Producer's Panel: Movers and ShakersThe Pixar creative process| 00:00 | (audience chatter)
| | 00:06 | Announcer: Welcome to the Movers and
Shakers panel, the producer's panel.
| | 00:13 | Let's start right away.
| | 00:14 | Please welcome Jamie Patricof, Blue Valentine;
(applause)
| | 00:22 | Alix Madigan, Winter's Bone;
(applause)
| | 00:27 | Todd Lieberman, The Fighter;
(applause)
| | 00:32 | Mike De Luca, The Social Network;
(applause)
| | 00:36 | Iain Canning, The King Speech;
(applause)
| | 00:40 | and Darla K. Anderson, Toy Story 3.
(applause)
| | 00:45 | And please welcome our moderator,
Patrick Goldstein, a columnist with the Los
| | 00:50 | Angeles Times, The Big Picture.
| | 00:53 | Patrick Goldstein: Thank you.
(applause)
| | 01:00 | Hey, thank you everybody for coming out.
| | 01:03 | We appreciate it.
| | 01:04 | I am sorry; I am a last-minute replacement.
| | 01:09 | We were going to have
Charlie Sheen hosting the panel.
| | 01:11 | Mike De Luca: Oh, I'm leavin'.
Todd Lieberman: Oh, that's an easy joke.
| | 01:14 | Patrick: He was unavailable, so
I am going to do my best.
| | 01:18 | I have done my homework.
| | 01:22 | We have an incredibly diverse
assortment of films represented by our producers
| | 01:30 | today, but I thought I would start with
a few questions for the one producer who
| | 01:37 | is in the Guinness Book of Records.
| | 01:40 | I know she is going to be totally
embarrassed, but that's my job is to pretty
| | 01:44 | much embarrass everybody up here.
| | 01:46 | Yes, they actually have a category for
the highest box office gross per film,
| | 01:52 | and Darla has produced four of the
great Pixar movies, starting with A Bug's
| | 01:59 | Life, Monsters Inc., Cars, and Toy Story 3.
(applause)
| | 02:08 | Mike: Impressive.
Todd: Yes, it is.
| | 02:15 | But what interests me is that of all of
the people on the panel today, you are
| | 02:22 | the person who actually
works full time at a studio.
| | 02:27 | Darla K. Anderson: I am glad you finished that sentence.
| | 02:30 | Patrick: It's a studio that, as we know, has
never made a bad movie, and I think I
| | 02:38 | am certainly curious about if you
could explain a little bit, in the big picture,
| | 02:44 | of how does Pixar manage to make
hugely commercial movies without sacrificing
| | 02:51 | any quality?
| | 02:52 | What's the process that goes into that?
| | 02:56 | Darla: We have been likened to old studio
ways, in that most of us are employees.
| | 03:07 | We have been there--I have been there 18 years.
| | 03:10 | And all of the other principals are still there.
| | 03:13 | Randy Stanton and John Lasseter and
Pete Docter and Lee Unkrich, all of us have
| | 03:17 | been there almost 20 years,
since the very beginning.
| | 03:21 | So, I think it was, first of all, this
fortunate accident that we were all in
| | 03:27 | this right place at the right
time with the right kind of passion.
| | 03:31 | And by the way, when we all showed up at
Pixar back then, nobody understood what
| | 03:37 | computer animation was.
| | 03:39 | None of us were making any money at all.
| | 03:43 | We were very extraordinarily poor,
and so it was interesting that we were all
| | 03:48 | drawn to the same thing, much
like any of indie folks are.
| | 03:53 | It was a very under-the-radar kind of
place to be, and everybody told me not
| | 03:57 | to go to San Francisco if I wanted to
make or be successful in movies in any
| | 04:01 | way, shape, or form.
| | 04:02 | So at any rate, so all these people
that were attracted to the passion of
| | 04:07 | storytelling, the passion of this
interesting new, pioneering technology,
| | 04:11 | are still there.
| | 04:12 | So it's a very collaborative
place, but I think of a lot of that
| | 04:16 | collaboration is born out of this DNA
of folks that were drawn to it of their own
| | 04:22 | volition, excited about
the same kind of the things.
| | 04:25 | And so when we are working on all
of our films and we show our films to
| | 04:29 | each other, there is kind of a
healthy competition, where we certainly are
| | 04:37 | very self-competitive;
| | 04:38 | we all want to make the best movie we
can. But everybody helps each other, and
| | 04:42 | so it's an extraordinarily rare place
to be, I think, in that there is that
| | 04:49 | much longevity with the same kind of
creatives who can speak, now, shorthand to
| | 04:52 | each other.
| | 04:54 | It's not perfect.
| | 04:56 | I mean, like any family, we are
dysfunctional in many ways, trust me, but we
| | 05:02 | all are rooting for each other, like
most families, and we help each other, so
| | 05:06 | that's the long answer.
| | 05:09 | Patrick: So I understood that you
brought in your key returning cast members
| | 05:16 | especially early in the process in Toy
Story 3, to see the early story reels.
| | 05:21 | Why do you bring them in early,
and how did that help them, or help you?
| | 05:27 | Darla: Well, typically, you know, there is
this illusion I think, because at the end of
| | 05:33 | the day when we have a successful
film, people are impressed by that.
| | 05:37 | But the making of our film, like any
creative endeavor, is a big, giant mess.
| | 05:42 | And really, every single film that we
have made, just is--it just isn't really good
| | 05:50 | until the last minute.
| | 05:51 | It really isn't.
And so there is a lot of terror involved.
| | 05:54 | So we don't usually tell the
actors all of the mess of it.
| | 05:58 | We bring them in. We have them record.
They see a ton of rewrites.
| | 06:01 | But typically, we don't share our big
chaotic mess with them because it would be
| | 06:10 | terrifying to them just to think
that they were in such a big mess.
| | 06:15 | So anyway, so you know, they really are.
| | 06:17 | You think that after we do one film,
the next one you think "Okay, now I know
| | 06:22 | what I am doing," but the creative
process just brings you to your knees, and it
| | 06:26 | just does. It's just the way it is.
| | 06:27 | You wrestle with it.
| | 06:28 | You try to tell the best story,
and that's the cool thing about a making a movie
| | 06:32 | is that no matter what, no matter how
many times you have done it, no matter if
| | 06:35 | you're bringing back the same
cast, it brings you to your knees.
| | 06:38 | It just does.
| | 06:39 | But in this case, in Toy Story 3, we
felt like we had known them for many years.
| | 06:43 | We thought maybe we could trust
them to be part of our process.
| | 06:45 | And we had a story that was kind of
hanging together a little bit better
| | 06:49 | after the second year,
| | 06:50 | so we showed them the reels.
| | 06:51 | We brought them and we showed them the
reels because we thought it might give
| | 06:54 | them a better context, because
they come in every so few months.
| | 06:59 | We thought that would might help their
process, which it turned out that it did,
| | 07:03 | but that was a gamble.
| | 07:05 | Patrick: And the other thing I think of with
the Toy Story films is Randy Newman and
| | 07:11 | his great work on the score.
| | 07:14 | What's the collaborative process like
with the composer, especially Randy Newman
| | 07:19 | who's obviously done a lot of
work with Pixar over the years?
| | 07:23 | Darla: Right, well, you know it's very interesting.
| | 07:24 | Again, you kill yourself on these films.
| | 07:27 | You work on them for many years,
and the one thing that I would say again,
| | 07:29 | computer animation it a little bit
different than live-action processes.
| | 07:33 | We can ultimately
control what we are doing more.
| | 07:36 | We don't have weather, and if we didn't
get the right performance, we can call
| | 07:39 | the actor back in, and we can help
craft some of the performances. Even though
| | 07:43 | the actors very much imbue the
life and soul to these characters,
| | 07:46 | we have the luxury of doing
a few more retakes, I think.
| | 07:51 | And with Randy, it's different.
| | 07:53 | We have zero control at all,
and that always shocks us every single time, as
| | 07:59 | with any composer.
| | 08:01 | We try to--we bring them in very early.
| | 08:04 | We show them the rough cut.
| | 08:05 | We tell them what the themes should be
or what we think that they should be,
| | 08:10 | and then he goes off and writes it,
and then you show up when there is a
| | 08:13 | 110-piece orchestra sitting there and
you hope that it's--because
| | 08:18 | the music completes the emotional
storytelling and through lines, so you just
| | 08:23 | hope and pray.
| | 08:25 | And as producers, you stand there
looking at 110 musicians going, "Okay, I hope
| | 08:29 | this really works because this is an
inordinate expense and a lot of
| | 08:34 | pressure," but it worked out.
| | 08:35 | Patrick: Iain, let me take
things over to you for a minute.
| | 08:44 | I think we knew that sooner or later
there would be Toy Story 3, but I had the
| | 08:51 | pleasure of interviewing David
Seidler, the screenwriter of The King's
| | 08:56 | Speech, a while ago.
| | 08:59 | It was not always clear that there
would be a King's Speech, and one of
| | 09:02 | the great sort of origin, story
about the movie is that David Siedler
| | 09:07 | had, through a third party, had gone
to the Queen Mother, the widow of King
| | 09:14 | George, and asked permission,
essentially, to tell this story. And she had, in
| | 09:21 | essence, said, "I would prefer you would
wait till after my death," and then she
| | 09:27 | lived to be 101.
| | 09:29 | So he really had to wait. And he
actually began this project, as I remember him
| | 09:38 | Patrick: telling me, this is, basically, as a stage play.
Iain Canning: That's right.
| | 09:40 | Patrick: So, tell me a little bit about
when you came into the process, and how, I
| | 09:46 | think, from hearing David tell the
story, he wasn't sure it would ever become a movie.
| | 09:50 | Iain: That's right. I mean, I've got to
thank the Queen Mother for living to 101;
| | 09:55 | otherwise, I wouldn't have got to produce it.
