Lee Daniels and Precious: It Takes Guts (In A Perfect World)

The usual joke about film producers is that nobody knows what they do. In the case of Lee Daniels, producer and director of the upcoming film Precious, the question is what doesn't he do.

The New York Times Magazine published a finely written and deeply reported cover feature about Daniels and his film by Lynn Hirschberg. I came away with a fresh appreciation for the bravery that can be required to get a story told -- not only in cobbling together his projects' financing, making unlikely casting calls and convincing stars to take a gamble, but in the choice of story.

Just like Daniels' previous films, Precious was and is a hard sell. It's the painful account of a 350-pound illiterate 16-year-old who is pregnant for the second time by her father, horribly abused by her mother and H.I.V. positive. Even though it is based on a published novel, you can be sure Daniels struggled to find backers. It helps, of course, that he's tackled tough subjects before: He produced Monster's Ball,about bigotry and interracial love in the South, and The Woodsman, about a convicted pedophile played by Kevin Bacon. It help that Halle Berry won an Oscar for Monster's Ball.

But I know that whatever credibility his previous successes gave him, it doesn't get any easier. What may matter most is that he's an outsider -- a real one, not a fake Hollywood one like Brad Pitt, as Helen Mirren tells Hirschberg -- and he knows what the bottom looks like. (Daniels, who grew up in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood, is gay, African-American, the son of a policeman and a victim of his abuse.)

That means that Daniels is willing to go places that most other filmmakers won't. That takes life experience and self-confidence, but most of all it takes guts.

I don't know if the audiences will follow when it opens Nov. 6, but I consider myself well-advised by Daniels' lead: Be brave.