My friend Scott has posted his diatribe against people who sit through the end-credits of movies. Several of his "film snob" friends (myself included) strongly disagree with him, which makes for a rare debate via blog comments. Hopefully you'll weigh in:
A few weeks ago, something small but momentous happened. I received my first royalty check.
Ever since I was 16, I've worked on video games and movies as a profit participant, someone who would theoretically benefit if the project ever made millions. Sometimes the promise of potential royalties has been my only compensation. Other times, I've taken a reduced salary just as a means to pay rent while waiting for the real money to start flowing in.
Whenever I've applied for a lease or a credit card, I've always listed my annual income and then written next to the figure "plus royalties". As if a loan officer might read it and consider, "Oh, wait. His income may be modest, but he gets royalties. We definitely want to be in business with this guy."
The problem is, none of the projects I've had points on have ever broken even. Until now.
Chavez Ravine, the short documentary I produced a few years ago, has finally earned back its advances and paid its first royalty check. I'll personally only get 10% of this particular check. Which may seem pretty paltry considering the hundreds of unpaid hours I've put into the project, but let me tell you, that $206 is immensely satisfying.
Last night, Tabitha and I hosted an Oscar-watching party. We ended up with 19 people in our living room, which was a lot of fun.
Despite the naysayers, I think Jon Stewart was the best host yet. The awards themselves were tame and enjoyable as usual.
Although I think Philip Seymour Hoffman is a brilliant character actor, I was disappointed that Joaquin Phoenix didn't win. He may have picked some lame scripts in the past ("Swing Away, Merrill"), but like his dead older brother was quickly becoming, Joaquin is a movie star.
I think everyone agrees that the biggest surprise of the night was Best Picture, the producers' Oscar that I hope to win someday. I imagine most people were surprised that Brokeback Mountain didn't win, which as you know I was glad about. But I was surprised that neither of my top two films won.
My friend Mark always says that Best Picture should be called Most Picture, since the movie that usually wins is simply the biggest production or the film with the grandest theme. He uses this to explain why movies such as Titanic or Gladiator win.
But I love huge movies. And I think there should be an award for Best Production (the original name for the Best Picture Oscar). This year, the film that I think clearly embodies the most picture principle was Munich, and it didn't win a single award.
No word yet from the Kid's camp, although their interest has prodded Scott and I to make big strides with our outline, which is shaping up to be quite a fun movie.
In the meantime, I've gotten several calls about line producing work, which is very nice, since for my first few years in this business I was grateful just to get an unpaid internship.
I've also learned from an entertainment attorney that my current position in the Hollywood hierarchy is called a golden retriever: a young producer who goes out and grabs a piece of material then brings it to a real producer who can hopefully get the movie made.
"In every place there are 100 people who can say no and only one person who can say yes. You have to get a good piece of material to the right person."
Robert Evans says he became a producer by controlling material--optioning books that people wanted to make into movies.
But securing exclusive film rights to a successful, published book is no easy feat, even if the book isn't called "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Godfather".
Then again, easy feats are seldom worth doing.
So when my friend Scott brought me a book he had loved as a kid, I read it and we decided to go after it. The writing is mundane and the book hardly has a plot or ending, but there is a charming quality to the nerdy young protagonist and her supernatural powers. More importantly, the book has been continuously published for 25 years and has a remarkable fan-base of readers who were touched by it at just the right age.
It took several months of pitching and cajoling to convince a major New York literary agency and the late author's estate that they should tie up the rights to their beloved book with a couple of aspiring filmmakers with no produced credits and no real money on the table.
But somehow we did and Scott and I finally controlled the rights to a published book.
Which is nice, because this morning we got our first nibble:
A young development executive at The Robert Evans Company called to tell me that he's always loved the book and is thrilled he's finally tracked down the rights and is eager to hear my take on the movie. He said they're currently in the business of making mid-budget family fare, and from my three sentence pitch, he feels we're on the same page.
So now Scott and I have to hammer out our treatment and see if we can get Evans to partner with us and set it up at Paramount.
Then the next step will be for us to stay in the picture.
My friend Aleem was once told by a successful screenwriter that the best writing advice he ever got was to "get dressed."
I think this is just as true for producers or anyone else trying to generate a career out of nothing.
I don't have a real job. I don't even have a fake job. No one cares whether I get out of bed or spend the day sailing or surfing or reading the paper... (which has its perks, of course)
Although unlike many freelance workers, I can't sit around trying to get hired either. I'm supposed to be the one creating the jobs, thinking up ideas for movies, finding or commissioning scripts, pitching them, getting them packaged and financed, and eventually hiring all my crew-member friends to shoot the movie.
(Actually, there's a middle ground, which is when I get hired to line-produce someone else's movie, and then I have all the structure and benefits of a real job--including the paycheck! Those jobs are great fun, but there's a lot down time in-between, and ultimately I want to be a creative producer anyway.)
So being a "creative producer" - at my low level especially - requires some discipline. With no boss or co-workers or paycheck, it's not always easy to convince yourself that there aren't better uses for your time than sitting around reading scripts or brainstorming story ideas or writing extensive notes for screenwriters about how to improve their screenplays which will probably never sell anyway.
But how else are you gonna make it?
So from Monday to Friday, I force myself to get up and drive over to my little office on Hollywood Blvd. Since I work alone and have a desk and internet at home, it's hard to justify paying $400/month for this privilege. But it does give me a cool place to have meetings, a structured time and setting to develop my producing projects, and a reason to get dressed.