Back Stage West/Drama-Logue recently spoke with three seasoned industry professionals -- Allison Anders, Stacey Sher, and Paula Wagner -- about their respective experiences as talented women working in a predominantly male world. 

What we found is that while women have made professional strides on the executive level, they still aren't calling all the creative shots.

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"Pulp" Producer

As I scanned Stacey Sher's tastefully decorated

Jersey Films office, my attention was immediately

drawn to two posters hanging on the wall--Martin

Scorsese's boxing opus, Raging Bull, and Stanley

Kubrick's ultra-violent "A Clockwork Orange." These

cinematic greats are definitely not thought of as

"women's" films, but then again, Sher is no

ordinary woman.
 

As a producing partner along with actor Danny

DeVito and Michael Shamberg at Jersey Films, Sher

has built an impressive and eclectic body of

credits that includes "Pulp Fiction," "Reality

Bites," "Get Shorty," "Matilda," "Feeling

Minnesota," "Gattaca," "Out of Sight," the

currently released "Living Out Loud," and the

upcoming Andy Kaufman biopic "Man on the Moon,"

starring Jim Carrey and directed by Milos Forman.
 

When asked what these distinct films have in

common, Sher explained, "I'm drawn to the

exploration of the human condition and human

connection, whether it's in a science fiction genre

like "Gattaca," which asks, What is it that makes

us who we are?, or "Pulp Fiction," in which the

characters are so textured, or "Get Shorty," which

also examines a destiny of a character--[mobster]

Chili Palmer wanting a change in his life.

"There's nothing we wouldn't do, but you've got to

find a personal hook or something that's fresh.

We're not really interested in doing the ninth

version of something that's been done before. What

we try to do is find fresh voices and we've been

incredibly fortunate."
 

Perhaps the single most important ingredient in

Sher's success is her passion, not just for the

business but for the art of filmmaking. A

self-professed film lover, she is especially

fervent about cinema's history and expects the same

enthusiasm from the people she works with.
 

"You can't believe the number of people that I meet

to interview for jobs who don't know who Orson

Welles is, as frightening as that sounds," admitted

Sher. "If people want to choose this as their path,

they should know about the arts that they're

working in and know about the history of films and

have actually seen [works by] the great filmmakers.

How can you judge or have a point of view if you

haven't read about or seen stuff? So see

movies--old and new, but especially old."
 

Unlike many young adults who aspire to write or

direct, Sher's ambition early on was to become a

producer. Upon a recommendation from a college film

professor, she applied and was accepted to USC's

Peter Stark Graduate Program for aspiring

producers. After earning her M.F.A. at USC, she was

hired as a director of development at Hill/Obst

Productions in 1985 and was promoted to vp of

production two years later. After serving as

associate producer on "Heartbreak Hotel" and "The

Fisher King," Sher became senior vp at Lynda Obst

Productions in 1991.
 

The following year, she joined Jersey Films as

executive vice president and was promoted to

president in 1993. Two years ago, DeVito and

Shamberg made her a partner.

While Sher acknowledged that she got her start with

the boost of two women--Obst and Debra Hill--she

has found her male counterparts to be equally

supportive of her rise to power. Noted Sher, "I had

great female bosses, but I have two men as partners

who are as supportive and as fun to work with as

any woman I've ever worked with."
 

While Sher is clearly comfortable with her position

in this industry, she did mention that "there are

times when it's odd, because I'm the only woman in

the room, and in certain business situations I

become very conscious of that." However, with more

and more women rising through the industry ranks,

Sher is positive about the current climate for

women working in the biz.
 

"I think my generation of women is much more

encouraging of other women because we're not

frightened that there's a scarcity of jobs out

there for women," said the producer. "I think early

on, sadly, there was this idea that there was a

limited amount of jobs and I don't think that it

was as supportive as it is now."

While Sher admitted that her line of work has its

frustrations (take, for example, her disappointment

with the beautifully conceived Gattaca failing to

reach audiences widely), she loves what she does

for a living.
 

"There's something really exhilarating about being

able to identify talent, put it together, and help

something come to fruition--whether it's working on

a script with a writer, being there to help a

director achieve his vision, or making sure the

cast, music, or marketing is right."
 

Her favorite part of her job, she revealed, is

hanging around the set and watching her hard

work--10-14 hours a day, on average--pay off.

