THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 21, 1996 TAG: 9602210039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines
GARY FLEDER saw ``Jaws'' at the Pembroke Theater in Virginia Beach in 1975.
He never quite got over it.
With his T-shirt proclaiming ``All I Want to Be is a Director,'' he left Norfolk in 1981 to follow a dream. He was just one of a million kids in the Steven Spielberg generation - kids who dream of making movies.
He came home to Norfolk this week - on film.
The credits on the screen at the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach proclaim it ``A Film by Gary Fleder.'' His feature-film debut, a wry gangster fable called ``Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead'' has an all-star cast including Andy Garcia, Christopher Walken, Treat Williams, Gabrielle Anwar, Jack Warden and Steve Buscemi.
It is, to put it mildly, a triumphant return.
``I'm now allowed to work with people I used to pay to see,'' Fleder, 33, said in Toronto on the morning after a screening of ``Things to Do.'' ``I didn't really choose directing. It chose me. It's all I ever wanted to do - ever. Of course, there's a lot of luck involved, being at the right place at the right time.''
He was the toast of the Cannes Film Festival in France last year. He flew his parents over from Norfolk for the world premiere. The North American premiere of ``Denver'' was a gala affair at the Toronto Film Festival. Premiere Magazine proclaimed him ``the flavor of the month.''
``Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead,'' written by his longtime college friend Scott Rosenberg, was carefully calculated to be his ``small'' feature-film debut. The $10 million budget is, by present Hollywood standards, a small one, but word-of-mouth immediately made it the talk of the industry.
It's definitely not a one-shot success. His second film is already planned, an adaptation of the thriller novel ``Kiss the Girls'' by James Patterson, about two serial killers. It will star Morgan Freeman and will be made with a budget of $25 million - more than twice the budget for his first film.
Fleder is in Durham, N.C., scouting locations for that movie. After that, there is talk of a film to be produced by Diane Keaton and starring Drew Barrymore.
Back in Norfolk, parents Harry and Lorraine Fleder are taking the amazing million-to-one success story quite calmly.
``He's passionate about his work,'' his mother said. ``Film is his whole life. It always was. I found his `All I Want to Be is a Director' T-shirt up in the attic the other day. My first recollection of his film passion was when he won a children's film festival at camp in Maine. He was about 12 years old and won a prize of $500. He always had Three Stooges and Marx Brothers posters in his room.''
Gary Fleder, though, says the real moment of reckoning was when he saw ``Jaws.''
``It was then that I knew I wanted to be a director,'' he said.
He also credits the Naro in Norfolk with fueling his movie passion. ``In the '70s, there wasn't any such thing as video yet. My movie vocabulary was developed and expanded at the Naro,'' Fleder said.
He wanted ``Denver'' to open locally at the Naro, but the vagaries of bookings landed it at Lynnhaven Mall instead.
His parents didn't blanch when he chose ``movie director'' as his career. ``We urged him to go for it,'' his father said.
``I think they are a little surprised that I ended up in feature films,'' Fleder confided. ``I think they thought I'd probably be able to make a living in television production of some type, but not feature films.''
Fleder's parents were treated to the ultimate filmgoer's fantasy when their son took them to the Cannes Festival in southern France.
``It was like another world, but we remained very logical about it, I think,'' Harry Fleder said. ``Miramax pictures rented a yacht for one party, and that blonde girl, Sharon Stone, was there. Everyone was flocking around her. They were all very nice to us, but after all, they're just people like everyone else.''
Gary Fleder's career has moved steadily upward from the very beginning. He went to Los Angeles by way of Boston, where he graduated summa cum laude from Boston University. He completed his master's degree in film production in 1991 at the University of Southern California, where he won the prestigious John Huston Directing Scholarship. Along the way, he won numerous awards around the country for his short-subject films ``Terminal Round'' and ``Poses,'' both of which debuted as student films at the Naro.
His hourlong psychological thriller ``Air Time'' was praised at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. A year later, his documentary on light-heavyweight boxer Phil Paolina also premiered at the Sundance Festival.
Fleder and screenwriter Rosenberg met in college in Boston.
Rosenberg's latest script was for the critically acclaimed ``Beautiful Girls.'' Fleder made his television debut directing two ``Tales From the Crypt'' episodes on HBO that Rosenberg had scripted. Both won cable Ace Awards.
Rosenberg, whose rise has coincided with Fleder's, said: ``Gary was the kind of guy who sat in the front of the class. I sat on the back row. Gary was always secure with his gift for making films. He can see what his film will look like before it is made. In college, I had pages and he had a reel.''
Fleder says that he and Rosenberg have the kind of friendship that is good for getting films made. ``We disagree on a lot of things, but it's the kind of disagreements that help the film,'' he said. `` `Things to Do in Denver' was written as a catharis for Scott. His father had recently died of cancer, and the film, in his eyes, was a metaphor for facing a terminal disease.'' (In the movie Andy Garcia, as Jimmy the Saint, gets a death sentence from The Man With the Plan on the same day he falls in love with a woman played by Gabrielle Anwar.)
Things began to go awry with ``Things to Do'' in Toronto. The critics began to compare it to Quentin Tarantino's ``Reservoir Dogs'' and ``Pulp Fiction.'' Those films, too, had been about crimes that went wrong. It didn't help that several of the actors, including Walken and Buscemi, had been in Tarantino films.
``We were shocked,'' Fleder admits. ``Those were cheap shots. Scott had written the script three years before. We finished production four months before anyone knew anything about `Pulp Fiction.' Our film is not another raucous, irreverent comedy. My film is much more serious. It starts out with humor, but it becomes a tragedy. I've talked with Quentin about the comparisons, and he regrets it as much as I do. He thinks the films are very different.''
However, the damage was done. Miramax Films, the releasing company, slowed things down.
``It was an effort to distance `Denver' from `Pulp Fiction' because almost every critic was making the comparison,'' said Cary Woods, the producer. The nationwide release of ``Denver'' was curtailed and eventually limited to only a fraction of the intended theaters.
The film was released so late that it had only a one-week run during the Oscar-qualification period. And then, Miramax put all its money into a successful campaign promoting the Italian-language film ``The Postman'' for the best-picture Oscar.
``Things to Do in Denver'' was shut out of the nominations.
Phoning from Los Angeles, Fleder asked a favor.
Glamour and money and Oscars weren't on his mind.
``I'm really worried about one thing,'' Fleder said, ``Would you go over to the Lynnhaven Theater and see if they have the sound turned up loud enough?'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Miramax Films
Director Gary Felder discusses a scene from the film "Things to Do
in Denver When You're Dead" with Andy Garcia.
File Photo
Felder in 1983 with a moviola machine.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB