THE LIFE OF A PRODUCER COPING CREATIVELY WITH THE REJECTION, SELF-DOUBT
MANY ON A FILM SET MAY CLAIM THE TITLE BUT ONLY A FEW ACTUALLY GET THE MOVIES MADE.
GR O W I N G U P on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Siena Oberman thought she wanted to be a doctor. Then she took a high-school filmmaking elective. ¶ “I thought, ‘Oh, sweet, I can leave class and go to the beach,’ ” she said. Instead, she fell in love. Oberman started making movies with her friends using a Flip camera. No beach bum but an overachiever, Oberman quickly assembled a resume of internships more varied than most careers: IM Global, an international sales firm; Route One Entertainment, an indie film company; Plan B, Brad Pitt’s production company; Paramount Pictures; United Talent Agency. ¶ As a Loyola Marymount University sophomore, she wrangled a meeting with a senior executive at Warner Bros. “He told me if I wanted to be successful, I need to get really good at one thing,” she remembers. That one thing was making movies happen — producing.
Oberman transferred to USC and began taking her small movies to film festivals — from Outfest to Cannes — and going “to every networking event I could,” she says. “I realized that if you can bring an actor or money or a big director, if you could make certain connections, then you could get involved in projects by bringing value to them.”
By age 26, Oberman had 13 producer credits, including four as lead producer. When I watched her in 2019 on the set of the fourth, “The Birthday Cake,” an indie mob picture set in Brooklyn that was released in June, she was nimbly juggling a dozen tasks at once, including a balky financier in South America; a set overcrowded with hangers-on and Val Kilmer’s personal documentary crew; an unexpected delay in Paul Sorvino’s arrival; conked-out Wi-Fi; and a crew member who wasn’t up to the job. Was this a typical day on set? She said there was no typical day. “For me the priority is: What’s the biggest emergency?”
Just as there is no typical day in a producer’s life, there is no typical path to becoming one. It isn’t something kids tend to dream of doing when they grow up, in part because it’s hard for even many grown-ups to get a handle on what it is.
Check out any movie’s closing credits and you’ll see a long list of people called “producers.”
“It’s the only title anyone can just decide to join,” said Lynda Obst, a producer and the author of the industry memoir “Hello, He Lied.” “But some of us have to stay and make the movie.”
Many credited producers are simply financiers. Others may have made a connection or performed a crucial favor. Or they may be an actor who’s gotten a credit (and back-end money) in return for taking a pay cut. Look closer, though, and you’ll see a little “(p.g.a.)” at the end of two or three names. These are the “creative producers,” certified by the Producers Guild of America (following a rule instituted in 2012) as having been involved with the project from start to finish. They oversee or handle every step: finding a script and polishing it; charming financiers to back it; getting distributors to guarantee sales or a studio to bankroll it; setting up an on-set team; wooing the right actors; putting out fires on set; test-marketing and finalizing the edit; negotiating the right release date and finetuning the marketing. That’s who we’re interested in here.
WHO BECOMES A PRODUCER?
An organizer: Anne Lai, who spent years leading the Sundance Institute’s Producing Labs before becoming executive director of the San Francisco Film Festival, says that “if there are common themes” among those who gravitate toward producing, “it’s like, ‘I was the person who put parties together. Or when the kids on the block played kickball, I would organize it.’ It’s someone who knows how to build teams.”
A left-brain/right-brain thinker: In most of the stories producers tell about their origins, there comes a point where
the artistic impulse melds with an analytical mind-set. Even while on set, Oberman spent as much time going over numbers — forms for tax breaks, financing contracts, cash-flow calendars — as she did ensuring that the cinematographer got enough wide shots to give them options in the editing room.
Producers are as likely to come from majors like economics as they are to emerge from English departments; some move over from careers in finance or law. Even indie producers have to deal in spreadsheets.
Christine Vachon, legendary for producing some of the most daring films of the late ’90s and early aughts (“Boys Don’t Cry,” “Far From Heaven,” “Velvet Goldmine”), wrote an indieproducing bible, “Shoot to Kill,” which included plenty of wild anecdotes and aesthetic mantras but also an itemized 30-page production budget.
A nurturer: Jordan Horowitz, one of the producers of “La La Land,” recalls trying a new tactic once while prepping for industry meetings.
“I [made] a chart of everybody’s priorities,” he says. “Actor, executive, whoever. To see how my priority could intersect with everyone’s priority.” An actor wanted the best part; an executive a safe bet; a director the fulfillment of a perfect vision. “For the producer, it was the project. The project was never anyone else’s first priority.”
