HBO Emerges as a Mecca for Maverick Filmmakers

Independent filmmakers have complained for years that Hollywood’s specialized film companies have grown from artistic gamblers into cautious corporations, as former art-house heroes like Miramax Films turn to $100-million epics and splashy star vehicles.

But there’s new hope for maverick movies, and, in an odd twist, it’s coming not from some new studio or well-heeled cineaste but from TV. Or, in the parlance of its marketing slogan, it’s not TV, it’s HBO.

Much of HBO’s reach into moviemaking will be on display tonight at the 56th annual Emmy Awards, at which the cable television network is nominated for a record 124 awards.

Although HBO has been the dominant player at the Emmys for several years (it won a leading 18 awards at the 2003 ceremony), the influence of its tiny HBO Films unit has been largely invisible outside the entertainment industry. Yet HBO Films, thanks largely to its adaptation of “Angels in America,” is responsible for no fewer than 44 of HBO’s total Emmy nominations, more than ABC and as many as CBS.

“HBO Films has been the best thing that’s happened to independent film in the last 10 years,” said longtime independent film producer Ted Hope, who made “American Splendor” for HBO Films.

The HBO Films path isn’t perfect. It makes only a handful of movies a year, and even though HBO spent more than $60 million making “Angels in America,” production budgets on other works can be austere.

Agents complain that there is no clear HBO Films storytelling viewpoint and that for every hiring of a daring filmmaker such as Mary Harron (“American Psycho”) or Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding”), HBO brings on an equal number of judicious veterans such as Fred Schepisi (“Mr. Baseball”) and Joseph Sargent (“Jaws: The Revenge”).

But just as HBO lured top writers and directors into its television series fold (“Six Feet Under,” for example, was created by Oscar-winning “American Beauty” screenwriter Alan Ball), HBO Films is attracting another wave of filmmaking talent that a few years ago wouldn’t contemplate working for a cable TV channel.

As soon as actor-producer Paul Newman purchased movie rights to Richard Russo’s novel “Empire Falls,” he took the project not to Universal, Disney or Paramount, but to HBO Films.

Independent producer Christine Vachon similarly bypassed her usual stamping grounds of Miramax, Fox Searchlight and Lions Gate and is making “The Ballad of Bettie Page” for the cable network. “Good Will Hunting” director Gus Van Sant has made his last two movies with HBO Films.

Although many HBO Films productions debut on television and never reach movie theaters, an increasing number now premiere at the multiplex. In the last two years, HBO Films’ “Real Women Have Curves,” “American Splendor” and “Maria Full of Grace” emerged as popular art-house releases, each grossing more than $5 million, a good return on modestly budgeted productions.

Movies made by HBO Films are not guaranteed theatrical releases. Those films that do make it into theaters can take ages to reach the 27.5 million TV subscribers who underwrite their costs while they suffer through endless reruns of Steven Seagal movies. Filmed in 2002, “American Splendor” debuted on HBO only this weekend, and the network has yet to schedule its own debut of “Elephant,” which began showing at film festivals more than a year ago and is already available on DVD.

The occasional HBO Films production -- Billy Crystal’s “61*” or “Gia,” with Angelina Jolie -- might not be reviewed much better than network movies of the week.

All the same, creative talent no longer views making movies for a cable channel as slumming, especially considering that the network’s reach and DVDs can potentially deliver a larger audience than a limited theatrical release.

“For filmmakers, HBO is no longer a compromise but an attractive, sexy place to go with your script,” said Joshua Marston, who wrote and directed “Maria Full of Grace.”

HBO Films’ ascent comes just as some established benefactors of quality films are retrenching or changing their programming philosophies.

Long the standard-bearer for risky cinema, Miramax is laying off scores of employees, recently was barred by parent Walt Disney Co. from releasing Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and may soon lose its co-founder, Harvey Weinstein. Fine Line Features, which distributed the Oscar-winning “Shine,” has been folded into parent New Line Cinema.

Although top specialized studios such as Fox Searchlight (“28 Days Later”) and Focus Features (“Far From Heaven”) continue to finance distinguished titles, the trend at other companies is to concentrate on genre subjects, such as “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” (Screen Gems), or pricier, star-laden dramas, such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The Aviator” (Miramax).

Rival TV networks complain that HBO enjoys an unfair advantage in series programming because it doesn’t have to worry about language, sexuality, advertisers and every single Nielsen rating. Movie studios could voice similar protests about the benefits of HBO Films: It doesn’t have to lose sleep over opening weekend ticket sales, and it is not shackled by two-hour running times.

Almost all film companies live or die by box-office returns, and to ensure maximum ticket sales, they shy away from stories and actors they fear might be “uncommercial.”

