COUPLE TOILS TO GET DREAMWORKS SKG OFF THE GROUND.Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are playing it remarkably cool, considering all the world is about to judge their judgment. The husband-and-wife co-heads of DreamWorks SKG's film division, their first corporate baby, ``The Peacemaker,'' opens today. The topical action-adventure, starring George Clooney George Timothy Clooney (May 6, 1961) is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter who gained fame as the lead doctor in the long-running television drama, ER and Nicole Kidman and directed by Emmy-winning ``ER'' producer/director Mimi Leder, opens a slate that will include Steven Spielberg's slave ship drama ``Amistad'' and the slapstick slapstick Comedy characterized by broad humour, absurd situations, and vigorous, often violent action. It took its name from a paddlelike device, probably introduced by 16th-century commedia dell'arte troupes, that produced a resounding whack when one comic actor used it to comedy ``Mouse Hunt'' before the year is out. ``We've had the good fortune of being so busy that it's been hard to notice whether we're nervous,'' says Parkes, an Oscar-nominated documentary director (``California Reich''), screenwriter (``WarGames'') and producer (``Awakenings''). ``But now that everyone is asking ...'' Parkes and MacDonald have a right to feel confident; they produced the year's biggest hit movie, ``Men in Black.'' And after three years of careful development, they figure they've pulled together the best bunch of pictures a start-up studio could hope for. ``We didn't want to buy spec material, scripts that were already out there, or projects that other companies had dropped,'' explains MacDonald, who was Columbia Pictures' vice president of production for five years before she and Parkes joined Amblin Pictures (DreamWorks partner Spielberg's longtime long·time adj. Having existed or persisted for a long time: a longtime friend; a longtime resident of Detroit. longtime Adjective production company) in 1994. ``We wanted to take our time and put some care into developing a group of films, rather than just jumping into the marketplace.'' Clearly a gargantuan gar·gan·tu·an adj. Of immense size, volume, or capacity; gigantic. See Synonyms at enormous. gargantuan Adjective huge or enormous [after Gargantua, a giant in Rabelais' task, with the extra-added distraction Distraction Divination (See OMEN.) Porlock a “person from Porlock” interrupted Coleridge while he was recollecting the dream on which he based “Kubla Khan”. [Br. Lit.: Poems of Coleridge in Magill IV, 756] of existing Amblin commitments (``The Lost World,'' the still upcoming ``Mask of Zorro'') to oversee. But Parkes says that one of the toughest aspects of getting DreamWorks in gear is doing it under ``the magnifying glass magnifying glass: see microscope. magnifying glass traditional detective equipment; from its use by Sherlock Holmes. [Br. Lit.: Payton, 473] See : Sleuthing .'' ``At Amblin, we quietly just made movies,'' MacDonald adds. ``At Amblin we had an amazing a·maze v. a·mazed, a·maz·ing, a·maz·es v.tr. 1. To affect with great wonder; astonish. See Synonyms at surprise. 2. Obsolete To bewilder; perplex. v.intr. amount of freedom,'' Parkes explains, ``but we were using the infrastructure and the financing of other companies. That allowed us to focus on one thing and one thing only, and that was the making of movies that we really cared about and believed in. ``Perhaps the biggest challenge has been moving that same approach over to an entire studio. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently , with all of these other issues of staffing and infrastructure and administration and releasing movies and finance, how do you keep all of that noise out of your head and still stay focused on the things that made the prior company work so well? ``Luckily,'' Parkes says, ``at least in terms of the way it feels on a day-to-day basis, we've been able to do that.'' |
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