(laughter)
| | 09:58 | But it was very unclear.
| | 10:01 | It's such a good thing for
David, in a sense, that he waited.
| | 10:07 | But then two generations ago, if you
would make a film about the current
| | 10:11 | monarch's father, then you could be beheaded.
| | 10:14 | So we had to be quite careful.
| | 10:17 | I was brought the stage play by Gareth Unwin,
my fellow producer, who is over there. I can wave.
| | 10:25 | And it was brought to us because we--
the company that I set up with an Australian
| | 10:31 | partner, Emile Sherman, See-Saw,
is a UK and Australian company.
| | 10:36 | So we were brought it because, from a
financing point of view, it could be a
| | 10:40 | co-production, and then also
because maybe there is something in the
| | 10:46 | Australian-British dynamic that sums
our friendship as producers as much as
| | 10:50 | the film itself.
| | 10:51 | So I mean, David had, I think, as
originally, he always wanted to do it as a
| | 10:57 | film, but he sort of had his own
block in the way of turning it into a
| | 11:02 | screenplay straight off and
ended up writing it as a play.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| On location| 00:00 | Patrick Goldstein: Alix. Winter's Bone has an
unbelievably intense sense of place.
| | 00:08 | I think that's one of things you
really come away feeling that it's in
| | 00:12 | the farthest holler of Appalachia,
although you didn't shoot it in Appalachia actually.
| | 00:19 | You shot in Missouri. Is that right?
| | 00:22 | Alix Madigan: Well, the book was written by a
gentleman named Daniel Woodrell, who lives in
| | 00:26 | West Plains, Missouri.
| | 00:27 | So, actually, the book and
the story takes place in the Ozark region,
| | 00:32 | which has the classic--the word
"hillbilly" comes from there, the hill people.
| | 00:37 | And the sort of the culture has had a
long history of moonshine and then going
| | 00:43 | into marijuana growing, and then
now it's been prolific meth makers.
| | 00:49 | Basically, the way we got access to this
community, which is a very isolated and in
| | 00:53 | insulated areas, a cousin from--and this
gentlemen has been profiled actually in
| | 01:00 | The Envelope, I believe--a cousin from
the Missouri Film Commission is a man
| | 01:04 | named Richard Myer, who is a self-
described hillbilly, and he lives in that
| | 01:08 | area, and he introduced us to the
Lacen family on whose land we shot.
| | 01:14 | They also served as extras, but most of
the homes were the Lacen family homes.
| | 01:19 | We obviously didn't do that much set
decoration, and the little girl in the
| | 01:23 | movie, the tiny, little girl--8-year-old
Ashlee--lives in the house we shot in,
| | 01:29 | and she is there now.
| | 01:33 | Patrick: So I--because I was going to ask, because
there are a lot of locals that you were
| | 01:37 | able to use in smaller parts and extras and--
| | 01:40 | Alix: There were.
| | 01:41 | We had a great casting associate in
Missouri, and most of the--I mean there was,
| | 01:47 | you know, obviously like some--Garret
Dillahunt who played the sheriff, Tate
| | 01:54 | Taylor, who played the bondsman who
now is directing The Help, which will be
| | 01:58 | obviously a big movie.
| | 02:00 | And those are all professional actors.
| | 02:03 | The most interesting casting choice
I thought was Sergeant Schalk, who is
| | 02:07 | actually an army recruiter. And he, I
think it was six months ago, he finished
| | 02:13 | being--he retired from being an army
recruiter, and he was asked "Do you want to
| | 02:17 | act?" and he said no, and he is now
a farmer in outside of Kansas City.
| | 02:24 | Patrick: Did you have to win over the
locals and get a sense of trust from them
| | 02:30 | or--how do you kind of walk into a
place and not be thought of as the
| | 02:35 | traditional Hollywood outsider?
| | 02:38 | Alix: Well, that's Debra.
| | 02:39 | She is really amazing.
| | 02:41 | Patrick: Your film director.
Alix Yeah, the director.
| | 02:43 | I mean she is--Debra, and her
collaborator, Anne Rosellini, they never wanted to
| | 02:48 | feel like dropped into the community.
| | 02:50 | So it was, I mean it didn't have
the long gestation period that Blue
| | 02:57 | Valentine did, but there were three years of
visits and immersing themselves into that community,
| | 03:04 | and when they were
writing the script especially.
| | 03:07 | And the thing is is also, we gave
the book to everybody so that they knew
| | 03:12 | what the story was about
before we started filming.
| | 03:13 | Patrick: The sense of place is very strong,
again, in a lot of our other films.
| | 03:19 | Todd, I know you shot a lot of The
Fighter in Lowell, Massachusetts.
| | 03:26 | Todd Lieberman: Pretty much the whole thing, yeah.
| | 03:27 | Patrick: So I am curious what the local
population thought of this movie, because as
| | 03:32 | you see in the film, there had already
been an HBO documentary some years before
| | 03:38 | capturing Dicky's crackhead experiences.
| | 03:41 | So I would assume they would have been
a little wary about another film coming
| | 03:46 | in, to how the community would be portrayed.
| | 03:48 | Todd: Yeah, I mean we talked
a lot with a lot of them.
| | 03:51 | A lot of them are actually in the movie,
and it was important to them, to the
| | 03:55 | town, to the family, and everybody, to be
understood, and they are amazing people.
| | 04:01 | And this is--it's a story of underdogs.
And this town kind of had gotten knocked
| | 04:05 | down and had been knocked down for many years,
| | 04:07 | and certainly because of that
documentary. They realized that this was an
| | 04:10 | opportunity to kind of bring themselves back up.
| | 04:13 | So, we had lots and lots of the locals,
not only in the movie, but they were
| | 04:18 | continually visiting the set.
| | 04:20 | I remember one day our line producer
came up to me, and he said, "Todd, I am
| | 04:24 | budgeted to feed about 250 people a day
for the crew, and we have got 400 people
| | 04:31 | coming in," because everybody was coming.
| | 04:34 | I mean, the entire town was always there.
| | 04:36 | We had the family;
| | 04:37 | we had Mickey; we had Dickey;
| | 04:38 | we had friends; they would bring entourages.
| | 04:40 | And it was like--
basically Lowell was our backlot.
| | 04:42 | So as you were talking before about, how
do you get a sense of time and place in
| | 04:47 | a period movie, our movie
takes places in the '90s.
| | 04:49 | I mean Lowell pretty much
looks exactly as it did then.
| | 04:52 | So we didn't have to spend really much
of anything on set decoration, but
| | 04:56 | the town very much embraced us,
and they loved us being there.
| | 05:03 | Obviously, it's a very sensitive
subject matter for them, and they take--they
| | 05:07 | are very prideful people.
| | 05:08 | And to show them the movie,
it was an interesting and kind of
| | 05:13 | tricky experience.
| | 05:15 | And we showed it to Mickey and
Dickey first, and once Mickey saw it, he
| | 05:20 | completely understood it and
really appreciated and loved the movie.
| | 05:24 | Dickey had a little bit of a harder
time because he is looking at himself on
| | 05:27 | screen and he is realizing this is the
life he led and these are the things he
| | 05:30 | has done, and yet at the same time he
understands that the redemption that he's
| | 05:35 | faced, that he has come to.
| | 05:38 | So we said, "Just watch it.
Watch the movie in an audience.
| | 05:43 | Come with us and see the
movie in front of 500 people."
| | 05:47 | And he did that again, and when he
watched it with 500 people and he saw
| | 05:51 | everybody cheering, clapping, crying, he
had completely understood that the life
| | 05:55 | he had led, everything he had done is
able to now help lots and lots of other
| | 06:01 | people realize
potentially some of their problems.
| | 06:04 | So, the town very much embraced
us and still to this day does.
| | 06:07 | They keep in touch with all of us.
| | 06:08 | Patrick: And let me bring some of
the rest of you into this.
| | 06:13 | Well, Darla, you know, even though it's
invented in the computer, I would argue
| | 06:19 | Toy Story 3 has a really
distinct sense of place.
| | 06:24 | And what are the decisions and debates
that go on when you are trying to think
| | 06:29 | of creating those environments--
| | 06:31 | the houses and schoolyards, the daycare
center--in terms of what they look like,
| | 06:36 | what the feel should be? How do you know it?
| | 06:39 | Do you only know it when you see it,
or is it based on earlier experiments?
| | 06:44 | Darla K. Anderson: Well, we had Toy Story and Toy Story
2 as the basis, and so we really wanted
| | 06:50 | to be true to those films but still
use all of our new technology, because we
| | 06:55 | knew that when we were making Toy
Story that it would quickly get outdated.
| | 06:59 | And you know, back then I think at that
point in time when Toy Story came out,
| | 07:03 | there had only been maybe seven minutes
total, in any other film, of contiguous
| | 07:09 | computer animation,
and Toy Story was 75 minutes.
| | 07:11 | And so there is no coincidence that we
made our main characters out of plastic
| | 07:16 | toys because that was way
easier for the computer to compute.
| | 07:20 | So, we had this design language
that we had set up back then, and we
| | 07:25 | wanted--and Toy Story, even though
it's outdated, it's still so beloved and
| | 07:30 | everybody is so familiar with it.
| | 07:32 | So we had to figure out how to get the
DNA of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 firmly
| | 07:38 | embedded in Toy Story 3 but now access
15 years worth of technology that made
| | 07:43 | Wall-E and Nemo and Up and all
of these gorgeous, gorgeous films.
| | 07:46 | And so we spent a really long time
studying our old stuff and imbuing all of
| | 07:53 | the technology to it.
| | 07:54 | Patrick: So, like, Mike, Social Network, I am
assuming Harvard didn't give themselves
| | 08:01 | over to you to shoot.
| | 08:04 | Where did you guys go?
| | 08:05 | It looked pretty preppy, but where was it?
| | 08:07 | Mike De Luca: Johns Hopkins and I
think a little bit Boston, BU.
