LOS ANGELES — It was 17 degrees and sleet was falling in Spokane, Wash., last November when Tony Krantz called “action” on the set of “The Big Bang,” a neo-noir thriller starring Antonio Banderas. Actually, because Mr. Krantz was suffering from acute bronchitis, the order came out more like a croak.
“I just kept thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is one of the greatest moments of my life,’ ” he recalled in a recent interview.
¶If that wasn’t the reaction you were expecting, it helps to know that Mr. Krantz, 51, is not a very as-expected kind of guy. He is, after all, attempting his third Hollywood career, beginning as an agent before switching to television producing.
¶Shifting from TV to movies is hard enough. But a Hollywood business-side person making a successful transition into the directing ranks? Cue incredulous laughter.
¶A lot of people dream of becoming the next Quentin Tarantino or David Lynch. That is exactly what Mr. Krantz is trying to do. “The Big Bang,” which opens in limited release on Friday, represents his theatrical debut after a series of direct-to-DVD gigs. His company, Flame Ventures, produced “The Big Bang” for just under $10 million.
¶“I had to figure out how to hire myself because nobody was going to give me the bat and ball without anything to show as a director,” he said. Filmmaking has been a goal since he wrote a paper in the eighth grade setting out what he wanted to do when he grew up. Becoming an agent and producing, he said, were just pit stops.
¶Mr. Krantz got his start in show business, like so many do, in the mailroom of Creative Artists Agency, although his start in life was considerably higher (his mother is the best-selling novelist Judith Krantz). He rose through C.A.A.’s television ranks, eventually spending 15 years there and putting together some of the seminal series of the 1990s, including “Twin Peaks,” “Melrose Place” and “ER.”
¶He left the agent life in 1997, when he became a founding partner of Imagine Television with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. Under Mr. Krantz’s leadership, Imagine delivered cultural hits like “Sports Night,” “Felicity” and “24.” After five years, a rift with Mr. Grazer over Mr. Krantz’s plans for growth led him to leave and pursue his directing dream.
¶“It’s always a cool thing when someone switches careers — it is wildly unexpected, which is what makes it so great,” said J. J. Abrams, the writer and director, whose credits include “Lost,” “Alias” and “Felicity.”
¶“I’m sure Tony appreciates the challenges of dealing with crew and schedule and actors in a way he never did before,” Mr. Abrams added. “It is harder to be told you only have one day to shoot nine pages than it is to tell a director that he or she only has one day to shoot nine pages.”
¶Mr. Krantz said that, while the directing road has not been easy, in some ways it is familiar territory. “It was hard for people to take me seriously as a producer at first, too,” he said. “I equate it to seeing your teacher out of school. It feels a little weird. Now, as a director, it’s the same thing again.”
¶The R-rated “Big Bang” is undoubtedly one of the stranger films to make it to theaters this year. Written by Erik Jendresen, who is best known as a writer and producer for HBO’s “Band of Brothers,” the movie stars Mr. Banderas as a Los Angeles private investigator who is hired by a Russian boxer to find his girlfriend and a stash of diamonds.
¶The investigation begins at the home of a movie star (James Van Der Beek) who craves crystal meth and has a thing for dwarfs. Another stop is the studio of a pornographer, played by Snoop Dogg. The trail leads to the New Mexico desert, where a billionaire and a particle physicist are trying to recreate the Big Bang in an underground complex.
¶“It’s stories colliding like atoms colliding,” Mr. Krantz said.
¶William Fichtner (“Crash”) co-stars as a police officer.
¶Added for good measure: Sikhs, purple smoke and a kinky waitress. Johnny Marr, best known as the lead guitarist for the Smiths, wrote the score. Mr. Krantz said the film’s visual style was partly inspired by the surreal photography of Gregory Crewdson.
¶“The Big Bang” includes obvious parallels to the avant-garde work of Mr. Lynch, the force behind “Twin Peaks.” Mr. Krantz was quite close to the reclusive Mr. Lynch at one time, even helping to produce “Mulholland Drive” in 2001. (That thriller had initially been packaged as a television show but was rejected by networks.) Mr. Lynch declined to comment for this article.
¶For his part, Mr. Banderas said he had no fears about doing a film — especially this film — with an untested director.
¶“I am an actor who has risked my career many times to work with first-time directors and people outside of the mainstream,” he said. “There was something in Tony’s vision of the project that interested me. It has to do with a certain naïve approach to the material and a visual sense of the story.”
¶Mr. Banderas added that Mr. Krantz was “gentle, committed to his piece and to his ideas.”
¶Whether art house audiences respond to “The Big Bang” remains to be seen, but Mr. Krantz is already working on his next film: “Honey Vicarro,” a drama about a sexy 1960s female private eye.
¶“It’s a project I’ve been chasing for 10 years,” Mr. Krantz said, growing animated. “Think ‘Boogie Nights’ meets ‘Network.’ ”
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