ENCORE: You were a teacher yourself. What was that experience like?

LANSING: When I grew up, the careers that were available for women were to be a teacher or a nurse. I went to Northwestern University and I got a degree in speech. I was qualified to teach English and Math in high school. I got my teaching credential when I came to L.A., which I did the day after I graduated college.

I purposely chose teaching high school math and English in Watts and East L.A. because I wanted to work with inner-city, underprivileged kids. It was right after the Watts riots. It was just a terribly rough time, but you could see in the kids that there was a hunger to learn and it’s the same hunger that you have today. It’s a matter of finding a way to engage them and finding a way to make the subject matter relevant and interesting to them.
I was a long-term sub at almost every school in the area. It was a challenge because when you get kids in high school in math, it’s often too late to generate any interest, and it’s a subject that they had to take to graduate. I was more successful in English where you can still instill something in a kid.

Teaching was my second greatest love. My first love was to be in the film business. Every day after I was teaching I would change my clothes and try to get a job in the movie business, which I eventually did. I feel guilty saying it was my second love because I did love it. I just always wanted to be in the movie business. Film was this incredibly powerful means of communication. It could affect legislation or the way you think or feel. In a way it was teaching, just in a different way.

ENCORE: Where did your social conscience come from?

LANSING: I’ve had it all my life. It starts with my mother who was probably my greatest role model. I saw she never turned her back on anyone. We weren’t a wealthy family so it wasn’t writing checks, it was with time.

She escaped Nazi Germany. She had to wear a yellow star. She came here when she was 17 years old by herself. She didn’t speak a word of English. She sewed dresses and eventually married my dad who had a heart attack and died when she was 32 and he was 42, and left her with my sister Judy and myself. I remember it like it was yesterday: Two men coming and saying to my mother, “We’ll take over the business, Margo, don’t worry.” And she said, “No, you’ll teach me how to run the business.” So she was an incredible role model for me, not just in work but in terms of her philanthropic and caring attitude toward everybody.

ENCORE: Did you try to reflect that in your movies?

LANSING: I did. From the time I was a child I saw the effect of these movies. I saw the “Pawnbroker,” even a movie like “Imitation of Life,” where a woman passed for white, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Movies can really change a culture. Film must always entertain you but it can do more than entertain. It can actually make you change the way you think about something and change the way you feel and affect your emotions and affect your mind. “China Syndrome” and “Gump” and “Brave Heart” and even movies like “Save the Last Dance,” which is an interfaith relationship. I was deeply influenced by “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” I love pure entertainment, too, but to me the highest kind of art is art that not only entertains but gets into the culture and really becomes part of the culture and becomes part of the dialogue. “The Accused” I think really affected the way people looked at rape victims. Or even a little teenage movie like “Save the Last Dance.” They all affect you when you’re growing up and they affect you as adults.

ENCORE: So why would you ever leave (the movie business)?

LANSING: I always dreamed that if I was financially secure and if I had achieved all the dreams that I had in the movie business, which fortunately and luckily I have, that when I was 60 I wanted to have another chapter. And I always wanted that chapter to be about giving back. It seemed to me that it would be the best chapter of life.

It started when I was in my 30s, continued in my 40s and got really, really serious in my early 50s. Your priorities start to switch. I started with organizations like Big Brother, Big Sister, and was involved in Israel and women’s rights. When my mother died, I got involved in cancer research. I couldn’t understand how this wonderful 64-year-old woman could die and the suffering that I saw her go through. The cancer literally ate her body and I felt like it had to happen for a reason. And the reason had to be that somehow or another to honor her life, to honor her memory, I would become a cancer advocate and start in a little way funding scientific research, trying to raise money for scientific research that somebody hopefully would find a cure for this disease so no one else had to suffer as I watched my mother suffer. And every day I did that, I felt somehow or another, I was keeping her alive, keeping her memory alive.

I still love movies. I still go to the movies all the time. I’m still cheering my friends on. But your priorities start to switch. At one time there’s nothing you want more than to be in a script meeting or on a movie set. And then, as you get a little older, the balance starts to shift. You start to like being a regent (of the University of California) or being involved with some other cause just as much. And then you start to wish that you were spending more time with the causes and they start to become more important to you. It gets to a point where you know you’re ready to leave. You want to start this third chapter. You want to give back. That’s more important to you than making another movie.

