First Time Director - Gil Bettman

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what, they would make money on the project. This same producing team, I will call them Sheila and Simon, had volunteered to put up $1.5 million to produce a film from a script called Car Crazy that I had co-authored for Universal Studios, but which Universal had decided not to green light and had put into turnaround. This meant that any company could produce the script, provided they compensated Universal for the fees that they had paid to me and my writing partner — a mere pittance, since my writing partner and I were unknowns and had written the script for Writer's Guild scale. Sheila and Simon said their company, Sheman Productions, was interested in doing this, so my partner and I met with them. At the meeting they told us how much they loved the script to Car Crazy, which was the story of how a small-town, ail-American teenage boy comes of age and gets the respect he hungers for by building the fastest hot rod in town — sort of Karate Kid meets American Graffiti. They told us they loved it so much they would give us $1.5 million to make it ! Furthermore, they had so much faith in me as a director they would let me direct ! All we had to do was get Keanu Reeves, Christian Slater, or River Phoenix to agree to star in it. Little mind that, at that time, Reeves, Slater, and Phoenix all had at least a $2 million asking price for their services on any picture. As to how we would pay the star and have any money left over to make the picture, neither Sheila nor Simon had any advice. That was our problem.

      Later on, at a party, Sheila told me, in so many words, that they had made the same generous offer to Tarentino, provided he could get Harvey Keitel to work in his movie. This is why I tend to doubt that Sheila and Simon had any understanding of the artistic merits of Reservoir Dogs. Their commitment to that film, like their commitment to Car Crazy, was based on simple math. Sheman Productions made its money selling to foreign distributors. Sheila and Simon knew that could easily make $1.5 million on the foreign sales of any film starring Harvey Keitel, Keanu Reeves, Christian Slater, or River Phoenix — provided it had a story that made sense and enough sex, violence, or action to satisfy the tastes of foreign viewers. This is how Sheila and Simon discovered Quentin Tarentino. If anyone deserves to claim that they gave Tarentino his break, it has got to be Keitel. He obviously read the script, saw the artistic merit in it, and then, as he is wont to do for deserving little groundbreaking films, got it made by simply agreeing to defer his paycheck or work for scale.

      The story of Reservoir Dogs shows that a writer-director has an advantage over a hired gun when it comes to making sure that when he goes to launch his career, he'll be working from a script that can do the job — even when a shoe salesman is producing it. Bottom line, the writer-director comes with the script, so the producer is removed from the process of selecting the script. This makes it more likely that the film will be an artistic success. You might even end up having the sort of dream relationship with your producer that a fellow director once described to me this way: “A good producer gets the money, gets the script, and gets out of the way !”

      In some cases, the secret weapon of the script gives the writer-director the advantage of being able to make his breakthrough film by completely dispensing with any producer to whom he has to answer. Many a writer-director of note has launched his career by being able to scrape together enough money to make his breakthrough film on the strength of the script alone. When this is the case, the writer-director, in effect, acts as his own producer. The money comes from those who back the project, either because of the artistic merit of the script or because they are friends or relatives. If this is the case, the writer-director, when it comes to all creative decisions, has only himself to answer to. Generally, the producer on this sort of project functions as a line producer who tells the writer-director how much money he does or doesn't have to spend. But exactly how he spends it is pretty much the director's own decision. A partial list of the writer-directors of note who fall into this group, and the projects they authored to launch their careers would consist of: Martin Scorsese/Mean Streets, Spike 'Let/She's Gotta Have It, Jim Jarmusch/Stranger Than Paradise, John Sayles/The Return of the Secaucus Seven, Gregory Nava/El Norte, Joel Coen/Blood Simple, Kevin Smith/Clerks, and Neil LaBute/7/2 the Company of Men.

      So what if you are just a hired gun director? Do you have a chance? Yes, but less of a chance. If you and your producer have irreconcilable differences over the script, there is a very real chance that the movie you make with that producer will not launch your career. Even worse, it may end it. Everything else — given a super abundance of talent, ingenuity, charm, and persistence — can be overcome. But, if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. That's a timeworn cliché because it happens to be so true. There are two other sayings that apply here. They are not as well known, but they are equally valid. The first is “You only get a couple of chits in this business, so you have got to make every one of them count.” The second is an original Bob Zemeckis aphorism: “You don't work your way up in this business. You are discovered and go straight to the top.” To which he added, “It's a club. They invite you into the club, and once you're in, you're in for good, unless you really screw up.” The first time director will have only one chance in his entire life to make his first feature film. He should make that one chance count. If he hits a home run his first time at bat, like Spielberg, Cameron, Tarentino, or Michael Cimino, then he is in the club for life — unless he screws up royally, like Cimino did.

      The list of first time directors whose first films bombed and were never heard from again is very, very long. There are no well-known names to bandy about here to prove my point, because these individuals disappeared beneath the waves without a trace. Lance Young, a very successful, highly respected, hip studio executive at Paramount in the early ‘90s under Gary Luchese always wanted to direct. He got his chance and made a film from a script he wrote called Bliss. On many levels it was an excellent film, but it was not a hit. Lance left the business for a couple of years and is now a studio executive at DreamWorks. Because of that initial defeat, Lance is probably going to have to wait much longer than he would like before he gets a second chance to launch his directing career.

      Zemeckis' first two films, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars, were both big disappointments at the box office in their initial release. After he made those films, Bob got a lot of consolation from a lot of powerful people, like Spielberg, Lucas, John Milius, Lew Wasserman, and Frank Price (at the time, the studio boss at Columbia). They all lined up to tell him not to worry, that he had made two excellent films, and that he was undeniably an excellent director. But none of them offered him any real jobs. Bob's directing career was very much on hold for almost five years. When he finally got his next break it did not come courtesy of his powerful friends, and it was not on a studio picture. It was to direct a movie for an independent production company in Vera Cruz, Mexico. It was an action- adventure comedy that was to be shot on a shoestring $7 million budget. The film was Romancing the Stone, and the rest, as we all know, is history. Bob was very fortunate that Michael Douglas, the film's producer, had enough vision and filmmaking savvy to look at Bob's first two films and recognize that, despite the fact that they had not made money, they had been made by a incredibly talented director — who would happily travel to the steaming jungles of Mexico and work his ass off for peanuts in order to get his directing career out of the deep freeze.

      Bob was extremely fortunate. That other crucial element that every first time director needs on his side if he is going to breakthrough into the club — luck — had played right into his hands. All wannabe directors reading this book should not count on being so lucky. They should not tempt fate. If your producer faces you across the desk, as Pedro did with me, puts his beefy, ham hock of a hand on the script as if it were the Bible, and tells you “Dees eez dee script! We shoot dees!” you had best think twice about continuing with the project. If to your mind the script is very much in need of a rewrite, it might just be time to say, “Sayonara, Pedro!”

      Remember that the script is not the sole component of the content of a film. The cast also figures as a part of the raw clay that the director has to shape. You cannot make a great film without a great cast but you can probably make a very good one. Sisters, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, She's Gotta Have It, Stranger than Paradise, Blood Simple, Salvador, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, El Norte, Say Anything, Clerks, Boy ? in the Hood, Hard Eight, Swingers, Bottle Rocket,

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