Honorees Highlight Hollywood’s Best
2024 PGA award recipients’ achievements span film, television and theater
GAIL BERMAN Norman Lear Achievement Award
Berman’s four-decade-plus career has taken her from Broadway to the big screen and back again, with stints as a studio chief and a new media entrepreneur in between.
“I’m your pivot girl,” says Berman, who last year received nominations for both a best picture Oscar (“Elvis”) and a comedy series Emmy (Netflix’s “Wednesday”). “Every five years, I have to do something else. It’s just my nature.”
Berman scored her first producing credit at the age of 23 when she and her former U. of Maryland classmate Susan R. Rose brought to Broadway a production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” After a decade-long run in the theater biz, burned out on raising money, she took a job as an associate producer for HBO’S new sister outlet, the Comedy Channel.
“I’d never worked in television ever, not even really thought about it much,” says Berman. “But the opportunity came to me, and I decided to take it, and it really changed the course of my life.”
It was around this time Berman first met the man her PGA honor was named after, legendary producer
Norman Lear (best known for groundbreaking TV series such as “All in the Family”), who died in December at the age of 101.
“We just got to revel in his storytelling, which was amazing,” says Berman, who met Lear through his daughter Maggie, a co-worker at the Comedy Channel.
When Berman’s husband, writer-producer Bill Masters (“Caroline in the City”), scored a two-picture deal with Disney, the couple moved to Los Angeles and she launched her career as a Hollywood exec, with stints at Dolly Parton’s Sandollar Prods., Fox Broadcasting, Paramount Pictures, Bermanbraun and the Jackal Group. Along the way, she exec produced the series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and helped shepherd long-running shows such as “Malcolm in the Middle” and “American Idol.”
Berman’s current Jackal Group slate includes a stage adaptation of the 2010 feature “Black Swan” that she hopes to take to Broadway.
“The development process is slow and raising money is still raising money, but if you become cynical about any of this, it really isn’t good for you or the product,” says Berman. “You have to enter it with a certain amount of wonder, excitement and gratitude.”
CHARLES D. KING Milestone Award
King has an impressive list of accomplishments, including an Oscar nomination for best picture for his 2021 feature “Judas and the Black Messiah.” But his proudest moment came when he told his young sons that he was quitting WME, where he was the first Black partner, to launch Macro, a multi-platform media company amplifying the voices and perspectives of people of color.
“They said to me, ‘Dad is going to be a boss!’ and started jumping up and down on their bed,” recalls King. “Whether Macro had gotten to the place we are now or not, I would have already felt like I succeeded.”
Since founding Macro in 2015, King has produced or executive produced features including Juel Taylor’s “They Cloned Tyrone” (2023), Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” (2018), Dee Rees’ “Mudbound” (2017) and the Denzel Washington-starrers “Roman J. Israel,
If you become cynical about any of this, it really isn’t good for you or the product.” — Gail Berman
Esq.” (2017) and “Fences” (2016). The latter earned a supporting actress Oscar for Viola Davis and best picture, actor and adapted screenplay nominations.
Born in Harlem and raised in Georgia, the son of a pediatrician father and a mother who wrote poetry and novels, King dabbled in modeling before earning a B.A. from Vanderbilt and a law degree from Howard, shifting his attention from a legal career to agency representation after an MTV lawyer suggested it would be a good fit.
Heeding the advice, King moved to Los Angeles. He had less than $500 in the bank and massive student debts, but he was able to buy a $2,000 car with a credit card and rent a one-bedroom apartment. After taking 60 meetings in six weeks, he landed a $300/week job in the mailroom at William Morris.
“There were some very lean days, but ultimately having a vision and knowing that I had a long-term plan was what helped me kind of power through it,” says King.
Today, King oversees multiple divisions as CEO of Macro, including film and television studios, an in-house creative agency and a seed-stage venture capital firm. He foresees continued growth for the company, particularly outside the U.S. Says King: “That’s the way that our company is macro, because we’re looking at this from a global perspective.”
MARTIN SCORSESE David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures
Over the course of his long career, Scorsese has amassed scores of producing credits on projects ranging from “Uncut Gems” to “Once Were Brothers” and “Vinyl” in addition to his own work on films such as Oscar and PGA nominee “Killers of the Flower
Moon.” His love of cinema and preservation of it is well established, making him a more than worthy recipient of the PGA’S David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures.
But, technically speaking, Scorsese wasn’t much of a producer during the first three decades of his career. He’s listed as a producer on his early short films “Vesuvius VI” (1959) and “The Big Shave” (1967) and an associate producer on the music documentary “Medicine Ball Caravan” (1967). But he didn’t take another producing credit until the 1990 eature “The Grifters,” directed by Stephen Frears, and he didn’t take one on a film he directed until 2010’s “Shutter Island.”
What changed? Not much, according to Scorsese. “I’ve always been involved throughout the entire production process,” he says. It was simply that “my collaborators and I felt like it was time that I took a credit that reflected that.” His basic approach as a producer: “Everything is about the good of the picture — the process of getting it onto the screen.”
Given his knowledge of and passion for film history, it’s no surprise to hear him wax rhapsodic about David O. Selznick, who produced everything from the iconic blockbusters “King Kong” (1933) and “Gone With the Wind” (1939) to the first movie Scorsese ever saw, the Western “Duel in the Sun” (1946).
“Hollywood had many great producers, people who really left their mark on the history of moviemaking, but why does David O. Selznick stand alone?” asks Scorsese. “Maybe it’s because he was such an unusual mix of qualities. He had a producer’s showmanship and sense of grandeur, a mogul’s determination, and a truly obsessive artistic drive. This is a man who would not stop until he got exactly what he wanted up there on the screen.”
Scorsese has often had to summon that Selznick-ian determination, and not just on epic films like “Killers of the Flower.” “I find that force of will is necessary on pretty much every picture, no matter what the scale,” says Scorsese. “I put everything of myself into all my pictures, and I always did the best I could.”
Everything is about the good of the picture — the process of getting it onto the screen.” — Martin Scorsese