FOR fans of Kimberly Peirce 2007 may be a banner year.
More
than seven years have passed since this 39-year-old writer-director
gave the world a movie. Her first effort in 1999, ''Boys Don't Cry,''
was indelible. It won a best-actress Oscar for the unknown Hilary Swank
and catapulted Ms. Peirce to a spot among the major filmmaking talents
of her generation.
But time has been passing, with no second
movie. This spring Paramount will finally release her new film,
''Stop-Loss,'' about an Iraq war veteran who returns home to Texas and
is called back to duty through the military's so-called stop-loss
procedure.
Seven years amounts to a yawning stretch in the prime of any filmmaker's creative life. And what happens if the new film fails?
But
it would be unfair to pick on Ms. Peirce or any one filmmaker for
spending years between projects. She is only one of numerous filmmakers
among her generation who have taken long hiatuses before stepping back
up to the plate; others include breakthrough directors of the 1990s
like Darren Aronofsky, David O. Russell and Spike Jonze.
Is it
a sign of timidity, or laziness, or some unexpected lack of drive? Is
it a lack of interesting material? Is it the fault of the studio system
and its emphasis on high-paying, mind-numbing commercial fare?
Mr.
Aronofsky, the director of ''Pi'' and ''Requiem for a Dream,'' released
his latest film, ''The Fountain,'' in November after working on it for
seven years. It quickly sank from sight. Mr. Russell, widely admired
for his original mix of comedy and seriousness in ''Flirting With
Disaster'' and ''Three Kings,'' has dropped from view since his
disastrous ''I Heart Huckabees'' in 2004, and is not close to making a
new film. The delightfully absurdist Mr. Jonze, of ''Being John
Malkovich'' and ''Adaptation'' fame, has spent the last several years
making music videos and finally settled on a feature film based on the
Maurice Sendak book ''Where the Wild Things Are,'' planned for release
in 2008.
It's not zero productivity, perhaps, but it is a far
cry from the deluge of creative output from young directors in the
1970s, when Hal Ashby fired off seven movies in nine years, including
''Shampoo'' in 1975, ''Bound for Glory'' in 1976 and ''Coming Home'' in
1978. Robert Altman made six films in five years, including ''MASH''
and ''Brewster McCloud'' in 1970 and ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'' in
1971. And Francis Ford Coppola had a similarly fertile run, with ''The
Godfather'' in 1972, along with ''The Conversation'' and ''The
Godfather: Part II'' in 1974.
The current lack of productivity
among promising filmmakers in their 30s and 40s has become a cause for
quiet consternation among producers and agents, not to mention film
lovers. It is felt in the paucity of movies creating excitement around
the Oscars, and in the desperate trolling for new talent at the
Sundance Film Festival.
And it's not just these filmmakers.
Other major directors have spent years tiptoeing around different
projects, often ambitious ones, only to back away and ultimately choose
something more familiar. David Fincher, who after ''Seven'' and ''Fight
Club'' in the '90s was considered a top filmmaker, has become notorious
for spending months considering projects, then walking away. His latest
film, ''Zodiac,'' a police thriller, is finally due from Paramount;
picking up the pace, he has been shooting an adaptation of F. Scott
Fitzgerald's ''Curious Case of Benjamin Button,'' about a man who ages
in reverse.
Others, like Baz Luhrmann, who reinvented the
musical with ''Moulin Rouge!'' in 2001, or Mark Romanek, who created
excitement with his indie ''One Hour Photo'' in 2002, have had projects
fall through for various reasons. Mr. Luhrmann is currently filming
''Australia,'' starring Hugh Jackman, his first film since ''Moulin
Rouge!''; Mr. Romanek is still idle.
In the space between all
the conversations in Hollywood about star salaries, box-office winnings
and Oscar possibilities lurks a larger question: Where are the missing
movies?
''I say it to these guys all the time, and some of them
are my friends: 'I feel like I want to see more movies from you,' ''
said Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a producer who was in charge of production
in the '90s at Warner Brothers, where he championed both ''Three
Kings'' and ''The Matrix.'' ''Why not more David Russell? Why not more
Darren Aronofsky?'' As filmgoers we're being deprived. We as a business
have to reach out to these filmmakers and beg them to make more.''
Even
Alexander Payne, the writer and director of ''Sideways,'' a critical
darling two years ago, is not productive enough for Mr. di Bonaventura.
''Why wouldn't I want one movie a year from him?'' he asked.
Mr.
di Bonaventura suggested that this diminished output had something to
do with the extreme scrutiny the filmmakers' every step receives. ''The
biggest problem in the business is you're torn apart for failure now,''
he said. ''By the critics, by the audience, by the studios --
everybody.''
David Linde, co-chairman of Universal, agreed that
the Hollywood fishbowl is not always healthy for originality and
creativity. ''There's a lot of pressure in this town to be part of the
mix in a specific way,'' he said, like having the best weekend
box-office numbers.
