bankrolling their films.

And for moviegoers there could be a payoff as well. To the extent that following tried-and-true formulas leads to a frequently depressing sameness, women action directors might bring something different to the screen.

“When Mimi found out she was going to do it, I went, ‘Bravo! Go, girl!’ ” said Lesli Linka Glatter, who just directed her second feature film, “Tempting Fate,” starring Kenneth Branagh and Madeline Stowe. “This is yet another sign that yes, it can be done. This is not just the domain of men.”

The box office performance of “The Peacemaker”--particularly how it opens this weekend--will put that idea to the test. Will this “smart” action movie, as Leder calls it, lure enough viewers to declare the experiment a success? For reasons of self-interest and of sisterhood, women in the movie business are holding their breaths.

“There’s an element of the ‘right stuff’ to [women] being able to play with the big toys,” said producer Lynda Obst, whose credits include this year’s space feature “Contact.” “The notion of a woman at the helm of a picture like ‘The Peacemaker’ adds a certain swagger to women in general.”

Penelope Spheeris, the director of several comedies from “Wayne’s World” to “The Beverly Hillbillies,” was more blunt.

“Let’s hope it does well,” she said, “because if it doesn’t, we’re screwed.”

Such cynicism is understandable, given the relative scarcity of women at the helm. Other than Leder, only one woman has directed action pictures: Kathryn Bigelow, whose most recent film was “Strange Days,” the 1995 thriller starring Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett. The $45-million picture was a box-office failure.

Looking across all film genres, including the character-driven dramas with female stars that some in Hollywood call “chick flicks,” women make up a fraction of the directing world. Fewer than 2,300 of the 11,000 Directors Guild of America members are women. Of total days worked by film directors in 1996, according to a DGA tally, women accounted for 9%.

More frustrating, women directors say, is that their films tend to be limited in scope and budget, less aggressively marketed and, as a result, less financially successful.

“They should make more movies about women. There aren’t enough. But they tend to be relegated to small movies,” said director Martha Coolidge, who has proved adept at comedy (“Out to Sea”) and drama (“Rambling Rose”), has conquered the world of special effects (“Real Genius”), but has never been able to break into the action genre.

“About 90% of what comes my way are 10 different kinds of breast cancer stories, 10 kinds of divorce stories, 10 kinds of woman-taking-care-of-her-dying-father films,” Coolidge said. “I do those. I care about them deeply. But one does want to do more.”

For years, Coolidge sought to do an action film based on Michael Crichton’s epic book about Vikings, “Eaters of the Dead.” The movie got made--Disney has scheduled it for a spring 1998 release. But it was directed by John McTiernan of “Die Hard” fame, who with James Cameron, Jan De Bont, Richard Donner, Renny Harlin and Ridley Scott constitute the action elite.

Terry Curtin, Disney’s senior vice president for publicity, said that when the studio bought the rights from Crichton, McTiernan was already attached.

Not Afraid to Be a Woman at Work

To see Leder, 45, on the set of “Deep Impact” may make you wonder why it’s taken her so long to get there. Confident in a way that puts everyone else at ease, she presides over a tricky “zero-gravity” scene with good-humored professionalism.

“How’s the smoke, Dietrich?” she yells at her director of photography as her actors--playing astronauts whose spaceship has been damaged by a nuclear explosion light-years away--sway precariously in midair, suspended by cables.

Leder, trained as a cinematographer, is an innovator who often used a Steadicam--a mobile camera--to bring intensity to even the most pedestrian scenes in “ER.” Her ability to blend frenetic action and human emotion caught the eye of Spielberg, whose Amblin Entertainment is a producer of “ER.”

Branko Lustig, a producer on “The Peacemaker,” put it this way: “She is great with speed.”

But Leder, who has a 10-year-old daughter, is not afraid to be a woman at work. Listen to her talk about “Deep Impact”: Much more than a story about the world coming to an end, it is about “the choices we have to make . . . and about issues of family.”

If that isn’t a first for an action movie, consider how she describes directing “The Peacemaker.”

“It was like having a baby, like childbirth,” she said, happily aware that this is something her fellow action directors would never--could never--say. “It was very painful, but afterward you forget the pain and you become very proud of it. It’s your child.”

Leder admits to not being a big action movie fan because too often “the stories aren’t very good,” but she says “The Peacemaker” is better than the norm. She insisted the script be rewritten to make Kidman’s role substantial--not peripheral or ornamental. She resisted the temptation to throw Kidman into Clooney’s arms--a romance, Leder said, “would have been absolutely ridiculous.” Most notably, she created a villain who is human--a gentle man who teaches piano even as he plans to obliterate a major American city.

“What differentiates this movie from others in this genre is that we put a human face on the terrorist,” Leder said. “Is that because of my femaleness? I don’t know.”

Why aren’t more women getting the chance to break with tradition? Some studio executives say the answer lies partly with the women themselves.

“From my point of view, if a woman came in on . . . an action picture, I don’t think it would be a difficult decision if she was impassioned and I believed in what her point of view was,” said Lorenzo di Bonaventura, president of worldwide theatrical production at Warner Bros. Pictures. “The truth of the matter is,” he said at a forum last weekend at the Directors Guild, “there haven’t been many women who have come to Warner Bros. wanting to direct a picture like that.”

