Boris Kachka - Becoming a Film Producer

Becoming a Film Producer

Boris Kachka

Masters at Work

B ECOMING A N EUROSURGEON

B ECOMING A V ETERINARIAN

B ECOMING A V ENTURE C APITALIST

B ECOMING A H AIRSTYLIST

B ECOMING A R EAL E STATE A GENT

B ECOMING A M ARINE B IOLOGIST

B ECOMING AN E THICAL H ACKER

B ECOMING A L IFE C OACH

B ECOMING A Y OGA I NSTRUCTOR

B ECOMING A R ESTAURATEUR

B ECOMING A P RIVATE I NVESTIGATOR

B ECOMING A B AKER

B ECOMING A S OMMELIER

B ECOMING A C URATOR

B ECOMING AN A RCHITECT

B ECOMING A F ASHION D ESIGNER

B ECOMING A S PORTS A GENT

B ECOMING AN I NTERIOR D ESIGNER

B ECOMING A F IREFIGHTER

B ECOMING A N URSE

B ECOMING A V IDEO G AME D ESIGNER

B ECOMING A M IDWIFE

B ECOMING A T EACHER

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F OR J AMIE AND A SHER

L ike 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 transgressivealbeit cameo-packedmob 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 seta 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. Its 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 calmconsidering the freezing temperature, the thousand stressors, and the caffeine coursing through hershe doesnt look like the most powerful person on the production. In fact, she is and she isnt.

Theres the talent. Val Kilmer, for example. Theres also Paul Sorvino, whos 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. Theres the writer/producer/actor team who first pitched the project, including rising star Shiloh Fernandez, musician Jimmy Giannopoulos (the films director), and filmmaker Raul Bermudez (a writer and producer), who called in enough favors to stud the cast with names that Obermans backers feel comfortable with (from Ashley Benson to Ewan McGregor). There are the international financiersone whose money seems stuck in South America, or maybe the Isle of Man, without which Oberman cant 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 weeks 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 members 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: Whats the biggest emergency?

I N S TATE AND M AIN, David Mamets 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. Ill give him an associate producer credit. Then he laughs, adding, Ill 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. Its what you give to your secretary instead of a raise, says the assistant.

Its 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 dont understand what it means and make the assumption that its 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 financewhich 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, Its the only title anyone can just decide to join. But some of us have to stay and make the movie.

Theres 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 isnt 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 producers lifeand 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.