In the past few years, producers have had to deal with a whole range of problems -- including studio cutbacks, more powerful directors and just getting the appropriate credit for their work. Yet, despite the increasing difficulties they face, most remain passionately committed to their jobs. These and other issues were debated at the PGA's new Beverly Hills headquarters in a roundtable discussion convened by The Hollywood Reporter and moderated by Stephen Galloway. Those taking part included Mark Gordon ("Saving Private Ryan"), Gale Anne Hurd ("The Terminator"), Hawk Koch ("Collateral Damage"), Neal Moritz ("The Fast and the Furious") and Laura Ziskin ("Spider-Man").
ROOM WITH VIEWS: (From left) Mark Gordon, Laura Ziskin, Hawk Koch, Gale Ann Hurd and Neal Moritz
The Hollywood Reporter: What is the most serious issue facing producers in Hollywood today?
All: (In unison) Credits!
Laura Ziskin: All you have to do is go to the movies and look at the proliferation of producer credits, and you can recognize that there's a problem. (There is) a trend, which I think we are in the process of reversing, toward the devaluing or undervaluing of the producer and his role, because if you can give that credit to anyone, the implication is that it doesn't mean anything. (One reason for the problem is that) the job is very hard to define -- it's much more difficult to define than the writer or director or any other role on a movie. From the studio's point of view, when they are confused (about the definition), they'll give that credit to anyone.
THR: How do you define a producer?
Mark Gordon: We are in the process of creating very specific criteria for producer, executive producer, co-producer. In general, in order to earn the producer credit on the movie, you must have participated in a significant way in the development, preproduction, production and postproduction of a movie.
Gale Anne Hurd: And the marketing.
Gordon: It's everything from the development of the script through the release of the picture, domestically and in the foreign markets. If you have a significant contribution to make within those areas, then that's what your credit should be.
THR: Has the job of producer changed over the years?
Gordon: It used to be that the directors worked for the producers! (Laughter)
Ziskin: (Another producer) turned to me when we were shooting "No Way Out," and he said, "It's the only business in the world where you hire someone who becomes your boss!"
Neal Moritz: But that's interesting, because certain movies, where it's first-time directors, where it's young actors -- I am the boss of that movie. Whereas if I am going to do -- whatever -- a Will Smith/Michael Bay movie -- I am working for them.
Ziskin: There has been an erosion of the producer's role to the point where the studios don't get it. There are big movies where the studio says, "We are not going to have a producer. We're going to produce it (ourselves)." As producers, you kind of laugh. What's producing? It's this succession of decisions that are made every second of the day. Sometimes they are made at 10 o'clock at night in the cutting room; sometimes they are made driving in the van on a location scout. Big, giant decisions are made every step of the way while you are making a movie that the producer is responsible for or party to. By the time the studio is aware of any issues, there will be 9,000 decisions that have led up to (them). That they would think they could control the process is insane.
THR: Yet most of the executives have been producers or are going to become producers.
Hawk Koch: Not many studios executives have been producers.
Ziskin: They usually go into shock when they do!
Moritz: It is a very different role. (As an executive), you are sitting behind a desk, and everything comes to you. As a producer, you are pushing a ball uphill, and everyone else is pushing the ball downhill. That's the difference.
Gordon: Cahiers du Cinema (the French magazine that introduced the auteur theory, stating that a director was solely responsible for a film) was responsible for this. (Laughs) Producers were the creative force in movies: They picked the scripts, they hired the directors. After shooting was over, the producer would supervise the editing of the picture. It was a completely different system. In the late 1950s and early '60s, what happened was that the auteur theory -- one of the most horrible terms in the history of film -- (made the director) the end-all, be-all.
THR: Let me play devil's advocate here. Do none of you accept, in certain circumstances, the basic auteur theory?
Ziskin:I think (with) every movie, every good movie, there is somebody who has a vision. Sometimes it's the producer. I have done other movies where it's been the director's vision. Sometimes it's the writer's vision.
THR: So why didn't the producers hit back?
Hurd: The producers were not smart enough to realize what was going on. They had their own little fiefdom, and rather than come together -- it helped the studio and the directors to have the producers remain in competition.
THR: What do you think of the "film by" credit, which always goes to the director?
Koch: Just because you have "director" next to your name, and you are going to direct a movie doesn't make you the auteur. There are people who have earned becoming the auteur.
