They Just Seem to Click

On the set of his first movie, “10 Things I Hate About You,” veteran sitcom director Gil Junger quickly learned just how different the feature film world can be from TV. Junger wanted an elaborate opening shot for the teen comedy, one that would pan over a neighborhood and into the window of a house.

The problem was that the house didn’t have the right type of window to make the shot work.

“The art department turned to me and said, ‘We’ll blow a hole in the house and put in a window, Mr. Junger.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ because in TV, you have to beg to get $500 to get a Steadicam shot.”

TV directors like Junger know how to get the job done--quickly and cheaply if necessary--and that’s one of the reasons why so many of them are making a successful transition into the suddenly budget-minded world of feature films. The recent batch of TV-to-movie transfers includes Robert Iscove (“She’s All That”) and Sam Weisman (“George of the Jungle,” “The Out-of-Towners”).

The feature film world has long mined the small screen for talent. Such acclaimed feature directors as John Frankenheimer, Franklin Schaffner, Sidney Lumet and George Roy Hill came out of the Golden Age of television of the 1950s. Oscar winner Steven Spielberg cut his directorial teeth on episodes of “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and such TV movies as “Duel.” Recent Thalberg winner Norman Jewison (“In the Heat of the Night”) directed TV variety shows. And Garry Marshall, who has struck box-office gold with “Beaches” and “Pretty Woman,” was a producer and director of such classic series as “The Odd Couple” and “Happy Days.”

The current crop of TV directors is finding that the quickest and easiest entree into features is via the low-budget teen film.

“The reality is: When a studio wants to make a picture for $9 million, they are not going to get an A-list director who is going to demand $3 million to make the movie,” admits Junger, who received Directors Guild of America and Emmy nominations for the acclaimed coming-out episode of “Ellen” two years ago. “10 Things I Hate About You” opened Wednesday.

“They can get a TV director for a minimal amount of money. They [Disney] basically paid me scale to make the movie.”

Junger says he didn’t do the comedy--a version of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” set in high school--for the money. “I really wanted to make a feature,” he says. “I figured it was worth it to me financially to take a loss.”

Because television is such a fast medium, Junger says, TV directors are logical choices for teen films. “In TV, we shoot 48 pages in 2 1/2 hours,” he explains. “You have to work quickly. You have to work efficiently. With the resurgence of these teen films, which are anywhere from $9 [million] to $18 million, you have to work on a budget.”

“10 Things” was budgeted for a 47-day shoot. “I did it in 43, simply because I have been trained in 22 years to make decisions quickly. I think it also serves comedy. One of the things I worked so hard at at sitcoms is pacing--keeping everyone alive. I think it translates well to the feature world.”

With the rising cost of movies, TV has become a key training ground for young directors, notes Tom Sherak, a 20th Century Fox executive. “You are always looking for sources [to find] the next director. Anything that is a craft like directing--and it is a craft--there has to be a learning experience. Years ago, you worked for a lot of these independents and worked your way up the line.

“All of a sudden, the business shifted, and it cost so much more to make movies, you had to look at a lot of places. Directors now come out of the MTV market, TV and commercials. Teen movies are made for a price, so even though a studio is taking a chance on a director, they feel it’s worth it. . . . Even if it doesn’t work commercially, somebody is going to look at the work and say, ‘What about him for a movie?’ ”

Teen movies open the door for directors who are hungry to enter the film world and, notes Sherak: “Once you’ve directed a movie, you have directed a movie. It gets them into the club.”

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Iscove broke into the club in a big way this winter with the surprise teen hit “She’s All That.” (The $9-million film has made about $57 million at the box office so far.) After starting out in theater, he directed a number of TV movies, as well as episodes of “Miami Vice” and “Wiseguy.” Two years ago, he scored a huge success on TV with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Cinderella,” starring Brandy and Whitney Houston.

Iscove says Miramax co-chair Harvey Weinstein loved “Cinderella” and first contacted him about doing the musical version of “Chicago.” But when that didn’t work out, Weinstein mentioned that he had a film, ready to go into production, which he thought would be perfect for Iscove.

“When we had done the testing on ‘Cinderella,’ I saw how much the teenagers and people in their early 20s were responding to a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and the ‘Cinderella’ story,” Iscove says. “This [“She’s All That”] had elements [of “Cinderella”] in it. I said, ‘This is a perfect transition.’ ”

Like Junger, Iscove’s TV experience paid off handsomely. “I showed Harvey a cut of this movie in mid-October, which was 2 1/2 weeks after we stopped shooting,” he says. It’s not unusual for film directors to spend months in post-production. “Because of my experience in TV, I could do that. My team was used to working that quickly with me.”

Iscove acknowledges that there is still a prejudice in the feature film community against TV directors. Some of the resistance is a fear that TV directors won’t attract movie talent. But since so many teen movies feature TV stars--for example, “Dawson’s Creek’s” James Van Der Beek in “Varsity Blues” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s” Sarah Michelle Gellar in “Cruel Intentions”--TV experience can be seen as a plus.

Another concern is that TV directors won’t have the visual expertise of feature filmmakers. Junger says: “The biggest concern that Disney had in hiring me, and they told me this, was, ‘Will it look like a TV show?’ ” But “10 Things” producer Andrew Lazar says that wasn’t a problem with Junger. “As a matter of fact, Gil is a fantastic still photographer and had a great sense of style.

“We met with a lot of directors,” Lazar adds. “Some were from TV, some came from independent films and some had done a lot of features. Gil, far and away, was the most articulate about what his point of view of the movie was. That is what you want in a director: a specific point of view and vision.”

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Weisman, who, like Iscove, got his start in theater and directed episodes of “Family Ties,” “Brooklyn Bridge” and “Moonlighting,” has four feature films under his belt, including the 1997 box-office hit “George of the Jungle.” His latest film is the Steve Martin-Goldie Hawn comedy from Paramount, “The Out-of-Towners.”

For Weisman, the most difficult aspect of going from TV to movies was the script. “Once you get into longer form, it is really tough. In television, you have a very specific act structure, whether it is half-hour or hour. The storytelling is geared toward commercial breaks. A film can very easily lose its way.”

After “George,” which made more than $100 million, Weisman stepped up into bigger budget films with more established stars such as Martin and Hawn. But Weisman thinks that becoming a successful feature director can work against you in Hollywood.

“A lot of people say, ‘Why should we pay him if we can pay someone a lot less who can probably make the same movie?’ ” Weisman says. “Don’t wish for what you want, because you might get it. When you get successful, you are up on another echelon, and the stakes are higher.”

But there are clearly advantages to feature films, Iscove says: “You get the ability to go back and reshape it and re-form it. In TV, you just have to trust your instincts and go out there. So learning that process was different, though it’s not a difficult process. In fact, it’s quite an enjoyable process because you get to see how people really respond to it.”

Both Weisman and Iscove plan to stick with features for the time being, though Junger hopes he can do both films and sitcoms.

“I’m reading [movie] scripts right now and found a couple that I am interested in--non-teen-films,” Junger says. “But I am waiting to see how my film does. I think if it does well commercially, then a whole new realm of movies will be open for me. I am trying to be very, very careful with the next film. I think the second one is very important, though every cell in my body wants me to start [a movie] tomorrow.”