Enlarge imageBy Anne Thompson
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - One way to escape the rigid rules of Hollywood formula filmmaking these days is to base your movie on a book. Adapt a movie from a best-seller like "The Devil Wears Prada," and you can make up your own rules.
"Prada" offers all sorts of riches for a movie: an established, catchy chick-lit title with a huge female following; a coming-of-age tale about a smart Cinderella named Andy who undergoes a total makeover; a glamorous Manhattan fashion magazine setting; and, last but not least, a magnificent Faustian villain, the editrix boss from hell, Miranda Priestley. Her Queen of Mean is a wicked nemesis of Cruella De Vil proportions -- and a part worthy of a star.
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It’s easy to imagine the way most studios would have made the movie: as a broad romantic comedy, where the plucky young heroine not only lands the guy, but gets back at her wicked boss, too.
But that’s not what Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler had in mind. Six years ago, she moved over from supervising such 20th Century Fox studio hits as "Mrs. Doubtfire," "A Walk in the Clouds," "Entrapment" and "Waiting to Exhale" to take the reins of the main Fox unit’s sister label. She started out by supervising the DreamWorks co-production "Cast Away," starring Tom Hanks, which she had developed; brought her project "Phone Booth" over from the big studio and put it together with Joel Shumacher and Colin Farrell; and pulled director Adrian Lyne back onto "Unfaithful," starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane.
"Elizabeth Gabler has taste, integrity and marketing skills and gets things done," says manager Joan Hyler, whose client Lane landed an Oscar nomination as "Unfaithful’s" sexy housewife turned adultress. "Also, her bosses trust her. She’s not a bloviator. There’s nothing hipper-than-thou, panicky or crazy about her. She’s very stable -- in the most valuable sense."
Gabler has proved adept at putting together slates of accessible character-driven movies, often aimed at smart adults, that score with both critics and audiences. She delivers four or five handcrafted movies a year to Fox co-chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos, who often let Gabler make movies, like "Walk the Line," that other studios would never green-light.
’PASSION AND TASTE’
Under then-studio chiefs Peter Chernin and Bill Mechanic, the Fox 2000 label was created in 1998 "to provide a diversity of creative advocacy within the studio," Rothman says, "so that we don’t have a monolithic point of view. Because Fox 2000 reflects Elizabeth’s taste, it does gravitate towards adult-oriented pictures. Elizabeth probably has the best batting average of any production executive in Hollywood. She’s very picky, and she’s out to make hits. She has earned tremendous autonomy. You ignore her passion and taste at great peril."
Execution-dependent and relatively risky, her movies often turn out well, from the Oscar-winning "Walk the Line" to the holiday comedy "The Family Stone," starring Sarah Jessica Parker. It’s surprising that more of them don’t fail at the box-office: One 2005 disappointment, Curtis Hanson’s "In Her Shoes," proved yet again that even with a star like Cameron Diaz in the lead, women’s dramas are a daunting marketing challenge. And yet that film finally grossed $90 million world-wide.
Partly, Gabler stays ahead of the profit curve by keeping her budgets reasonable. "Prada," which was shot in New York and Paris, cost $35 million; "Line" cost $28 million (world-wide gross: $184 million); the teen-girl flick "Aquamarine" cost $12 million (world-wide gross: $20 million), and "Drumline," a movie about college marching bands, $13 million (world-wide gross: $58 million).
This fall’s adaptation of a family classic, "Flicka," starring country star Tim McGraw, will cost just $15 million. Even Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe cut their fees to deliver "A Good Year" for $35 million. On the other hand, Gabler spends when she needs to: The fantasy-adventure "Eragon," set for December release, will wind up in the $85 million-$90 million range.
GOOD READS
But mainly, Gabler likes to chase down potentially hot book titles, from "Prada" and "Shoes" to "A Good Year" and "Eragon." Books in development at Fox 2000 include "The Life of Pi," "Shadow Divers," and "Marley and Me," which has spent 35 weeks on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list. "I love working from books, and I always have," Gabler says.
Fox 2000 chased after "Prada" at a time when "soft" female movies had become a tough sell in Hollywood. "Even romantic comedies are centring on male characters and their issues," says screenwriter Kirsten Smith ("Legally Blonde," "She’s the Man"). "All of us writing female-driven stories are hoping that ’Prada’ does well."
Back in 2002, producer Wendy Finerman ("Forrest Gump"), who at the time had a production deal at Fox 2000, swiftly responded when her New York book scout sent her ex-Vogue staffer Lauren Weisberger’s 100-page book proposal. She quickly got Gabler and Fox 2000 production executive Carla Hacken on board. "We got aggressive about it and got a first look," says Gabler. "It had dual protagonists, one relatable to older women, one younger women. There hadn’t been a working girl kind of movie in some time. It had the guilty pleasure of the fresh perspective on the glitzy New York fashion world."
"Prada" is not your conventional romantic comedy centred on the question of how the boy and girl jump over hurdles to get together. In the movie, two generations of women, played by Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep, take front and centre. Romance is strictly a subplot, with men in supporting roles, including our heroine’s loyal boyfriend (Adrian Grenier), sexy romantic interest (Simon Baker) and swishy fashion-editor mentor (Stanley Tucci).
RESHAPING THE STORY
A succession of writers took a whack at wrestling this anecdotal account of life in the New York fashion fast lane into a shootable, commercial screenplay. Writer-director Peter Hedges parted ways with the studio when his movie "Pieces of April" came out. Howard Michael Gould ("Mr. Baseball") gave it a whirl. Two funny gay writers added juicy bons mots: Paul Rudnick ("Addams Family Values") and Don Roos ("The Opposite of Sex").
Finally, Finerman got her way and persuaded Gabler to hire David Frankel ("Sex and the City," "Entourage"). Frankel immediately connected with former magazine scribe Aline Brosh McKenna ("Laws of Attraction"), who refocused the story on Andy’s journey. McKenna credits Fox 2000 for keeping the movie real: "They don’t push you for the phony studio choice," she says. "Nobody wanted it to be over the top or silly."
McKenna provided a narrative spine. The most significant change from the book, one that was crucial to career women Finerman and Gabler, was taking Miranda Priestley seriously. "I didn’t want to see her look like a fool," Gabler says. "I don’t think Meryl Streep would have done it if there hadn’t been a role she could sink her teeth into."
The key moment in the movie -- when Miranda, a powerful, controversial magazine editor of a certain age, lets down her guard -- was Streep’s idea. She wanted her to "show that there’s a cost," McKenna says. "But she’s not going to let it get in the way of the things she has to do. She’s not just responsible to herself, there’s her business and standards to uphold."
Thanks to the book’s best-seller status, it was OK to craft a morality tale about a young woman wrestling with the devil. "That gave us opportunities to grapple with larger issues of good and evil, which is not something you typically think of in this genre," McKenna says. "You don’t often tinge a coming-of-age story with moral choices."
It’s also unusual for the young heroine to be having sex with one guy and within a week falling into bed with someone else. It was never an issue with the studio, McKenna says: "She’s 23 years old. It’s so true to what would happen."
Finerman says, "At the end of the day, Elizabeth helped to get us everything we needed."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