"We're making Man on the Moon right now and it's a

magical, Fellini-esque experience to be on that

film set every day. That makes any amount of

garbage that I have to deal with from a business

standpoint worthwhile, because I'm sitting here

having this great experience."

-----------------------

Cruising Into Producing
 

Like Sher, producer Paula Wagner has also witnessed

positive changes with respect to opportunities for

women in the entertainment industry.

"Over the years, I've really seen women's attitudes

about themselves improve," said Wagner, who with

actor Tom Cruise heads C/W Productions on the

Paramount Pictures lot. "If you look around, you

see how many women are working in very high-level

positions at studios, television networks, as

producers, and even in the difficult area of

directing. I think a lot of strides have been

made."
 

Regardless of the improvements in the way women

executives are perceived, Wagner said that she's

long maintained a healthy attitude about her

abilities to compete in the field. "I've always

been an individualist and felt that with the right

attitude, energy, focus, and perseverance, you can

transcend being a woman and just become a person

working alongside other people doing the best you

can do. I've always been about the work."
 

Wagner's career in entertainment began at

Carnegie-Mellon University, where she received her

B.F.A. Upon graduating, she relocated to New York,

acting on and Off-Broadway and in regional theatre,

including several Yale Repertory productions. She

also co-authored a New York stage production,

called Out of Our Father's House, which she also

performed in.

Her career took a surprising turn when her Los

Angeles-based agent, Susan Smith, recruited Wagner

to work in her agency.

Recalled Wagner, "I was out here [in L.A.] and

talked to my agent and I asked her, "What's out

here? What's going on?,' and Susan said, "You could

do regional theatre. You could do this. You could

do that. You could become an agent and work for me.

I happen to have an opening here!' It was the

strangest idea at the time. Being an agent was

probably the last thing I ever thought I'd do, but

I said I'd try it out for while and here I am. So

my agent turned me into an agent."

Wagner spent the next 15 years agenting, the last

12 of which were spent at Creative Artists Agency,

where she guided the careers of such clients as

Oliver Stone, Demi Moore, Val Kilmer, and her

future partner Tom Cruise, who eventually proposed

that they start their own production company.
 

Said Wagner of her decision to take the plunge into

producing, "Tom and I had similar kinds of goals

and thoughts about movies and we talked a lot about

our philosophies and about making movies. I loved

being an agent and I had wonderful clients, but I

thought it was time to take a leap and do something

where I was right in the thick of it, getting

involved with production and the casting process

and working with writers and directors."
 

Cruise/Wagner Productions was established in 1992.

Their first feature film under the C/W banner was

the box office hit "Mission: Impossible," followed

by the critically praised film Without Limits,

written and directed by another former Wagner

client, Robert Towne. The film, starring Donald

Sutherland, Billy Crudup, and Monica Potter, told

the story of Steve Prefontaine, the legendary

runner and Olympic athlete. Next on C/W's

production slate is a "Mission: Impossible" sequel

with John Woo attached to direct.

Not surprisingly, Wagner's background as a

performer and as a talent representative prepared

her well for her current profession.
 

"As an actress I really understood character,

script development, the actor's psyche, working

with directors--hands-on experience, if you will,"

she explained. "And then, as an agent, I was able

to observe how production worked, how producers

worked, studio systems, and financing. I got to

know all the talent and how to put things together."
 

While there are any number of definitions of a

"producer," depending on whom you talk to, Wagner

has a clear vision of her responsibilities in the

filmmaking process and described her job as "the

glue that holds everything together. The producer

is the conduit, or a buffer, between the financing

and the creative team. He or she has a fiscal

responsibility to the budget, to the schedule, and

to making an organized and efficient movie. And the

producer has a creative responsibility to making

the best possible movie and pulling all the

elements together and setting the stage so that

each creative entity--the director, the actors, the

production designers, etc.--can function at their

best and not be distracted by the myriad of details

during production."
 

Wagner said she particularly enjoys participating

in the casting process, especially when defying

stereotypes or pre-conceived notions of how a role

should be cast. Take, for example, the cast of

"Mission: Impossible," which featured an

international and racially diverse cast that

included Ving Rhames and Jean Reno as safe

crackers, and Vanessa Redgrave and Canadian actor

Henry Czerny as villainous operatives.

"It's really important to have an open mind," she

opined. "When you're casting a movie, it's not just

casting one role; it's balancing the film with the

presence of the actors. Sometimes it's casting

against type, which can be very exciting. Or

casting unexpectedly, where a role is written one

way, and you come up with a great idea and it's

cast another way. It's important to look into

someone and see what their range is or the

different layers of an actor."

