So You Want To Be A Producer
Turman, Lawrence
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BOOK SUMMARY
Few jobs in Hollywood are as shrouded in mystery as the role of the producer. What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do? In So You Want to Be a Producer Lawrence Turman, the producer of more than
Submit a book reviewBOOK SYNOPSIS
Few jobs in Hollywood are as shrouded in mystery as the role of the producer. What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do? In So You Want to Be a Producer Lawrence Turman, the producer of more than forty films, including The Graduate, The River Wild, Short Circuit, and American History X, and Endowed Chair of the famed Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California, answers these questions and many more.
Examining all the nuts and bolts of production, such as raising money and securing permissions, finding a story and developing a script, choosing a director, hiring actors, and marketing your project, So You Want to Be a Producer is a must-have resource packed with insider information and first-hand advice from top Hollywood producers, writers, and directors, offering invaluable help for beginners and professionals alike.
Including a comprehensive case study of Turmans film The Graduate, this complete guide to the movie industrys most influential movers and shakers brims with useful tips and contains all the information you need to take your project from idea to the big screen.
BOOK EXCERPTS
WHY BE A PRODUCER?
This [RKO Studio] is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had! Orson Welles
Why not be a producer? Would you rather sell shoes for a living? Or be an accountant? Both are honorable occupations, but wouldnt you like to wake up eager to go to work, use every part of yourself while at work, and maybe, just maybe, have a tiny impact on the world? Thats why Im doing it.
We all like movies. Heck, thats why you bought this book. Were all critics, too; we know what is a good movie, and we know what isnt. A lot of times we even think we know why. I know I do. Indeed, I felt that way long before I got into the movie business. So, how about a job where youre the one who decides what movie to make, and how it should be made? A producer. That sounded exciting to me a long time ago, and it still does. Whats more, producing is that rare profession where you can start at the topif you control a super, terrific, dynamite script.
There are many levels and categories of producing: line producers, executive producers, co-producers, associate producers, assistant producers. Line producers are physical production specialists. Executive producers get their credits for anything from arranging the money, to controlling the property, to being manager of the star or director, to being the studio executive overseeing the film. The associate producer title is a catchall, bestowed upon anyone the producer deems worthy. But the real deal is the producer. He or she runs the show. Its the producer, and only the producer, who accepts the Academy Award for best picture.
I actually feel the same today as I did in 1967, when I was interviewed by a young kid writing for the now-defunct Cinema magazine. That young kid was Curtis Hanson, who has since entered the top echelon of writer-directors with an Academy Award best-screenplay win, plus best-director and best-picture nominations, for L.A. Confidential (after having directed The River Wild for me). When Hanson questioned why I chose to go into filmmaking, I replied: Nothing could be more rewarding or stimulating. I think everyone in the business feels the same way. If every salary were cut in half, not one person would leave. I chose producing because it would coalesce both my background experience and modicum of ability in business with what I immodestly and laughingly thought of as my good taste and judgment. Boy, what fun to decide whether a picture should be made, to decide or influence a decision that something should be done this way instead of that way, and to see if I can get this artistic quality here within the framework of that kind of budget money there. Each day has new challenges, new battles, new struggles, new frustrations, new satisfactions. Each day as I wake up I figure Ill walk into the office and get hit with a right to the heart and a left to the kidney, but I love it. Its uphill all the way because its so competitive and ephemeral and frustrating. There are many frustrations within the framework, but the satisfactions are just enormous. Even the complainers love it.
Theres hardly a better job around. A producer is the person who decides an idea, a character, or a story is worth telling. I initiate every single film project upon which I work; most of them would not have seen the light of day had I not decided to make them.
I really believe that there are things nobody would see unless I photographed them. Diane Arbus
Thats exactly how I feel about most of the films Ive produced. Im the starter and also the finisher, and am therefore involved in every aspect and most details of production. It may begin with an original idea of mine (Caveman), a book (The Graduate, The Flim-Flam Man), a play (Mass Appeal, The Best Man), reading a play prior to its production (The Great White Hope, Tribute), an original screenplay (Full Moon on Blue Water, Second Thoughts), or an idea a writer brings to me (Running Scared). In all cases, I arrange for the financing, without which a project cant get off the ground. I work closely with the writer structuring and detailing the story. I select the director and, with him or her, select the actors and consult about the look and style of the picture, as well as the actual production of the film, including hiring the crew, editing, selecting the composer, and discussing what kind of music is to be used and where it should be placed in the film. I am also involved in the ad campaign and the overall marketing and distribution strategies. As producer, I am the editor and sounding board for all the other creative talents, hopefully enhancing their work and coalescing all into a unified whole.
As a producer, you use every part of yourself. Its always challenging; youre never bored. Its creative, its working with interesting, diverse people, exercising your taste, your judgment. You also get to meet and know unusual, accomplished peoplein my case, everyone from Wernher von Braun, father of the space program, to Noel Coward, to Henry Kissinger. The job involves travel to unusual places, for me from the Kentucky Derby to the car races in Le Mans. Each movie project becomes a journey of discovery. Each has different types of characters; each is in a different setting or environment; each deals with things you havent seen or heard beforeyoure learning and growing all the time. And each movie involves a new, different set of collaboratorsall worldly, creative, and stimulatingand many will become lifelong friends.
