After directing acclaimed series like CRIME STORY and L.A. LAW, Mimi Leder got her first two Emmy nominations for directing CHINA BEACH, which she also produced. It was her work as an "action director" on E.R. that caused Steven Spielberg to choose her for DreamWorks' first feature, THE PEACEMAKER.

As director of DEEP IMPACT, she is again making an action film in many respects, but she feels it is an "epic drama" in terms of looking at how people react to potential cataclysmic destruction. And there is enough reality to the film's story of asteroid collisions with Earth that the Air Force and JPL have a venture called NEAT -- Near Earth Asteroid Tracking. The head of the project, astronomer Eleanor Helin has been quoted that only about five percent of the estimated asteroid population has been found, leaving a sizable potential threat.

Leder says one of the things she's noticed about directing this film is figuring out "what these different characters would do if the world was going to end, and how they would face disaster, rather than thinking about what I would actually do. That's the great thing about being a director -- you get to be all these other people emotionally." The screenplay, she notes, was developed by several people: "Bruce Joel Rubin wrote a couple of drafts, and Michael Tolkin wrote a couple, and I worked with them to develop the characters further."

She admits that creating the kind of intimacy and complexity of characters she likes to do, while still within basically an action genre, is "what I like to do, it's what I'm interested in. I'm interested in the human element. If the world is going to end, what would you do? If the tidal wave is coming, where do you run? Do you face it, or do you run? Can you beat this force of nature? Hopefully it's not something we'll have to face."

Comparing the demands of a feature with those of episodic television, Leder says one thing she misses is "the shorter schedule. My next film will be smaller than this sort of epic. I really enjoy working on feature films very much, but the trick is that I've been trying to tell intimate stories in large canvases. In television, I've been telling intimate stories for years. And I would do both. If there's a good script, I'll do television again. Absolutely."

The story of DEEP IMPACT fascinated Leder, she says, "By the fact that it could happen. And, if it did happen, how people would react, how the world would react to it. Would people panic? What sort of inner strength would it summon up in each individual? Would you say something to loved one you'd never said; would you renew your vows; would you kill yourself? What would you do? And those emotions are very interesting."

She agrees many of those kinds of questions were part of her earlier projects like CHINA BEACH, and says part of what made directing this project appealing to her was "the enormous challenge to explore what a comet looks like, and how visually you make it look not like a potato coming at the Earth. And what it would be like to land on a comet. There were a lot of challenges to the movie production-wise, in every direction. How do you create a tidal wave, and how do you integrate it with the people? But the real challenge was how do you keep the emotion, whatever it is? How do you keep the emotion high and strong for the audience? That was my challenge in this big palette I had."

Another part of the challenge was actors responding to tidal waves and other events that were created through ILM effects, as Leder notes: "I was shooting people reacting to something they couldn't see. I hadn't worked with this level of effects before. In PEACEMAKER I had blue screen, and a nuclear explosion, and some effects that supported the movie that you didn't even see, but in this movie there's a whole world of visual effects. I have a spaceship, and astronauts that go up to save the world, and what's outside the spaceship. It was really fascinating. I learned a bundle."

Part of the film, Leder explains, is "astronauts floating on a tug, carrying nuclear weapons above a comet set that Les Dilley, our production designer, built. He's just great; a genius. And what can I say? Hanging actors on wires and floating them, working in very low gravity, trying to create an atmosphere we'd never seen before -- was extremely challenging. And trying to keep the emotion of the scene right up there with the way it looked."

Asked about whether being a woman helps maintain emotional intensity in filming, Leder responds "I could say 'Of course it does, and I'm a very emotional person' -- but then I can't say I'm more emotional than another director, a male director, who brings out emotion. I can't say mine is more emotional than Ang Lee, or Steven Spielberg. I can't say that because I'm female I have stronger emotions. There are a lot of male directors out there who have very strong emotions. You can say 'Mimi Leder directs very emotionally' but not that it's more or less."

Leder found the process of directing DEEP IMPACT helpful in her further growth as a director, and says "I learned a lot. Working with a large ensemble cast, working with visual effects in ways I'd never done before, a whole world was opened to me. And seeing what is possible and what is not; what looks good in terms of conventional effects. And I was challenged to not make the visual effects overcome the emotion of the movie, but still make it look real. And, I must add, it's very tedious working with visual effects. I think my next movie won't have any. I need to take a break from it. But you're going to see things in this movie you've never seen before. And I'm very pleased about that."

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