• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • pelled to direct Pay It Forward the minute she finished reading the script in August 1999. "Call me foolish, call me an idiot, but I thought it might make a slight little impact on how people deal with one another," she says. Leder may not be far off the mark: The story has already inspired class- room projects, a college scholarship fund and a New York mural project for schools previously torn by gang rivalry. Unassuming, soft-spoken Leder admits there's a second reason she was drawn to Pay It Forward: "the chance to escape the moniker, 'Mimi Leder, action director.'" Though she's made a name for herself in the macho genre of "boys' films," she says, she never loved action films or intended to direct them. That happened quite by accident when Steven Spielberg unexpectedly asked her to helm The Peacemaker as his first DreamWorks release in 1996. "I asked Steven, 'What makes you think I can direct action?' And he told me, 'You direct action every day on ER,''' recalls Leder, who as a girl attended a Yiddishist-secularist Jewish Mittelschule in L.A. These days, the director is hoping her latest film will create a "pay it forward" movement; she is participating, among other ways, by battling the dearth of women directors in Hollywood. It's an arena where she feels she can make a significant difference. Leder, who's mentored female film- makers through the Directors Guild of America, believes it took her longer to become an established director because she is a woman. "For me personally, things have changed, but for many other women, they haven't," she laments. "Hopefully, I can use my success to help others." ❑ Pay It Forward, rated PG-13, opens today in area theaters. Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment and Kevin Spacey star in "Pay It Forward" On Record e's got a song and a friend for every mile behind ehind him," says Johnny Cash on the intro to the album The Ballad of Ramblin7ack (Vanguard), the soundtrack off of the much-lauded Ramblin' Jack Elliott documentary In 12 words, Cash perfectly cap- tures the essence of Elliott. Ramblin' Jack has been on the move since 1946, when he left his hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y., to become a cowboy, and then found himself hanging around with Woody Guthrie. Elliott is a self-proclaimed Guthrie devotee, and some of the earlier recordings on the album sound like almost perfect Guthrie imitations. However, Elliott's is no mere derivative act. His music has a sweet authenticity all its own. About half the songs on the album were recorded on Elliott's 1998 tour (Elliott is still touring today), oth- ers are culled from live performances and old Ramblin7ack album tracks. in New York's Some were written Washington by Elliott, others by Square, Guthrie and Bob circa 1954. Dylan, and there are some traditional American folk songs. All together Elliott's ramblings paint a picture of a. rural American countryside that's largely missing from current popular culture, Unlike a lot of the folk music that came out of the '60s, Elliott's songs aren't overtly political. Elliott comes across as a happy wanderer. He's the cowboy on the move, the trucker on the lonely highway: a weathered American with a guitar by his side and a song at the ready. And he's funny. In "Cup of Coffee," recorded live from a 1980 Texas performance, Elliott drives his truck out to a rest stop, gets a cup of coffee laced with moonshine and winds up passed out in a flower bed. He's got a knack for making fun of him- self and remaining perfectly charming. Elliott has the respect of some true American folk/country heroes. There are duets here with Cash, Guthrie and Dylan. "Acne," a duet with Dylan per- formed live in 1961, is wonderfully fun. Elliott sings, "You said you'd ask me to the senior prom/ found out I had acne now you won't ask me/ cause have acne." Through the older and more recent tracks; you get a sense of Ramblin Jack's evolution from Guthrie fan to revered artist in his own right, and the album probably would work better if it fol- lowed a chronological order. 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