When It's Not About the Money - Part 2 - For The Love of the Game

[T]he job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's reexamine it.

-David Mamet in a Salon Interview

There is a common truth about the producer in theater and in film. They are salesmen. They are salesmen that sell art, but they are still salesmen.*

Mamet knows art, and he knows salesmen. He writes great characters who are obsessed with money, and in interview after interview, he distances artists from salesmen and talks disparagingly about producers and the film and theater business and how it's all about the money.

His film producer in State and Main, Marty Rossen (played by the wonderful David Paymer) is a petty little man who cajoles when he can, and threatens when that doesn't work. Or as his producer says in Speed the Plow

"Life in the movie business is like a new love affair; it's full of surprises and you're constantly getting fucked."

The Coen Brothers give us Jack Lipnick in Barton Fink, who alternately woos the titled writer when he thinks that will work, but offers him this when it doesn't:

"I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? Because I got horse-sense, Goddammit. Showmanship!"

And that may be what separates producers in film and theater from other salesmen. Deep down, they are showmen.

The Producer's Max Bialystock uges his new partner, "When you got it, flaunt it!"

But he knows there is no art without commerce.

"Don't forget the check-y," Max tells one of his elderly suitors. "Can't make plays without the check-y."

For some of us, it makes us feel cheap. I have never been good about having my hand out for the check, which is why, in Part 1, I talked about how I never liked that part of producing. This, even though I often describe being a line producer as being a glorified accountant. I'm okay with counting and watching the money, but not collecting it.

Someone has to do it.

The previous post - When It's Not About the Money - was going to be a one-off. However, as often happens after I publish, I woke the next morning to the realization that there was an entire side to the story I had not told. It was not a part of that article, so I didn't edit it. It was a follow-up.

What I have seen in my new-found position of working with people who are good at raising money is that there is a side of the salesman many don't see, and that's the love of the product.

In the past few weeks I have seen producers as salesmen at work, and what I walked away with was how seamlessly they blended art and commerce.

Doug is a theater producer, and if you looked up a theatrical producer in a dictionary, his picture would be there (maybe without the big cigar).

When I first met him for coffee in a hotel bar, he immediately broke into his spiel about his current musical, complete with flyers and cards and props from the show that he carried in his bag, a bag that was seemingly as bottomless as a magician's hat and had whatever it needed.

Then, he played his favorite song from his the new musical he is raising money for on his phone for us. A few seconds in, his face lit up, and it lit up for real. The snake-charmer charmed by his own tune.

When he talks about his current comedy - a hilarious piece he was kind enough to take some of us to - he beams. "I've seen it a number of times now," he says. "A day in the theater never fails to cheer me up."  He offers a satisfied sigh, and you know he truly loves it.

When I sat with Marc, the director and producer for a film we may be able to help get funded, he, too, had all the marketing and social media angles covered, as well as potential tie-ins to his very clever movie about the lottery. Once he talked about the scenes from the script, though, he lit up. He could see the scenes right before him, and that was not about box office or grosses, but seeing a dream come to life.

My producer friend Trevite says of herself, "I'm a closer." She is good at making deals and not shy about making sure investors deposit the checks. While she says she doesn't like being on set (she has the LP and PM and AD for that) the truth is that she has a hand in every side of the creative process, and not afraid to get her hands dirty to make things get done. I got to see the rough cut of her latest feature, and it looks great - not great for the small budget they had - but great like I would have enjoyed it if I had paid $15 in a theater for it.

Maybe that's the difference between producers in theater and film and other salesmen. The dream came before the money, and the dream was not about money but the work. "Whereas money is a means to an end for the filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end," says Robert Redford.

This is what separates them from the Willy Lomans, whose boss tells him, "The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell."

A few years ago, I was line producer on a true art film, so much so that I can't give you a simple description of the movie. The screenplay was based on an existential novela and was, if possible, even less commercial than the book. The producer and I had lots of issues with how each of us work, but I never stopped admiring her for raising over $600K for a film I could not describe by a first-time feature filmmaker.

That is certainly talent.

Sometimes I wonder if those of us in the arts embrace the fact that "artist" is the word that most comes to people's minds after the word "struggling" is not just a way of us justifying our lack of financial acumen. The work should be the badge of honor, not the poverty.

Later this week, I will learn if my marriage of these two worlds lands a script and two filmmaker friends that I very much admire their funding. If so, we will be shooting in the Fall. That will make it all worth it.



............

Many people know one of my favorite "poor artist" speeches is by Bill Murray in "Tootsie." Here is a little bit of it.









*As with the term "actor," I use it for both genders.

When It's Not About the Money....

