Producer’s Panel (Moderator Patrick Goldstein, 2011)

Reviewed by My Eklund. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011.

Patrick Goldstein from LA Times was the moderator of the producers’ panel. Six Hollywood known producers were answering questions about the struggle to get the film funded, the struggle with press etc.

Darla K Anderson who produced Toy Story 3 is in the Guinness book of records for the highest box office growth. She has produced four of the Pixar movies starting with Bugs’ life, then Monsters Inc, Cars and Toy Story 3. She’s been working there for about 30 years with her co-workers. They never seem to displease the audience whether they are doing commercials or movies, because they work themselves up with a lot of help from each other. “The creative process in terms of production really brings you to your knees, no matter how many times you’ve done it,” Darla says.  Computer animation is a little bit different that live action processes. They don’t have to worry about weather. If they need to do a retake they call in the actor or actresses and that’s a luxury.

Iain Canning was the producer of the King’s Speech. He says ironically that he can thank the queen’s mother, otherwise he would never have gotten to produce this magnificent film. They shot it in London. A critic said, “Kings speech is a gross falsification of history.” Iain says that there is a lot of focus on the relationship of the king and whom he supported. “We also have to think about that a movie is compressed. It’s impossible to get every bit of information into a movie,” Iain says.

Alix Madigan was the producer of Winters Bone. Daniel Odrell wrote the book. They shot it in Missouri. It’s an isolated community. The little girl that plays a character in the film actually lives in the house where they shot part of the film. One interesting thing that she said was that one of the cast members was a prior army recruiter. He is now a farmer because acting was not what he wanted to do. They pretty much had to readjust the whole city, and where therefore visiting it for three years before they started the production.

Todd Lieberman produced The Fighter. A lot of locals were casted for this film. It’s a story of underdogs trying to succeed against all odds. It is a humorous depiction of a family that didn’t grow up in the top of the American social ladder, and it is a tragic destiny that we as an audience may take part of. Especially when he (Dicky) finally get to see his documentary on TV and realizes what a tragic figure he has become. It is a touching moment.

Mike Deluca was the producer of The Social Network. Harvard didn’t give themselves over, even though the set looked pretty preppy. They shoot the film at Johns Hopkins and Boston University. One critic said that the character in the movie has no resemblance to the real Mark Zuckerberg, even though the producer knew what the deposition was in the law force and so forth.  He said that they worked of available research, and they got most of it right, but the moderator keeps confronting him that it’s not true to the real life of Mark Zuckerberg. The producer says that if it was a documentary they had to keep everything as true to the fact as they could, but this is indeed a movie. By that said, there has to be some invention to make the movie interesting to the audience.

Jamie Patricof produced Blue Valentine. It has a documentary feel to it. It had the lowest budget of $1 million, even though the main actress was Michelle Williams. They went through private acuity sources. The director didn’t want many lights, he just wanted one truck, he wanted a minimum of crewmembers and so forth, so they made it through the low budget.

It took 90 days to shot The Social Network. Blue Valentine took 25 days to shot and Winters Bone took 24 days. That is the difference between shooting an independent movie and having a studio behind them, as the Social Network had.

When it comes to the relationship between the director and producer, Mike talked about his relationship with David Finsher.  He didn’t want to intrude on the director, but rather give him space. The best Mike could do was to support him and also stay out of his way. Jamie says that it is important to let the director direct the film, and not focus on anything else.

It’s always very interesting to go to panels, because you actually get to hear the real stories behind the films and what their struggles were, from the filmmakers.