This evening I attended a fascinating event sponsored by the Producers Guild of America—a conversation between two enormously prolific movie producers, who between them can lay claim to many of the most important films of the past several decades. If you're not familiar with the names Scott Rudin or David Picker, click on their names here and you'll jump to their respective imdb pages. Odds are good they've each had a hand in a film that you experienced as profoundly moving. Picker is most well-known perhaps for having run United Artists during its heyday.
What I found so astonishing about what they had to say today was that, in large part, they managed to both confirm so many of the disheartening features of the current landscape and yet, in spite of this, both men project an entirely convincing optimism about the future of American filmmaking.
Here's a random collection of some of the harbingers of doom on the movie-making horizon these days.
1. Whereas studios used to be run be men who were in the business of making films, currently they are relatively tiny arms of enormous multi-national corporations, for whom profit is God and movies are seen as just another product to market.
2. The stakes for movie-making have increased with their budgets along with ancillary rights and this has inspired a corresponding expansion of the paranoia and risk-averse culture of Hollywood executives.
3. Foreign films and niche market American independent films are finding it more and more difficult to compete for a dwindling number of screens in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
4. The audience for theatrical releases is dwindling steadily as audiences diversify into web-based entertainment, gaming, cable television and DVD.
5. The guys in marketing have taken over the reigns of most film financing entities resulting in a cart-before-the-horse approach to developing new material. The ideas begin with the marketing campaign and end with a story, director and cast to fit the campaign.
In spite of Rudin and Picker both recognizing all of these disturbing trends, astonishingly, neither man is pessimistic about the future. And here's the best part. Why?
Because they both have a deep and unwavering faith in the vision of their single-minded directors. And that, I find, inspiring. That in spite of all of the bad news out there, the fundamental truth remains: people with vision and the ability to translate their vision into compelling storytelling will always find a way to communicate to an audience.
Thank you, Scott Rudin and David Picker. You've restored my conviction that this whole enterprise I'm engaged in may not actually be a total waste of time and energy after all. Rudin and Picker remind me of the best producers I've had the pleasure of working with in recent years—Darren Chilton, Pieter Jan Brugge, to name just two—for they possess what is perhaps the most vital characteristic of the top-notch producer: faith and fierce unyielding loyalty to the vision of their directors.
Can't ask for much more than that.