I love making movies . . . so much. I mean, theres plenty of pain and heartache, and every day is a roller coaster. . . . I will never retire. I am a person who wants to discover and learn, and that sort of drives me. . . . The experience of every movie is a different experience of the variables in that equation, and thats not only exciting and dynamic, but its challenging in that trial and error, hopefully, if youre aware, moves you to a better, more evolved place the next day. Brian Grazer (Academy Awardwinning producer of A Beautiful Mind)
What could be more gratifying? Very little, I think. And Ive just been talking about the icing on the cake. The cake for me is my personal expression. The idea or theme behind each film I choose to do is my conscious or, sometimes, unconscious signature, through which I express my values to my peers and to the world. I like to thinkI do thinkthat I can affect the world, or at least a few people in it. My concerns, my themes, seem to be consistent. American History X, a film I executive produced, made audiences confront how destructive hate can be. Its the story of an American racist neo-Nazi skinhead who ultimately rejects that way of life, but whose own brother is murdered as a consequence of his actions. The Great White Hope, which I produced thirty years earlier, was also about racism. It was the story of the first African American heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson, who, by merely holding the title of worlds best, inflamed not only the white boxing establishment but many people throughout America. When Muhammed Ali visited the set, he told me, Thats my story!
The idea of getting to sit in a room with a cup of coffee and talk about a story for a few hours is really one of the privileges and pleasures. Theres nothing more fun than talking about some movie like Memoirs of a Geisha, and you sit around with some really smart writer, and youre talking about how some woman might behave in 1920s Kyoto. And then, literally a half-hour later, youre talking about Custer and how he changed American history. I just love a day that takes you from ancient Rome to the Old West. Doug Wick (Academy Award winner for Gladiator)
Even the seemingly guns and giggles Running Scared (Billy Crystals first screen role), which I co-produced, had a serious underlying theme: two cops (Gregory Hines is the other) who are near retirement decide to play it safe and avoid getting hurt by not tempting danger. Except all hell breaks loose and they succeed by reverting to their true natures, by not running scared. The moral? Youve got to try your hardest all the time, whether youre a cop, athlete, or producer.
The Best Man, based on Gore Vidals play and which I co-produced, is a political movie about compromises, backroom deals, distortions of the truth, the power of the press, and the glare of public life, all of which are as pertinent todayif not more sothan decades ago when we made the film. Those themes are pieces of myself. Id like the titles of those films, plus others Ive produced, engraved on my tombstone. (Well, there are a couple Id like excised.)
Is there anything more exhilarating than completing a film that began life as an idea in your head and then sitting in a crowded movie theater, hearing the audience laugh, or hold its collective breath, seeing tears flow, and perhaps hearing some applause? For me, nounless its seeing my sons grow and flourish. But they also began life as an idea in my head.
Is it a roller-coaster ride? For sure. One reason to be a producer is that its a damn exciting life. I guarantee youll never be bored. But youll also never be relaxed. As the great baseball player Satchel Paige said, Dont look back. Someone might be gaining on you. Its not that its a competition with your fellow producers. There are just so few movie slots at each studio, and so manytoo damn manyproducers chasing them. Thats why you have to be creative. And isnt using your creativity in trying to make movies, and then actually making them, the biggest reward? I think so. Youre constantly using your imagination, your ingenuity, and your brain power. Each day at work youll be living to the fullest. So why not play the game, where you decide what movie to try to make, and sometimes get it made? What beats that? Maybe scoring the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl . . . but even that takes less creativity than producing movies.
Each movie presents a genuine new challenge. On every movie I feel like you learn something you need to know, that I didnt know. It never gets dull. Christine Vachon (Far from Heaven, One Hour Photo, Boys Dont Cry, Happiness)
If your imagination is fired about becoming a producer, I say go for it. Or go for whatever your dream is because if you dont, youll live to regret it. I shoulda; I coulda, are words you do not want to even think, much less utter, five or ten years down the road. My favorite line in all of musical literature was written by Oscar Hammerstein, in Carousel: I let my golden chances pass me by. Or, as the poem by Whittier says, Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, it might have been. However, if someonefamily or a friend, perhapscan talk you out of it, beware . . . you probably wont make it. It is tough and it is competitive. If youre not prepared to give 100 percent, just about all the timeand I mean more than an eight- or nine-hour workdayforget about it. But if you are, if you do, I guarantee its worth it.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in ones favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. J. W. von Goethe
AUTHOR BIO
Lawrence Turman has produced more than forty films, including The Graduate, The River Wild, Short Circuit, and American History X, and is the Endowed Chair of the famed Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California.
BOOK REVIEWS
Turman has made smart, superior films for forty years. This is a no B.S., straight-forward, and clear guide to being a producer. Paul Newman, Oscar-winning actor
A smart, savvy survivors guide to the glamorous (and treacherous) producing game. Peter Bart, editor in chief, Variety
Far more than a simple how-to book, Larry tells you what it really takes to get a movie madeand how you can make a career of making movies. Jeffrey Katzenberg, cofounder of DreamWorks and executive producer of Shrek 2 and Shark Tale
Its worth four years of film school. David Brown, four-time Oscar-nominated producer of Chocolat, The Verdict, A Few Good Men, and Jaws
Whether youre just starting in this business or a seasoned professional, there is something to be learned from Larrys book. This is a must-read! Jane Rosenthal, cofounder and producer of the Tribeca Film Festival
FOR RELATED BOOKS
Performing Arts Books :: Film & Video Books :: Direction & Production Books
MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 1400051665
ISBN(13-digit): 9781400051663
Copyright: 2005
Dewey Decimal: 791.4302/32
Library of Congress: 2004029777
Book Publisher: Random House Inc
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 273
Paper Weight (lb): .4375 lb
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