DOWNSIZING

Sam Mendes compares the experience of making a small film to that of driving a small car. “It’s more maneuverable and more fun. It may not take you as far, but you’ll certainly enjoy the ride,” said the director, who’s opted this season to break away from his regular film diet of movie-star-heavy melodramas (“Revolutionary Road,” “Road to Perdition”) for his new, quirky road movie “Away We Go,” a picaresque comedy about a young couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) traveling around the United States, searching for the perfect home to raise their impending baby. “I loved it. I loved having to work fast again,” he said.

Mendes isn’t the only director who has opted to renew creatively by going small. While this summer boasts a raft of de rigueur studio blockbusters, the “Angels & Demonses” and “Star Treks” of the world, it also features a crew of A-list directors pointedly departing from the kinds of films that made their reputations, often chucking the trappings of big-budget filmmaking in search of the high of flying by the seats of their pants. For some, the films serve as bids for the creative freedom that comes with smaller scales and lowered expectations, almost a self-prescribed tonic for the bloat and stress of industrial-sized, high-stakes studio filmmaking. Others simply crave a change of pace.

There are historical precedents, of course; Francis Coppola, for example, delving into “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish” after the tsoris of “One From the Heart” and “Apocalypse Now.” (He’s also painted on a smaller canvas for his 32nd film, “Tetro,” due in theaters June 11.) Or Steven Soderbergh’s micro-budget experiments with non-actors like “Bubble” and the recently released “The Girlfriend Experience,” which stars porn star Sasha Grey and feels like an ironic, cool chaser after the two-part, 268-minute megalith of “Che” or his trio of glitzy “Ocean” capers with a laundry list of marquee talent.

After a trifecta of “Spider-Man” movies and with a fourth on the horizon, Sam Raimi recently returned to his horror roots with the modestly budgeted “Drag Me to Hell,” about a young loan officer cursed by a vengeful gypsy. And Ang Lee is forgoing heavy drama for the first time in over a decade, making the comedic and intimate “Taking Woodstock,” which opens in August.

According to Mendes, Soderbergh calls these cinematic excursions “purification films.” “It’s like detoxing. You can get into the habits when making bigger films where you sort of expect everything to be there for you. You don’t have to work for it. You can get into a rhythm that sometimes you need to break,” said Mendes, who also worked with an entirely new crew, editor, cinematographer and production designer to make the $17-million film (only $2 million more than his budget for “American Beauty” 10 years ago).

The production also made a concerted effort to be environmentally conscious, with smaller trailers, and Priuses to ferry people about. “As a consequence there was even less conspicuous consumption,” Mendes said, and less of a feeling of running a small empire. “There aren’t as many people, and you feel less guilty because you’re not spending as much money.”

For Mendes, “Away We Go,” which opened Friday, meant a welcome plunge into romance after years of dwelling on the marital despair of “Revolutionary Road.” “I love that it was written by a couple [married novelists Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida] who love each other, about a couple who love each other.” Like the characters in “Revolutionary Road,” this couple “wanted to escape, but this time they could. It mirrors my own philosophy much more closely. I’m not Yatesian,” he said, referring to the bleak worldview sometimes taken by “Revolutionary Road” author Richard Yates. “I don’t believe we’re all doomed.”

Lee said that “Taking Woodstock” is his response to doing “six tragedies in a row for 13 years.” His most recent film, 2007’s “Lust, Caution,” dealt with a Chinese resistance fighter sent to seduce the head of the secret police during the Japanese occupation. “That was the last straw,” says the Taiwanese-born director. “That was like hell for me, not only the sex part but the intensity of the drama, all the killings. It challenged Chinese patriarchal society with female sexuality. It was nerve-racking for me. I faced a lot of pressure. . . . It gets to be too much.”

Because of censorship demands from the government, seven minutes of “Lust, Caution” were edited out of the version shown in mainland China, and star Tang Wei was banned from appearing in the Chinese media. All of the controversy weighed heavily on Lee. Afterward, “I really tried to get healthier. . . . Spiritually and philosophically I was yearning to do something warm,” Lee said.

In “Taking Woodstock,” the spirit of late ‘60s rebellion uplifts and frees audiences. It is not a concert film and features no footage of the celebrated music extravaganza but instead tells the true story of a dutiful, closeted gay son, Elliot Tiber, who attempts to rescue his parents’ crumbling Catskills resort by enticing the promoters of Woodstock to set up their three-day peace-love-and-understanding rock festival next door.

At a budget close to $30 million, “Taking Woodstock” remains modest by studio standards but still cost twice the price of “Brokeback Mountain,” mostly due to the 400 to 500 extras outfitted in full hippie regalia. Yet the structure of the lighter fare -- by his usual collaborator, Focus Features Chairman James Schamus -- was completely different from Lee’s serious dramas, which were crafted with Swiss-watch meticulousness.

“Usually in dramas, you have your way to set up the character and conflict, and people fight their way out,” Lee said. “Here you don’t have that benefit.” The Woodstock festival passed through this small hamlet, and a community of people “managed to survive this. It’s like magic. It’s chance. It’s harder for a filmmaker to have a grasp on because it’s not specific. It’s abstract. That presented a challenge, which I welcomed.”

“Away We Go,” “Taking Woodstock,” “The Girlfriend Experience” and “Drag Me to Hell” don’t feature established movie stars, the kind who invariably end up on the studios’ very short wish lists.

For “Taking Woodstock,” Lee cast stand-up comedian Demetri Martin as the lead and wound up calibrating all the other actors’ performances off Martin’s naturalistic acting style. After making three super-sized, effects-studded films, Raimi went simple with “Drag Me to Hell,” which was made for around $30 million and features Alison Lohman (“Matchstick Men”), who is hardly a household name. “I realized all these toys I’m used to are wonderful but not always necessary,” Raimi told The Times. “All I really need is the actress.”

In “The Girlfriend Experience,” which details the day-to-day life of a high-end escort, Soderbergh actually created the film around Grey. “Employing non-actors, by design you are building the piece around them and what they bring of themselves,” the director recently told The Times. “What’s fun about it is that you’re never sure what you’re going to get. You have to let it go where it’s going to go and not force it. It’s a good way to work, you’re constantly adapting to what’s in front of you.”

“I use different actors for different stories. John and Maya needed confidence” from their director, Mendes said, but so did Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Revolutionary Road.”

“[‘Away We Go’] is looser and needs freedom and improvisation,” Mendes explained. “It needs loose naturalism. If you work with a microscope on anything, you can lose your peripheral vision. You don’t stand back and look at the world around the character. This movie is all about the peripheral vision and lets people exist in the landscape.”

Reviews and reactions for these more contained projects have been mixed. “Drag Me to Hell” pleased the critics but didn’t draw audiences. “Taking Woodstock” seemed to irritate the taste-mavens at the Cannes Film Festival for not actually being a concert film. It’s certainly possible these smaller films would get different receptions were they to bear the imprimatur of unknown indie directors rather than Hollywood heavyweights. Or maybe not.

“Away We Go” has already received one glowing review -- from Mendes. “I love watching the film,” said Mendes. “I loved working with Dave Eggers and Vendela and John and Maya. It was all delightful. I wasn’t pushing them into places of intense emotional discomfort which I’ve been doing [to the actors] in my last three movies. I wasn’t saying, ‘This has to cost you something.’ I felt uplifted by it, definitely.”

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rachel.abramowitz@latimes.com