| | 08:13 | Patrick: And why John Hopkins?
| | 08:16 | Mike: The challenge was to find locations
that could pass for Harvard, even if you
| | 08:20 | were trying to get it by someone who had
been to Harvard. They just happened to
| | 08:23 | have kind of more of an
aesthetic match than other schools.
| | 08:28 | Patrick: Iain? That wonderful period London?
| | 08:32 | Iain Canning: Yeah, Buckingham Palace
wasn't Buckingham Palace. That would've been good.
| | 08:38 | We shot it in London, which was
rare for Tom Hooper, the director.
| | 08:44 | I think he'd recreated London in five
different countries, but not London, so
| | 08:48 | it was quite nice, too. In fact, I think
our base was sort of 100 meters from his house.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creative liberties| 00:00 | Patrick Goldstein: Now Mike, when I saw him
backstage, he taunted me a little bit.
| | 00:05 | He said, "You know, you have
to ask me some tough questions."
| | 00:07 | Mike De Luca: I didn't say "tough questions," I
said, "Are you going to ask us questions
| | 00:10 | that are different than the questions
we've been asked for the last month."
| | 00:12 | Patrick: Well.
| | 00:14 | Mike: In his mind, it becomes taunting.
| | 00:15 | Jamie Patricof: Let's remember only
Mike asked you that question; no one else did.
| | 00:20 | Mike: Patrick has known me since 1994,
so I can taunt him a little bit.
| | 00:25 | Darla K. Anderson: Uh oh.
| | 00:26 | Patrick: Along the way, a lot of people,
not just Mark Zuckerberg have--
| | 00:29 | Mike: I have to go to the restroom.
(laughter)
| | 00:35 | Patrick: --have questioned the accuracy of the film.
| | 00:37 | And I was recently--Mark Zuckerberg
was on the cover of Time Magazine.
| | 00:42 | He was their Person of the Year,
and when I read their story, it kind of
| | 00:45 | summed up, pretty nicely, the argument
that many people in the media have made
| | 00:51 | against the film.
| | 00:52 | So I would like to, like Charlie Rose,
I'd like to read you a little excerpt, then
| | 00:57 | have you respond to it.
| | 00:58 | "Zuckerberg's life at Harvard and
afterward was the subject of a movie
| | 01:04 | released called The Social Network,
written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by
| | 01:07 | David Fincher.
| | 01:08 | The Social Network is a rich
dramatic portrait of a furious, socially
| | 01:12 | handicapped genius who spits
corrosive monologues in a monotone to hide
| | 01:17 | his inner pain.
| | 01:18 | This character bears almost no
resemblance to the actual Mark Zuckerberg;
| | 01:23 | the reality is much more complicated."
| | 01:26 | It also goes on to quote Zuckerberg, who
did go to see the movie, brought a whole
| | 01:31 | bunch of people from his company.
| | 01:34 | "Afterwards, they all went out for
appletinis, his signature drink in the movie.
| | 01:39 | He'd never had one before."
| | 01:41 | He is quoted as saying, "I've found it
funny what details they focused on getting right.
| | 01:46 | I think I owned every single T-shirt
they had me wearing, but the biggest theme,
| | 01:52 | the biggest thing that thematically
they missed is the concept that you would
| | 01:56 | have to want to do something, date
someone, or get into some final club in order
| | 02:01 | to be motivated to do something like this.
| | 02:04 | It's just, like, completely misses the
actual motivation of what we're doing."
| | 02:08 | Mike: And your question is?
| | 02:10 | Patrick: Well, and I am going to broaden this.
| | 02:13 | We have some other movies here
based on real characters, but--
| | 02:16 | Mike: I will say that I saw him on
Saturday Night Live, and he did speak in
| | 02:19 | a monotone.
(laughter)
| | 02:21 | Mike: I don't know if any of you caught that last night.
| | 02:22 | Todd: What t-shirt was he wearing?
Mike: He was delightful. Sweatshirt covering a t-shirt.
| | 02:25 | But it was a little monotone.
| | 02:30 | Patrick: Well, how close to reality is the
movie. And by the way, and to broaden it,
| | 02:37 | how close does a movie need to be to reality?
| | 02:41 | Mike: I'll take the second question first.
| | 02:42 | As a movie fan, which is the
lowest ranking you could have to comment on
| | 02:47 | this, I enjoy--I've enjoyed movies over
the years that are based on real events
| | 02:54 | and real people but that are almost like
Truman Capote's ambition for In Cold Blood,
| | 02:59 | the non-fiction novel.
| | 03:01 | I think it's okay to make dramatic
movies that are metaphorical about real events.
| | 03:08 | I think they have a high bar for
integrity because you're dealing with real
| | 03:11 | people, especially if it's
about something happening today.
| | 03:14 | But I've enjoyed those movies.
| | 03:16 | I think those movies serve a purpose.
| | 03:17 | I think they bring that story to a
wider audience than documentaries.
| | 03:21 | Documentaries and movies based on real
events, they do two different things, and
| | 03:27 | I would hate to see either of them not happen.
| | 03:29 | So, I get a different thing as a
moviegoer from movies based on real people, and
| | 03:34 | I think it's okay to do that.
| | 03:37 | As far as your first question, again,
I only know what was available in
| | 03:41 | our research.
| | 03:42 | I know what the
depositions were in that lawsuit.
| | 03:45 | There was stuff that we saw that isn't
in the movie, in terms of some IMs and
| | 03:51 | things that came from Mr. Zuckerberg that Aaron used
as a jumping-off point to create what no one can
| | 03:57 | know, which is what's in someone's
heart and mind when they're in closed-door
| | 04:02 | rooms talking to people with no witnesses.
| | 04:06 | I feel comfortable that
we've got a lot of it right.
| | 04:08 | But working off the available
research, that's what I am basing kind of
| | 04:14 | my comfort level on.
| | 04:15 | Patrick: Aren't there things in the film that
are invented, the most obvious being a
| | 04:20 | big part of the presumed motivation in
the film is that he's trying to first get
| | 04:28 | a girl and then win back the girl.
And he, in reality, had a girlfriend
| | 04:34 | throughout almost this entire period.
| | 04:36 | So what's--if you could try to explain.
| | 04:39 | So why wouldn't--why would you
go against the reality there?
| | 04:43 | Mike: I think Aaron was--I mean, I don't
want to speak for Aaron, but I think he
| | 04:45 | was dealing with a composite character
for the character Rooney Mara played that
| | 04:49 | represented things that were available
in the research about Mark's frustrations
| | 04:53 | up to the point where he
got a long-term girlfriend.
| | 04:57 | I think, for better or worse, I do
think dramatic license is permissible
| | 05:01 | in--when it's not going to be a
documentary and you are going to do a film based
| | 05:07 | on real events, there has to be, I just
think, there has to be some invention.
| | 05:11 | I think that if, again, if the
invention is done with integrity, the script
| | 05:15 | was vetted within an inch of its life,
it's sourced within an inch of its
| | 05:18 | life, and you just try to honor the
real people that you are kind of telling
| | 05:22 | the story about.
| | 05:23 | But you are telling a story, and I
think since I like the subgenre that those
| | 05:27 | films are in, I think it's okay.
| | 05:29 | Patrick: Todd, obviously The Fighter is
dealing with very real people who have been
| | 05:36 | widely written about and
Dicky's in the HBO documentary.
| | 05:41 | So, I'm curious, just from the
strategic standpoint, how many of them needed to
| | 05:48 | sign off, or give you rights to their stories?
| | 05:50 | And as a producer, how do you get
that. In the case of The Social Network,
| | 05:55 | Patrick: there was a book
Todd Lieberman: Yeah.
| | 05:56 | Patrick: that they used. What about--
| | 05:58 | Todd: We had basically the exact opposite
experience as Mike because as Mike's--
| | 06:05 | the subject matter for those
guys weren't involved at all.
| | 06:08 | By design, with us, they were so much
involved that they were around all the
| | 06:12 | time. And we got rights to pretty much
all of them, and we got rights to Mickey,
| | 06:16 | Dickey, Alice, George, the sisters, and then Charlene. Everybody.
Patrick: The mom?
| | 06:22 | Todd: The mom, yeah, Alice, and it was
extremely important to us, and it was
| | 06:29 | extremely important to David
Russell and Wahlberg and everyone, to be as
| | 06:33 | accurate as possible while telling
this dramatic story, and during the course
| | 06:39 | of developing the script and shooting
the movie, there were a couple of fudges
| | 06:43 | that we did.
| | 06:44 | But for the most part, we stayed
pretty true to what actually happened.
| | 06:49 | I mean, the timeline was a little truncated;
| | 06:51 | Dickey was in prison for several
years, as opposed to several months.
| | 06:55 | The one thing that Mickey said
after he saw the movie is, "That didn't happen.
| | 06:59 | I didn't get knocked down in the Shea Neary
| | 07:03 | fight," and that was something that we
did just for kind of dramatic purposes.
| | 07:07 | But basically, the characters and the
only other real thing that we kind of
| | 07:12 | fudged because it was very important to
David to bring forward a love story, that
| | 07:19 | the Charlene character, the Amy Adams
character, played that role during that
| | 07:25 | course of time wasn't exactly accurate
to when it really happened in real life.
| | 07:30 | But other than that, I mean
everything was fairly real.
| | 07:33 | I mean, so much to the point that
Mickey O'Keefe--this is well-documented--
| | 07:36 | Mickey O'Keefe who is the trainer and
the local policeman there is playing
| | 07:42 | himself in the movie.
| | 07:43 | He's never acted before in his life,
and it was important to Mark and us and
| | 07:48 | everyone to get it right to hire an
actor to be able to know how to train
| | 07:52 | someone and know how to deal with
the actual moves and the accents and the
| | 07:56 | people, and we just said
to him, "You are the guy."
| | 07:58 | He said, "I am not an actor, I am a cop."
| | 08:00 | "Well, you are an actor now.