----------------------------

Director at Heart

While women such as Sher and Wagner have made

impressive strides in the producing arena,

writer/director Allison Anders, whose films include

Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca, and Grace of My

Heart, would argue that most female directors have

had a far more difficult time flourishing in this

industry. In fact, Anders is downright angry about

the situation.
 

"It scared me the day I realized that I was part of

an elite few, worldwide--I could count them on my

fingers--and that I was part of that elite few who

was lucky enough to get to make more than one

movie," said Anders, who was once a single mom on

welfare before entering UCLA's graduate film

program. "African-American women? Latina women?

Asian-American women? Forget it. They do not make a

second film. It's almost like people go, "Oh, we

heard that voice already.'"
 

Indeed, Anders has been fortunate, but even she has

immense difficulty getting her unique voice heard.

She spent years unsuccessfully trying to find

financing for Paul Is Dead, a semi-autobiographical

look at mental illness and sexual abuse. While her

script Things Behind the Sun, an exploration of the

effects rape has on women and their male

perpetrators, was recently picked up by a film

company (Behavior), numerous companies turned down

Anders, saying the subject matter was too dark.

"I was attached to a number of things and I was

just waiting endlessly, and I was very despondent

about the way things were going," explained Anders.

"People are too happy to make a comedy about a

child molester [referring to Todd Solondz's

"Happiness"], but they will not make a serious film

about rape. Do I have resentments about that? You

better believe I do."
 

So what is a talented, passionate, opinionated

female filmmaker to do? Borrowing from two

over-used sayings, Just do it, and do it your way.

"I think that you have to make the second film the

way that you made the first one," advised Anders.

"You just got to go, "Well, fuck them,' instead of

getting suckered into their promises. Usually what

happens is that at the point you make a first film,

everyone's excited about you and you think that

it's going to last, but in fact they're excited

about you for a half a second, especially as a

woman. That's because some "boy wonder' comes along

who's a genius. They've never once called a woman

director a genius--not even Jane Campion."
 

As Anders sees it, the industry as a whole has

basically restricted female directors to working

within certain genres, and those women who do not

fit the mold often have a hard time.

"The only place for women directors in this system

is to not have personal vision; to do very

big-budget romantic comedies or broad comedies,"

said the filmmaker. "Even someone like Katherine

Bigelow (Strange Days) has a monstrously difficult

time making a film she wants to make because she's

a woman with a very big vision, and a very

expensive vision, usually."
 

Out of sheer frustration, Anders recently returned

to her early roots of low-budget guerilla

filmmaking, reuniting with Kurt Voss, with whom she

co-wrote and co-directed her first feature, Border

Radio (nominated for a Spirit Award for Best

Feature in 1989). The yet-to-be-titled feature is

currently in post-production and features a large

ensemble cast that includes Ally Sheedy, John Doe,

Rosanna Arquette, Lucinda Jenney, Larry Klein, and

Chris Mulkey.
 

Said Anders of how the untitled feature came about,

"Kurt and I were talking about Border Radio and we

were like, "Well, Christ. We just went and made a

movie. We didn't have any resources. We didn't have

any money. We didn't know anything, and we made a

film. So why can't we do it again? We have much

more resources now. Maybe we don't have any money,

but we have a lot of knowledge and we know how to

make things happen.'"
 
 

Anders' latest film with Voss was written in eight

days, financed in five days, and shot in three

weeks. Said Anders of the experience, "This is how

I want to make films."
 

While Anders sometimes wonders if her frustration

is worth the price of making films, she has come to

realize that, regardless of the roadblocks, she

must follow her heart.

Opined Anders, "It's just such an awful,

unfortunate thing that I love making movies so

much. It's kind of like my penchant for failed

romances [a trademark of all of her films'

heroines]. It's like, Why did I do this again?

Because it's miserable for me in some ways, but

this particular film that I just did has been

great, and I think I have a different attitude now.
 

"I think my expectations have changed dramatically

to the point where I've gotten to this very pure

place of knowing that this seems to be my calling.

Filmmakers just have to do it regardless of [the

obstacles]. Originally I had such an intense need

for approval, and I don't have that anymore. I'm

still stuck with me. Ultimately, it's me and

myself. I think that's what's changed."

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Back Stage West/Drama-Logue November 19, 1998

© 1998 Back Stage, Back Stage West, and BPI Communications Inc.

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