TMS Muse of the Week: Gale Anne Hurd
(via amc.com)
If the ratio between male film directors and female film directors is fairly wide, you can assume the same applies to male film producers and female film producers. There aren’t exactly as many women with the same power and reputation as David O. Selznick, Robert Evans, Jerry Bruckheimer and Judd Apatow running through Hollywood history, but there are a handful of feminine names that pop up consistently in discussions on productions. The most recognizable might be Julia Phillips, Kathleen Kennedy and Gale Anne Hurd. Three ladies who had to play with the boys to get to where they are and excelled along the way. For Gale, it began as an assistant to B-movie legend Roger Corman, who film fans know as the guy who helped a lot of New Hollywood directors get their foot in the door in the mid-to-late 1960s. One of the rare protégés of Corman not to be a man or a director was Gale, who had degrees in economics and communications from Stanford University when she decided to head back down to her native SoCal for work in 1978. Known for her no-nonsense, professional ethic, Gale must have impressed Roger quick enough for her to be co-producer on one of his films, Charles B. Griffith’s Smokey Bites the Dust (1981), three years into assisting Corman. And just three years following that, Gale saw potential in a little sci-fi thriller that would change her life and career: James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984). Still early in his own career, Jim sold the rights of his original script to Gale for only a dollar, stating she could be head producer if he could direct the movie however he wanted. The deal paid off when the modest feature turned into a huge holiday season blockbuster and the beginning of a major film franchise. Though some assume Jim and Gale were already together by the time T1 was shooting, they actually met through Roger, who was also a mentor to Jim, and didn’t begin dating until the movie was released.
The producer and the director then partnered for Jim’s Aliens (1986), the equally classic action sequel to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror Alien (1979), and Jim’s sci-fi adventure The Abyss (1989), both with Gale as producer again. In between The Terminator and Aliens, the couple married in 1985 and lived in Los Angeles. While Aliens was another smash hit for the pair, The Abyss was infamously plagued with difficulties ranging from set logistics to creative differences, resulting in mixed reception from both fans and critics. Things from work must have carried over to their home life because Jim and Gale divorced the same year The Abyss was released.
(via twitter.com)
Based on interviews I’ve read over the years about Cameron films, the filmmaker sounds like a lot to handle in person, with perfectionism, extreme demands and workaholic tendencies. I can imagine how exhausting this would be to be around every day, even for someone strong-willed like Gale, who can generally hold her own in confrontation. Of course, there’s also the fact that if you look at the dates of Jim’s marriages, he wed his next wife, fellow director Kathryn Bigelow, the same year he and Gale divorced. Nevertheless, the separation must have been somewhat amicable in the end, because Gale still signed on for Jim’s sequel T2: Judgment Day (1991) and both continue to do retrospectives and reunion appearances together.
Following her split from Jim, Gale continued working on interesting and memorable projects, such as Ron Underwood’s horror-comedy Tremors (1990), Roger Donaldson’s disaster flick Dante’s Peak (1997), Michael Bay’s sci-fi epic Armageddon (1998), Andrew Fleming’s historical farce Dick (1999), Jonathan Frakes’ sci-fi comedy Clockstoppers (2002), both Ang Lee’s infamous superhero movie Hulk (2003) and Louis Leterrier’s rebooted The Incredible Hulk (2008), and Naomi Foner’s coming of age drama Very Good Girls (2013). Since 2010, the hitmaker has been the fulltime showrunner of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and its various spinoffs and has also branched out into producing documentaries like Valerie Red-Horse’s Choctaw Code Talkers (2010) and Mankiller (2017), and Alex Winter’s The YouTube Effect (2022). After her time with Jim, Gale’s second husband was directing auteur Brian De Palma in 1991-93, who is the father of her one child, Lolita (b. 1991). Their daughter shares the same name as Gale’s mother, as well as Lolita Davidovich, the female star of the film Gale and Brian collaborated on, Raising Cain (1992). Since 1995, Gale has been married to writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh, and the two participated on Armageddon and Hensleigh’s The Punisher (2004) and Welcome to the Jungle (2007).
What I like about Gale is how she’s not only one of the biggest figures in the action/adventure film genre and genuinely has tomboy interests, but also clearly appreciates femininity and isn’t just ‘one of the guys,’ hence her work on Dick and Very Good Girls. She proved herself in a longtime ‘boys club,’ but never lost sight of herself. If there’s a real-life equivalent to Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor, it’s probably Gale Anne Hurd.
