The New York Times felt that Heche was "refreshingly cast in Marion's role", while noting that her portrayal was "almost as demure as Ms. Leigh's, yet she's also more headstrong and flirty". Her 1998 films were the only theatrically released films in which she had a leading role. Heche also starred opposite Ed Harris in the 1999 film, The Third Miracle, directed by Agnieszka Holland. 1998–2001: Directing projects Heche spent much of the 1998 to 2001 working on film directing projects, often writing her own screenplays. She pulled back from acting roles during this period and had relatively few acting appearances from 1999 to 2001. Her first effort at writing and directing was a 1998 short film titled Stripping for Jesus, which was about an evangelical Christian stripper who writes Bible verses on her body so as to reach clients "in a language that they understand". According to Heche, the film was a metaphor for "my life as I saw it". The film was fully self-financed. Heche starred in the film along with Suzanne Krull and Karen Black. Her next several films were made for cable television and featured then-partner Ellen DeGeneres in varying degrees of participation. The first of these (and the one with the widest release) came in 2000, when Heche directed a segment of If These Walls Could Talk 2 for HBO. An anthology film, it consisted of a series of segments about lesbian life in individual years over several decades. In Heche's segment, "2000", DeGeneres and Sharon Stone starred as a contemporary lesbian couple trying to have a baby together via artificial insemination. DeGeneres was also one of the executive producers of the film. In 2001, Heche directed another anthology film segment, this time part of On the Edge, a Showtime anthology of science fiction stories directed by different actresses. Heche's segment, titled Reaching Normal, was her screenplay adaptation of the short story Command Performance by Walter M. Miller Jr. The segment features Andie MacDowell and Paul Rudd in the story of a housewife who enters into a telepathic extramarital affair; the segment includes a cameo appearance by DeGeneres. Heche also directed a documentary that was to be released in 2001, Ellen DeGeneres: American Summer, about DeGeneres' 2000 stand-up comedy tour. The project was never completed. DeGeneres, who financed the documentary, states that she "burned" the film after attempting to salvage the project following the couple's