Studio executives also say that their movies’ monstrous price tags tend to make them cautious in their choices. When risking tens of millions of dollars, you want to feel comfortable about who’s running the show. Why particular directors inspire comfort on particular projects is not always easy to define. But one thing is clear: The desire to make safe bets has not prevented first-time directors who are men from being hired to make expensive action pictures.

“Con Air” was the feature debut for Simon West, a music video director. Ditto for Michael Bay, who started with “Bad Boys,” then made “The Rock” and is now making “Armageddon,” a $100-million sci-fi fantasy adventure starring Bruce Willis that is Disney’s priciest movie ever.

Leder herself has been fortunate, she said, to have been given opportunities by several open-minded men, from Spielberg to the executive producer of “ER,” John Wells. Nevertheless, she said, there is one overriding reason women directors are so often relegated to teen comedies and the like: “Because it’s mostly men doing the hiring.”

Reluctance to Stray From Proven Formulas

Even when women hold the purse strings, there is reluctance to stray far from formulas that have worked in the past. As a result, both men and women quickly find themselves pegged as certain types of directors--”romantic comedy” or “period drama”--based on the films they have already done.

Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing has greenlighted a string of hits directed by women, from “Wayne’s World” to “The Brady Bunch.” But until “Deep Impact,” which Paramount is co-producing with DreamWorks, the studio had hired no women to direct large-budget action films. And that probably would not have happened, said John Goldwyn, Paramount’s president of production, if Spielberg--who was originally supposed to direct--had not championed Leder.

“There is a tendency to try to replicate what came before,” Goldwyn said at a forum last weekend at the Directors Guild. “We keep throwing money at people who have had success in certain genres that have succeeded before. Because when you hit with one of those movies, they make a lot of money. . . . [And] that tends to make everybody continue to play the game in the same way and not necessarily change the rules.”

Do women directors make different films from men? For years, women have said yes. In 1974, for example, the American Film Institute launched a Directing Workshop for Women partly in the hopes of improving how women were portrayed in film. Mathilde Krim, wife of the late United Artists Chairman Arthur B. Krim, was the workshop’s chief architect.

“I told my husband, ‘Women should be directing. We would see a different picture of humanity,’ ” she said in Variety. In 23 years, the workshop has trained more than 140 women to direct, including actresses Anne Bancroft, Joanne Woodward and Lee Grant.

Today, some women directors still proudly assert that gender helps define their filmic vision.

“We are women, and we probably will be telling stories that concern women. And I’m not afraid to say that,” said Jocelyn Moorhouse, the Australian director whose “A Thousand Acres,” starring Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer, opened this month. “I am interested in stories that concern women. . . . And I’m not ashamed to be doing [them].”

But other filmmakers chafe at being identified as women first, directors second.

“Because I’m a woman, I’ve had to work harder and be better at the job and not screw up as much. Because you’re not forgiven,” Spheeris said. “Guys--when they’re gripey on the set--they’re geniuses. We’re having a bad time of the month.”

Nevertheless, Spheeris was reluctant to be quoted in this story. “I have a pretty strong belief that by separating us out as different than other directors, we’re perpetuating the discrimination,” she said.

Bigelow feels much the same way. In films such as “Near Dark”--her vampire western that has become a cult classic--Bigelow distinguished herself with a kinetic, daring style and strong female characters. In “Blue Steel,” Bigelow turned gender stereotyping on its head, casting Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop trying to catch a psychopath.

Of Bigelow’s “Strange Days,” a nightmarish thriller about Los Angeles at the millennium’s edge, one film critic wrote: “No one will ever say she directs like a girl.” But too often, Bigelow said, directors get more attention--especially from the media--for being “girls” than for doing their jobs.

“To qualify a director in terms of their gender simply ghettoizes women,” said Bigelow, who is seeking financing for a film about the life of Joan of Arc.

Earlier this week, Bigelow and 60 other film and television directors--all of them female--gathered at a posh steakhouse on La Cienega Boulevard. Hosted by the American Film Institute, the dinner was a celebration of how far they have come, and Leder was on everyone’s mind.

“Tonight, her first feature is being premiered on Hollywood Boulevard,” AFI Director Jean Picker Firstenberg announced. The directors--among them Claudia Weill (“Girlfriends”) and Agnieszka Holland (“Europa, Europa” and the upcoming “Washington Square”)--put down their forks and applauded warmly.

Leder is gratified by the attention and aware of how much may be riding on her success. Ironically, she now finds herself worried about being typecast in the other direction.

“I hope I’m not only offered action. That’s not all I want to do,” she said the other day, launching into a description of what she hopes will be her next movie, an epic love story based on her parents’ courtship.

“They call me ‘Action Woman.’ It’s an odd thing to be called that,” Leder said. “I can direct anything.”

Visit MetaHollywood, the Times Web site devoted to coverage of digital effects and new media in the entertainment industry, for more about DreamWorks’ “The Peacemaker”: https://www.latimes.com/metahollywood