Come in the movie."
| | 08:01 | He did an amazing job,
and so it was extremely realistic.
| | 08:05 | Patrick: And the mom, who is portrayed
pretty unsympathetically in the movie, I
| | 08:12 | remember calling my mother and saying, "Mom!
| | 08:14 | I am appreciating you more than ever
after seeing the"--but did she have any--
| | 08:21 | when she finally saw the
movie, was it hard for her?
| | 08:24 | Did she have any doubts or second thoughts?
| | 08:26 | Todd: Well, I think it's--look, it's when
you--when you look at--if someone made a
| | 08:30 | life about me, a) it would be boring
as hell, but second of all, it would
| | 08:34 | probably be very difficult for me to
watch anything because you're analyzing
| | 08:38 | things more specifically than
maybe a general audience would.
| | 08:42 | I think each of them seeing the
movie saw something in it that probably
| | 08:47 | made them feel a little awkward,
but at the end of the day, they all
| | 08:51 | appreciate what it is.
| | 08:53 | Even though Alice could be seen as an
unsympathetic character, you know that at
| | 09:00 | the end of the movie, the hope is you know
she actually does love her kids and she
| | 09:05 | really wants the best for them.
| | 09:07 | She goes about it in kind of some strange ways.
| | 09:10 | But look, every family has
idiosyncrasies in them, and this one is certainly
| | 09:14 | no different.
| | 09:15 | Darla: We were really true to Buzz and
Woody, and they were with us every step
| | 09:22 | of the way.
| | 09:24 | Patrick: No, no, I was thinking as they were talking.
| | 09:26 | I was thinking here going, "Oh thank
God Buzz Lightyear doesn't talk unless
| | 09:32 | Patrick: we want him to."
Darla: Oh no he talks, and his agent's difficult to work with.
| | 09:37 | Patrick: Iain, I thought your film was going
to get a pass and cruise through this
| | 09:44 | whole reality debate with smooth
sailing, and then I read, of all people,
| | 09:50 | Christopher Hitchens, the other day,
who you know has great respect in
| | 09:55 | journalistic community, writing a piece
saying that The King's Speech is a gross
| | 10:01 | falsification of history, particularly
in the way that it makes the Royal Family
| | 10:06 | look less enamored of Nazi
Germany than they really were.
| | 10:11 | Did you fudge the historical record?
| | 10:14 | Iain Canning: No, I don't think we did.
| | 10:16 | I mean we had so many historians and
researchers working on the film, and I
| | 10:22 | think there is a compressing of time in the film.
| | 10:27 | Their friendship lasted for longer,
and his therapy sessions lasted for longer.
| | 10:31 | But the actual aspects which I
think were brought up in that
| | 10:36 | article--Churchill, for example. I
think there is a lot of focus on Churchill's
| | 10:41 | relationships to the King and how
in the film, it looks like he is a keen
| | 10:48 | supporter of George the VI from the start.
| | 10:50 | Well, we have a whole sequence with
Churchill supporting Edward VIII and talking about Edward VIII.
| | 10:57 | So, they just didn't make the film
because we were making a film, and so there
| | 11:03 | will be a historian's version of the
film on the DVD, but for maybe the general
| | 11:09 | public, they didn't need that
precise, accurate bit of information.
| | 11:12 | Patrick: And by the way, part of this is--
it's usually journalists who are in the lead.
| | 11:21 | When The Hurricane, Denzel
Washington played a great boxer--
| | 11:28 | Mike: Hurricane Carter.
| | 11:29 | Patrick: Yeah, Hurricane Carter,
and it was the boxing writers,
| | 11:33 | the journalists who were the first to
attack the movie in saying it was wrong
| | 11:37 | and this was inaccurate and that was
inaccurate. And journalists are trained to
| | 11:43 | get the facts right, and filmmakers are
trained to create drama and conflict.
| | 11:48 | And so I think there's an inherent
difference here, but I wanted to ask if
| | 11:52 | anyone else on the panel had a strong
opinion of where movies should draw the
| | 11:58 | line between the truth and
between dramatic storytelling?
| | 12:02 | Mike: I would avoid anything outright
derogatory or defamatory, libelous slander,
| | 12:10 | like anything that's--you can't--you
just can't sacrifice that kind of integrity
| | 12:13 | on the altar of dramatic license or invention.
| | 12:16 | Patrick: What about with Boogie Nights?
| | 12:18 | You know, when you were running New
Line that--how careful were you in terms of
| | 12:25 | that, creating that world without
making--totally making everything up?
| | 12:31 | Mike: We made everything up.
| | 12:33 | I mean Paul was inspired a little bit
by what happened at Wonderland Avenue
| | 12:37 | and the Jon Holmes of it all, but, very--
like a very small portion of that served
| | 12:41 | as inspiration.
| | 12:42 | Everything else sprang out of his mind.
| | 12:44 | It was as wholly invented.
| | 12:46 | Iain: Just, I mean, I'm sounding
like too much of a British subject.
| | 12:52 | The only person alive in our film is
the Queen, so we did have to be incredibly
| | 12:57 | careful, from a British filmmaking
perspective, that we got as much right as
| | 13:01 | possible, because the stakes are
pretty high when it's the current Queen's father.
| | 13:09 | Darla: You might get beheaded.
Iain: Possibly. There's probably some clause.
| | 13:15 | Patrick: You've worked in the documentary
field a lot, and your filmmaker Derek
| | 13:21 | Cianfrance has worked on documentaries
as well, and so, not surprisingly, Blue
| | 13:25 | Valentine sort of has a documentary feel to it.
| | 13:29 | Was that always the plan?
| | 13:31 | Did you use multiple
cameras and natural lighting?
| | 13:35 | I mean, how documentary was the actually shoot?
| | 13:37 | Jamie: Well, you know, it's interesting.
| | 13:41 | Everything that happened in Blue
Valentine was scripted to some extent.
| | 13:46 | But Derek, as you said, got sort of cut
his teeth out in the documentary world,
| | 13:50 | and he said sort of there is this
vision of a director sort of as a guy
| | 13:54 | standing on some sort of high-up point
with a megaphone in his mouth screaming
| | 13:58 | direction, and Derek said in
documentaries, he got to to turn that
| | 14:03 | megaphone to his ear and listen.
| | 14:05 | I think that was really what the plan
was in making the film was, okay, there's
| | 14:10 | a scene on the bridge where you know
Ryan has his--Michelle has a secret that
| | 14:15 | she is trying to not tell Ryan, and Ryan
wants get this secret out, and they had
| | 14:19 | some dialog they had to do.
| | 14:21 | But the idea was sort of document this,
| | 14:23 | what's going to happen now?
| | 14:24 | And you know Ryan's decision was to
scale the Manhattan bridge and get close to
| | 14:29 | jumping off it, which he probably
would've done if Michelle hadn't told him.
| | 14:33 | But that was--that was always his plan.
| | 14:35 | I mean it was a lot of improvisation,
but it was always sort of there was
| | 14:39 | calculated improvisation, and a lot of
things he wanted to do we thought were
| | 14:45 | completely ludicrous and didn't believe
he was ever going to go through with it.
| | 14:47 | There is an opening scene of the
film where Ryan Gosling gets woken up by their daughter.
| | 14:54 | Ryan Gosling has slept in the house overnight.
| | 14:57 | Derek set up the camera the night before.
| | 15:00 | Derek and the cinematographer
slept in the house with them.
| | 15:04 | Texted the AD send the
daughter in. She came in and woke him up.
| | 15:07 | Patrick: I think Ryan Gosling has done that before.
| | 15:10 | Patrick: I think he likes to sleep in the house.
Jamie: Probably.
| | 15:12 | Jamie: Well, Michelle did the same thing.
| | 15:14 | So, but, so again, it was all those
things, although some of them, he didn't know
| | 15:22 | exactly what was going to
happen, and we didn't know that.
| | 15:24 | But in that documentary background,
I think is what, again, made, at least for
| | 15:30 | me--when I watch that and still--it
sort of--it reaches inside in a place
| | 15:35 | that's not--I haven't really
experienced many times in watching the films, and I
| | 15:37 | think part of that is because it does
feel so real because he brought that
| | 15:41 | documentary skill to it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Securing funding| 00:00 | Patrick Goldstein: I guess, my real question, I think
in terms of the art of producing, is the
| | 00:06 | dark art of raising money for your
movie, because it's often not there. And I
| | 00:11 | think people will often wonder,
| | 00:12 | "So have you learned--are there some
actual tricks to the trade, or what sort of
| | 00:18 | ingenuity do you have to use
in terms of fundraising?"
| | 00:23 | Iain Canning: Well, we had Jeffrey on board,
and we had a script that people responded
| | 00:29 | to, and it was incredibly tough,
but I guess people did--I mean we had some
| | 00:35 | funny, strange moments where people
would read the scripts and say "Yes, now
| | 00:38 | we are doing the film."
| | 00:39 | And then we would say, "Oh, what a sec.
| | 00:42 | In the first page, it says, 'For the
ease of read, we are not going to do the
| | 00:47 | performance of the stammer through
the script because that's an actor's
| | 00:51 | performance. That is not something
that you want to imitate on script.'"
| | 00:54 | So people would read the script and go,
then remind themselves that he had a stammer, and go "Oh!
| | 01:00 | Yeah, this is a
different film than what I thought."
| | 01:02 | So we had some strange moments like that.
| | 01:04 | But primarily, it was incredibly
difficult to net everyone together in the
| | 01:10 | "herding of the cats," which I call that
process--because everybody is scratching
| | 01:15 | their way out and you have got to kind
of pull them all in-- it was complicated, but
| | 01:20 | people really did love David Seidler
scripts and they love Jeffrey and national
| | 01:25 | treasure Colin Farrell didn't hurt either.
| | 01:28 | Patrick: So, when you don't have a lot of a
budget, and I think in your case, I don't
| | 01:34 | know, somewhere $12-$15 million--
| | 01:37 | you are shooting a period film,
unlike most of these other films that are
| | 01:42 | pretty much set today--
| | 01:45 | so, when you are doing a period film,
what are some of the ways that when you
| | 01:50 | don't have a lot of money, you can
creatively cut corners to come up with--
| | 01:57 | I remember when I was young, Roger
Corman, I interviewed him, and he said,
| | 02:03 | "The first thing we always did," because
Roger Corman made these B movies,
| | 02:07 | "We'd always have a shot of the
billboard, and the billboard would look like the
| | 02:10 | 1930s or the 1950s or whatever period
we were in, and then we could just shoot
| | 02:15 | the rest of the film wherever we were.
