Man, Woman, ‘Girl’

The easy part for producer Cathy Konrad and writer and director James Mangold was hooking up professionally during the filming of the 1997 thriller “Cop Land,” their first joint project. Much more challenging was the development of their own romance, a high-risk drama that unfolded behind the scenes during the film’s production.

They enjoy recounting the events today as they sit in their offices at Sony Pictures because, well, they both love telling stories, and because it all turned out fine in the end. Mangold and Konrad, both in their mid-30s, are now married and have recently completed their second project, “Girl, Interrupted,” a drama about teen-age depression that stars Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. The Sony film, released for Oscar consideration at the end of 1999, opens nationally on Friday.

Mangold co-wrote and directed the film, based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of her experience with depression as a teenager during the 1960s, while Konrad produced it. It’s the 13th producer credit in the past six years for Konrad, whose other films include the “Scream” movies--”Scream 3” opens next month--as well as the controversial “Kids.” Konrad says her honeymoon with Mangold a year and a half ago was the first vacation she had taken in nine years.

There’s been no thought of a break since then, not when they both know they have great opportunities to make the movies they want. The married partners will unite for two more upcoming films in their respective roles--”Kate and Leopold,” a romantic comedy, and “Cash,” a biopic about country singer Johnny Cash.

Konrad’s other upcoming projects include “The Garden,” about a college basketball scandal in the 1950s, and “Cherokee Rose,” an epic about the infamous Trail of Tears. Neither Mangold nor Konrad envisioned such a productive union when they first got together to make “Cop Land,” a dark-edged drama about a corrupt New Jersey town starring such A-list actors as Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone.

The Miramax film moved into production at a critical moment in both of their careers. Konrad had just finished the first “Scream” movie and had firmly established herself as a capable studio producer with the added knack for discovering and nurturing young talent. Mangold, meanwhile, had received favorable notice for his first feature, “Heavy,” a small film about an overweight cook who falls for a beautiful young girl.

Early in the shooting schedule, Mangold was puzzled by his own actions; Konrad’s birthday arrived and he realized he didn’t want to give her the traditional industry gift--goodies from Tiffany. “Finally, it got to this point where I pulled Cathy into my office and said, ‘Look, I’ve gotten this entire bag of things for you, but all of them are stupid and none of them adequately says how much I adore you,’ ” Mangold recalls. “That was a moment that made me stop and go, what is going on with myself? Also, in a really pathetic way, that was really romantic.”

Combining Romance and Movie Careers

A couple of weeks later, Mangold made a declaration of love. “I think I said, ‘I’m sweet on you,’ ” Mangold says, looking over at Konrad.

“Something like that,” she agrees.

Both say now that their romance was risky business, especially for Konrad, who was breaking the unwritten rule of getting involved with “talent.” Mangold was potentially jeopardizing his shot at his first big feature. But he says now that any concerns about his movie career took a back seat to his emotional well-being.

“The pressure I was feeling at the time was that I’d just met the most amazing woman in my life and I had to do something about it,” Mangold says. “Even with this wonderful movie going on and all these other wonderful things happening, if I didn’t have the courage to lay it all out on the table, then I was a loser.”

When he confesses this, Konrad flashes a smile of sheer delight and pounds the couch. “What made it so great was that we had this kind of bond that was very professional and, at the same time, it was the beginning of a relationship, so it was fabulous,” Konrad says. “And, as Jim always says, making movies is romantic.”

Now, of course, everything is out in the open. Their continued success as working partners, they agree, depends on being true to their professional roles even though they are married. When they discuss projects, they debate them as director and producer, and not as husband and wife, they say.

“I want the ability to throw a fit,” Mangold says. “And I like having a partner who can show me a different point of view, and not go ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ all the time.”

It helps too that they respect each other’s opinion. “I get so much from Jim’s point of view, his keen storyteller’s eye,” Konrad says. “Our singular professions complement each other. When we’re working together making a movie, it’s been great. A lot of fun.”

Young Talent, Mature Themes

Mangold and Konrad were drawn to “Girl, Interrupted” for different reasons. Konrad welcomed the opportunity to introduce a young audience to mature themes about life’s hardships and emotional challenges. Mangold saw an opportunity to make a unique film about mental illness.

“Almost all other psychoanalytical movies with a troubled protagonist end up with a healing through the confession of a dark memory,” he says. “What I thought was so contemporary and topical about what Susanna was putting forth in her book was, what if this cloud just lands on you? And what if it just goes away one day, and what if a lot of stuff just happens along the way and some of it plays a great role in making it go away?”

The pair traveled different paths to reach their shared destination. Mangold was signed to a writer-director deal at Disney at age 21 after making a hot short film while a student at California Institute of the Arts. His career quickly fizzled, however, and he ended up returning to graduate film school at Columbia University.

“There can be such a thing as being discovered too early,” he says of the experience. “When you’re so young, you get swept up and actually imagine that they invited you to make your dreams come true on the screen. But what they really wanted was for you to make their dreams come true.”

He climbed his way back with “Heavy” and then “Cop Land,” scripts he wrote based on characters and locations he remembers from growing up in the Hudson Valley area of New York. Konrad, meanwhile, climbed the production ladder out of college by first taking entry-level location jobs for such films as “Hamburger Hill” and “Suspect.” She then moved to Los Angeles.

“I came here with a head full of dreams and just no understanding of how to know anybody except to call the same people over and over again,” she says. “Which I did. And it got me a job.” Eventually, she earned enough production credits to land a position as an assistant to Kathleen Kennedy at Amblin Entertainment, and then as a producer for director Norman Jewison.

It was while working for Jewison that she discovered a pool of young talent, including directors such as Larry Clark (“Kids”) and Kevin Williamson (“Scream”). She worked with them to nurture their first projects to completion.

“I’ve never had an agenda,” she says. “I’ve always fallen in love with stories and writers and directors and ideas. I do things that sound fun to me. That’s how Jim picks things that inspire him. For me, it’s the same test.”