"When they say it's not about the money, it's about the money."
H.L. Mencken

Recently, I watched what may be the worst film I have ever seen. Ever. And I've seen some very bad movies, some of which, I'm afraid to say, were films where I was on the production side.

Characters didn't talk to each other, and they certainly didn't listen. Every scene involved one character sharing a heart-rending story from their past for a few minutes, followed by the other character doing the same. Might have made for a good monologue class, except the writing was predictable at best, and unbelievable at worst.

For years, I have said that the reason I was a line producer and not a producer is that I hated raising money. When people ask "why," I, like the people in the movie, share a story. Unlike the movie, I'll keep the monologue short - for once.

This goes back to my years as close friend of Eran, the director of The Rook*. He commissioned me to co-write an erotic romance story, and I did. It was the type of story that was inspired by Red Shoe Diaries, in fact, we were hoping to attach Joan Severance in the lead. There's little else to say about the story other than Eran and I probably made it much more complicated and multi-layered than it needed to be, as was our wont.

We started with a budget of under $1M. After months of trying to raise the funds, we thought we had hit pay-dirt with a production company of an old friend of mine. There was just one catch. First, we had to make sure they made money. Then, we needed to attach better talent to attract their investors. Then, the investors wanted more for themselves. More months and many budget revisions later, we were at $3M.

All of that work was worth it, we thought, when a company agreed to put up the money. On a Friday, they asked for our bank routing information, the deal was signed, and our bank confirmed that they had, indeed, authorized a transfer. It would take the weekend to go through, but should post the next business day, Monday.

Eran and I did what any normal, struggling artists (a bit of an oxymoron, that - normal struggling artist) would do - we celebrated. In fact, we celebrated pretty hard and spent a good deal of money celebrating. What did it matter? We were in the money!

You can see where this is going.

On Monday morning, no money had been transferred. Over the weekend, the Korean markets had crashed, and the entire deal was contingent on Korean money and pre-sales.

We were devastated. We asked the production company if there was anything we could do? They told us that the money folks said they would have done it for less, but that there was no way at $3M. Why they asked, was the budget so high anyway?

This experience soured me on the art of raising money for film, much as chasing "angels" and grants had in theater. I pretty much walked away from that world.

Until now.

In my new job, I am working with two guys who have connections in the finance world and experience putting deals together. Furthermore, they enjoy it. It's a good combination, as I look after the production side and need to do only minimal glad-handing.

The two worlds met recently when I showed them a script I had budgeted for the past three years. Both the script and the budget had gone through many revision,  but we were now at $1M. Both the guys loved the script, and also loved the directors and writer of the script, two other guys who have become like old friends to me.

I'll share more about the script at the appropriate time, but we brought the package to a finance contact of my partners, and they like it enough to have set up a meeting.

We aren't there yet, but if all goes as we hope, it will mean that I will have helped two old pros who I truly like very much bring their script to the screen.

I won't say it's not about the money - we know what that means - but this would give me some special satisfaction. To see my new partners and two old friends all benefit from a script that is screaming to get done would make me very happy.

At least on this one, it's also about more than just the money.




*For those newer to the blog, there was a long series on The Rook that probably could be a book by itself. My experiences there shaped much of my line producing later, and, especially for those who enjoy the production lessons (or the stranger, funnier war stories, it's one of the best series you can follow. Check it out if you have not done so.

The Girl in the Holograph - Part 2 - The Mistress Episode

"Look at Roosevelt. Look at Churchill. Look at that old fella whats-his-name in The African Queen."
Schatze Page (played by Lauren Bacall) in How To Marry A Millionaire*

People often ask producers how low-budget indie films get funded. The answers are as diverse as the movies themselves.

A movie I did that won Slamdance was truly funded by friends and family of the co-producers. A horror film I did was funded by a couple of deli owners. Town Diary was funded by PSA's my partners and I did for the American Dental Association.

Dentists have been a joke answer to that question for years. I don't know why dentists would have a specific attraction to the film industry, other than maybe they are attracted to anything other than the boredom of being dentists.

Stan has a great story, which I have told before but is worth telling here. A dentist had put together enough money from his practice to fund his dream of directing a movie, which was shot on location. Stan had a full crew in the last week of prep when the dentist walked up to him and told him this:

"Last night, Jack Nicholson came to me in a dream and said, 'You're not a director. You're a dentist.' He was right. Pay everyone out. I'm going home." And that is what Stan did - a movie ended by a vision of Jack Nicholson.

The Mistress

There is another old cliche that is sometimes true. Stan, again, tells of a mob guy who funded a movie for his girlfriend. When she hooked up with the lead actor, he had one of his guys get on a boat with the negative of the film and dump it in the ocean.

