Earning the Right to Shout, ‘Action!’

Years ago, when film editor Robert Parrish wanted a tutorial in how to direct movies, he paid a visit to the legendary John Ford on the set of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Parrish found Ford looking through a hefty device called a finder, trying to decide where to set up the camera for his next shot. Ford eventually waved Parrish over. It was time for a lesson in the art of directorial command.

To hear Ford tell it, if 9:30 a.m. arrived and you hadn’t gotten your first shot of the day, the studio would send out a producer-spy to check up on things. “He won’t come right up to you and tell you to get off your [rear],” Ford explained. “He’ll slink up to you like a sidewinder and say, ‘How’s it going?’ As soon as the son of a [gun] speaks, and you’re sure he’s in the right spot, you swing the finder around hard, like this.”

Without hesitation, the director swiveled and cracked Parrish on the noggin with the finder. Blood flowed, but Ford offered no apology. “After you’ve been at it a few years,” he said without looking up, “you’ll discover that your aim will improve and you can knock off two or three producers a week with your eyes closed.”

Many things about Hollywood have changed since Ford’s heyday, but this much remains the same: First-time directors are still learning lessons you can’t pick up in film school. Just ask John Lee Hancock, who made his directorial debut over the weekend with “The Rookie,” a Disney film that stars Dennis Quaid as a Texas high school baseball coach who gets a second chance at living out his dream of making it to the major leagues. The film has won a raft of critical plaudits for its lyricism and quiet authenticity, and it took in $16 million at the box office.

As the screenwriter of two films directed by Clint Eastwood, “A Perfect World” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” Hancock got to study at the feet of an old master too. A man of few words, Eastwood didn’t offer Hancock any long-winded lectures about filmmaking.

“With Clint, you learn by watching,” says Hancock, a native Texan-turned-Angeleno who still drives a 1995 Ford pickup truck. “John Cusack [who co-starred in “Good and Evil”] calls him the Zen Daddy. He has this great calming influence on everybody, because he knows what he wants. I sometimes wondered to myself why he would shoot something one way and not another, but then you’d see the shot in dailies and you’d go, ‘Oh, I get it.’”

Everybody, it seems, dreams of being a Hollywood director these days. And the fantasy cuts both ways--studio executives are on the prowl for the next Steven Soderbergh or Paul Thomas Anderson. “There’s no greater bond than being the first person to believe in someone,” says Disney production chief Nina Jacobson, who helped Hancock get his directing job. “It’s a relationship you hope will last over an entire career.”

A lucky few phenoms make an instant impact. Actor Todd Field’s first directing effort, “In the Bedroom,” earned a best picture Oscar nomination this year. Music video director McG made a splashy debut in 2000 with “Charlie’s Angels,” as did British theater director Stephen Daldry, who earned raves for his first film, “Billy Elliot.” British theater director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty” [1999]) and video director Spike Jonze (“Being John Malkovich” [1999]) landed best director nominations for their rookie efforts, with Mendes winning the Oscar.

Studios are tantalized for other reasons: First-timers work cheap, can be put under “option” contracts for a second or third film and are full of youthful energy. “They have a hunger that can make up for a lack of experience,” says DreamWorks production chief Michael De Luca, who discovered such directors as Brett Ratner and the Hughes brothers. “With established directors, you’re always having to tell them why they should do the movie. With first-timers, they’re usually saying, ‘I’ll die if you don’t let me direct the movie.’”

Of course, just as many rookies crash ‘n’ burn as go on to stardom. The whole appeal of “Project Greenlight” was watching first-time director Pete Jones being fed to the sharks. Tony Kaye was a hot commercial director when De Luca hired him to make “American History X.” But Kaye ended up in a messy brawl with New Line Cinema and disowned the movie after the studio allowed actor Edward Norton to reedit the picture. Hollywood loves hiring flashy commercial directors, but they are as likely to fail as a writer or actor making the transition to directing features. Good movies rely on more than just striking images. They require a director with storytelling skill, rapport with actors and the ability to establish a consistent tone.

“In videos, you get accustomed to focusing all on style,” says Peter Care, a respected video and commercial director whose debut film, “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys,” is due out in June. “But doing a movie, it’s more about how do I get the feeling and emotion right?”

Coping with intense pressure is another challenge. Hancock tried to relax by organizing lunchtime baseball games on the set. Care began meditating and chanting before going to work. Actor Billy Morrissette, who made his debut this year directing “Scotland PA.,” a comic version of “Macbeth” set in a 1970s burger joint, found himself lying down on the set’s restaurant counter between takes, trying to collect himself.

“I felt like George W. Bush on his first day on the new job, with everyone staring at me, saying, ‘What’s next, sir?’” he recalls. “I was sweaty, I didn’t sleep, my stomach was in knots. I even said, ‘Action!’ at the wrong time. It took about a week before I was breathing normally.”

Hancock says his adjustment wasn’t quite so difficult, but at 45, he’s had nearly 20 years of experience, having worked as a production assistant, a script reader, TV producer and actor--he once did a Kirin beer commercial with the unlikely duo of Gene Hackman and Shannon Tweed. Hancock says his stint as a producer of two short-lived CBS dramas, “L.A. Doctors” and “Falcone,” proved invaluable. “As a producer, I was in the editing room, trying to fix any problems we had, so I really noticed who’d come in with a well-conceived battle plan and avoided painting themselves in a corner.”

“L.A Doctors” star Ken Olin, a veteran director himself, offered especially useful advice. When writers create a scene, Olin told Hancock, they often have a key image that resonates in their mind. “You need to find that same image as a director, and even if you can’t explain to everybody why you need it, make sure you get it on film, because that’s the image that will always be in the final cut of the movie.”

In “The Rookie,” when Quaid begins his comeback attempt, we see him on the mound, pitching to a catcher crouched behind home plate. “I put the camera way back behind first base, so the pitcher’s on one side and the catcher’s on the other, with this big puffy Texas sky behind them,” Hancock recalls. “That was my key image. When I auditioned for the job, I told the Disney executives I wanted ‘The Rookie’ to look like a baseball movie shot by John Ford. It wasn’t just a pretty shot. It was emblematic of this little man in a great big world.”

Before filming began, Hancock screened Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show” so all of the non-Texans on his crew could see what Texas really looked like.

“It’s the first film I saw being made, and it’s so great that I wanted people to at least know that I was setting my sights high.”

Hancock wasn’t nervous about pitching himself to Disney because the film’s producer, Mark Johnson, who’d worked with Hancock on many previous projects, had told him the studio wanted a more experienced director. “So I felt free to speak my mind,” Hancock says. Driving home from his meeting, he was surprised to get a call from Johnson, who told him, “I hope you’re serious about directing because you just got the job.” Hancock was elated.

Then he remembered that he’d been so overwhelmed by the frantic pace of events that he’d neglected to tell his wife, Holly, who’d just given birth to twins, about the audition. “When I got home, I said kind of sheepishly, ‘I think I’m directing a movie.’ And my wife said, ‘Really? How did that happen?’”

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“The Big Picture” runs each Tuesday in Daily Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes .com.