HOW DO YOU START?
Unlike acting or costume design, production has relatively few academic tracks (though there are producing programs) or entry-level prerequisites. That said, many producers share the same path as others in the industry — starting at the bottom, as an assistant, and making connections on the way up.
Film school: An obvious first step, with USC being the gold standard. Though it bears remembering that Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC, went to Cal State Long Beach and did just fine. Film school is a hub for the brightest and most passionate budding filmmakers — in other words, a great place to meet your future collaborators.
Industry assistant work: Hollywood runs on assistants, the next generation of power brokers. Most common is a spot in one of the big talent agencies that dominate Hollywood: United Talent Agency, Creative Artists Agency, ICM Partners and William Morris Endeavor. There’s plenty of turnover and demand. Variously called “boot camp” or “grad school” by insiders, it’s a grueling gantlet (subject, as recently documented, to low pay and occasionally abusive behavior) and a huge learning experience.
Agencies are factories of information, and assistants learn everything, in part because their job is to listen in on every call. They hear how everyone works — agents, producers, executives, directors and actors — and can figure out pretty quickly which corner of the industry they’d want to work in.
Production office jobs: For would-be producers, there are lower-level jobs in production companies. You can be a production assistant (P.A.) helping out on set before moving up to the next stage — perhaps “development,” meeting with agents and finding scripts and writers. An assistant might eventually score an associate producer credit. From there you might become a production executive (keeping the office running) before becoming a partner or striking out on your own.
WHAT ARE THE CAREER PATHS?
Lai remembers sitting in on a movie when an actor walked by and asked what she did all day. A fellow producer cut in: “It’s like we’re pilots. We have to put everyone on the plane. We have to get everyone safely off the ground. We have to get to 20,000 feet. Our job is not to crash while you guys do the work.”
There are two ways to get the plane off the ground — essentially two ways to be a producer:
Studio-backed films: In the old days, most producers worked for studios, which took care of financing and expenses. There are still producers “on the lot” — like Obst at Sony — but they are semi-autonomous and can take rejected projects elsewhere. Others have first-look deals with one or more studios, streamers or networks that might cover some of their overhead. Even in the absence of such a deal, an independent producer usually prefers to line up a studio before the actual filming begins. If that happens, the producer gets her fee or percentage and it’s smooth sailing — with the huge caveat that the studio is ultimately calling the shots.
Independent films: For movies without a star or clear genre potential, a pre-production studio deal might not be in the cards. In order to make an independent movie, the producer must cobble together financiers to pay up-front costs.
These are investors, not benefactors, their money securely backed by foreign sale guarantees and bridge loans. In the event of a sale to a distributor, often at a film festival, the investors get paid back first. The producer is among the last to see back-end money if the film takes off. Oberman still goes this route. She also used Lai’s pilot analogy just as “The Birthday Cake” was set to start filming but awaiting final financing — essentially, taking off without enough fuel to land.
“It’s just a reality of indie producing,” Oberman said. “Almost every movie close to production feels like it’s going to fall apart. … Even today, my state of mind is, ‘I think I’m making a movie in a week?’ It doesn’t hit me as fully real until everything is locked in.”
Every independent film project is like this. In fact, no film is a done deal until the day it’s released. It makes the process thrilling but highly unstable.
It can take years toiling on a project before it comes to fruition — or pitching multiple projects before one takes flight. Inevitably, there are low points, moments of extreme self-doubt.
For producer Michael London, the break came a couple years after he had left a plum position as a producer at Fox to hang out his own shingle.
“I was a little lost,” he says. “I left my relatively plush job and my office and my assistant. I was working out of my house, and I wasn’t exactly feeling overconfident about things.”
But he had fallen in love with an unpublished manuscript from a friend, Rex Pickett, about two guys having a lost weekend in California wine country. He just needed a filmmaker.
A few days before he was planning to give up and look for a job, he got a phone call in his home office. Alexander Payne wanted to make the script into a movie, which became the successful and critically acclaimed 2004 film “Sideways.”
HOW DO PRODUCERS MAKE MONEY?
There are easier ways for a smart and driven person to earn a living. A producer’s earliest training, whether as an assistant or in the mad scramble to get a friend’s movie made, can net close to minimum wage.