Constantly fretting over opening weekend grosses, said “Angels in America” director Mike Nichols, “is one of those things you carry around with you, like being overweight. It’s always there. It makes everything different [when you don’t have to worry about them]. It gives you freedom.”

That includes the freedom to address topics that would make other executives break out in hives.

Director Van Sant leans toward nonconformist subject matter, prefers improvisation over finished screenplays and likes casting mostly unheralded performers. His HBO Films movie “Elephant” was inspired by the Columbine High School shootings, and his next HBO Films movie, “Last Days,” follows the final hours of a suicidal rock star patterned on Kurt Cobain.

When producer Cary Brokaw first tried to make “Angels in America” into a movie a decade ago, he was told Tony Kushner’s celebrated two-part play about AIDS, Roy Cohn, Mormons and Ethel Rosenberg was long and perilous.

“People felt the subject matter was too bold and overt in its expression,” Brokaw said. “We shopped it everywhere and there were no takers. Harvey [Weinstein] was frightened of it.” (Miramax notes that it is distributing the six-hour Italian movie “Best of Youth” and remains committed to producing daring works such as “City of God” and “Dirty Pretty Things.”)

HBO Films head Colin Callender had no reservations about “Angels in America’s” themes, and he also was free to make the movie a bit longer than six hours, a running time unthinkable to almost every movie studio. (HBO has shown “Angels in America” in six one-hour segments, in two three-hour chapters and as a six-hour marathon.)

“Empire Falls” landed at HBO for similar reasons. Novelist Russo’s sprawling and talky narrative didn’t need to be pruned into the tidy studio shorthand that inevitably would cost it the textures that distinguish the novel.

“Paul [Newman] really wanted to do a version of the book that was not reductive,” said “Empire Falls” producer Marc Platt. “The book is very character-driven. It’s not some great big action fantasy. What’s attractive about Colin and his colleagues, especially [HBO Films Senior Vice President] Keri Putnam, is that they are very supportive of the original intention of the piece.”

Although “Angels in America” features several superstars, such as Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, a number of HBO Films productions are notable for how few recognizable A-list actors populate their casts, which runs contrary to the craze favored by many executives to pack big-name stars into small movies.

“Maria Full of Grace” writer-director Marston said that in addition to being told not to make his Latin American drama in Spanish, some of the several dozen film companies that rejected his movie also made preposterous casting suggestions. For the title role of a teenage Colombian drug mule, at least one producer wanted Marston to cast 30-year-old Spanish actress Penelope Cruz.

Although HBO Films was criticized for casting Spanish star Antonio Banderas as the titular Mexican revolutionary in “And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself,” it allowed the novice Marston to cast newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno, and it didn’t make her and her co-stars speak English.

“When Josh came in and said he wanted to shoot the movie in Spanish, that was a great plus for us,” Callender said. “That was what creatively made the movie work.” In addition to winning the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, “Maria Full of Grace” took three top prizes last week at the Deauville Film Festival.

Another recent HBO Films alumnus, writer-director Jim McKay, said HBO paid for a monthlong workshop for McKay and 55 actors to refine the script for “Everyday People,” a movie about the tensions sparked by a neighborhood restaurant’s closing.

“It was a very roundabout way of working, but they were supportive,” said McKay, who is finishing his next movie, about a young person kicked out of his home, for HBO Films. McKay is convinced that more people saw “Everyday People” on HBO than would ever have seen the film in theaters.

HBO’s recent success with series programming is partly responsible for its surge in filmmaking.

“Five years ago, there’s no way Al Pacino and Meryl Streep would have considered doing a movie there,” said “Angels in America” producer Brokaw. “But their consistently good shows, like ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Six Feet Under,’ as well as their consistently good movies, made it possible.”

Similarly, filmmakers who have good creative experiences at HBO Films return to work there and encourage friends to do so. Nichols decided to make “Angels in America” for HBO Films while he was adapting the play “Wit” for the cable network. (All the same, Nichols said he will make his next movie, an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel “Skinny Dip,” for a studio, because “I don’t think it’s an HBO movie at all.”)

The countless filmmakers who can’t imagine their work not showing in theaters might continue to steer clear of HBO, as several of its Emmy-nominated movies (“Iron Jawed Angels” and “Something the Lord Made”) never made it to the silver screen. And the money that HBO Films disburses to its filmmakers is never going to set any compensation records.

“The only reason I would go outside of HBO is to get a bigger paycheck for myself,” said “Good Will Hunting” director Van Sant. “But usually with the money comes the sacrifice of what you wanted to do.”

Says Chris Albrecht, HBO’s chairman and chief executive: “We didn’t set out to fill a void, but we do seem to be drawing talent. We’re starting to offer an alternative.”