Directors downsize their productions' scales

Sam Mendes compares the experience of making a small film to that of driving a small car. "It's more maneuverable and more fun. It may not take you as far, but you'll certainly enjoy the ride," said the director, who's opted this season to break away from his regular film diet of movie-star-heavy melodramas ("Revolutionary Road," "Road to Perdition") for his new, quirky road movie "Away We Go," a picaresque comedy about a young couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) traveling around the United States, searching for the perfect home to raise their impending baby. "I loved it. I loved having to work fast again," he said.

Mendes isn't the only director who has opted to renew creatively by going small. While this summer boasts a raft of de rigueur studio blockbusters, the "Angels & Demonses" and "Star Treks" of the world, it also features a crew of A-list directors pointedly departing from the kinds of films that made their reputations, often chucking the trappings of big-budget filmmaking in search of the high of flying by the seats of their pants. For some, the films serve as bids for the creative freedom that comes with smaller scales and lowered expectations, almost a self-prescribed tonic for the bloat and stress of industrial-sized, high-stakes studio filmmaking. Others simply crave a change of pace.

There are historical precedents, of course; Francis Coppola, for example, delving into "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish" after the tsoris of "One From the Heart" and "Apocalypse Now." (He's also painted on a smaller canvas for his 32nd film, "Tetro," due in theaters June 11.) Or Steven Soderbergh's micro-budget experiments with non-actors like "Bubble" and the recently released "The Girlfriend Experience," which stars porn star Sasha Grey and feels like an ironic, cool chaser after the two-part, 268-minute megalith of "Che" or his trio of glitzy "Ocean" capers with a laundry list of marquee talent.

After a trifecta of "Spider-Man" movies and with a fourth on the horizon, Sam Raimi recently returned to his horror roots with the modestly budgeted "Drag Me to Hell," about a young loan officer cursed by a vengeful gypsy. And Ang Lee is forgoing heavy drama for the first time in over a decade, making the comedic and intimate "Taking Woodstock," which opens in August.