Sometimes a producer takes a flat fee, other times a cut of the production budget — maybe 5%. But everything is subject to change throughout development. A small movie can earn a producer $30,000 for six months of work. And when a production’s budget needs tightening, a producer’s fee tends to be the first to go — because the boss can’t quit.
Ultimately, producers can and often do make a lot of money. But only after all the work of development, fundraising, talent scouting and staffing has been done. If a studio has acquired it by then, the money starts to flow only when filming begins — but that 5% of the budget can mean millions.
Some eventual percentage of net profit is often worked into the deal, but as producers are among the last to be paid, it takes the rare blockbuster for eye-popping money to kick in.
HOW HAS THE JOB CHANGED IN 20 YEARS?
London knows more about Hollywood’s evolution than most; he’s been adapting deftly to its seismic shifts from the beginning of his career.
On the strength of “Sideways” and two other successful projects, “The Family Stone” and “The Illusionist,” London set himself up for a successful career in the mid-aughts.
“I was riding the tail end of the indie movie explosion,” he says. “There was a lot of excitement about the notion that you could find broader audiences for more personal films.”
In 2006 he founded Groundswell, the fruit of a collaboration with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and capital investors from Wall Street. The company made “Milk,” “The Visitor” and “The Informant!,” among others. And then the bottom fell out.
Two giant markets collapsed simultaneously in 2008 — the one for stocks and the one for DVDs. Between those two forces, it suddenly became much harder for London to find the financing he needed through Groundswell. He had to return to the life of an independent producer.
The way out of his impasse is obvious if you’ve been watching anything over the past decade. Even before indie film production began to buckle, TV had begun to rise in prestige, setting off a highly competitive market that then became super-heated in the era of streaming. Early on in that evolution, London got the idea for his first TV show. The only taker was a tech company just moving into TV: Amazon.
“Betas” became one of Amazon’s first shows. “It reminded me of ‘Sideways’ and ‘Thirteen,’ ” he says, “The financiers said, ‘Go make what you want to make.’ ”
He secured a first-look deal with a TV arm of Fox and rode the content boom with projects that fit his taste; when he delved into genre, there was always a strong storytelling element. For FX, he made “Snowfall”; for Showtime, he made “SMILF”; Hulu aired “Chance,” starring Hugh Laurie; “The Magicians” ran on Syfy for five seasons.
“I feel like I get to be here for a second golden moment,” says London. “Television is so huge now that you can find these lanes where, if you’re in the right place at the right time, you can get something interesting done.”
WHAT ADVICE DO PROS HEAR THAT IS WRONG?
In a field that many enter through side doors, the only wrong advice is that you have to follow any particular path.
You don’t have to go to film school. London’s career began when producer Don Simpson liked a profile he wrote for the L.A. Times; Obst was a magazine editor before she made the leap. Some producers argue that in a field where youth and energy are at a premium, it’s better to just jump right in and find a job.
You don’t have to be an assistant. Oberman skipped the agency-assistant path and was just fine. If you can wrangle a job in development or on set, that may be just as good a path.
And thanks to the rise of TV,
you don’t have to get a studio deal. With so many streaming services competing for the right story — whether from a book or magazine piece or the fertile mind of a young screenwriter —
all it takes is a great concept (plus a committed name actor and some open-minded financiers). Oberman manages without any first-look deals; she’s trying to build up her portfolio first, maintaining full creative control until she finds the right partner at the right price.
WHAT’S GOOD ADVICE?
DNetworking is key. A producer’s job is to make connections. So many projects come together through what looks like serendipity: An agent for an in-demand director turns down a project on her behalf but passes the script to a famous playwright, who loves it. That’s not luck; that’s the result of a producer knowing the right agent and keeping an open mind.
