As she negotiates the way from her trailer to the set of the sci-fi thriller, “Deep Impact,” director Mimi Leder is besieged with questions and requests for her time.
“Everybody wants a piece of you,” she says, passing quickly by the space shuttle that will carry a crew of Hollywood astronauts to the comet on a collision course with Earth. “They don’t teach all this at film school . . . all the compromises you have to make, all the questions you’re going to have to answer.”
For Leder, known for her distinctive work on such hit TV series as “ER” and “China Beach,” the release of “The Peacemaker” marks her debut as a director of feature films. But it’s also the first film for DreamWorks SKG.
The corporate monogram–SKG–represents the triumverate of Messrs Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen. Because of their remarkable track records these men are as close to royalty as one comes in this town.
Their $2.7-billion merger was announced to loud fanfare in 1994. But, since then, aside from one hit TV series (“Spin City”) and two highly visible flops (“Ink” and “Arsenio”), some well-received interactive products (its “The Lost World” games) and a relatively low-profile record label (George Michael, the Eels, the soundtrack to “Rent”), DreamWorks seems to have been playing a waiting game.
One of the things the fledgling studio desperately has been waiting for is government approval to build it physical plant in the marshlands of Playa Vista. The other involves finally getting some product into the nation’s megaplexes, almost a year later than predicted.
So, while Leder is trying to save humanity from a fast-moving chunk of intergalactic debris in “Deep Impact” (scheduled for release in 1998) she also has been called upon to promote the eagerly awaited “The Peacemaker.”
If Leder is feeling the pressure, it doesn’t show.
While it may seem unusual that DreamWorks would entrust such an important project to a first-time filmmaker, it should be noted that Spielberg and Leder worked together on “ER.” Nor is she a stranger to the ways of Hollywood, thanks to the teachings of her late father, independent filmmaker Paul Leder.
Still, directing a $50-million action-adventure probably wasn’t what she had in mind for her debut.
“It was really exciting to learn some of the things I didn’t know,” she said, relaxing in her trailer between takes. ” `Peacemaker’ really wasn’t a special-effects movie, although some are used. It’s a smart thriller.”
Because of star George Clooney’s busy schedule, Leder literally had to shoot her movie backward. The climactic scenes around the United Nations in New York were shot first, followed by those in Europe.
To save money and add an air of Old World realism, the company set up shop in the Slovak Republic and Macedonia and it employed many local actors.
“We couldn’t have found the things here that we found there,” she explained. “It was very freeing for me, coming from working in a small box (TV) and going to these locations and being able to shoot big, wide shots and really explore landscapes.”
“Deep Impact,” a co-production of DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures, is being made in the more traditional start-to-finish format.
“I thought filming `Peacemaker’ was tough, but this has been a nightmare,” she admits. “I like to see an actor face to face when I’m directing him. But, because we’re in this spaceship and there’s no room, I’m directing over a microphone and climbing up and down a ladder all day.”
Leder says “Deep Impact”–which stars Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni and Morgan Freeman–is actually three “what-if” stories in one. The first involves the astronauts’ battle to alter the comet’s course, the second describes how adults might react to impending doom, while the third finds two teenagers in a Romeo and Juliet dilemma.
After attending Los Angeles City College, Leder became the first female cinematographer accepted to the American Film Institute. She began her directing career on “L.A. Law,” and made several made-for-TV movies.
It was Leder who helped shape “ER” into the fast-paced drama that it has become.
“I didn’t direct the pilot of `ER,’ I started with the first episode,” she said. “What I did when I came onto `ER’ was use the Steadicam perhaps 75 percent of the time. My thumbprint was to keep the camera moving at a breakneck base and take no prisoners.”
Leder received two Emmys for her work on the medical drama, including one for directing the “Love’s Labor Lost” episode.
But TV is one thing. Making feature films is another. For Leder, it helped that Spielberg’s Amblin production company is responsible for “ER” and she had worked with Clooney on the series (“We have a great shorthand,” she said).
“I’ve wanted to make feature films for a long time, but it’s been very difficult to find anybody to hire me, even though I’m very good at my craft,” she says, mentioning that Spielberg himself started on the small screen. “It’s hard for film producers to make that commitment. But it’s also very hard for television actors to cross over and make that transition.”
She thinks that television can be a harder medium to produce than features, because you’re working on tighter schedules and smaller budgets.
“Once you’ve established the characters and your show, the tough part is getting it on every week, making it consistent, new and fresh,” she suggests. “In features, you have all new characters to create. They’re both hard for different reasons, but I think the lines are blurring.”
Just as in “ER,” where Clooney might work feverishly to keep a patient’s heart beating, “The Peacemaker” forces viewers to be constantly aware of the deadline imposed on him by the terrorist.
“There is a ticking bomb, so, I said to myself, I’m not going to have this camera stop moving,” she stresses. “Because, once we stop, it’s going to go off.”
As for DreamWorks’ strategy, “The Peacemaker” is being presented as merely the first in a long slate of pictures to be offered under its boy-fishing-on-a-moon banner. Soon to follow are Spielberg’s period drama, “Amistad,” and the Nathan Lane comedy, “Mouse Hunt.”
Other production deals have been set with such directors as Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”), Scott Hicks (“Shine”) and Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire”). The first feature from Katzenberg’s animation team, “Prince of Egypt,” is expected in November 1998.
“We haven’t had a lot of time to be nervous,” said Walter Parkes, who heads the DreamWorks Pictures division. “We’re proud of our first movie, but this isn’t just about our first movie. It’s about a continuation of a tradition of filmmaking.”
Looking ahead, Leder knows that she’ll be directing at least one of her next two pictures for DreamWorks. That movie could be “Sentimental Journey,” a romance dedicated to her parents.
It’s become a family affair in that her brother is reworking the script originally penned by her father, who died last year. Her sister will cast the picture.
“It’s not going to look like anything I’ve done before,” she allows, refusing to give too much of the story away. “My father was a soldier in Patton’s army, which liberated Buchenwald, and my mother was a survivor of Auschwitz. It’s about how these two people fell in love amidst the most horrible tragedy of the century.”
Even though her first two features will be filled with bang-bang action and special effects, Leder insists they will share at least one quality with the deeply personal “Sentimental Journey.”
“It will be a highly emotional film, which I think both `The Peacemaker’ and `Deep Impact’ are,” she says. “Anything I do is going to have a human element attached to it.”
