First Time Director - Gil Bettman

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whatever extent was needed to stay on schedule and under budget. This is not surprising. It was very much in their interest to do so. Very few first time directors get a second chance if they cannot get into the mindset of being a budget hawk. It is fundamentally irrelevant whether they do so out of necessity — as in the case of all the directors who raised the money themselves — or whether they do so naturally or out of common sense, as in the case of those first time directors who were picked up as a hired gun by a producer or a studio. In either case, they had to show respect for the budget.

      The director's relationship with his producer is rarelyFrom day one Pedro trouble-free. This is especially true in the case of a first time director, because, more often than not, the producer is a wannabe director. So if the producer wants to direct, why doesn't he just go out and raise the money to make his breakthrough film and then direct it himself? The answer holds the source of all the trouble and strife between producers and directors: Most producers are wannabe directors who lack the confidence to direct. They know they can sail and they want to sail across the Atlantic, but they are not quite sure they can make it all by themselves. So they hire the director. The director is perfectly capable of sailing across the Atlantic all by himself. In some cases, he has actually done it — once, twice, even a half a dozen times. If the producer would just let the director do what he has hired him to do, they would both make it to port safe and sound.

      It rarely works that way. Most producers want to direct so badly, they have to “help” the director, even though the director does not want or need their help. The worst of the wannabe director-producers have no taste for the dirty or difficult part of directing. They tend to let the director do all the grunt work and get everything moving in one direction, whereupon they step in and second-guess him and tell him he has to move in the opposite direction. The worst of them will do this every step of the way. Every pivotal creative decision the director has to make, the producer is likely to either veto outright or dabble with to suit his fancy. And it is all perfectly unnecessary.

      The hell of it for the director, especially the first time director, is that he has to let them muck about and get in the way. The reason for this was made abundantly clear to me over and over again by the Spanish producer who hired me to direct my first feature film. It was a little low budget rock ‘n' roll love story which, when it was released briefly in this country, was called Crystal Heart. It actually enjoyed a long run in the Spanish-speaking world, where it was known as Corizon de Crystal. The producer, I'll call him Pedro, was a semi-articulate but fairly bright businessman who at one time had been the heavyweight champion of Spain. (He had the physique and the flattened nose to attest to his accomplishments in the ring.) He and his business partner were actually funding this million-dollar venture themselves. There was no studio, no bank loan, no investors. All the funds to make the picture were coming out of their own bank accounts.

      From day one Pedro did not let me take creative control of the picture. For starters, the script desperately needed another draft. It was a love story that conveniently omitted the process by which the boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl meet. They have a little spat. They make up and, the next thing you know, they are in love. I tried desperately to convince Pedro that this little omission required a little rewrite. He equivocated. He stalled. He entered into negotiations with the writer. The negotiations fell apart. Then I offered to do the rewrite myself for free. But it was too late. Pedro declared that we were too close to the start of production and a rewrite would complicate the preproduction process and generate overages. When I tried to convince him he was cutting off his nose to spite his face, he wo uld pick up the script and wave at me for emphasis declaring, “Dees eez de script. We shoot dees.” When I protested one time too many, he reminded me, “”Oooh, but Meester Bettman, eez so seemple. Eez myyyyyyy mooonie, eez myyyyyy mooovie!”

      And he was 100% correct. He was writing the checks. He was going to call the shots. Determined artist that I was, I continued to fight with him, sometimes openly, in front of the crew. The Mexican sound mixer, Manuelito, took pity on me and tried to clarify the futility of railing against the producer's droight de seigneur. One day he took me aside and counseled, “Con dinero, baille el pero” which loosely translated means: “If he's paid, the dog dances.” This was very wise advice that I was just too young and full of myself to heed. I kept on fighting with Pedro, which simply compounded the situation. The problem with the love story in the script was a real one. I was right to see it and right to want to correct it. But once Pedro had told me in no uncertain terms that he had made his final decision to leave the script unchanged, it was stupid of me to continue to fight. It was a battle I could never win. By entering into it, I had much to lose and comparatively little to gain.

      When I started out as a director, I was inclined to fight with producers over creative directorial decisions for the same reason that I was inclined to fight with line producers and UPMs over budgets. If anything came between me and the fulfillment of my ambition, I was going to attack it. Again, such passion is useful. Nobody becomes a successful director without it. But, as a first time or neophyte director, you should never risk one iota of whatever trust and goodwill exists between you and your producer. You must quell your desire to make that stellar breakthrough film if you run even the smallest risk of getting into an adversarial relationship.

      When you get into a disagreement with the producer, it is usually because he trying to do your job for you. He is trying to “help” you sail the boat, by making a key creative decision about the script or the casting or the art direction or the mis en scene or some other realm of creative endeavor. Unless you are very lucky and happen to land a truly imaginative and gifted producer, his decision is going to suck.

      And yet you are going to have to pretend that it's great, or somehow, miraculously, trick him into changing his mind. If you are a trickster, if you are adept at manipulating people into doing things you want them to do without being up front about it, go for it! The goal is to avoid being confrontational. If there had been some way I could have gotten Pedro, all by himself, to arrive at the decision that the script needed a rewrite…if I could have made him believe that it was his decision, the decision would have been implemented. We would have made a better movie.

      As a first time director, the only way for you to get ahead with your producer is by getting along. Without the money, there is no movie, and the producer brings the money to the table. But there can still be a film, even a fine film, without you as the director. The producer always knows this dirty fact.

      The harder you struggle against the producer's right to meddle in the creative decision-making process, the more frequently and the more vehemently he will assert that right. I found this axiom out the hard way with Pedro. I was too inexperienced to recognize the irrefutable logic of “eez myyyyyy mooonie, eez myyyyyy mooovie!” When Pedro refused to let me rewrite the script to clarify exactly why the boy and the girl fall in love, I simply went ahead and did it, and then talked the male and female leads into playing it the way I had rewritten it, rather than the way it was in the script. In retrospect, I'm amazed that I was naïve enough to think that I could pull this subterfuge off without Pedro detecting it. His English was self-taught, and somewhat spotty. I guess I was hoping that this would keep him from picking up on my little rewrite. I hoped wrong. He figured it out and was furious.

      The next day on the set, after we had finished shooting, he drew me aside into a quiet, darkened corner for a little tete à tete. We were seated opposite each other. He leaned in close and lowered his voice for emphasis and told me, “Meester Bettman (pause) what chu do today…(long pause) EEZ SHIEET!!! EEZ SHIEET, WHAT CHU DO!!! My partner see deece…E SAY I CRAZY HIRE CHU! !!!@@@@! !!!!!”

      That became his constant refrain. It seemed like practically everyday he told me in so many words that, in his mind, what I had done up until that point, “Eez shit!” All the same, he never fired me. I kept on coming to the set, day after day, and doing what the director has to do.

      But when the picture was wrapped, Pedro shut me out of the editing room. I was banished from the entire postproduction process. When I called him to protest, he told me, “You no need come to the editing room. I do everything.” All in all, the postproduction job did not hurt what I

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