Lynda Obst, producer who championed women in Hollywood, dies at 74

“You have to develop a thick skin,” she told The New York Times in 1996. ‘You have to be able to depersonalize drama without becoming depersonalized. Every day there are crises, dramas and disappointments. To survive without being thrown, you must be strong.

Small but energetic, with a gravelly voice and wry sensitivity, Ms. Obst worked as an editor at the New York Times magazine before coming to Hollywood in the late 1970s, where she scouted potential projects as a “development girl” under producer Peter Guber.

Her first big discovery led to her first Hollywood credits as associate producer of “Flashdance” (1983), which starred Jennifer Beals as an aspiring dancer and became one of the year’s biggest hits.

Ten years later, Ms. Obst’s career took off after she reconnected with writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron, a friend from New York’s journalism world. Ms. Obst produced Ephron’s directorial debut, “This Is My Life” (1992), and was the executive producer of Ephron’s romantic comedy “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993), which grossed more than $227 million worldwide.

Ms. Obst has found continued success with romantic comedies, including as producer of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” (2003), starring Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. She also produced thrillers such as ‘The Siege’ (1998), created dramas including ‘Hope Floats’ (1998) and helped shape the modern science fiction genre. As executive producer of “Contact” (1997), she successfully campaigned for Jodie Foster’s role as an astronomer, one of the film’s leads. She later served as producer on Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (2014), which became her biggest commercial success, grossing over $681 million during its initial release.

“It’s not a starting point to work on a science fiction film,” she told the website Salon in 2013. “I’m just a nerd who likes romantic comedies.”

As Ms. Obst settled into her Hollywood career in the 1980s, she also returned to her journalistic roots, writing sharply observed articles for magazines such as Harper’s and Premiere. She subsequently wrote two books inspired by her time in show business, beginning with “Hello, He Lied: And Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches” (1996), which Publishers Weekly described as “a quintessentially Hollywood-style hybrid, a memoir . /survival guide that describes what it’s really like to get a movie made while still managing to say something nice – or at least benevolently neutral – about everyone in power.”

While she praised former bosses like producer David Geffen, she also noted examples of sexist or boorish behavior, such as the time Geffen casually suggested getting collagen injections.

Much of the book, which was adapted into an hour-long AMC television special, introduced readers to the basics of producing, including the benefits of befriending unglamorous crew members. “You discover everything,” she wrote. “When the production designer says the sets will be ready in a week, and the carpenter tells you he doesn’t even have the wood yet, you know someone is lying.”

As Ms. Obst told it, success in Hollywood comes partly from following the trends and giving the public what it wants. (She titled one chapter “Ride the Horse in the Direction It Goes.”) But she also advised aspiring producers not to be complacent. “The secret that all powerful people know is that no one else gives you power,” she wrote. When it comes to power, she added, “consent cannot be given. Permission must be granted.”

Lynda Joan Rosen, the eldest of three children, was born in Manhattan on April 14, 1950, and grew up in the suburb of Harrison, NY. Her father worked in the garment industry — “we called him the Shoulder Pad King,” Ms. Obst recalled — and her mother was a teacher.

Fascinated by the counterculture of 1960s New York, Ms. Obst skipped school to spot Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village. (She never saw him, she said, although she once caught a glimpse of singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.) She became involved in the left-wing student movement after enrolling at Pitzer College in California and volunteering to to teach in state prison. in Chino, in which prisoners were introduced to the work of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

After transferring to Pomona College, Ms. Obst “turned into a really shitty radical,” as she put it in a 2020 interview for Sagecast, a Pomona podcast. She found that she was more interested in studying Aristotelian ethics than in debating the merits of ROTC programs, and after earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1972, she enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University , with plans to start a career in academia.

After about a year she quit. Around the same time, she met her future husband, literary agent David Obst. He helped her meet writers, including Ephron, who encouraged Ms. Obst to become a magazine editor.

Aided by her husband’s literary connections, Mrs. Obst soon joined the Times, where she edited articles by author Taylor Branch and pianist Glenn Gould. She also edited a book, “The Sixties: The Decade Remembered Now, By the People Who Lived It Then” (1977), which included personal essays by Muhammad Ali and Abbie Hoffman.

Mrs. Obst reluctantly moved to California, after Simon & Schuster tapped her husband to start a manufacturing company in Los Angeles. She had hoped to spend the rest of her career at the Times and said she knew next to nothing about movies.

But she said she began to find her footing in the industry when she learned from Guber, the executive producer of “Midnight Express” (1978), who “gave me the license to do whatever I wanted” at his production company Casablanca.

Ms. Obst later collaborated with Geffen and collaborated with Debra Hill, with whom she produced films including the teen comedy “Adventures in Babysitting” (1987) and director Terry Gilliam’s genre-defying “The Fisher King” (1991), a fantasy movie. comedy-drama that became one of her favorite projects.

“I laughed and I cried,” she told the Times, recalling the first time she read the script. Even when she had to leave the office to run errands, she couldn’t stop reading, she said. “At one point I cried so hard that I grabbed the script and threw it against the windshield.”

After the film came out, Ms. Obst went out on her own, producing such films as “One Fine Day” (1996), starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney, and “The Invention of Lying” (2009), with Ricky Gervais. She also worked as an executive producer in television, including the sitcoms “The Soul Man” and “Hot in Cleveland” and the miniseries “The ’60s” and “The Hot Zone,” based on author Richard Preston’s warning. about infectious diseases.

Mrs. Obst’s marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her brother Rick Rosen, who co-founded the talent agency Endeavor and now runs the television division of its successor, WME, her siblings include a son, Oliver Obst, an executive and producer at 3 Arts Entertainment; her brother Michael Rosen, a former television producer; and two granddaughters.

In her latest book, “Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business” (2013), Ms. Obst lamented recent trends in the industry, including the rise of predictable mega-franchises and action films.

“We have this formula: set piece, set piece, blowing up a city, a dystopian universe, robots doing the same things,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “It’s not easy to make those things fresh.” Moviegoers should “come together and vote with our feet,” she added. “It’s about wanting just a little bit more. A little more drama, a little more reality and a little more emotion.”