Hurd: We have all worked with people who have earned that. Generally, they are writer-directors, but not always.
Moritz: It's the same thing with the production credit ("a production by," which is given to some producers). You have to earn that. In your first couple of movies, the studio doesn't give you the production credit.
Gordon: But you know what? The fact of the matter is, there are a handful of directors who have such a significant impact on what they do that we are all thrilled to get out of the way, OK? By and large, (the difference between producers and directors is) we have all developed many more scripts than probably all of the directors that we've worked with. We are professional developers; that's what we do for a living.
Ziskin: We don't get paid up front.
THR: Let's talk about money.
Ziskin: OK, let's talk about how, even if you get paid a healthy fee, if you amortize that fee over the average time it takes to start from an idea to finally making the movie ...
Hurd:"The Incredible Hulk" is 11 years.
Ziskin: I would say the average is five years. But for the writers -- I have a project at Fox now, and they just hired another set of writers at $250,000 a week! If I tell you how many mortgages and houses this script has bought -- and good for the writers, I live with a writer! But they get paid, and it doesn't have to be good. We work for years and years and years for basically nothing.
THR: What does an average producer get? And when?
Koch: Without a studio, if you develop it on your own -- nothing. If you develop it with a studio, the norm is generally a $25,000 (development) fee, against whatever your (producer's) fee is. However, you don't get the $25,000 at the beginning; you get $12,500. You won't get the other $12,500 until they abandon the project or make it.
THR: What is the average producer making on a studio picture?
Ziskin: I would say the producers' fees go anywhere from $250,000 to $2 million.
Gordon: The average director's fee --
Ziskin: -- for a journeyman! --
Hurd: -- is probably about $2 million.
Ziskin: Who's been on the project longer? If you are a developing producer, which we all are, for the most part the project starts with us, (and) we are on the movie many more years.
Moritz: The difference is, a director can only really work on one movie at a time; the producer ordinarily (has several projects he is working on).
THR: Let's talk about another issue: studio cutbacks. The Hollywood Reporter puts out a chart every year of studio producer deals. These would pay maybe $500,000 to $1 million each. How much have studio cutbacks impacted producers?
Moritz: I think there are far fewer producer deals.
Ziskin: I'm going to be an optimist, and say that there's a trend. The trend is, things have to get really bad -- I saw (Israeli foreign minister) Shimon Peres on "Charlie Rose" last night, not to compare the two -- he said he's optimistic because things are at rock bottom, so they have to get better. The trend is that the studios are recognizing that it means something to be a producer.
THR:How serious for most producers were the studio cutbacks?
Hurd: It wasn't just for producers. The actors' deals are gone; the directors' deals are gone. But if you have just done a great job for the studio, they will be making a deal with you, because you have shown that you add value to them.
Moritz: If you are making them money, they want you around.
THR: How hard is it now to raise money outside the studio system?
Moritz: Without a track record, it is very hard.
Hurd: I don't think it is harder. It is all material-driven; it is all about what material you have and what the studio wants. The studios are now all looking at the fact that the tent-pole productions are very important for them, and where do they come from? They generally come from producers. Look at (producer) David Heyman, who had "Harry Potter." I guarantee you, Warner Bros. and AOL are blessing him right now.
THR: Are the kind of films that the studios are making today different from when you all began?
Koch: It's a lot harder to make the smaller, specialty movies. A studio executive in the old days -- I'll go back to a Bob Evans or Dick Zanuck -- would (greenlight a movie) because fiscally it made sense. But then there was this pet project that he had, and you took a chance on it because it said something -- it may have been a Stanley Kramer movie, or it may have been an early Norman Jewison movie, "A Soldier's Story." Do you know how hard it would be to make "A Soldier's Story" today?
Moritz: Large corporations, not one guy, are running the studios.
Koch: I've got two or three movies that are just little jewels. They are all supposed to cost under $10 million, and I want to make all of them because, quite frankly, I just finished a giant tent-pole movie ("Collateral Damage"), and it's nowhere near as much fun as the little things.
THR: The studio decision-making system, how has that changed?
Gordon: You've got so many levels of corporate hierarchy now. Executives get this much time to be successful; movies have one weekend to be successful. The window of opportunity is so much shorter.
Hurd: Let's take it to the marketing people and see what they say.
Gordon: Exactly. So everybody is completely risk averse, which is why it is rare within the studio system -- and which is why the independent world has produced some of the great movies over the last few years -- that you are going to have the opportunity to make a great little jewel.
