Ostensibly, I produce movies for a living. The most recent movie I had a hand
in producing won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pretty heady stuff, to
be sure. The reality, though, is slightly less fulfilling. We shot that film
two years ago and, since then, I’ve produced nothing. Zilch. Not a frame of
film, a byte of sound, a kernel of popcorn.
How, you may ask, does one survive in the film business without actually
making any movies? Or, more relevantly, what the hell have I been doing for
the past two years? Good question. Here’s the answer, which is really a
guide for those of you looking either to become a producer or waste your
time completely. The two are often indistinguishable.
This is how it starts: I read hundreds of scripts, articles and books, watch
countless films for remake possibilities, listen to tons of ideas – and most
of them are crap. It’s like a beauty pageant where everyone has either a
monobrow or two noses. When you are reading a script, only one thing truly
matters, which I learnt from my old boss Harvey Weinstein: is it a movie?
Not is it a good idea, or is it well written, or is there some big star
attached. Is it a movie?
Two years ago, I read a script from a first-time screenwriter with several
novels under his belt that left me giddy. The characters were real, the
structure was sound and the story was captivating. That’s not to say it
didn’t have some issues; no script comes out perfectly formed. It would be
the genetic equivalent of a baby emerging with Brad Pitt’s face. But it was
pretty close.
It was about a patrolman on the border between California and Mexico. He had
done time in Iraq and was now serving his country in a different way. The
reality of his life, though, was grim and fairly hopeless. No matter how
many illegal activities he and his cohorts stop, countless criminals slip
through the cracks. It’s a numbers game, and the odds favour the bad guys.
So here you have a good man in an increasingly desperate situation. He’s
trying to keep his wife and young daughter intact, provide for them, but he
knows he’ll never get to where he needs to be. Faced with this bleak
reality, he is approached by some Mexican criminals with an offer: let a
particular vehicle pass through and he’ll be paid handsomely. It’s a
victimless crime – no drugs or terrorists, merely high-priced foreign call
girls who can’t easily enter a post9/11 America.
He decides to look the other way and take the money, which enables him to
support his family for a year. Unfortunately, he’s asked soon afterwards to
let another car through, then another and another. The Mexicans have him,
and they dictate the rules of the game, including threatening his family if
he doesn’t continue to comply.
It read like a classic thriller with characters you really cared for, plus the
added bonus of being extremely topical. Stories about border corruption were
splashed across the covers of every newspaper, and the writer had clearly
done his research. I thought to myself, yes, Harvey, it’s a movie!
I bought it. The movie had all the earmarks of a critical and commercial
success, with a great role fora leadingman. Already feeling a fat producer’s
fee burning a hole in my pocket, I called my travel agent and asked her to
look into renting a villa for two weeks in St Barts in the West Indies.
Then it all went wrong. I sent the script out to several agents, who had many
of their top director clients read it. I found myself fielding calls from
many of my heroes, film-makers I’d dreamt of working with, along with
several exciting up-and-comers. I finally decided on someone in the middle:
he’d just directed a very well received film whose lead actor was nominated
for an Academy Award. Actors would line up to work with him, I was assured,
and every studio was dying to make his next film.
The first thing he did was get the writer to rewrite the script, tipping it
slightly into more “character drama” territory. Not satisfied, he then
rewrote it himself, shoving it completely out of “commercial thriller”
territory. I called my travel agent, asking if a week in a hotel in Miami
wasn’t a more practical idea.
Six months had passed. We sent the new draft out to all the top actors, and
the responses felt like what models must hear every day – too dark, too
small, too thin. One well-known actor, possibly the most humourless man I’ve
ever met – which, in my business, is saying a lot – loved the script but was
“looking to branch out into comedy”. I wasn’t quite sure which branch, and I
certainly didn’t want to find out.
The director got a very well respected actor to read it, and the actor loved
it, with one caveat: he wanted a rewrite done, with his input. They huddled
together for weeks and emerged with a script that was basically a 90-minute
monologue about a guy who works at the border. At least, I think he worked
at the border.
