Becoming a Film Producer by Boris Kachka

Author:Boris Kachka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

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ONE OF THE HAZARDS of handling more and bigger pictures, as Berger is trying to do, is that your attention is pulled in more directions. You have less time to pore over a budget pass or get through every edit in time for a meeting. On the other hand, Berger has spent years becoming more organized, learning to delegate, seeing problems further ahead and fixing them faster. This is true in any challenging field, but particularly in an industry with so many moving parts.

Berger spends much of the afternoon shifting gears yet again, moving on to a big-budget streaming series barreling toward production—a show whose complex, choose-your-own-adventure structure makes it more intricate to produce, too. He has one conference-room meeting and a couple phone calls about staffing up—conversations that involve everything from checking union rules in different cities to assessing a behind-the-camera talent to figuring out how serious a potential filmmaker is when they tell him they’re “seriously” interested in signing on. (In Hollywood, subtext really matters.)

Suddenly the day is wrapping up, which is a good thing because it’s starting to feel a little like the show Berger’s making: a choose-your-own-adventure in which the adventure chooses you, and you just have to ride it out and hope the pieces eventually fit. The only way to wind down from such a day is to get dinner and some drinks at the San Vicente Bungalows.

Are there many professions in which you overcome the stress of a day by going somewhere you’re bound to run into the same people you’ve just been on the phone with? Perhaps a few. It works for Berger—usually.

“It’s a common refrain when I talk to students curious about a career in entertainment,” he says on the drive over. “If you value work-life balance, I have a lot of industries for you, but this is probably not the one. Family always comes first, but beyond that, this is a twenty-four-seven business, where the line between social and professional is blurred.”

What might look superficial on the surface, Berger sees as an incubator of ideas, a palm-fronded courtyard populated by “intelligent, passionate people who are obsessively devoted to the work. The edict is true here: Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Are money, power, celebrity alluring to some people? I’m sure it is. But all of it takes a staggering degree of work and determination.”

As soon as we’re settled at a table overlooking the patio, passersby start connecting, Berger included. An agent walks by and Berger presses him, jovially, for a yes or no on an actress he’s been offering a part. “It’s a pass,” says the agent. “We should move on.” Despite the bad news, Berger seems buoyed. “I love a quick pass,” says Berger. “A three-month ‘maybe’ is brutal.” Producing, as many will tell you, is about “hearing no all the time, and sometimes turning nos into yeses.” But you have to pick your nos.

In the course of the next

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