Becoming a Film Producer

Boris Kachka

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501159459
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

A revealing guide to a career as a film producer written by acclaimed author Boris Kachka and based on the real-life experiences of award-winning producers—required reading for anyone considering a path to this profession. At the center of every successful film is a producer. Producers bring films to life by orchestrating the major players—screenwriters, directors, talent, distributors, financiers—to create movie magic. Bestselling author and journalist Boris Kachka shadows award-winning producers Fred Berger and Michael London and emerging producer Siena Oberman as movies are pitched, financed, developed, shot, and released. Fly between Los Angeles and New York, with a stop in Utah at the Sundance Film Festival, for a candid look at this high-stakes profession. Learn how the industry has changed over the decades—from the heyday of studios to the reign of streaming platforms. Gain insight and wisdom from these masters' years of experience producing films, from the indie darlings Sideways and Milk to Academy Award–winning blockbusters like La La Land. Here is how the job is performed at the highest level.

1 WAIT, WHAT DOES A PRODUCER DO?

Like many film producers, Siena Oberman lives in Los Angeles but works and sleeps wherever she is needed. In early December 2019, that was the vicinity of Gravesend, an old Italian neighborhood in South Brooklyn that was the setting for a low-budget movie she spent months building from scratch, a transgressive—albeit cameo-packed—mob drama titled The Birthday Cake.

Tackling her fourth film as a lead producer by age twenty-five, Oberman is definitely an outlier, roughly the same age as the assistants answering her hourly calls to the tax attorneys, movie-star agents, and private equity managers she needs to keep her project afloat. This particular project is a precarious one, a low-budget indie feature held aloft through foreign investment, tax credits, well-connected talent, and the tirelessness of Oberman, the wunderkind without whom none of it would have happened.

One blustery day toward the end of the shoot, filming has been going on for a couple of hours by the time Oberman arrives on set—a stolid Italianate house (rented out by the production) on a modest block, distinguishable now by the noisy generator on the winter-brown patch of front lawn. It’s almost 11 a.m. Oberman would have arrived earlier, but she was waylaid by a tense phone call closing the remaining financing. Slight, angular, and shockingly calm—considering the freezing temperature, the thousand stressors, and the caffeine coursing through her—she doesn’t look like the most powerful person on the production. In fact, she is and she isn’t.

There’s the talent. Val Kilmer, for example. There’s also Paul Sorvino, who’s been delayed after driving many hours into the city; even if he makes it later in the afternoon, the order of the shoot will have to be rearranged. There’s the writer/producer/actor team who first pitched the project, including rising star Shiloh Fernandez, musician Jimmy Giannopoulos (the film’s director), and filmmaker Raul Bermudez (a writer and producer), who called in enough favors to stud the cast with names that Oberman’s backers feel comfortable with (from Ashley Benson to Ewan McGregor). There are the international financiers—one whose money seems stuck in South America, or maybe the Isle of Man, without which Oberman can’t pay the crew.

These financiers are technically producers too; some have creative input, some only bring money or connections to actors. Money is power, and power will get you a producer credit on a movie. But in order to produce a movie in the sense defined in this book, you need to take responsibility. No matter how powerful you are, you need to be in charge. You need to cajole the financiers; fill out the tax-credit forms; remind the first-time feature director to get enough camera angles; scan the past week’s footage for continuity because it snowed; procure money for marketing materials; find a cozy spot in the basement for your financiers so they can watch the shoot on monitors without getting in the way.

These are the problems Oberman had this morning, before the Wi-Fi conked out, the fire alarm went off, the actors’ union delivered an ultimatum, a crew member’s temper flared over all the people on his set. When I asked Oberman, toward the end of the day, whether this was the typical way she allocated her time, she said there was no typical way. “For me the priority is: What’s the biggest emergency?”

---

IN STATE AND MAIN, David Mamet’s wicked satire about a Hollywood film production camped out on location in a small town, a director played by William H. Macy is told that the only horse in town is “booked.” “Tell the guy, get me the horse!” he says. “I’ll give him an associate producer credit.” Then he laughs, adding, “I’ll give the horse an associate producer credit!” A screenwriter who overhears him (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) asks a young assistant what an associate producer credit is. “It’s what you give to your secretary instead of a raise,” says the assistant.

It’s a funny scene and, for all its cynicism, a window onto what a producer does. It illustrates the kind of horse-trading (sorry) necessary to get a production off the ground, and it touches on a central paradox of the job: “Producer” is a credit everyone seems to want on a film, but because it applies so broadly, few filmgoers have any idea what a producer actually does.

“Most people outside of the movies just truly don’t understand what it means and make the assumption that it’s very finance-driven,” says one producer. “Which is pretty much not the case. There is a perversion of what the word means that also includes people who finance—which is a version of buying the credit without doing the work.” Or as Lynda Obst, a producer and the author of the industry memoir Hello, He Lied, told me, “It’s the only title anyone can just decide to join. But some of us have to stay and make the movie.”