It’s the payoff for all those years of hard work. It’s the reward. You feel more authentic and more alive than you’ve ever felt in your whole life. It’s the payoff that allows you to get up each day and do exactly what you want to do, be in total control of your destiny and to give back and to actually see the effect that you can have by starting a program or maybe changing in some small way the way people think, or the culture or a human being. It is the payoff and I feel the kind of satisfaction that I’ve never known in my life except during this time of life. I really do view it as the happiest time of my life.

One of the most thrilling days of my life was just a few weeks ago when all the lawsuits (over the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative) were over and we issued the $250 million in bonds and they sold out in less than 24 hours. All that money is going to research, not just for cancer but for all diseases and hopefully we’ll see some real progress.

And the Purpose Prize has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I consider it one of the most wonderful honors to be privileged enough to read about these people and then to meet them. Every single one of the Purpose Prize winners inspires me. I’m humbled in their presence. They inspire me and I get ideas from them. Sometimes I work with them and try to bring their programs to L.A.

ENCORE: Now you want even more people to be able to make a contribution. How?

LANSING: I am very excited to start a movement called Prime Time, which deals with the prime time of life, the third chapter, when you don’t retire you rewire. I think there should be a place for all of us to go, like a Peace Corps, where you do voluntary public service and you get a tax credit, or you get a paying encore job, such as with the EnCorps teaching program. To me this time of life is when you should do socially relevant things. They say 60 is the new 40. I think 60 is the new 60. We’re young. We’re healthy. We’ve got at least 25 years of good productivity in us and I really think the world can be changed if people will view us as an asset and put us to work in either voluntary or paying positions. We’ve got to change the role of philanthropy. It can’t just be about dollars. It has to be about good ideas and time.

ENCORE: A movement requires some kind of mobilization and a call to action, doesn’t it?

LANSING: We’re working on that. I’d like to figure out a way to get some candidate to say, “If elected, I’m starting this.” That’s all that Kennedy did (to launch the Peace Corps) — a simple speech.
I want to flip the model. I want to flip the Teach for America model. I want to flip the Peace Corps model. It’s always about young people and I want to say, “60 is young, or 65, or 70. Put us back to work and let us have either paying jobs, part-time jobs or volunteer jobs.” And I’d like a world where everyone did two years of public service, where that’s just what you did.
ENCORE: You’ve started this in a small way with Prime Time LAUSD.

LANSING: I’ve learned that there is no shortage of people that want to do it. We have to show people that volunteers can really be an asset and that it is something that is extremely positive. The thing you learn whenever you’re trying to change a culture or start a movement is to be patient. I come from a culture where it took us 10 years, even when I was the head of the studio, to get “Forrest Gump” made. It took me eight years when I was a producer to get “Fatal Attraction” greenlit. Seven years for “The Accused.” I have great resiliency and an ability to never give up. I won’t give up until this is part of the national culture.

ENCORE: The EnCorps Teacher Initiative has gotten off to a fast start.

LANSING: I’ve learned about the generosity of the corporations and about the value of public/private partnerships. In January, we start recruiting the people from the corporations. So far it looks like we won’t have any problems. The governor (Schwarzenegger) was great. That press conference launched it. And that drew attention and that gave us the credibility and made the project move much faster.
We have more corporations now that we can handle for the first year. They see that they’re training their future employees. They see that it’s a civic responsibility. They see it as a way to treat their employees with dignity and respect. It’s a win/win for everybody. It’s also tax deductible. Now we’re working with them to recruit the people. They go to school and they go right into the internship (certification) program and into the classrooms in September.

ENCORE: Do you think there’s an “encore” trend? What do you hear from your peers who are in the same stage of life?

LANSING: I think we’re at the tipping point of a huge movement as the boomers turn 60. We are the generation that marched. We’re the generation that said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Now we’re over 30. We’re the generation that changed the world once and I think we’re going to change it again.
I think most people look forward to this chapter. People are constantly coming to me and saying, “Tell me about it.” You’ve got to find what your passion is. It really doesn’t make any difference, but you’ve got to find out what it is and you better start young in figuring it out. You can’t just turn 60 and not have a plan.

You’ve got to lay the seeds early. I had no transition. I was already a (University of California) regent. I was already involved in cancer research. I was already involved in education. I just went from one busy day into another busy day. All these projects are like little movies to me. I feel younger than I’ve ever felt. I feel more authentic than I’ve ever felt. I feel this will be the most important part of my life.