Persistence is essential. There are legendary projects that waited years — through actor defections, production snafus, botched rewrites and ’L O remembers he studio turnover — before the instinctively knew right team and the right moment how to command a clicked. Behind nearly stage, even before every “surprise success,” there is he had proper a producer with a Plan A followed training. That by B, C, D, E. confidence gave
Hear everyone out, but trust him courage to pursue a career
yourself. Once you’ve learned in an industry where the odds everything you can from mentors, seemed stacked against him. actors, test audiences, His early mentors could see figure out your own tastes and through his talent and charisma, limits. Not every project will get though. “They told me, made. Even fewer will find a ‘You have a problem being large audience (never mind vulnerable, and you need to get leaving a cultural mark). But no over that, because this will kill project that does break through you as a brown queer trans can do so without the guiding person, if you keep acting like hand of a producer who projected everything is fine,’ ” he said. unbridled confidence. Every actor’s dilemma, London waited years for Payne D’Lo said, is whether their to get freed up to make “Sideways” career is progressing at the — which was a risk, but right pace. Do you keep going, his instinct told him Payne was or is it time to give up? the right director. He said the mid-2010s felt
Oberman’s early success like a tipping point for queer showcases all these qualities, and trans people, and he beginning with her breakthrough booked roles on “Looking,” moment. In her senior “Transparent” and “Sense8.” year at USC, Oberman had a But then, as he was making pinched nerve; in treating it, a strides in trans advocacy — doctor broke one of her vertebrae. including filming an open Unable to sit for 10 hours a letter to Hollywood asking for day, her plan to become an fair casting practices for transgender assistant was derailed. But it roles in 2017 — the might have been the best thing acting work fizzled. that’s happened to her so far. “It became, ‘Am I doing
“I went to a lot of festivals, did enough?,’ and that question general meetings with tons of ‘Am I doing enough?’... that people and asked them for was the real struggle,” he said. advice,” she says. “I had a lot of Many agree that it can be time on my hands, which I spent rough. It’s competitive, there researching the business and are toxic elements, it favors consuming films.” And then, she people with connections, and decided to start producing. every time you have one success,
“The idea that I’m going to go someone asks, “What you get famous actors and millions are doing next?” of dollars and ‘be a producer’ at We asked performers how 22? I don’t think I would have they maintain their mental been brave enough to pursue it health in Hollywood and because it’s kind of crazy.” queried therapists for advice
But a few years and many that might be helpful for anyone movies later, she wouldn’t trade working in the industry. her agonizing, exhilarating job for anything in the world.
CREATIVITY
Brian Torres, a queer Mexican Native American therapist, specializes in highly sensitive people; he said many artists fall into this category.
They “have a brain that deeply processes information and also a more finely tuned or highly reactive nervous system and sensory-processing sensitivity.” As a result, highly sensitive people have a high degree of empathy, which makes them good storytellers, but they also tend to get overwhelmed and burn out faster.
D’Lo’s partner, Anjali Alimchandani, a psychologist and a board member of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network, said much of her work focuses on helping people connect with and remove barriers to their creativity: “In order to be able to access creativity, we need to feel free and safe.”
That involves understanding how to identify and observe feelings — and to build the skills to manage emotions.
“If there’s a painful feeling coming up, it’s almost always that there’s an unmet need underneath the feeling,” Alimchandani said. “What are the feelings trying to communicate? It’s trying to give you data about where something isn’t working.”
REJECTION
Alimchandani points to D’Lo’s struggle of always wondering whether he’s doing enough. “That’s tied to rejection,” she said. “Am I doing enough? Am I being enough? Am I enough, period?”
It can also affect your relationships, D’Lo said, when friends have successes you don’t have.
Torres said it’s easy to tie up your own self worth in other people’s approval of you, to think that you’re not good enough unless someone thinks you’re good enough for the job.
Jeff Logan, the lead of Allblk streaming service’s drama series “Double Cross,” said you have to love the whole process. He said his past — as a former football player who worked to lose more than 100 pounds after becoming depressed and homeless — helps him tackle adversity in the entertainment industry.
“It’s about knowing there will be rejection, accepting and welcoming it,” he said. “There has to be a yes there somewhere. I’m going to find it.”
Actor, writer and producer Randall Park, co-founder of the production company Imminent Collision, said the reality of pursuing a career in the entertainment industry is that you won’t come out unscathed.
“I think just by doing it, you get destroyed a little bit,” he said. “In life too, right?”
But: “It makes sense that the funnest job in the world is really hard to get . ... If you want to experience that much fun for a living, you gotta go through some hoops.”
INSTABILITY
There isn’t a linear path to success in the industry, “so there’s a constant self-doubt of ‘Am I on the right path?’ ” said Alimchandani.
Torres sees that a lot of his clients’ happiness rests on getting that new project. “It’s this preoccupation with success, that you’re not going to be happy until you get that movie,” he said. “And you’ll be unhappy until then?”
Many in the industry also confront financial insecurity — irregular income, juggling a side job or multiple jobs.
