NO B.S., PRAYER AND EMMA STONE: HOW PGA’S PRODUCERS GOT IT DONE

Ahead of the Producers Guild of America Awards on Feb. 25, the nominees for outstanding producer of motion pictures reveal their secret weapons

Ben LeClair, American Fiction

“The script was originally called Fuck. The cover page said ‘Fuck by Cord Jefferson.’ So right out of the gate, we were like, ‘Yes.’ And when you find the reveal in the middle of the movie why the script is titled that, we loved it even more. We hope the movie generates a conversation, but we don’t have a lot to say about that conversation. We want it to be theirs, not ours. To [see the film] connect on this level, across the country, and make this sort of potentially lasting statement, it’s why we do it.”

David Thion, Anatomy of a Fall

“Justine [Triet, the director] wanted an open end — you have to make your own opinion. It’s a very French way of building a story. Sometimes it was hard for Sandra [Hüller], and she constantly said, ‘Am I guilty or am I not?’ Finally, Justine said, ‘OK, for me, 90 percent she’s not guilty, but I really want the audience to feel that there is 10 percent of uncertainty.’ This is remarkable, because we had a lot of feedback from people saying, ‘I need to see it twice.” It’s the first time I’ve seen this phenomenon.”

Tom Ackerley, Barbie

“There was a scene that, while filming, showed me how powerful the movie could be. It was between Margot [Robbie] and Rhea Perlman, where she’s talking about how mothers stand still — it was deadly quiet on set that day. I remember thinking, ‘Is the camera shaking?’ But it wasn’t; one of the grips holding the techno crane was crying and unable to hold the crane straight. It was so incredible to see these very masculine grips crying from the scene. I get goose bumps even talking about it now.”

Mark Johnson, The Holdovers

“I’m sort of an anxious producer. I’d get a draft of the script and say, ‘This is great, let’s go make it.’ And [director Alexander Payne] would say, ‘No, we’re going to work on it a little bit more.’ There are three stages in filmmaking for Alexander that are really sacred. One is the development stage — how long it takes to get a script right. The other is having enough shooting days. And then, thirdly, editing: He takes longer than most directors. But the proof is in the pudding. He’s right on all three.”

Daniel Lupi, Killers of the Flower Moon

“Filming this was a bit like Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis. Everyone wanted us to shoot it in Canada or in a tax rebate [location. But] we grounded it where the film took place. I think from a crew point of view, this movie was quite emotional. Every day on set, we had lots of Osage with us — linguists, people from costume. To them, this was a hard story to tell. The first day of shooting, I remember a chief and the elders came out to say a prayer. You always felt like you were making their story.”

Bradley Cooper, Maestro

“The reason why [the Bernstein children and I] became so close is they’re very much the children of their parents. They’re no B.S., they’re highly intelligent. They don’t suffer fools, and tell you exactly what they think. It was wonderfully challenging. They’re so smart and insightful that it would behoove me to include them as much as I could. That they were willing participants was a benefit to the film. That’s the real gift, that I was able to make friends for life with these three beautiful people.”

Emma Thomas, Oppenheimer

“We got incredibly lucky with the casting, I think we got everyone we wanted. John Papsidera is the most genius casting director and one of our oldest collaborators: We’ve been working with him since Memento. Obviously the most exciting moment was when Cillian [Murphy] said yes, but the other big moment was when Robert Downey agreed to play Strauss. We were very excited about taking a huge movie star with a well-known persona and doing something we haven’t seen him do before.”

Christine Vachon, Past Lives

“I always say that the studio has a personality. It has to mash with the story you’re trying to tell. Everybody needs to be on the same page, everyone needs to be telling the same story. You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t be, how often that’s not the case and things go off the rails. Obviously, we’ve had a relationship with A24 for some time. An extremely original story by a filmmaker with an original vision depends on that originality, and it depends on the people around it to allow that to bloom.”

Ed Guiney, Poor Things

“Working with Emma Stone [as a fellow producer] was so great. With a film like this, there are lots of things to chew on and discuss on the way to making it, and then when you come out on the other side, you’re trying to wrangle those into its best version and trying to figure out how to push it out into the world. She was really invaluable as part of those conversations. Her instincts around that were really great to have, and she’s just a complete pleasure to work with.”

James Wilson, The Zone of Interest

“It was really important, maybe in underlying subliminal ways, to [shoot at Auschwitz]. We always had to sell that idea that we had to be there. But above the camp walls in the film, it’s actually CG. You can’t show the buildings now, because they’re 80 years old. I remember [a financier] said, ‘You can do this somewhere else for cheaper. Why does it have to be there?’ It didn’t physically require it, but it was a psychic thing we weren’t expecting. It really did have an effect on everyone in different ways.”