Producers Roundtable
From left: American Hustle's Charles Roven, 12 Years a Slave's Dede Gardner, Gravity's David Heyman, Captain Phillips' Michael De Luca, The Butler's Pam Williams and Lone Survivor's Mark Wahlberg.
From left: American Hustle's Charles Roven, 12 Years a Slave's Dede Gardner, Gravity's David Heyman, Captain Phillips' Michael De Luca, The Butler's Pam Williams and Lone Survivor's Mark Wahlberg.
Wahlberg on why he became a producer: "The only reason why I wanted to was because I was never going to get the script first. I had to wait for Brad Pitt to pass; I had to wait for this one to pass. So I had to go out there and create my own thing, find material, develop it for myself and have creative control. I'd rather be behind the wheel of a car going down a highway at 200 miles per hour than in the backseat with somebody else in control. So that was it for me, and then I just loved it, and it was addictive to me."
Roven on what he struggles with: "There could be more problems in the marketing or the casting. There's always that one guy on the crew that's not exactly right, or budgets are spiraling out of control. What are you going to do? How are you going to make sure you don't hurt the process? And that's when you're actually making it; getting it to the point to where you're making it, that's a whole other skill set."
Heyman on producing Gravity: "It took us four years to make the movie, and for us, the big issue was figuring out the technology with which to achieve zero gravity. It was a year and a half of R&D, where the studio was putting in money on blind faith because we didn't have a clue what we could do."
"I didn't feel pressure because we had a possible replacement in place before the thing actually went down," says De Luca, referring to Charlie Hunnam's exit from Fifty Shades of Grey. "It's just called being prepared. But I am on Twitter constantly. I am a masochist. I'm into the fandom, so I was aware of what was coming the first time around, when Charlie Hunnam wasn't what most readers pictured."
Williams on test screenings: "We must have screened The Butler 70 times. A lot changed, namely tone. Lee Daniels is a certain director, and the movie needed to be PG-13, and he is [in] more of an R-rated world. And the movie started out as two hours and 46 minutes, so it was really useful to know [what might be cut]. I see those as a tool — and if screenings are used as a hammer, that's the wrong tool."
Gardner on the public attention of World War Z: "You have to just stay focused, and I feel very fortunate to have Brad [Pitt] and Jeremy [Kleiner] as partners. But that was wretched on every level. It was horrible. And I had a great time making Z, but I didn't like the scrutiny that comes along with the size of it. I really found that uncomfortable. I guess it's a natural thing because of the size and the investment, but I felt this is no one's business until we're finished with this movie."
"I almost fired my agent Ari [Emanuel] over [Fifty Shades] — not because I wanted to play the part," says Wahlberg. "We were aware of the book very early on, and we were close to securing the rights, and then we get into this bidding war. We were so close to having [it]. That was one of the few times I was going to fire Ari."
"I come out of television, where you hire the director on a weekly basis, and they come and go, and so you're always driving the train," says Williams. "In film, basically, you hire your boss, and then it really is about servicing his vision."
"I've had many films that had some weird stuff going on — before 'social media' was the term," says Roven. "We did keep our head down, tried to stay true to our vision, and the film came out and it was very successful. I had one film where, based on the person we cast, we were getting [comments] that his parents should have killed him at birth; that his parents should have smothered him with a pillow."
"Richard Harris was Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies, and when he got sick, I remember going to see him in the hospital. He said: 'Don't dare recast. I'll be back.' And then he didn't make it. And he was a godfather to me, and it was like a family, and there's grieving. You don't rush on and go, 'Oh well, who are we going to get to replace him?' "