As a studio boss, Dawn Steel was always drawn to movies that reminded her of her own struggle against the odds. Now, as an independent producer, she's getting to make them.
"It's always about the underdog," said Steel, who in her recently published autobiography, "They Can Kill You . . . but They Can't Eat You" (Pocket Books; $22), writes that her favorite film as a young woman was "Rocky.""I just love the idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, whether it's the success of `Cool Runnings,' which is the success of four guys from Jamaica who had never seen snow, or whether it's my success, just as a human being.
"You know, I grew up with a family (that) didn't have any money. I didn't have any education. It was an issue about putting food on the table some nights, and so I came to California and I didn't have anything.
"So the great American dream happened to me. I say this in the book: If I can do this, anybody can do this. You have to persevere, you have to just not give up, and you have to know what you want. You have to be able to see your dream."
Steel, former president of Columbia Pictures and chief of production at Paramount, sent her autobiography off to the printer before "Cool Runnings," her first film as an independent producer, became a sleeper hit. Produced for about $3 million, the Disney film had grossed $33.3 million through last weekend, its fourth in release.
But Steel, who in her studio days worked on such films as "Flashdance," "Top Gun," `The Untouchables," "The Accused," "Fatal Attraction," "Awakenings" and the restored version of "Lawrence of Arabia," doesn't regret not having identified the film about the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team in her book.
"For me, the absolute success was that I loved making it," she said. "And so for me, the success came in the fact that I didn't expect men to take care of me, that I found a job that I love to do, that my family was intact and happy, that I had finally resolved the stuff with my mother before she died and after she died.
"All of those things were successes for me, so that `Cool Runnings' actual box-office success was gravy."
For a woman who once toiled 18 1/2-hour days in order - in the jargon of the business - to improve Columbia's market share, Steel sounded, if not exactly mellow, a lot less hung up on the bottom line than one might have expected and certainly much more concerned about issues having little to do with show business.
So it comes as no surprise to see her practically shudder visibly when asked about an entertainment trade newspaper report that she is being wooed by Ted Turner to run his Turner Pictures Worldwide.
"Don't believe everything you read in the trades," said Steel, 47.
"I hate management. I hate management. I just do. So if I can figure out how to, whether it's Ted Turner or Barry Diller or anybody else, if I can figure out how to do whatever the next version of this is - more movies per year, without having to be management - then maybe that's the perfect place. I don't know that yet."
Meeting Steel after reading her book is an uncanny experience: Her hair, even at the end of a busy week, is as luxuriant as she says it is in her book, and her voice - still touched with the accents of her native Great Neck, N.Y. - and turns of phrase feel familiar.
But while Steel said she and collaborator Marcelle Clements worked hard at making the 281-page narrative sound like her, "I don't see this as an autobiography.
"I see this as an advice book or a self-help book. Whether or not I pulled it off is a different conversation."
It was a how-to tome that Pocket Books editor Judith Regan (who also edited a rival biography, Howard Stern's "Private Parts") talked Steel into writing three years ago.
"Judith came to me with the idea right when I left Columbia. She said to me, `There's been no book for women, like (the books by Lee) Iacocca or (Donald) Trump. There are all these books written by men, for men.'
"And she asked me a question. She said, `Did you have anything to read when you were coming up the ladder?' And I said, `No, I didn't.' So she worked on me for about a year, and I finally gave in."
A rapid-fire read, "They Can Kill You . . . but They Can't Eat You" chronicles the highs and lows of Steel's professional and personal life - creating Gucci toilet paper, being tapped by then-Paramount boss Michael Eisner as a production executive, threatening to resign unless the studio made "Flashdance," and having affairs with Richard Gere and Martin Scorsese before marrying producer Chuck Roven and having their 6-year-old daughter, Rebecca.
Steel doesn't burn any bridges in the book, observing - with very few exceptions - the old adage about not saying anything at all if she has nothing nice to say. She doesn't address her recently concluded independent production deal with Disney.
But the book, and her promotion of it, have given her an opportunity to reinvent her media image, which had never really recovered from its low point five years ago, when California magazine caricatured her for a cover story on the state's worst bosses.
At the time, she said only that she didn't deserve that sort of recognition. In retrospect, she said, the experience was painful - as were other articles in which she was referred to as "the Queen of Mean," "Steel Dawn" and "Dawn of the Dead" - but she has learned to live with it.
"I think that we women have to recognize the fact that women bosses, tough women bosses - I mean, you can't run a studio and not be tough, whether you're male or female - get looked at through a different lens than men. Period. And it's just the way it is.
"I am, and was, a very demanding boss. I want what I want, when I want it. And I expect people to do their jobs at peak performance. It's what Barry Diller expected of me, it's what Michael Eisner expects of Jeff Katzenberg, and it's what I expect of my staff. So what's the difference?"
Steel prefers not to view any reverses she's encountered as the result of sex discrimination, because she feels it's unproductive for women to view themselves as victims.
"It's a complicated time right now," she said of on-the-job relations between the sexes.
"First let me say that it's gotten much better. I used to be the only woman in the room, always. And now, I'm very often in rooms that are only women. There are no men in the room. And, in fact, I can go through days, in terms of my work, and only speak to women during the day, and get my work done and get my movies pushed forward, and happily."