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The Hype: Chasing A Big Dream
submitted by: Lisa D.
source: The Daily News of Los Angeles
Date: August 16, 2001
By Bob Strauss
While many Hollywood observers were surprised by the box-office success of Disney's G-rated "Princess Diaries" (the film was No. 3 at the box office last weekend, making another $14.1 million), the film's producer, Debra Martin Chase, was not one of them.
As Whitney Houston's partner in BrownHouse productions, the Harvard-educated lawyer knew the appeal of the material from her hugely popular television production of "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella" a few years back.
"What I have discovered is that my niche is these female wish-fulfillment/empowerment movies," says the Chicago-born, Pasadena-raised Chase. "I love stories that reinforce, particularly for kids, that we each have the power to be whatever we want to be, that we are only limited by our own vision." A film buff since childhood, Chase dutifully pursued a law career she found unsatisfying until 12 years ago, when she moved back to the West Coast and got a job in a studio legal department. She was soon pursuing her own producing dreams with Denzel Washington's company before moving on to BrownHouse and projects of her own.
As an African-American woman in what is still a white male-dominated field, Chase admits that her success has not come easily. She hopes that, while it capitalizes on a universal fantasy, "Princess Diaries" also gives some indication of the hard work achieving glamorous dreams entails.
"Everybody dreams of waking up one day and being told, 'It's all been wrong. You really are a princess' or 'You really are famous.' Everybody wants to be more than they think they are. But kids need to understand the work that goes into being successful. They need to know that they can't become star athletes or singers overnight, but that the people who've achieved these goals worked very hard and sacrificed to get to where they are."
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