In the universe of movies, directors shine just slightly less than the stars themselves. But where are tomorrow's Steven Spielbergs and David Lynches coming from?
Some of them may just come out of the Discovery program and have their short films air on "The Showtime 30-Minute Movie," which premieres Sunday at 7 p.m.The Discovery program, begun by Jonathan Sanger and Janice Sue Memmel of Chanticler films in 1987, allows six to eight young directors to helm their own 30-minute "feature."
Approximately 600 people apply for the program each year, and that number is whittled down to about 80. Then a panel consisting of movie makers trims the group even further - this year to 23 - and those finalists direct a scene on videotape. The final judgments are made from those tapes.
These are not college kids making movies. "The purpose of the program . . . is to give people who are already experienced professionals a chance," said Memmel.
And although the budgets for the films are infinitesimal by Hollywood standards - about $35,000 per half hour - there's a lot of bang for the buck. Discovery is a non-profit program, and much of the talent and materials are donated.
Previous mini-features have been seen on PBS and one, "Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall," won an Academy Award.
The three films that the comprise "The Showtime 30-Minute Movie" are a rather eclectic bunch:
- Conquering Space is about an engineer (Guich Koock) who moves his family to Florida in the early '60s so he can work for NASA - and it's about his dreams, his troubled marriage and his coming-of-age daughter.
- 12:01 P.M. is very much like an episode of "The Twilight Zone." There's a "bump" in time and the only one who's aware of it is an average guy (Kurtwood Smith) who keeps reliving the same hour of his life over and over again.
- To the Moon, Alice is the story of a homeless family that takes refuge on a sitcom set and their struggles to survive in a hostile world.
"Alice," the strongest of the three, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival early this year. And its director, Jessie Nelson, has already seen a number of changes in her career.
"Since I've done the this film, a number of doors have opened for me at studios," Nelson said. "Now I have a directing deal and a writing deal at Paramount. It was a script at Disney that I wrote, that I was bumped on as a writer, and they hired maybe six writers to rewrite me. When I finished the (Discovery) program, they approached me about directing it.
"People don't trust you before you've been able to prove you can do it. And there's no way to prove it in the industry until you're given a chance to prove it. So suddenly I'm in the position of being offered to rewrite other people's scripts, writing and directing deals . . . And I haven't changed. It's just that I've been given a chance to show that I can do it."