Some mentioned money in discussing the
drought: successful writer-directors can make huge fees rewriting other
people's scripts, as Roger Avary has since winning an Oscar as one of
the writers of ''Pulp Fiction'' in 1994, or by directing commercial
blockbuster-type movies, as Bryan Singer has done with ''Superman
Returns'' and ''X-Men,'' after making a striking impression with ''The
Usual Suspects'' in 1995.
But it is possible that the
self-indulgent American culture that shaped these filmmakers and made
them so successful in the 1990s has left them ill equipped to take on
the weightier questions facing society in the new millennium. Perhaps
Quentin Tarantino, child of the video culture, feels at a loss when
faced with the war in Iraq and global terrorism. And yet Mr. Russell
made a movie about Iraq in 1999, well ahead of the current conflict,
while the projects he now has in development are in the light comedy
vein.
''It's part of the larger culture,'' said Laura Ziskin,
who was in charge of Fox 2000 when it made ''Fight Club'' and is now
producing the third ''Spider-Man'' movie. ''There's not a lot of
encouragement to go deep on anything. In the '70s people had the
feeling they could change things through art, through creativity.''
Hollywood
itself has a responsibility too, said Jeremy Barber, a leading agent
for writer-directors like Noah Baumbach. ''There's no one pushing
back,'' he said. ''It takes an oppositional force'' to bring out the
best in an artist, like a strong-minded studio executive or producer.
''We
have an indulgent system,'' he added. ''The industry celebrates them
prematurely, and we don't enter into a dialectical relationship with
them.''
Ms. Peirce declined a request for an interview, but a
spokeswoman said that she took a long time to find material she liked
well enough to make into a movie.
Ms. Peirce has had many
opportunities along the way. She landed a two-year deal at New Line in
2000, which expired without a project getting off the ground. She had
been slated to direct ''Memoirs of a Geisha'' and, later, ''A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,'' based on the book by Dave
Eggers. In 2001 she spoke in interviews of spending seven months
researching an unsolved murder for what was to be her next project.
That movie was never made.
More than any other factor, though,
Hollywood veterans cite the absence of the kind of creative ferment
that coursed through the Hollywood of the 1970s, the challenge that one
cinematic triumph posed to other artists.
At least that's what
Cameron Crowe, the writer and director of ''Jerry Maguire,'' ''Almost
Famous'' and the more recent critical disaster ''Elizabethtown''
suggested, as he was leaving a recent tribute to his hero, Billy
Wilder.
''There's no community,'' he said. ''We need to
encourage one another.'' He cited the rivalry between the Beach Boys
and the Beatles in the '60s, when one group's innovative album spurred
the other to do it one better. ''It's like 'Pet Sounds' and 'Sgt.
Pepper's,' '' Mr. Crowe said. ''It becomes a cycle that feeds on
itself. One great work leads to another.''
There is powerful
evidence of that dynamic in three ambitious, critically hailed movies
in 2006 that were, in no small way, the fruit of mutual challenge and
frank criticism. The films -- Alejandro González Iñárritu's ''Babel,''
Guillermo del Toro's ''Pan's Labyrinth'' and Alfonso Cuarón's
''Children of Men'' -- were constantly reviewed and critiqued among the
three directors, who are all Mexican.
''These films are like
triplets, they are sisters,'' Mr. Cuarón said in a telephone interview
from Mexico. (In the middle of the conversation his cellphone rang,
with Mr. Iñárritu on the line. ''I am trashing you as we speak,'' Mr.
Cuarón told him in Spanish.)
''We are very good friends,'' he
continued. ''We are big fans of one another, we respect each other so
much. If Alejandro says, 'That stinks,' I know he is not trying to hurt
me, he's trying to help me.''
All three films -- which last
month received a total of 16 Oscar nominations among them (including
writing nominations for all three) -- take on serious subjects in
contemporary society. Mr. González Iñárritu's film is a multicharacter
tale about the breakdown in communication across diverse cultures. Mr.
Cuarón's, based on a novel by P. D. James, is a dystopic comment on
society, foreseeing a terrifying future where women's fertility has
disappeared amid environmental disaster and a rising police state. And
Mr. del Toro's dark fable, set in Spain in the 1940s, grapples with the
dangers of blind obedience in the face of evil.
When Mr.
González Iñárritu ran out of steam in the editing room, Mr. del Toro
trimmed several minutes from his film; Mr. González Iñárritu returned
the favor on ''Pan's Labyrinth.'' After months of research in London,
Mr. Cuarón showed an early draft of the screenplay for ''Children of
Men'' to Mr. González Iñárritu.
''He said: 'Man, this is a
piece of junk. You can't shoot this thing. Where are your characters?'
'' Mr. Cuarón recalled. He spent a sleepless night, then went back to
the drawing board.
This mutual prodding has been going on for
years, Mr. del Toro said. ''We have a relationship that is not guarded,
and that is invaluable in an industry where most people expect
complacency,'' he said over a drink at a Los Angeles theater where he
was introducing ''Pan's Labyrinth'' to a local audience.
''All
you can dream of is a system of truth, and support,'' he went on. True
to his creed -- and in conspicuous contrast to his American
counterparts -- he is already at work on a new film, a sequel to
''Hellboy.''