Learning to adapt

SIX YEARS ago, when Gina Prince-Bythewood was first offered "The Secret Life of Bees" to adapt into a screenplay and direct, she blew it off without even reading the book. Never mind that Sue Monk Kidd's novel about a young white girl growing up in the civil-rights-era South was a bestseller. Prince-Bythewood had just come off directing two movies without a break and she was exhausted.

So the filmmaker was surprised by her reaction a few years later when an actress friend mentioned she was going in to audition for "Bees." "I got so offended and jealous," she recalls. "I was like, 'No, that's my movie!' and I hadn't even read the book yet." She went home that night, read the story in one sitting and realized, "Oh my God, I messed up."

Two months later, the film was in turnaround and she was offered the project again. This time she was ready.

Second chances abound in Prince-Bythewood's career. As a UCLA student, she applied for the undergraduate film program and was rejected. Against her counselor's advice, she appealed the decision, writing an impassioned letter to the board, and it relented.

After graduation, she landed an interview at "A Different World," one of her favorite television shows. "It was by far the worst interview I ever had in my life," she says, cringing at the memory as she sits in a West Hollywood cafe. Facing a room full of writers and producers, "I was just giving monosyllabic answers. I didn't know what I was doing, like you should come in with stories."

She didn't get the job, but again, she didn't give up. Calling producer Susan Fales every other day for a month, she was finally given another shot. "I would never do that today," she says. "Now I know how annoying that must have been." She got more than a job; her future husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood (writer-director, "Biker Boyz"), was on the writing staff. The couple has two sons.

After five years working in TV, Prince-Bythewood wrote her first film script. "Love and Basketball" (2000), about a female college ballplayer dealing with romance and ambition, was rejected by every studio in town. But someone at Sundance got ahold of it, and after attending labs for screenwriting and directing, Prince-Bythewood found producers and made the movie.