“Movies are Like Babies”
By David McClintick Walking my dog on West End Avenue a few months ago, I encountered the Hollywood producer Lynda Obst in a thicket of lights and cameras. She was on location with her new movie, ''One Fine Day,'' starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney. I hardly know Ms. Obst. We once had a frank exchange about something I had written that had irritated her. This time we said a cordial hello. She looked exhausted, and now I know why. She had been living through the true stories she tells in her smart, amusing new memoir, ''Hello, He Lied.''
Ms. Obst has learned from her mistakes en route to a rewarding career as a producer, executive producer or associate producer of films like ''Flashdance,'' ''The Fisher King'' and ''Sleepless in Seattle.'' ''Hello, He Lied,'' an episodic account of her experiences, is a post-feminist, post-P.C. survival guide for women in Hollywood, a book that confronts and then breaks through female and male stereotypes into a knowing report on how real people work together in the hurly-burly world of movie making. Many of her lessons also apply to more sedate forms of business. ''I was sitting in a production meeting recently,'' Ms. Obst writes, ''intently trying to find potential budget cuts to present to the director of 'One Fine Day,' when I was struck fresh by a scene that had become commonplace: every person in the room was a woman. . . . I froze the frame in my mind for a moment and beheld what I can only describe as a classic we've-come-a-long-way-baby moment, realizing how impossible this sight would have been 15 years ago, when I first arrived in Hollywood. . . . There seems to be no real glass ceiling anymore, except at the highest regions of corporate ownership.'' That's a big exception, which Ms. Obst acknowledges. The corporate owners are virtually all white males. Ms. Obst calls them the ''power firmament'' or ''dominance hierarchy,'' and they impede women's advancement to the highest level. And even when women do rise to lofty Hollywood posts, Ms. Obst reports, what she calls ''the Boys' Club'' is ''intractable,'' ''impenetrable,'' ''a bunch of privileged veterans tenaciously holding on to the last bastion of their exclusive power.'' However, she adds, the club ''is quite liberal in its internal politics. . . . Gay men are welcome, and felons.'' Ms. Obst, however, doesn't seem to aspire to that level of power and for now appears content to flourish amid the rising number of opportunities open to women of her considerable talents. She is most interesting when she tells of being thrust into traditionally male roles in historically man-heavy Hollywood. Arriving on location in Texas to produce ''Heartbreak Hotel,'' a movie about a boy trying to introduce his lonely mother to Elvis Presley, Ms. Obst found herself simultaneously confronted with a potential (and gender-neutral) mutiny by her largely male crew and a lawsuit by her ex-husband seeking custody of their son. She withdrew her son from school in Los Angeles, flew him to Texas, hired him a tutor and herself a lawyer. Then she cajoled the ''very attractive'' leader of the movie crew to hold off his mutiny long enough for her to persuade the studio to dispatch two production executives by private jet to resolve the crew's problem. Ms. Obst says the experience helped her forge a deeper relationship with her son (the custody suit was later dropped) and taught her always to brief herself thoroughly before arriving at a movie set. ''I now know,'' she writes, ''that the teamsters know everything and I avoid ambushes by getting the scoop from the driver on the way in from the airport.'' ''Know the names of the teamsters,'' she advises. ''Sure, they cost a lot of money and they eat a lot of doughnuts, but they can be great allies, too.'' ''Whenever I speak to women starting out in the business,'' Ms. Obst says, ''they invariably ask me the same question. How do you get taken seriously? I always give them the same answer. Take yourself seriously. . . . The goal is to be able to think in the way that men have learned to think without becoming one. This is not masculine behavior we are learning; it is professional behavior.'' Evident throughout ''Hello, He Lied'' is an unfashionable bulletin: There are differences between men and women, and women sometimes have natural advantages that they should employ in business settings. Women are more nurturing, intuitive, responsible, passionate, patient and flexible than men, Ms. Obst argues. ''Even an impatient woman like me is more naturally patient than your typical type A male exec. Programmed biologically to endure nine months of hell for a lifetime of responsibility, a woman's ability to wait until the proper moment to make a movie is superior.'' Women are sometimes at a disadvantage, too, she asserts. ''Everyday, run-of-the-mill business junk in Hollywood -- like simple lying -- astonishes women, leaves us speechless, and we take it personally. . . . Lying turns the wheels in Hollywood, and we women must develop ears to hear it for what it is, or else we can be bluffed hourly. . . . Women tend to feel guilty when they lie and angry when they are lied to. These emotions do not belong in the workplace.'' Ms. Obst's book is filled with tips -- ''The Ten Commandments for Chix in Flix'' (Thou shalt not cry at work) -- and observations. ''I've noticed that there are two major styles of female executives in Hollywood: fuzzy and crisp,'' she writes. ''The fuzzy girl is artistic; her hair is wilder (rarely blow-dried); she wears secondhand dresses. Often the fuzzy girl is more talented. . . . The crisp girl suggests the Smith/Wellesley girl: one who always returns phone calls and dresses for success. . . . Crisp girls can be ruthless without anyone noticing.'' The laughs in ''Hello, He Lied'' are somewhat deceptive, for the book is quite serious. In the end, Ms. Obst is not optimistic about change in the fundamental power dynamics of Hollywood, which has always been an oligarchy of white men. ''You lose if you don't respect the fact that this game has been played in a particular way since its inception. It always has been and always will be,'' she writes. ''The tragic fate of the lone soldier marching out of step in Hollywood is that he gets stampeded. . . He's out of sync. Sync rules.'' |
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