There’s an old Hollywood joke: How many producers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Twelve: one to screw in the light bulb, eleven to take credit for it. Those eleven people may be movie stars taking a credit in exchange for a pay cut; family members cut in on a deal; celebrities lending their imprimatur; or, far more often, financial partners who have helped pay for and sell the movie but done little else.

This isn’t a book about the eleven who take credit; this is about the so-called creative producer, the one who does the work. If only it were as simple as screwing in a light bulb. The best way to figure out what it entails is to watch someone do it. Over the summer and fall of 2019, I followed three exceptional producers at different phases of their careers, watching how their jobs evolve hour to hour and day to day. In following all three and interviewing a wider array of people in Hollywood and independent film, I got a sense of how the job progresses from decade to decade of a producer’s life—and then, even more broadly, how the industry has changed over those decades, from the heyday of the studios to the reign of the streaming platforms.

Oberman, the twentysomething in charge of The Birthday Cake, isn’t exactly a typical up-and-comer, but she occupies the niches of a producer just making her bones. She works mostly on movies that cost less than $5 million and takes in fees in the five figures. She barely has time to sleep and, having fewer people to delegate to, must wear many more hats.

Higher up the chain is Fred Berger. Now thirty-nine, he’s one of two partners in Automatik, a young production company that’s pushing up into budgets as high as $100 million on films and TV streamers. Berger had his first big break as one of the lead producers on the prestige blockbuster La La Land, and since then he’s rapidly built up credits and experience. He’s a talented and confident negotiator with deep artistic bones, adept at handling bigger projects and egos, but still working his way up to permanent stability.

Finally, I spent time with Michael London, who at sixty-one has been through several transformations in the industry and his own career. He’s been an executive at a mainstream production company as well as a studio (Fox); a semi-independent studio-backed producer; a completely free agent riding the early-aughts indie boom to bring the world Thirteen and Sideways; and the head of a private equity–backed finance and production company. Now he’s independent again and doing far more TV than he ever imagined doing.

These three producers have a lot in common (they work on the more artistic “indie” side of the street—none have made a Marvel movie), but they’re also as different as any three people separated by age, temperament, and background. There’s a consistency in what they do and the traits that make them effective. They are strategically calm and very good at getting what they want, having mastered the art of figuring out what other people need. They can tell when a negotiator is serious and not just blowing smoke, but they also have the spark of defiant optimism it takes to convince themselves and others a long shot is worth taking (all movies start out as long shots). What they do isn’t easy, but it’s never dull. It’s a high-stakes emotional roller coaster whose ultimate goal is showing people a good time.

You’re probably still asking: What do they do? Explaining that requires breaking down the process of how a movie gets made. Like many businesses, it used to be both simpler and less interesting. In the days of the studio system, Warner Bros. or Paramount Pictures did everything. It had actors with seven-year contracts, in-house marketing teams and directors, and its own house producers based near the lot. A producer worked for Paramount, for example, and was responsible for developing the script, assembling the cast, shepherding a project through filming, and handling the marketing and release. These producers were either high-powered executives or their more hands-on minions, but in either case they were company men (and a few women). They did the management for the studio—the giant factory whose many workers banded together to bring films to fruition.

As studios became less monolithic, a more outsourced system developed. Producers were still in charge of finding and developing projects, but they became more independent. In the ’70s some directors set themselves up as production companies. As the actors gained more clout in the ’80s and ’90s they, too, set up production companies. One of the best teams of producers works at Plan B Entertainment, Brad Pitt’s production office. The studios, meanwhile, became acquirers and resource providers, in some cases literally providing soundstages and in others acquiring already-made movies. A company that doesn’t make movies at all but only acquires is a distributor; all the studios, TV networks, and streaming platforms buy material, but only some also help make it. (Networks and streamers often partner with studios, though many have studio arms of their own.)

Nowadays, a movie that starts with a producer can take one of two tracks. If the producer has a “first-look” deal with a studio or platform, she gets office overhead covered by the studio in return for taking any project she packages (gathering up talent, revising the script, roughing out the budget) to that studio first. If the studio refuses, she can take it elsewhere. If the producer manages to get any studio behind an unfilmed project, the deal is done; the producer gets her 5 percent of the budget (or some agreed flat fee) and becomes the hands-on manager of a company-owned film in progress.

The other route—independent filmmaking—is more complicated. This is the route that tends to generate those extra producer credits. A sample roster of producers is effectively an anatomy of how an independent movie got made: two managers of big-name actors who took a pay cut; the person who introduced the screenwriter to the director; a line producer who worked overtime to get a tax credit; two indie producers who managed the project; the author of the originating book; and maybe a horse wrangler for good measure. But the largest number of “producers” on a complicated project consists of financiers who floated the project so it could get made before a studio laid a hand on it.

In order to make an independent movie, the producer must cobble together financiers to pay up-front costs. These are investors, not benefactors. Their money is securely backed by the promise of foreign sales and bridge loans—sometimes even guaranteed by the sales arms of agencies that handle the distribution sales. Then, Lord willing, the movie gets made. In the event of a sale to a distributor, often at a film festival—sometimes in an auction after a major premiere at Sundance or Cannes—the investors get paid back first. They get paid again (as much as 20 percent) if the box office exceeds the budget. The producer is among the last to see that “back-end” money.