THR: Is the independent world better than that?
Moritz: It is a different world, by the way. It is a completely different world than the studio system.
Hurd: Do you know how many of the independents are owned by the majors? How many true independents are there?
Gordon: Miramax is not an independent company any more. They need to make money the same way that Disney does.
Hurd:There is money out there to get movies made. But then the triggering effect is to have distribution. There are (only) a handful of companies that distribute film. There are new ones that come on the radar all the time, but if they don't have a hit in fairly short order, they are off the chart. The "healthy independent world" is only as healthy as the distributors who are distributing independent product.
Ziskin: The whole nature of making movies is an unholy marriage of bankers and artists. Bankers are by definition and necessity risk reducers; artists are by definition and necessity risk takers. There is a friction, naturally, in the process of making movies. There is something in that friction that is very good, but right now, it is very unbalanced.
Hurd: In the old days, producers used to be buffers between the studios, the bankers and these kind of creative (people). Producers brought a real service and value to the studio because they were mediators; they were the reasonable ones in the middle. Now it seems like some of them are enablers to directors.
Ziskin: The other change is, the studios began to look at two functions on the movie in an idiotic way: what you guys refer to as the "line producer" and the "creative producer" -- which actually created a lot of problems, because, as anyone who has made a movie knows, every financial decision is a creative decision, and every creative decision is a financial decision.
THR:Who has done that best? Who are your heroes in terms of actual producers?
Gordon:Irving Thalberg, who chose to make interesting movies (that were not always surefire commercial hits); and David O. Selznick, who was probably the consummate producer, the man who was in every way responsible for the movie that he made. He was the producer's producer.
Hurd: Stanley Kramer and Saul Zaentz, because I think they were and are passionate about the stories that they wanted to tell. People can talk about singular visions for directors; I think both Kramer and Zaentz have the singular vision.
Moritz: I'm coming at it from a completely different angle. My (choices) are James Nicholson and Samuel Arkoff. They were always trying to find the new people, because they couldn't afford the other people, and they tried to make interesting stuff with new young people.
Koch: Stanley Kramer and Hal Wallis -- and I got to work with both. Stanley Kramer because he cared so deeply about what he was doing, and Hal Wallis because, as I watched him, he was a guy who could make an Elvis Presley movie and also make "A Man for All Seasons" -- he had this broad range; he was very eclectic in his tastes.
Ziskin: My heroes are the people at this table -- and actually anybody who can stick with it, who has passion about an idea, who won't take no for an answer.
At the table
Mark Gordon
After graduating from NYU film school, Gordon worked in commercials and TV series. Following several after-school specials, he produced his first feature film, the low-budget actioner "Brothers in Arms." His subsequent features include "Opportunity Knocks," "Swing Kids," "Speed," "A Simple Plan" and "The Patriot." He received an Academy Award nomination for "Saving Private Ryan."
Gale Anne Hurd
After working for Roger Corman, Hurd teamed up with James Cameron to make "The Terminator" and followed it several years later with "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Her other producing credits include "Aliens," "The Abyss," "Alien Nation," "The Ghost in the Darkness," "The Relic," "Dante's Peak," "Armageddon," "Virus" and "Dick."
Hawk Koch
Koch began his career as a roadie in England, then entered the film business working for Sydney Pollack as well as William Castle. After producing such films as "The Idolmaker," "Gorky Park" and "The Pope of Greenwich Village," he became president of Rastar. His other film credits include executive producer of "Wayne's World" and producer of "Keeping the Faith" and "Frequency."
Neal Moritz
Moritz, a graduate of USC's Peter Stark producing program, has made such films as "Volcano," "I Know What You Did Last Summer," "Urban Legend," "I Still Know What You DId Last Summer," "Cruel Intentions," "Blue Streak," "The Skulls," "The Fast and the Furious" and "Slackers." He has just wrapped "Sweet Home Alabama," with Reese Witherspoon.
Laura Ziskin
Ziskin, a USC film school graduate, started her career writing for a game show, then worked on the Barbra Streisand remake of "A Star Is Born." She has produced such films as "Murphy's Romance," "No Way Out," "D.O.A.," "Everybody's All-American," "What About Bob?" "The Doctor" and "Hero" and also served as president of Fox 2000. She is currently producing "Spider-Man."