But once they saw the billboard, they said, 'Oh!
| | 02:19 | Yeah, we are in another time.'"
| | 02:20 | Iain: It probably helped that it was a
very smog-related time when we were
| | 02:26 | shooting, so that perfectly helped us in a way.
| | 02:30 | I think, as well, in terms of British
film at that point there wasn't any period
| | 02:38 | films being made, and I think in the UK
especially that's such a part of our
| | 02:42 | filmmaking tradition.
| | 02:45 | So, I--in terms of the ambition, I
think all the suppliers and everybody
| | 02:50 | involved sort of took a punt on the
film working, but also one of the early
| | 02:58 | conversations I had with David was, "Oh,
I am going to keep them in the room as
| | 03:06 | much as possible. I am going to keep
them in the consultation room." And we were
| | 03:10 | like, "No, get them
out of the consultation room.
| | 03:12 | We can sort of have more scope."
| | 03:15 | So actually, it was the odd way around,
because David was trying to be the
| | 03:20 | sort of super-realist, where we were trying to
be the idealists, which is not normally the way
| | 03:23 | it goes with producer.
| | 03:25 | Patrick: Right, because that's one of those
nice scenes in the film when they get out
| | 03:28 | for a walk in foggy London, and that
scene could have stayed inside. But what's
| | 03:34 | great is that when the King gets
really pissed off at him, he just leaves him
| | 03:40 | behind, which is, again, you
couldn't have done in an interior scene.
| | 03:46 | Iain: And he was the Duke of York at
that period, so he could have
| | 03:50 | conceivably walked around with Logue at that
point and not being recognized in the way
| | 03:54 | Iain: that he would have been suddenly when he became King.
Patrick: Right.
| | 03:56 | Patrick: So now Alix may want to contest this,
but in my research it seemed like
| | 04:01 | Blue Valentine had the actual
lowest budget of all the films, which was
| | 04:05 | Jamie Patricof: I think she wins.
Patrick: around a million dollars.
| | 04:08 | Alix Madigan: Should we whisper?
Jamie: No, you go ahead. Our's was four. You take it.
| | 04:13 | Alix: Ours was two.
Male Speaker: Wow!
| | 04:15 | Patrick: So, I want to ask both of you
again--because these are both
| | 04:23 | remarkable films that got made and
have such a wonderful sense of place
| | 04:27 | and great character,
| | 04:28 | so, again, if both of
you could talk a little bit about how did
| | 04:32 | you find the money, and once you had it,
how did you find ways to make it go as
| | 04:40 | long a way as possible?
| | 04:41 | Alix: Basically, we tried to--Debra
Granik and Anne Rosellini and I tried to put
| | 04:49 | together the movie through the kind of
standard, which Jamie of course does very
| | 04:56 | well, put together the movie but through
sort of the standard indie model, which is by
| | 05:01 | putting some sort of name actor in the
role to garner financing. And I have to say
| | 05:07 | unfortunately that didn't work out,
because we were able, ultimately, to get
| | 05:12 | our money through an equity source who
believed not only in Debra Granik, but
| | 05:17 | also in the genre aspects of the
material and felt the movie could be marketed
| | 05:22 | in a thriller kind of
way that could be commercial.
| | 05:28 | I think the great thing about
Debra being able to cast actors who were
| | 05:33 | unknown was that you could truly
immerse yourself and get lost in the film.
| | 05:41 | It's really exciting, for instance, to
see John Hocks get the recognition that he
| | 05:45 | is getting, because he was a
journeyman actor who has been working for years
| | 05:50 | and who is just really incredible at
what he does, and was able to just give
| | 05:56 | this incredible performance, and no one
really--he didn't really have great
| | 06:00 | name recognition.
| | 06:01 | If I went down the list of the people
tried to get for that role in order
| | 06:05 | for us to get financing, again, I am
just, not to knock any of the actors who we
| | 06:10 | went out to, but I am just kind of
glad that the movie became what it was
| | 06:15 | because we weren't able to do that.
| | 06:17 | Jamie: Blue Valentine took--
Derek wrote script 12 years ago.
| | 06:25 | I did a film called Half Nelson five
years ago, and the plan was--we talked to
| | 06:29 | Ryan after that film--the plan was to
go make Blue Valentine as a follow-up to
| | 06:33 | that, and we just couldn't get the money.
| | 06:36 | Ryan and Michelle were both attached, and over the years
| | 06:39 | we kept on getting close to the
finish line through different private
| | 06:44 | equity sources. And this is a
movie where we had Ryan Gosling,
| | 06:47 | we had Michelle Williams, who are very
highly respected actors, but neither of
| | 06:53 | them were major stars that led
people to sort of throwing money at us, even at a
| | 06:58 | very low-budget level.
| | 06:59 | I mean we had budgets for the film at $2 million, even
a million and a half. We could have beaten her.
| | 07:05 | But we just couldn't get there,
and then finally, the irony of the situation
| | 07:11 | is that we finally at the end of the
process, through a traditional financing
| | 07:16 | source, a film finance company, we got
a budget that was higher than we even
| | 07:21 | needed, truthfully.
| | 07:22 | I mean, this was a very low-fi movie--
| | 07:25 | Derek, and we had a very specific way to do it.
| | 07:28 | He didn't want many lights. He didn't
want--his rule for the camera department
| | 07:32 | was you are only allowed one truck,
didn't matter what you wanted. And that was
| | 07:34 | the same thing with the lighting
department. You're only allowed one thing.
| | 07:37 | He wanted it to be as minimal as possible.
| | 07:40 | He always wanted as minimal crew as possible.
| | 07:42 | Half the time when we were shooting,
there would be Derek and one or two other
| | 07:48 | crew members in the room shooting in
there, and sometimes Derek would be shooting,
| | 07:50 | himself, and that's how we wanted to make the movie.
| | 07:52 | If somebody had given us $20 million,
we would have--and we actually this is
| | 07:57 | --I probably shouldn't say this.
| | 07:58 | We actually had a problem at the end
of the film--everybody is going to sort
| | 08:01 | of think I am crazy--
| | 08:03 | it was a very unusual problem.
| | 08:05 | We shot the film in Pennsylvania, and
our bond company was adamant about us
| | 08:10 | adding a lot of money to certain parts
of the budget that we didn't want to add
| | 08:13 | money to because we knew we didn't need
it. And our accountant comes in about a
| | 08:17 | week before finishing and says,
"You know, we have a big problem."
| | 08:20 | I was like, "This is not good."
| | 08:23 | We laughed. What could the problem be?
| | 08:26 | We need to spend more money. Because you
have to spend a certain amount of your
| | 08:30 | budget in Pennsylvania, we hadn't
spend enough money because we were so under
| | 08:33 | budget. And it sounds crazy, but
the complete financing would have
| | 08:39 | been disaster if we hadn't hit that number.
| | 08:41 | So we really had, during that last week,
to rethink how we are going to do it.
| | 08:45 | We wound up having to move our
editor to Pennsylvania to edit the film.
| | 08:48 | We had to do all these crazy things.
| | 08:50 | I wanted to buy the Scranton Yankees.
| | 08:52 | That didn't work out.
| | 08:55 | I kind of felt like I was in Brewster's
Millions, but there are other ways to do it, but -
| | 09:01 | Patrick: Well, for example, how many days?
Jamie: 25 days.
| | 09:05 | Patrick: Alix, on your film, how many days?
Alix 24 days.
| | 09:08 | Patrick: And as a comparison, Mike, on Social Network?
Mike De Luca: 90.
| | 09:16 | Patrick: Okay. So, again, that's the difference
between independent filmmaking and having
| | 09:22 | a studio behind you.
| | 09:23 | One thing is the filmmaker has a lot
more time for setups and to try a lot
| | 09:29 | more complicated stuff.
| | 09:31 | So again, what interests me is in those
24, 25 days, as a producer, how much of
| | 09:37 | your time is spent saying, how do we
get the biggest bang for our buck?
| | 09:41 | How do we condense things, or can we
shoot all of the stuff in the same area
| | 09:46 | without having to move?
| | 09:47 | What are a couple of examples of that?
| | 09:49 | Jamie: Yeah. I mean I think you are always try to
figure out how can we condense locations, how
| | 09:54 | can we decrease number of shooting days,
how can we get through more scenes in a day,
| | 10:03 | all those things.
| | 10:04 | But I think the other thing is that
what makes Blue Valentine Blue Valentine
| | 10:07 | and what makes Winter's Bone Winter's
Bone is sort of this sort of a feeling of
| | 10:13 | really being inside the
movie and it being really personal and not
| | 10:18 | having this grandiose scope.
