POWER FLOWER

SPOTLIGHT

'I love L.A.," crows Lili Zanuck, who may be the brainiest wornan residing there. "Where else do peopie build French chateaux with swimming pools in the living room? I even love the superficiality—you scratch the surface here and you know everything." When she first arrived seven years ago, her name was Lili Fini, and she was a twentythree-year-old office manager for the Carnation Company. Then a crony fixed her up with the famous and dashing producer Richard Zanuck (son of Darryl, partner of Brown). Four months later, she was a Hollywood wife. "But I had an innate aptitude for the movie business," Lili explains in her fetchingly chirpy voice. And so while she worked for Zanuck-Brown, she was also cultivating littleknown agents, chatting up future stars. Then she stumbled upon a science-fantasy script called Cocoon; she became its co-producer and hired Ron Howard (Splash) to direct it Producing was fun—"It's like going to school and coloring all day, except you're allowed to color outside the lines." Lili's movie opens later this month, and the word on it is very good. One of these days, some smart studio is going to give her the whole box of crayons.