This cliche is the premise of a movie that I think is under-rated called Mistress, where Eli Wallach, Danny Aiello and Robert DeNiro are men who invest in a movie by Robert Wuhl - as long as their girlfriends are in it. Stan and I watched the movie together, and he loved a moment when producer Martin Landau meets a potential investor in a meat locker. "I met an investor in a meat locker!" he blurted out, leading to some strange looks from the people around us.

One of my favorite moments was Wuhl and Landau chasing Ernest Borgnine (playing himself) around a parking lot to try to get him to do the movie. It was the perfect metaphor for the way producers and directors sometimes chase name actors.

Having struck out with that attempt, as Landau and Wuhl do with Borgnine, we hit unexpected paydirt** with the main premise of the movie.

Director Phil had been looking for the perfect person to play the Girl, and he found an unknown who he felt had exactly the quality he wanted. We will call her Abbie***, and as it happens, Abbie, in her early twenties, had an older friend, Mark.***

This is the point at which I should be clear that we never discovered that Abbie was Mark's lover; in fact, both characterized the relationship as a caring "older uncle," though they were not blood relatives. Our suspicions went in a more salacious direction, but those suspicions were never proven true nor proved false. This would also be the point where I make clear Mark was not a mobster.

I forgot the amount of money I had budgeted for the film earlier, but the top end that Mark, and more importantly, his lawyers, were willing to invest was around $300k. That was certainly less than our mark, but Phil and Donna were not about to walk away from a chance to make the movie. Once again, we were working with the budget we had, and not the budget I thought was needed to complete the film.

The Drawdown

Once that lawyer got involved, actually getting Mark's investment became much more difficult. They insisted on doing a drawdown, which, to be fair, is not unusual in film financing, even on bigger budgets. People who finance films rarely want to put all the money up front. so they will want to work out a schedule of when they deliver the money, which means the line producer (me) has to come up with a cash flow.

In preparing a cash flow, it is essential that you always have the money in the bank before it needs to be spent. For example, I should have the payroll for any given week in the bank before the beginning of that week, not waiting on it when checks come due.

Financiers want to pay it as late as possible. Filmmakers want the money as soon as possible. One of the things you have to explain to first-time investors is that low-budget films are very front-loaded.

Let me explain.

Pay Me. Pay Me Now

Studios and large production companies keep accounts with major vendors, from grip and lighting to trucks to camera gear, and alike. A purchase order, which is basically a promise to pay, is enough to get equipment on set.

While low-budget films also use Purchase Orders to keep track of spending, the nature of working with start up LLC's - or other corporate entities - means they have not established credit, so everything will be COD - Cash on Delivery. Locations should be secured before shooting, and, again, payment usually goes along with a location agreement. Similarly, the costume designer has bought the wardrobe during prep, and art department will spend the largest portion of their budget before principle photography.

There are many analogies between armies and movies - feeding the crew, moving the crew and equipment - etc. Another one is that most of the money is spent before a single shot, such as it were, is fired.

First, We Kill All The Lawyers

Once we got the Mark's lawyer involved, convincing him of all this got messy. His lawyer and financial advisor was not from the film world, and was skeptical. Given the ways films are financed and the way investors see their money back, I can't say that I blame him. See Coming To America.****

When the Money Finally Comes

There were certainly moments where it seemed the movie might not get done, with a good deal of the negotiations centering on if and whether the investor, Mark, could actually take the movie from Phil and Donna, who could approve - or turn-down - a distribution deal, and, to a lesser extent, whether the investor had any creative control. Without getting into details, all of these eventually were settled to the satisfaction of both parties.

Phil and Donna were happy. The investor was happy. I was, well, satisfied. Sorry, I'm just not a glass-half-full guy. Too many years in this business

Surely, the Girl was happy. Afterall, she was going to be a lead in the first feature film she had ever done. Isn't that an actor's dream? She must have been thrilled, and, most of all, appreciative of the opportunity she was getting, and appreciative both to her 'uncle' and the producers, and certainly would not have wanted to do anything to disappoint them.


So you would think. That, however, is for The Girl in the Holograph - Part 3 - The Girl Can't Help It.





* Obviously, a bit of an in-joke that an audience would have been in on, as Bacall had hooked up with a married Humphrey Bogart (the 'old fella' she refers to) on To Have and Have Not, when she was 19 and he was 44. Photo above includes Bacall's How to Marry a Millionaire co-star, Marilyn Monroe.

** My apology for mixing my sports metaphors, using a baseball and football reference in the same sentence. Mea culpa.

*** - You know the drill. Protect people by using aliases, and all that.

**** Coming To America is probably one of the most famous cases of a movie that made hundreds of millions at the box office and showed a loss. Yes, I said one of.