Showtime's 'Girl Thing' is a guy thing, too

Women definitely own center stage in "A Girl Thing," and Rose isn't apologizing for that.

"Everything is always about men -- from their point of view, their feelings, their situations," said Rose. "This is one of the few times where it's all about what women think and feel."

"It's about time we have the platform, thank you very much."

In other words, consider "A Girl Thing" testosterone displacement therapy.

The film, showing in two parts on consecutive Saturdays, Jan. 20 and 27, at 8 p.m. EST, offers a quartet of dramas. Stockard Channing plays a psychiatrist who's the single link; her patients are the focus of the stories.

Elle MacPherson's Lauren has a fear of intimacy that's not helped by a really bad blind double date with Bob (Brent Spiner), Casey (Kate Capshaw) and Frank (Bruce Greenwood). An unexpected romance with Casey, however, brings a change of perspective.

In the second hour, sisters (Glenne Headly, Rebecca De Mornay, Allison Janney) find their mother playing family peacemaker from the grave: She challenges them to get along or lose their inheritance.

Lynn Whitfield, Mia Farrow, Linda Hamilton and Scott Bakula star in the tale of a wife who enlists her husband's girlfriend to make him pay for his infidelity.

The film concludes with Camryn Manheim as an angry woman who snaps after seeking counseling from Channing, putting her and other patients at risk. S. Epatha Merkerson, Peta Wilson and Margo Martindale co-star.

The tight shooting schedule -- 34 days -- brought out the best in everyone, said Rose, a veteran filmmaker whose recent TV projects include "The Truth About Jane" and "An Unexpected Life." She has worked repeatedly with Channing, Hamilton, Whitfield and others.

"These women who are used to being pampered and fawned over and taking their time hit the floor running and did everything I asked them to do," she said. "They left any ego they had at the door and they were team players."

Joked Whitfield: "I probably would have had my arm broken if I hadn't done the project." The actress said she was thrilled to work with Farrow for the first time and reveled in improv scenes with her and Hamilton.

So what's a girl thing, in her opinion?

"Whatever a girl wants it to be is what it is," Whitfield replied. "It's the wonderful and crazy and hard and harsh and complicated things that we are. Whatever a girl thinks it should be for her."<