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

“You have to develop a thick skin,” he told The New York Times in 1996. “You have to be able to depersonalize the drama without becoming depersonalized. Every day there are crises, dramas and disappointments. Just to survive without getting thrown you have to be tough.”

Diminutive but energetic, with a husky voice and a wry sensibility, Obst worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine before arriving in Hollywood in the late 1970s, exploring potential projects as a “development girl” under producer Peter Guber.

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

A decade later, Obst’s career took off after reconnecting with writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron, a friend from the New York journalism world. Ms. Obst produced Ephron’s directorial debut, “This Is My Life” (1992), and executive produced Ephron’s romantic comedy “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993), which grossed more than $227 million. all over the world.

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

“It’s not a change to work on a sci-fi movie,” she told the website Salon in 2013. “I’m just a geek who loves romantic comedies.”

As Obst settled into her career in Hollywood in the 1980s, she also returned to her journalistic roots, writing highly featured articles for magazines such as Harper’s and Premiere. He went on to write two books inspired by his time in show business, beginning with “Hello, He Lied: And Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches” (1996), which Publishers Weekly described as “a quirky hybrid of Hollywood, memoir/guide of survival that describes what it’s really like to make a movie 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 pointed out examples of sexist or rude behavior, like the time Geffen casually suggested she get collagen injections.

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

As Ms. Obst said, success in Hollywood comes in part from following trends and giving the public what they want. (One chapter was titled “Ride the Horse in the Direction It’s Going.”) But he also advised aspiring producers not to be complacent. “The secret that all powerful people know is that no one else gives you the power,” he wrote. When it comes to power, he added, “no permission can be granted. Permission must be obtained.”

Lynda Joan Rosen, the oldest of three children, was born in Manhattan. was born on April 14, 1950 and grew up in suburban Harrison, New York. His father worked in the garment business (“we called him the shoulder pad king,” Ms. Obst recalled) and his mother was a schoolteacher.

Fascinated by the New York counterculture of the 1960s, Obst skipped school to try to find 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 leftist student movement after enrolling at Pitzer College in California and volunteering to teach in the state prison. in China, introducing the prisoners to the work of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

After transferring to Pomona College, Ms. Obst “became a really terrible radical,” as she put it in a 2020 interview for Sagecast, a Pomona podcast. She discovered that she was more interested in studying Aristotelian ethics than in debating the merits of ROTC programs, and after receiving a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1972 she enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University, intending to launch a career. in the academic world.

She quit after about a year. Around that 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. He 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.

Ms. Obst reluctantly moved to California, after Simon & Schuster recruited her husband to start a production company in Los Angeles. He expected to spend the rest of his career at the Times and said he barely knew anything about movies.

But he said he began to find his place in the industry while learning from Guber, the executive producer of “Midnight Express” (1978), who “gave me license to do whatever I wanted” at his Casablanca production company.

Obst later worked with Geffen and teamed with Debra Hill, with whom he produced films such as the teen comedy “Adventures in Babysitting” (1987) and director Terry Gilliam’s genre-defying “The Fisher King” (1991). , a fantasy film. Dramatic comedy that became one of his favorite projects.

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

After the film’s release, Obst went out on his own and produced films such 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 for the comedies “The Soul Man” and “Hot in Cleveland” and for the miniseries “The ’60s” and “The Hot Zone,” based on the book Warning by author Richard Preston. on infectious diseases.

Mrs. Obst’s marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his brother Rick Rosen, who co-founded the talent agency Endeavor and now heads the television department of its successor company, WME, survivors include a son, Oliver Obst, manager and producer of 3 Arts Entertainment; his brother Michael Rosen, a former television producer; and two granddaughters.

In his last book, “Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business” (2013), Obst lamented recent trends in the industry, including the rise of megafranchises and predictable action movies.

“We have this formula: setting, setting, blowing up a city, dystopian universe, robots doing the same things,” he told The Guardian in an interview. “It’s not easy to make that stuff fresh.” Moviegoers needed to “come together and vote with our feet,” he added. “It’s about wanting a little more. “A little more drama, a little more reality and a little more emotion.”