A Chat With the Film Industry’s Big 5

Anyone expecting fireworks as the five Directors Guild of America Award nominees--two of whom were shut out of the Oscar nominations--shared a stage for a three-hour symposium Saturday morning would have been sorely disappointed. The five pros, in a mostly low-key manner, answered questions about their films and working styles.

The jostling and jockeying was in the lobby, where as many guild members, in a line snaking to the entrance, were shut out as could squeeze into the DGA’s packed auditorium. This is an industry town, after all, where a sun-soaked Saturday--a rarity these days--couldn’t compete with the luster of the five heavy hitters.

Nominee Steven Spielberg inherently commanded attention by virtue of his elder-statesman position. But it was James Cameron--who would go on to win the feature directing award that night for “Titanic”--who riveted the energy in the room every time he spoke. The raptness and intensity bespoke an audience hungry to soak up every iota of information about the making of a movie that at this point seems to be almost as legendary as “Gone With the Wind.”

Demographically--and a chronic thorn industrywide--the nominees were virtual clones: James L. Brooks (“As Good as It Gets”), Cameron, Curtis Hanson (“L.A. Confidential”), Spielberg (“Amistad”) and Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”).

Adding in Jeremy Kagan, the director who has served as moderator the last several years, all six onstage were male, roughly in their mid-40s to mid-50s and white. Five of the six, coincidentally, sported trim salt-and-pepper beards. The audience too was a veritable sea of white, and almost all male, faces.

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Redeemingly, the nominees were an eclectic bunch artistically, representing all factions of filmmaking:

* Spielberg, the icon of the establishment, has worked within the studio system for two decades and produced several of Hollywood’s highest-grossing blockbusters.

* Cameron is the former maestro of the action/sci-fi/special-effects genre and has dramatically reinvented himself with “Titanic,” an old-fashioned epic whose heart is as big as its special effects.

* Brooks has mostly overcome the albatross of his television roots--though he and Spielberg were left off the list of this year’s Oscar-nominated directors--and is hitting his cinematic stride with quirky comedy on par with his previous career.

* Van Sant has intentionally operated on the industry fringes in independent, low-budget films to accommodate his subversive bent. “Good Will Hunting” shows what he can do with mainstream material: make it pop.

* And Hanson, who had his one big splash six years ago with the B-genre “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” has also jolted his career with the unexpected brilliance of “L.A. Confidential.”

Onstage, there were no big surprises; the fascination was in the detail. Cameron, the current king of Hollywood, was dead center among the men. Spielberg, the old master, was positioned alongside the moderator. Van Sant looked self-conscious in the limelight. Sandwiched between titans Spielberg and Cameron, Van Sant still evoked the high school outsider, the drama student who stays up till 2 a.m. in coffeehouses, slouched alongside the student body president and the strapping engineering major.

Cameron, comfortable finally with a record-breaking global phenomenon on his hands, could now joke about the problem-laden and over-budget production--grist for industry and media coverage for months. Asked about “happy accidents” on the set, he quipped: “Most of our accidents were negative.”

Van Sant took the cue, wryly noting that his first choice for the Minnie Driver part had been “Titanic’s” Kate Winslet. “But she was unavailable,” he said, pausing between each phrase. “Been down there a long, long time.” Another pause, as the audience laughed. “She’s really tired.” More laughter. “Doesn’t know whether she’s going to do another film or wants to quit the business.”

Spielberg, later talking about shooting the water sequences of “Amistad,” threw in: “Fortunately, my boat didn’t have to sink.”

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Jokes aside, the men shared a committed passion for the calling. As each homed in on the casting process, what was clear was the alchemy they hunt for relentlessly, even for months, to find that exact actor. Spielberg had almost given up, he said, after four months of a national search for the right actor to play slave leader Cinque and hours of bleary-eyed viewing of videotaped auditions.

“There I was dozing. I was convinced we were not making the film. Hours and hours of videos,” the director said. “And then the tape went into the player. When Djimon Hounsou came on, it was a wake-up call.”

Said Hanson, who has jump-started the careers of his “L.A. Confidential” cast: “I look for actors who I can give a chance to blossom, who can surprise me.”

Van Sant is known--it would seem from the inside jokes onstage--for taking black-and-white home Polaroids of potential actors, then shuffling table configurations much like someone playing with a deck of cards until it feels right.

“Mixing and matching,” he said, “I could spend hours and hours doing it.”

“Did you ever spend time in jail?” Cameron quipped.

Leonardo DiCaprio initially caught Cameron’s attention not for his work, with which the director said he was unfamiliar, but the electricity that the actor generated when he visited his office for the first time. “Our female CFO, all the female executives, the secretaries, I suddenly found everyone in the room,” Cameron said. “I thought, ‘Hmm, this is a little odd.’ ”

The editing phase is “where the experience becomes religious,” Brooks said. All the men share that fervor. Cameron, who said he practically lives in the editing room during that phase of production, moved the facilities into his home, taking up several rooms. Van Sant did the same.

Van Sant shared his epiphany of reading Ben Affleck & Matt Damon’s now-famously good script of “Good Will Hunting”: “I read the first act and thought, ‘OK, this is great, but there probably won’t be a second act.’ Then I read the second act and thought, ‘OK, but there won’t be a third act.’ And by the end, the script “knocked me out.”

Cameron boasted of his film’s being the first of the near-dozen Titanic movies to actually approach the Irish shipbuilders of the doomed vessel for the original blueprints.

“And I got them,” he said proudly of his persuading the company to hand over the legendary documents for the first time. He added wryly: “Well, it’s always been a black mark for them.” Cameron said he scrupulously adhered to the blueprints of the ship, even though he decided to fictionalize the passengers.

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Brooks, known for obsessive retooling, acknowledged re-shooting the ending of “As Good as It Gets” because he thought the original, shot at the start of production, was glib and he knew he could do better. Instead of a suave kiss, he inserted Jack Nicholson’s now-famous “bad” kiss. “It’s amazing how little we changed and how much it meant,” said the perfectionist director--a moniker that could apply to all five men.

When Nicholson couldn’t get to the center of his character one day, Brooks sent the crew home, despite the cost. He explained: “We spent four hours talking. We gave ourselves the time. It was respect for the process. Respect that we weren’t machines.”

Cameron had to find the key to persuade a reticent DiCaprio to take the role of the dashing, upbeat Jack Dawson--a role that seemed too easy and generic for an actor attracted to troubled, neurotic men. “I told him it’s a lot easier doing what you’ve been doing than to do Jimmy Stewart,” Cameron said. DiCaprio signed on.

Not surprisingly, the event’s last statement, and emotional capper, came from Spielberg, when responding to what he liked best about the filmmaking process.

“You gain yourself,” the veteran said simply. “You’re reborn every time you make a movie.”