If we had had this sort of
| | 10:25 | scope of a movie like the Social Network
or The Fighter or Toy Story 3 even, you have
| | 10:31 | these massive planes you are playing
with. The films wouldn't work. And I
| | 10:35 | think at the same time, so when you
have a film like the Social Network, you
| | 10:38 | need that time to get these scenes
that are just massive, and for us, it's sort
| | 10:43 | of the flip side.
| | 10:44 | You need to sort of whittle it down to
the sort of core and essence of it in
| | 10:47 | order to get those scenes.
| | 10:49 | So if people are worried about feeling
like they are in this sort of huge world,
| | 10:56 | they're not going to have the
experience they need to enjoy Winter's Bone or
| | 11:00 | Blue Valentine, and the same
thing goes for Social Network.
| | 11:04 | I mean, if you look at--you were
talking about is the opening scene of Social
| | 11:07 | Network, all the way through that
party scene, I mean that is such a massive
| | 11:12 | endeavor to make that work the way it
did. And we couldn't have made the--I
| | 11:18 | could have made the Social Network for
the budget that I made Blue Valentine
| | 11:21 | for, but it just would have not been a good film.
(laughter)
| | 11:25 | It wouldn't have worked.
It just wouldn't have worked the same way.
| | 11:30 | Patrick: Todd, also, you developed The
Fighter at Paramount and spent years.
| | 11:37 | There is a whole litany of different
writers, different actors, different
| | 11:41 | filmmakers. You finally get this
great cast, and a great filmmaker, David
| | 11:47 | Russell, and you still had to go to
an outside investor, Ryan Kavanaugh,
| | 11:53 | Relativity to put up the money.
| | 11:57 | What does that tell us
about today's studio system?
| | 12:00 | Todd Lieberman: Dramas are extremely difficult to
get made. But as evidenced by everyone on
| | 12:06 | this panel, with the exception of our
Toy Story friend over there, they're all
| | 12:09 | pretty much dramas, and they've all had
critical acclaim. For the most part, there
| | 12:14 | has been big box office success on them.
| | 12:16 | So I think that they're harder to take a
bet on, but when the good ones come out,
| | 12:22 | there's obviously a financial reward
to them. And I hope that this year will
| | 12:25 | allow others like that to
continue to make those movies.
| | 12:29 | I mean we had Mark Wahlberg, Christian
Bale, David O. Russell, and no one would
| | 12:33 | finance the movie. We ended up making it
for, at least in studio terms, a low budget,
| | 12:40 | not in independent terms, but it was a
$23 million movie that we shot in 33 days.
| | 12:46 | And that was the most that we could
get. And to Jamie's point over there,
| | 12:50 | that's exactly the way this
movie should have been made.
| | 12:52 | So it was difficult to find the money
for it, but I hope that because of the
| | 13:00 | financial success and the critical
acclaim that all these movies are getting
| | 13:02 | that maybe it will clear some sort
of pathway for more great dramas.
| | 13:07 | Jamie: I think the thing about movies now
versus five years ago is that you need a
| | 13:13 | great cast, you need a story that's a
great script, you need a filmmaker who knows what they
| | 13:18 | are doing, you need a cast that is right--
not only from a performance standpoint but
| | 13:24 | also has something the distributor can
use to help them get the movie out into
| | 13:28 | the world--and it needs to be done for
the right budget, and that sounds sort of
| | 13:33 | like a simple formula.
| | 13:35 | But I think for many years it's sort
of just the money just sort of started
| | 13:39 | escalating to a point,
whether it was the special divisions like
| | 13:44 | Vantage and more independent, those
companies that sort of allowed the budgets
| | 13:47 | to balloon.
| | 13:48 | But I mean, as Todd just said, they
needed $23 million to make that movie, and
| | 13:53 | that's all they were able to--that's
what they got. And 10 years ago, 5 years
| | 13:59 | ago somebody tells me that $23 would
have been maybe $35 or $40, and ultimately it
| | 14:03 | wouldn't have been successful.
| | 14:04 | Todd: Yeah. I mean, there were versions the
movie we are talking about that were $70
| | 14:07 | million with Brad Pitt, and it would
have been a whole different movie and a
| | 14:10 | whole different set of circumstances,
and you end up with the thing you're
| | 14:13 | supposed to end up with.
| | 14:14 | It just kind of always works out that way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The producer/director relationship| 00:01 | Patrick Goldstein: I wanted to ask one more question about,
for all of you, the relationship between the
| | 00:05 | producer and the director, because
some of the filmmakers that
| | 00:14 | created these films are very strong willed,
| | 00:18 | some of them notoriously
difficult. Others may have been--
| | 00:23 | So I'm wondering, is it a
partnership, is there collegial sense, is there a
| | 00:28 | little bit of a therapy sense
to it? I mean, how would you,
| | 00:32 | how do you find the right
balance to work with the filmmaker?
| | 00:36 | Because the producer isn't always--
doesn't always get to say yes.
| | 00:42 | The question is, how do you say no in the
right way that doesn't create a firestorm
| | 00:47 | and keeps the film going?
| | 00:49 | Jamie Patricof: Can I nominate Todd to answer that question?
Todd Lieberman: Yeah, I am happy to.
| | 00:52 | Todd: I mean, look, when we brought David O.
Russel on board, the only person that
| | 00:56 | ended up to work with him in our
entire group was Mark Wahlberg.
| | 00:59 | And quite frankly, he wasn't the
flavor of the month at that time.
| | 01:05 | And he had a reputation for being prickly.
| | 01:09 | Now, at the same time, as a producer you
want to gain the trust of the director
| | 01:12 | and you want to create some sort of
partnership so that there is a symbiotic
| | 01:15 | relationship, and each
film is completely different.
| | 01:18 | I remember I was listening to your
partner, Scott Rudin, talking about
| | 01:22 | his experience with Fincher
and the Coen Brothers, and saying, every
| | 01:27 | movie is different.
| | 01:28 | I realize on those two movies that
he didn't necessarily have to be set
| | 01:31 | everyday; those guys know how to make a movie.
| | 01:32 | And my role in that movie was
completely different than it might have been
| | 01:35 | in some other movies.
| | 01:36 | You know, with David, we spent a lot of
time developing the script with him and
| | 01:39 | establishing relationship
with him in pre-production.
| | 01:42 | And what it turned out was that the
collaboration was actually beautiful,
| | 01:46 | because he is willing to try anything.
| | 01:50 | And he is willing to
go down so many different paths and
| | 01:55 | tangents that some people might find
that overwhelming. What we found, it
| | 01:59 | was kind of invigorating.
| | 02:00 | And when we're on set with David O.
Russel and you can throw an idea, he'll try it.
| | 02:06 | And he'll try that, and he
just kind of going off the cuff.
| | 02:11 | So every movie is different. With that
particular movie, we found an amazing
| | 02:15 | symbiotic relationship.
| | 02:19 | He listened to us, we listened to
him, and it became kind of a beautiful
| | 02:23 | collaboration and a real friendship.
| | 02:26 | Patrick: Mike.
Mike De Luca: Well, David makes it easy for a producer.
| | 02:29 | Mike: And I've known him since Seven at New Line in '95.
| | 02:34 | He is self contained. He also has
a producing partner, Cean Chaffin.
| | 02:39 | With David, I felt like my role
was to literally give him space.
| | 02:43 | Stay out of his way, don't intrude on
the process, respect it, and then just keep
| | 02:48 | any studio bullshit off his desk, but
there was none because Amy also feels that
| | 02:52 | way about David Fincher.
| | 02:53 | So, once we kind of drew the box
that the movie had to fit into, he was
| | 02:57 | left alone.
| | 02:58 | And he is one of those directors
where if you're lucky enough to be in
| | 03:02 | business or be partnered with the
visionary filmmaker, it's really a
| | 03:07 | director's medium and the best thing I felt I could
do was just support him and stay out of his way.
| | 03:11 | Patrick: Mhm. Jamie, my impression, just from
seeing the movie, is you're in really close
| | 03:18 | quarters with the
filmmaker. What was that like?
| | 03:21 | Jamie: Yeah, I mean, I've had that
experience with most of the films I've
| | 03:25 | worked on, where my number one job--and I
think it's all of our number one jobs--is to allow the director
| | 03:33 | to focus on directing the film
and not deal with anything else.
| | 03:37 | I mean, that's really, I think,
our main goal as a producer.
| | 03:40 | At the same time, especially if you've
lived with the material as long as I did
| | 03:46 | on Blue Valentine--you
asked if you kind of connect to the
| | 03:51 | characters. I can't say I really connect
to Ryan Goslin or connect to Michelle
| | 03:54 | Williams directly, but indirectly, I
feel like I have two kids and I sort of--
| | 04:01 | That's amazing thing about this movie is
that when I started this movie, I had
| | 04:04 | just gotten married.
| | 04:05 | That's when I was planning to make it,
and by the time I made it, I had two kids.
| | 04:08 | And so I had a feeling and I had
an understanding of the material,
| | 04:13 | so when we're on set and there are
work conversations that we would have
| | 04:17 | that were creative conversations,
but ultimately, my job is just to be there
| | 04:22 | and to support the director. But I
love that creative collaboration.
| | 04:28 | And fortunately, that's been
the process I've had so far.
| | 04:31 | Todd: Sometimes you're asking challenging
questions, and you want to support as
| | 04:36 | best you can, but you also want to
throw out challenges to directors to make
| | 04:40 | sure that their vision is
completely and utterly in line.
| | 04:43 | And we had, I wouldn't called
them arguments--we had kind of very
| | 04:47 | lively discussions about the
level of humor that was going to be
| | 04:50 | portrayed in The Fighter.
| | 04:52 | And I was, quite frankly, doubtful that
that tone was possible, because it's
| | 04:56 | dark subject matter.
| | 04:58 | And David was very, very specific about
how he wanted to bring levity into this
| | 05:03 | otherwise dark environment.
| | 05:06 | And we had a lot of discussions about
how you're able to laugh at a situation
| | 05:10 | where someone's smoking
crack and jumping out windows.
| | 05:13 | And we went to the first test
screening and the audience is uproariously laughing,
| | 05:18 | and I turned to him, and I said, "You're
absolutely right, and I'm really glad that
| | 05:21 | you did that and that was your vision.
| | 05:23 | Because had I been in control of it
and not allowed you to do your vision, we
| | 05:27 | wouldn't have had that."
| | 05:28 | Patrick: Darla, what's, again, how is
it different in the Pixar world?
| | 05:32 | Darla K. Anderson: I think it's exactly the same,
exactly the same. I mean, that the producer is
| | 05:36 | protector of the director's vision,
| | 05:39 | and so you are all the things you
mentioned: you are the therapist;
| | 05:44 | you're the challenger; you're the
protector. Sometimes you just get out of the way.
| | 05:48 | And sometimes the director has such a
burden, they're carrying around the world
| | 05:55 | on their shoulders, that you ask
challenging questions just to also remind
| | 06:00 | them what their vision is, or just to
kind of get the conversation going again.
| | 06:04 | But really, 100% of the time, we've all
worked with visionary directors that are
| | 06:14 | just brilliant and driven
and have singular focus,
| | 06:18 | and so our job is to just get that
vision on the screen at all costs.
| | 06:25 | You sleep well at night knowing that
you have done everything in your power to
| | 06:28 | get that vision and
everything you can up on the screen.
| | 06:31 | Patrick: You know, Todd, you've already
helped me in my marriage, because--
| | 06:38 | Todd: Thanks -- I do that a lot you know.