“It’s holistic and not just about self-worth,” Torres said. “If you’re trying to make money with your art and you don’t make it, that brings up the insecurity of ‘How am I going to survive?’ ”
UNDERREPRESENTED COMMUNITIES
If you’re a person of color or identify as LGBTQ, you deal with all these issues, amplified, Alimchandani said. She added that this is also true for most women, who face disproportionate standards of beauty.
“Extra rejection, lack of opportunity, racism, transphobia, homophobia, being asked to do stereotypical things that kill your soul . ... What does that do to a person to undergo that?” Alimchandani asked. “The tokenism, but also constantly being asked to teach people.”
ART AS THERAPY
In addition to performance work, D’Lo writes, produces and stars in autobiographical solo stage shows. And he runs workshops with South Asian immigrants, helping them tell their coming-out stories.
“The process of you doing these shows is such a therapeutic process,” Alimchandani said to D’Lo. “Sometimes it’s not until you start to write your story, and you start to be able to rewrite your self-story, that you realize this ... isn’t actually true anymore and maybe it never was. You start to see things in new ways.”
She also sees aspects of group therapy in how D’Lo’s audiences react to him.
“As one person is sharing their story, others start to connect, and it starts to illuminate aspects of their story,” she said. “It’s the part after the show when everyone is coming up to him to talk. There’s tears; people are emotional. It is so much like group therapy.”
“It is the vehicle of comedy that allows people to look at their own story through my story and not feel like it’s so overwhelming,” D’Lo said.
COMMUNITY
Park and Michael Golamco, co-screenwriters of the 2019 film “Always Be My Maybe,” were part of a group of friends that started the LCC Theatre Company at UCLA. (LCC stands for Lapu, the Coyote That Cares.) Ali Wong, who co-wrote “Always Be My Maybe” with them, is also an LCC alumni, as are many nowworking Asian American creatives in Hollywood.
“Mental health is the biggest threat to your staying in the industry,” said Park.
Golamco said this is also true with other jobs in Hollywood.
“I think writing is about managing your anxieties ... because you spend so much time all alone trying to figure this out,” said Golamco. “Anxiety is a constant in the room, and a lot of writers I know deal with that anxiety, no matter who they are.”
“The best prescription to [managing your mental health] is community,” Park said.
Park said artists should start their own groups. He also was part of the Channel 101 community, where he directed and starred in many short comedy films. He also recommends getting involved in community-based organizations or small theaters.
BALANCE
Your career is not the most important aspect of living a happy and fulfilled life, Park said.
“It is the type of career where a lot of people fool themselves into putting everything into it,” he said. “They believe everything has to be sacrificed to be successful in this.”
Torres said he encounters this all the time with clients.
“It’s these indoctrinations,” he said. “‘If I’m not suffering, bleeding, if my mind’s not preoccupied with this 24/7, I’m going to lose out. Someone hungrier is going to take it.’ It’s really this abusive relationship with entertainment.”
He tries to get artists to pinpoint the parts of their work that drive them. “So what if you wanting to act is not about being a screen actor at all,” he said. “What if acting is the box it comes in? So what does acting help you access?
“Do you like to tell stories? To express yourself? The adrenaline of the stage? Or being able to wake people up to something? If it’s actually about those four other things, maybe there are ways to hit all of that spiritually while you’re waiting for the acting thing. What other ways can you express yourself so this muscle doesn’t feel like it’s suffering?”
Torres used to be part of a heavy metal rock band, and he remembered pinning his hopes and dreams on a record deal. And once he realized the reality — that talent and hard work might not get you anywhere without luck, which is out of your control — that’s when he started to quit.
Knowing what he knows now, he wishes he had been more gracious and grateful for the opportunities he did have.
“Some of the best times I had was in the band with my band mates,” he said. “I wish I’d given that more credence and more validity.”
FREEDOM TO LEAVE
Torres likes to try to get his therapy clients to consider a Plan B. This is often an unpopular suggestion.
“It’s not that I think you should quit,” he said. “But if you start this inquiry about what else is there, you may feel less stuck . ... I try to just slowly make room for what else could bring you happiness.”
After he gave up his music pursuits, he found that working in mental health was not too far off from his initial desire to connect with people as a musician.
“To be drawn to the arts and moved by this passion and empathy — and to end up here — it makes sense that my next field would be of service and about helping folks,” he said.
D’Lo has struggled a lot in the industry. But he’s still making art. “I’ve always had to remind myself, ‘It’s not your job to be available for somebody else’s vision,’ ” he said. “It’s your job to manifest your own visions for what your career is going to look like.”