One way to figure out who a “creative producer” is on a project is to figure out which person or company doesn’t put in their own money. All they have is skill and connections; they don’t buy the light bulb, but they screw it in, day by day, and eventually make a good living from it.

Whatever path a film takes, the creative producer is the person who looks out for the project from start to finish. The studio might handle marketing, but it only has so much bandwidth to focus on each project; the producer is the one who makes sure her specific movie gets the care and push it deserves. The director (always) thinks he knows best, but the producer tells him when he’s letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

There’s an even easier way for a casual filmgoer to know who the real producer is. In 2012, after years of pushing back against credit creep, the Producers Guild of America instituted a “Producer’s Mark,” a simple “PGA” beside the names of a small handful of producers who have been able to certify that they fully managed the project. (In the end credits, look for, e.g., “Siena Oberman (pga).”)

Even with that settled, it’s still difficult to define the job’s parameters, because there’s no real professional certification behind it, no concrete set of skills or qualifying exam. It isn’t oriented toward a task but toward a project, which cannot exist—much less succeed—without the accomplishment of many smaller tasks (some of which, in larger production companies, become jobs of their own). You can think of it as not one job but a succession of them, or an overlapping web. Below is the most elemental rundown:

SCOUT

Lynda Obst will never forget what Peter Guber, whose movies include Rain Man and Gorillas in the Mist, once said to her: “ ‘A producer is a dog with a script in its mouth.’ ” Obst continues, “So how you become a good producer, that’s a different issue. But you can call yourself a producer if you have a script you can sell.”

Fred Berger was a young up-and-comer casting about for projects when he teamed up with producer Jordan Horowitz and Damien Chazelle, a young director with a crazy idea for a jazz dance musical doubling as a love letter to Los Angeles. Michael London was a not entirely satisfied junior Fox studio executive until he went independent, and eventually heard from a friend, Rex Pickett, who was working on a book he originally called Two Guys on Wine. Berger and London would probably have been successful without La La Land or Sideways, but they started out the way so many successful producers do—as dogs with good scripts in their mouths.

Once you’ve scouted the script, you’ll know whom to recruit to help get it made, because if you’re a good scout, you’ve also spotted talented actors, directors, rewriters, and cinematographers as a result of voracious movie-watching and connection-making, either at film festivals or your local theater. And you’ll know their agents, too.

DEVELOPER

This is where the canine analogy breaks down: No good producer is merely a retriever. A producer has probably read more scripts, and almost certainly gotten more made, than the screenwriter they’re working with. “Development” is another one of those words that sounds baffling to people outside the industry. It’s editing and gathering, making a project viable and strong. It’s easy to mock studios and producers for giving “notes”—meddling creatively, the cliché goes, to water down a story forged from the pure genius of the creator. In fact, notes can save a project before it even gets off the ground.

Scripts may fail to sell for many reasons, but none of them can get a green light without being coherent, well-defined, and written with an understanding of the practicalities of making the movie. A script needs a clear arc, plausible characters, a plot without holes, and a visual language that conveys information efficiently and elegantly. It needs to connect with an audience emotionally, of course—and a good scout wouldn’t champion one that didn’t. But practical elements must be conceived with the reality of filmmaking in mind. If a producer knows that no one in Hollywood would pay more than $20 million for a quirky sci-fi comedy, she’ll know that sixteen helicopter scenes and a CGI spaceship are just not going to work.

EDITOR

This is the flip side of development; once a movie has been shot, the producer makes sure that the director and editor’s cut of the movie or show has a viable path toward success with an audience. So the producer becomes, once again, the overseer. They will offer notes toward meeting certain audience expectations (genre elements, or an Oscar-worthy monologue). They will also hold test screenings with an eye to audience responses, and then deliver the news to the director about what gets high praise and what bored the focus group to tears. Most producers have “final cut” on a project, meaning the ultimate say over what ends up in the movie, but this tends to be a last resort. On TV shows the lead producer, or showrunner, is often the head writer and the lead editor in postproduction, while leaving the shooting to episode directors. The producer as defined here is different. On a film, he has less artistic input but more practical savvy, control, and, ultimately, responsibility.

NETWORKER

Building up a circle of trusted friends and acquaintances is important in most professions, but absolutely essential to producing. Producers connect directors to writers, actors to scripts, and financiers to people who can vouch for their honesty. “I spent five years going to every film festival and networking event I could,” says Oberman—beginning when she was still in film school at the University of Southern California. “I realized that if you can bring an actor or money or a big director, if you could make certain connections, then you could get involved in projects by bringing value to them. That’s just the quickest way to get into producing.”

This is why many producers think it’s important to get an early start in the business, while you’re young and social. This is why an assistant job at a talent agency, while often grueling or even exploitative, is considered a path toward producing. Fielding calls from people across the industry—and learning, for your boss’s benefit, who’s important and what...