Burying my concerns, I sent the “package” out to all the major studios. The
silence was deafening. One by one, various executives read it and, one by
one, they passed. There was a nibble here and there, but it was usually by
someone in the mail-room with – sadly – no authority to greenlight a $30
million movie. (But they obviously had immaculate taste.)
After months of waiting and pleading, I found a studio that was willing to
finance it – for roughly the budget of a documentary short.
A year had passed since I bought the script.
It was time to regroup. After much Sturm und Drang – mostly on my
part – the director and I parted ways. I decided on a different approach. I
went back to the original script and tried, once again, to court a big-name
actor. Surely someone would see in it what I first did.
Miraculously, it worked. After several months of near-meetings and
almost-conver-sations, I finally sat down with a recent Oscar winner who was
perfect for the part. He loved it, he said, one of the best scripts he’d
ever read. I sat and listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop – he’d
want the character to be deaf, he’d want the story to take place in
Kazakhstan, he’d want a competent producer. But all I got was a yes, he was
in, and let’s go get ourselves a director.
Now I had a movie star. The directors started calling again, and I even heard
from one I’d originally passed on because he wanted to add chase scenes and
explosions – just stick ‘em in anywhere, he’d said, that’s what audiences
really wanted nowadays. Now we had a 30-minute conversation where he
pretended to forget his earlier thoughts and proclaimed the script was
“perfect as it is”.
This was shaping up to be quite a movie, and the star promised me this would
be his next film, even mentioning it on a talk show while promoting another
movie.
Two weeks in St. Bart’s: $15,000.
There was a buzz around town, which always happens when a star commits to a
project, and I returned to the ring for the easy part – going back to the
studios with my shiny, new, glorious package. Only I quickly discovered that
the package wasn’t so glorious after all.
The star was (and, in fact, still is) African-American. His wife would be as
well, and the “other woman” in the movie would be played by a Latino
actress. For some reason everyone was calling my movie an “urban film” (code
for a movie for black people).
The part had been written for a white guy, but this was a fantastic actor, and
people of all colours and ethnicities work on the border. Even so, my
casting choice would prove to be a huge problem; apparently, there are many
countries in the world where movies starring African-Americans other than
Will Smith need not apply.
Nobody in town would finance the movie, because it had literally no appeal
overseas. My weak protests – wouldn’t people go if it were actually a good
movie? – were met with laughter. What does a “good movie” have to do with
anything?
It had now been a year and a half since I last stepped foot on a set.
People in the industry were beginning to wonder – what was I working on? Calls
were going unreturned. I developed the unmistakable stench of desperation.
My wife started leaving the mortgage payment notices (and her shopping
receipts) on my bedside table.
A producer friend once told me: “You’re either making a movie or you’re not.
Everything else is just talk.” (He hasn’t worked in five years, but that’s
another story.)
I clearly wasn’t making a movie. What I was doing was bleeding money. I had
rung up a profoundly large credit card bill (wooing the various talents),
ludicrously high legal fees (negotiating everyone’s deals) and astounding
costs for therapy and medication (very poor health care system in America).
This was in addition to actually buying the script, paying for rewrites and
flying people back and forth for meetings.
Stuck in Purgatory, I’m currently faced with several decisions. Find a new
actor? Hire a different director? Wait for the studio regimes to change and
pray that someone responds to my script? Fire my travel agent? Get a good
divorce lawyer?
It’s now been two years since I last produced a movie, and the script sits
prominently on my desk, taunting me daily. Help me, it pleads, get me to the
screen where I belong. Heed the signs, people tell me, this one just wasn’t
meant to be. And still I carry on, for some unknown reason. Passion?
Stubbornness? Desire? Stupidity? Who knows – it’s probably a combination of
all of the above, but mainly the latter.
For these are the tools of my trade. I’m a producer.