Patrick: I always tell my wife she is being
| | 06:42 | stubborn and now I realize, I have to say
| | 06:44 | to her, honey, you're being specific.
| | 06:48 | So that's good.
| | 06:49 | Todd: Or just don't say anything.
Jamie: Or just say you're sorry.
| | 06:53 | Todd: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.
| | 06:57 | Patrick: One other thing. In The King's
Speech, Geoffrey Rush is an executive producer
| | 07:07 | on the film, and in The Fighter, Mark
Wahlberg is a producer on the film.
| | 07:12 | What do the actors do to
earn or deserve that credit?
| | 07:16 | Jamie: Can I add the Michelle and Ryan
are executive producers on Blue Valentine?
| | 07:20 | Patrick: Oh Okay.
Todd: No.
| | 07:24 | Jamie: Damn you, Todd.
I am just trying to be specific.
| | 07:29 | Todd: I'm available for therapy afterwards.
| | 07:31 | I mean, in Mark's case, it's been
written about, it's well-documented: he is
| | 07:35 | very, very passionate.
| | 07:37 | He knew Micky Ward growing up. He knew
the family. He is from Dorchester.
| | 07:40 | He is from the area.
| | 07:41 | He was instrumental in obviously
getting David O. Russell on board, and
| | 07:46 | corralling just kind of a lot of
the logistics of the HBO, you know, the
| | 07:51 | fights, and then the guy trained for
years and years in his backyard after he
| | 07:55 | built a gym.
| | 07:57 | There is no reason why he wouldn't
have been a producing partner with us on this one.
| | 08:02 | And every producer's role is different,
and Mark was kind of the godfather of all of
| | 08:07 | it and a driving passionate force behind it.
| | 08:10 | And the guy, as Micky Ward says "never
give up," Mark really never gave up, and
| | 08:14 | thank God he was our partner, because
he pushed it forward and kept pushing
| | 08:17 | it forward and said, "We are going to
make this movie," and the three of us kind of agreed.
| | 08:22 | And we all lent different
things to it, but thank God for him.
| | 08:27 | Patrick: Iain.
| | 08:28 | Iain Cannning: In terms of Geoffrey, he was
interested in making the film before we even
| | 08:34 | came on board, because through David's
theatrical agent at that time, he'd got
| | 08:39 | scripts through his letterbox.
| | 08:43 | And so he then came on board. My
producing partner Emile had worked with
| | 08:49 | Geoffrey on two films before. And we
then brought Tom on board, and we financed
| | 08:55 | the film at that point with just
Geoffrey and the script and Tom.
| | 08:58 | And he was obviously a huge part of
that financing, and also decided to come
| | 09:02 | over three weeks before he needed to
come over in order to start rehearsals,
| | 09:09 | in order to just sort of get together with
Tom, and just went above and beyond of
| | 09:14 | what he needed to do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| A matter of taste| 00:00 | Patrick Goldstein: Mike, let me ask you one other
thing though, because I was thinking of Boogie
| | 00:03 | Nights and also American History X, which
you made at New Line, which dealt with a
| | 00:10 | lot of the social currents in our culture.
| | 00:15 | Boogie Nights, a huge influential
hit; American History X, not so much.
| | 00:20 | Again, after Mike, I would love to open
this up to everyone. As a producer,
| | 00:27 | when you are at the studio, how do you
know if something that fascinates you is
| | 00:32 | going to fascinate anyone else?
| | 00:34 | Mike De Luca: You don't. That's why it's terrifying.
| | 00:38 | This is going to sound trite, but you
have to just go with your gut, because if
| | 00:43 | you start hedging your bet about, oh,
they're going to like this or this might
| | 00:47 | work for them, although I might
not see that movie personally,
| | 00:50 | you're lost.
| | 00:52 | It becomes gambling at that point,
and at least when you stick to your gut
| | 00:56 | instinct that you find something compelling,
| | 01:00 | if it fails, you can go, well, I was
honest in my motivation to try to either
| | 01:07 | green light as an executive or be
patron of the arts as a producer or be an
| | 01:11 | author of it as a producer.
| | 01:13 | You just feel better even in
failure when you've been honest about your
| | 01:17 | motivation to do something.
| | 01:18 | The trick when you're an executive is you
can't feel that way about 25 movies a
| | 01:22 | year. It's impossible.
| | 01:23 | So you start making deals with yourself
about the programmers that have to go on
| | 01:27 | behind the ones that you really,
really love as a head of production or a
| | 01:30 | studio executive.
| | 01:31 | Todd: Yeah, as a producer, I mean, you
have to really--once you start thinking
| | 01:36 | "what do they want?" then it's done.
| | 01:38 | I mean, the only thing
you have is your own taste.
| | 01:41 | I remember--this is anecdotal, too--I
wish Emma Thomas were here, too, because
| | 01:46 | there is a great story I wanted to tell her--
| | 01:50 | I started in the independent world at a
company called Summit, which was then an
| | 01:55 | independent film sales and distribution company.
| | 01:59 | When I first got there, they gave me a
load of scripts, and they said, "Here's our
| | 02:05 | list of people who can write coverage for you.
| | 02:07 | There is a guy who writes pretty good coverage.
| | 02:09 | His name is Chris Nolan.
| | 02:10 | You should call him and
give him some of these scripts."
| | 02:12 | So I called Chris and I said, "Hey,
look, man, I am Todd Lieberman. I am new here.
| | 02:17 | We've got a bunch of scripts here.
We will give you 50 bucks a script.
| | 02:19 | You can cover these."
| | 02:20 | He said, "Well, I am kind of probably
phasing out a coverage because I just got
| | 02:26 | this writing job I am going to do."
| | 02:27 | I said, "Well, how about $60?
| | 02:29 | That's $10 more.
| | 02:30 | We are going to give 10
bucks more to write coverage."
| | 02:33 | He said, "No, I think I'm
done with my coverage career."
| | 02:35 | A mutual friend of ours had given
me a script of his called Memento.
| | 02:38 | Wow! I read that and I am like,
well, this is &^@%#$ awesome.
| | 02:43 | I mean his coverage is good, but this is a good script.
| | 02:47 | That was the very first script that
I'd read that I said, "Well, I am absolutely 100%
| | 02:51 | in love with this script."
| | 02:54 | Between Summit and Newmark, we got it made.
| | 02:56 | But you know you kind of figure out
what your taste is, and then you just go with that.
| | 02:59 | Jamie Patricof: Well, one thing I want to say
though is I think one of the things that
| | 03:05 | separates, in at least my opinion, sort
of independent world is we don't have
| | 03:13 | a studio that is sort of
behind the curtain saying--
| | 03:19 | It's nice to have a gut feeling, but my
understanding, although I have never made
| | 03:22 | a studio film, is that it doesn't always
just come down to gut when it comes to
| | 03:28 | the whole big picture.
| | 03:29 | The studio is saying, okay, who is the audience for
this film, and how we are going to get to them?
| | 03:32 | Mike: Although it's interesting
watching Amy Pascal operate. To navigate the
| | 03:36 | different departments, to muscle
something through marketing and
| | 03:39 | distribution, you do need someone in
charge with a gut feeling saying, we are
| | 03:43 | making this no matter what.
| | 03:44 | Sometimes if you're lucky, you will get
that performance from a studio head.
| | 03:48 | Jamie: But you, you've been on both sides in a sense.
| | 03:50 | When you were running the studio,
you got to make the decision, but you
| | 03:53 | couldn't just make them truly with
your gut. But now you get to sort of go with
| | 03:57 | your gut, I guess.
| | 03:58 | Mike: It's pure.
Jamie: Yeah, that's what you're doing in the start.
| | 04:00 | Todd: As a producer, you push it
forward. As a studio head, I imagine it's
| | 04:04 | completely different.
| | 04:05 | Jamie: And then you also get
the benefit of a track record.
| | 04:07 | That's when Mike De Luca come to you
with the movie, if they're saying no, they
| | 04:13 | better have a damn good reason
why they are saying no or
| | 04:15 | Mike: Yeah!
