GIVING CREDIT
Saluting the behind-the-scenes talent making movie magic.
Graham Broadbent started off by producing 1997’s Welcome to Sarajevo and founded Blueprint Pictures in 2005 with fellow producer Pete Czernin. The company’s output across film and television includes A Boy Called Christmas, 2020’s Emma, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, A Very British Scandal, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Seven Psychopaths, In Bruges and
The Banshees of Inisherin.
You’ve collaborated with Martin McDonagh for a while. How does your relationship work?
I’ve worked with Martin since In Bruges. He’s very particular. He creates his work in the most extraordinary way. And the thing that’s special about him is that he tends to make a film every three or four years. But you always know he’s got some new place to go – something different to do. That’s what makes it fundamentally exciting. Whenever you work as a producer with someone who’s as brilliant and lovely as Martin, you play by their rules. My whole job is to let him be brilliant. You can make brilliant films but they often take a piece of time. Martin simply doesn’t really say what he’s doing. He comes back and goes, ‘I’ve written this. Take a look.’ It’s invariably extraordinary, because he’s an extraordinary writer.
What’s your goal as a producer?
For what we do at Blueprint as a company, having some IP is always interesting. We’re going, ‘Is there a book? Should we buy a book or a play or whatever.’ But the place I like making films is around this area. You’re not in the blockbusters. The financial burden you’re carrying is not going to cripple or break a studio. But what it allows you to do is work with brilliant filmmakers. With brilliant filmmakers, actors will come to the roles because they’re extraordinary. And then you have to work with studios like Searchlight or Universal. They have a real sense that the film might not be down the middle, but there could be an audience to be tapped on it, and that audience could go a long, long way. Because even with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I think we had no sense that that would run as far as we did, both critically and commercially.
A lot of people saw that film around the world. So I think if you make really good films with really good filmmakers, and allow an audience to find them – I think that’s the counterargument to the IP.
What do you find is the biggest misconception about producers?
Lots of people think producers are big, scary people who shout at everyone all the time in order to get their own way. But to me, it’s utterly collaborative. It’s never oppositional. If you’re ever in the position of telling someone what to do, or suggesting that they must do it, then the relationship doesn’t work, because you’ve got to have brilliant creative people, and you’ve got to literally wrap around them, and help. As a producer you go, ‘How can I help this person do their best work?’ That’s the simple thing. Occasionally, it’s asking the dumb questions. I’m sure if you talked to Martin, he’d go, ‘Graham asks all the dumb questions.’ And I bet I do.
Is there a path to becoming a producer?
You want to ideally get into a company and get a little bit of script experience, work with a producer, see what the day-to-day is. If you worked with a producer for a year, you’d see a film go into prep, be cast, financed, shot, edited and put into a theatre. That journey as an assistant would be fantastic, because you’d get the landscape of it. But for me, it’s about creative antennae. Can you sense a good story? Can you help a good story? Can you be ambitious for a story? Because I’ve certainly worked with directors before who are really good, but you’re going, ‘You should be more ambitious. This is really good. We should reach out here, and then you can cast better, or get a studio involved,’ or whatever it might be. The reason why I’m a producer is that I like telling stories. So across a range of things, any wannabe producer should get into a world of stories – learn what they are, how they work, make friends with young filmmakers, young directors, young writers and then begin.
Are producers often frustrated directors?
Definitely not! I have absolutely no desire at all. Me on set is hilarious. I’ll turn up in the morning. They’ll do the first set-up. And then they’ve got to go and do the coverage. I’m like, ‘I’ll see you later when it’s done.’
What are you most proud of producing?
I love In Bruges because it’s where I started with Martin. I love Three Billboards because it was such a great journey. I love A Boy Called Christmas because I’d never made a big family film. I love the Marigold Hotels. We just shot a really nice film with Andrew Haigh called Strangers; we’re shooting a film with Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley called Wicked Little Letters. It’s a completely different palette to this, to that, to the other.
‘You go, “How can I help this person do their best work?” Occasionally, it’s asking the dumb questions’