Jamie: he is going to leave that studio.
| | 04:17 | Jamie: I mean, that where you get that
benefit of--I've made a handful of
| | 04:22 | films, but I haven't made films that have
grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.
| | 04:24 | Ultimately, that gut instinct is what
defines a producer and sort what a--
| | 04:31 | Mike: Although every couple of
years there is whole new batch of
| | 04:33 | Mike: studio executives that--
Jamie: Amy Pascal.
| | 04:35 | Mike: or don't even know, except Amy Pascal, who don't
even know you. You have to like justify your
| | 04:40 | existence every six months, which is fine.
| | 04:44 | It's still a good job.
| | 04:45 | Todd: It's so hard to get a movie made,
obviously, so the only thing to push it
| | 04:48 | forward is your own passion, and if
you don't fully believe in it, then why is
| | 04:52 | someone else is going to believe in it?
| | 04:53 | I remember, last year I produced a
movie called The Proposal, and when I sold
| | 04:57 | that movie to Nina Jacobs who was the
head of the studio at that time, I pitched
| | 05:02 | it to her as kind of my own story.
| | 05:04 | I had dated a woman for many, many
years who was quite older than me who also
| | 05:07 | happened to be my boss.
| | 05:08 | I gave her a lot of information about
what that relationship was, and I said,
| | 05:13 | "I bet I could add a lot to the story."
| | 05:14 | She said, "Well, God, Todd. I have to
buy that for you because if it's that
| | 05:18 | personal to you, we've got to
buy that and develop that movie."
| | 05:21 | Yeah, it was. It was really personal,
and it turned into something completely
| | 05:25 | different, but at least there were
parts of it that were me in that movie.
| | 05:29 | Then I called my ex-girlfriend.
| | 05:30 | I said, Sandra Bullock is going to
play you, and Ryan Reynolds is going to play me.
| | 05:36 | That's kinda cool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The MPAA and ratings| 00:00 | Patrick Goldstein: So I want to put you on the
spot, because I read the other day that Harvey
| | 00:04 | Weinstein, who is distributing the
film and helping bring it to a wider
| | 00:11 | audience, he has been--I think he sort
of floated a trial balloon talking about
| | 00:19 | cutting the now legendary
moment where the king curses.
| | 00:26 | As a way to get him through his stutter,
he starts rattling off a whole list
| | 00:32 | of obscenities, and that is the one
moment in this otherwise very traditional
| | 00:39 | film that earned it an R rating, and
there's been a lot of hubbub about the
| | 00:45 | unfairness of that.
| | 00:48 | So Harvey is talking about cutting
that to get a PG-13 to find a broader
| | 00:52 | audience, and I assume your director,
Tom Hooper, will have to weigh in on this,
| | 00:56 | but I'd like to know what do you think.
| | 00:58 | Iain Canning: I love the
"cut," such a dramatic word in that sense.
| | 01:03 | We did--we have all been
involved in the conversations.
| | 01:05 | We just feel that we want as many
people to see the film as possible.
| | 01:10 | Certainly in the UK it is widening out
in terms of the audience for our film.
| | 01:15 | So it is frustrating.
| | 01:17 | We knew going into it that we
were always going to have that scene.
| | 01:20 | It's absolutely a part of how David, the
writer, got through his own stammer and
| | 01:25 | how he found a breakthrough.
| | 01:30 | There is no cutting.
| | 01:32 | We are looking at whether we could
possibly do a bleep scenario where we would
| | 01:37 | keep the essence of that scene but
we wouldn't actually hear the words.
| | 01:42 | We are just trying to find ways, but
there is going to be no dramatic cut
| | 01:44 | of that sequence.
| | 01:48 | Patrick: Jamie, you're the producer of Blue
Valentine, another film that was initially
| | 01:59 | *&^@#$ over by the MPAA.
| | 02:01 | Jamie Patricof: I am glad you said that, not me.
Patrick: Okay, now we are an officially R-rated panel.
| | 02:05 | Patrick: Now, they had given you an NC-17
rating, and you appealed, and it was indeed
| | 02:14 | overturned, and you won and you got an R rating.
| | 02:17 | But having gone through that process,
I'm curious, from your point of view, I
| | 02:23 | know some people would say the MPAA is
looking out for the interests of parents,
| | 02:29 | but other people I think see
them as self-appointed censors.
| | 02:33 | Where do you stand?
| | 02:34 | Jamie: Having two kids who are
four-and-a- half and two-and-a-half, I think it's
| | 02:39 | important to have an organization that,
in theory, is out there and rating films
| | 02:44 | and helping us understand what's
coming out in the form of media, whether it's
| | 02:48 | television or film, online content.
| | 02:51 | There is so much content
now that we have access to.
| | 02:55 | But at the same time, we were
blown away by the NC-17 rating.
| | 03:00 | It was such a shock to us.
| | 03:03 | We actually--since it's in the past, we
used to sort of--when Derek Cianfrance,
| | 03:08 | the director who was making the film,
it was very important that Ryan Gosling
| | 03:12 | and Michelle Williams understood that
they had to sort of give a very naked
| | 03:16 | performance, both in the
literal and the physical.
| | 03:20 | When we finally got through the whole
film and we were watching the film, we
| | 03:24 | used to sort of make jokes that we
made a PG-13 film, because there is very
| | 03:28 | limited nudity, there is very limited
cursing. There is no drug use. There
| | 03:34 | is limited drinking.
| | 03:35 | All the things as a parent that I
would be worried about my children having
| | 03:40 | access to at a young age
weren't really in there.
| | 03:43 | So when that rating came out, it was
just a complete shock, and it was hurtful.
| | 03:48 | It was sort of offensive that this
organization would treat the film that way.
| | 03:54 | But fortunately, Harvey supported us in
keeping the film exactly the way it was.
| | 04:01 | I think maybe the most frustrating part
is we went back and we appealed, and we
| | 04:07 | were the first film to ever have a
unanimous overturned rating and without
| | 04:13 | making a change to the film.
| | 04:14 | We didn't make one change to the film.
| | 04:16 | So there is obviously a disconnect in
this organization, because--I mean you
| | 04:20 | probably know more about the MPAA than
I do--but because of the way that it's
| | 04:24 | set up, you have one group that rates
the film and you have another group that
| | 04:28 | sits on the appeals commission.
| | 04:30 | They're different people.
| | 04:31 | So if the group that rated it said it
was NC-17, and the group that we appealed
| | 04:35 | to unanimously thought it wasn't NC-17,
there is obviously a disconnect going on there.
| | 04:40 | So in theory, I think the MPAA is important.
| | 04:43 | I think what they do is great, but I
think they just sort of need to figure
| | 04:47 | out a better set of guidelines, or
be a little more open to what is in
| | 04:57 | different rating classes.
| | 04:58 | I think, what The King's Speech had
to deal with is just is as frustrating,
| | 05:02 | I mean more frustrating, because
again the whole--I understand Blue
| | 05:07 | Valentine really gets to you.
| | 05:11 | Derek always said, it's not what you
see, it's what you feel that's really the rating.
| | 05:15 | I think The King's Speech has one scene
that automatically makes it an R film,
| | 05:20 | which just makes no sense.
| | 05:22 | Iain: The UK can managed to get around it
by putting some sort of tag on the posters
| | 05:27 | that said, "Film contains
swearing in a speech-therapy context."
| | 05:32 | (laughter)
| | 05:41 | Patrick: Some of the R films on this panel I
know got an R rating for depicting drug use,
| | 05:46 | which definitely is a clear-cut ratings no-no.
| | 05:54 | Mike De Luca, producer of The Social
Network, how did you--there is a party
| | 05:58 | scene in The Social Network that I
would've thought would've gotten you an R
| | 06:02 | rating, where it pretty
clearly portrays drug use.
| | 06:06 | How did you get around that?
| | 06:07 | Mike De Luca: Look, I don't know how the MPAA
works either, but if I had a conjecture, my one
| | 06:13 | experience with the MPAA on the front
lines was Boogie Nights when I was at New
| | 06:17 | Line, and that was a whole different
kettle of fish because we were trying to
| | 06:20 | get an R after like 11
submissions and getting an NC-17.
| | 06:24 | So what I learned from that
process is sometimes while there is the
| | 06:29 | suggested presence of narcotics in
that scene, there's no actual use, the
| | 06:35 | way with sometimes where the
simulated sex scene if the bodies are moving,
| | 06:39 | they get a little wiggy.
| | 06:40 | If they're not moving, they get less wiggy.
| | 06:43 | It's weird, but I think a
lot of that comes into play.
| | 06:47 | And that's how we got it.
| | 06:48 | I think that's how they interpreted
the scene in Social Network, because we
| | 06:52 | got the PG-13 rating.
| | 06:53 | Patrick: Jamie, that reminds me--I don't
want to get too taudry here, but it does tell us
| | 07:01 | the way that the MPAA mindset works.
| | 07:05 | Someone who runs a studio told me,
seemingly very authoritatively, that part of
| | 07:11 | the problem with your oral sex scene
was the motion of the oral sex was up and
| | 07:17 | down instead of sideways.
| | 07:19 | (laughter)
| | 07:21 | Todd Lieberman: Because normal oral sex is?
Jamie Patricof: It's way too early for a question like this.
| | 07:24 | Patrick: I could not make that up.
Todd: It makes sense.
| | 07:26 | Patrick: Is there any truth to that?
| | 07:30 | Jamie: That's the first time I am
hearing of this, but we'll go re-cut it and see
| | 07:36 | what happens.
| | 07:37 | I think you made a good point, though.
| | 07:38 | I mean, I have had conversations.
| | 07:41 | We never, we didn't have a dialog with the MPAA.
| | 07:43 | There was no dialog to be had.
| | 07:46 | I think the independent films, they
sort of just--here is your rating and that's it.
| | 07:53 | I think, in this form of studios, I
think you a lot more, for whatever reason,
| | 07:56 | there is a lot more dialog going on.
| | 08:00 | Again, I don't know why exactly, but
that was, again--I still don't know for a
| | 08:08 | fact what was the NC-17 scene.
| | 08:13 | Again, what we were told was the oral sex scene.
| | 08:17 | It's sort of from--it was
like a game of telephone.
| | 08:20 | But again, when you look at--again, it's
an odd thing, because the ratings board
| | 08:25 | overturned it so unanimously, it
doesn't really makes any sense.
| | 08:29 | But I guess now next time I have a film
with an oral sex scene, we will try the
| | 08:35 | side-to-side versus the up-and-down,
and I will let you know.
| | 08:37 | We will come back here and discuss it.
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