First Time Director. Gil Bettman

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СКАЧАТЬ first time director on his breakthrough project must do everything in his power to make sure that his protagonist and the actors in his leading roles are blessed with as much likeability as possible — the more, the better. Admittedly, by claiming that a director can successfully cast his film by homing in on likeability and richness in his actors, I have oversimplified the process to make my point. Still, likeability is absolutely crucial in your protagonist. Without it, your movie will never succeed.

Casting the Supporting Roles

      In casting the supporting roles for his film, the first time director should home in on richness of character. The audience should be intrigued by and interested in the characters playing in support of the leads. They do not have to find them likeable, because they do not have to identify with them. Richness of character enables an actor to be mercurial. If he brings this mercurial quality to the role he is playing, the audience will never be able to anticipate his next move. They will remain fascinated with him; every time he appears on screen will be a treat. If you look down the list of the actors who have won the Oscar for best supporting role, you will find that they all are quintessentially mercurial and rich in character. James Coburn in Affliction, Cuba Gooding Jr. in jerry Maguire, Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, Martin Landau in Ed Wood, Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, Jack Palance in City Slickers, Joe Pesci in GoodFellas — all of these actors relied on their inherent richness of character because the roles demanded that they convincingly embody both positive and negative human attributes. In Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding is believably flawed. As Jerry tells him, he lacks heart and commitment. He is too focused on money and success. But, at the same time, he is a fighter and a loyal friend. Martin Landau in Ed Wood is self-destructive, self-indulgent, facile, and nasty, but he is professional and dignified, as well as a warm, if inconstant, friend to Ed Wood. Gene Hackman in Unforgiven and Joe Pesci in GoodFellas are both vicious and homicidal, but in addition to being a believable killer, Hackman manages to come off somehow dignified, and Pesci, when his role demanded it, seems believably childlike and light-hearted. Kevin Spacey's role in The Usual Suspects literally turns on his ability to seem harmless and yet latently lethal.

      Generally speaking, with supporting actors, a first time director should focus on their range of emotion. The greater their range of emotion, the richer their character. The richer their character, the more unexpected their behavior. This complexity will drive up the audience's interest level in them and thereby intensify the all-important transportational effect of the film on its viewers. Rich supporting characters enhance the audience's overall viewing pleasure and put the first time director that much closer to his objective of making a film which will launch his career.

Content and the Producer - Sometimes They Come from Different Planets

      Content is everything for the first time director. His first professional gig will not become his breakthrough gig, it will not propel him into the top tier of working directors if — when it comes to content — his film is not flawless. Unfortunately, the first time director rarely has complete control over the content of his film. Inevitably, until a director has a track record of having either directed several moderately successful films or one thoroughly successful film, he will have to share control over the content of his film with those who are putting up the money for his breakthrough gig: the producer, the studio, the backers, or some sort of combination of the three. Therefore, to some extent, the first time director's fate is not in his own hands.

      As talented and capable as he may be, the first time director cannot make a breakthrough film unless his producer and the other parties he has to defer to have good judgment in script and casting. The director may know exactly how to rewrite the script so that it goes to a higher level and becomes incredibly compelling and suspenseful from beginning to end, but if the producer doesn't like those script changes, the chances are they will never get made, and the film will never become a breakthrough film. The director may have discovered the next Kevin Spacey and want to cast him in the lead for his film. But if the producer doesn't have the insight to realize that someone who looks like Kevin Spacey can be just as compelling and likeable as someone who looks like Tom Cruise; if the producer refuses to hire the next Kevin Spacey and insists instead on hiring an actor who is as handsome as Tom Cruise, but cannot act as well and lacks the humanity of the actor that the director has discovered — then the first time director's film will not become his breakthrough film.

      The first time director has no choice but to defer to his producer and the financial backers of the film because he cannot fire them. However, they will not hesitate to fire him, if he pushes them too far when they disagree over script and casting. Content is everything, but the content of the film — good, bad, or indifferent — will be meaningless if the director succeeds in getting himself replaced. It has happened many, many times to many talented, even brilliant, first time directors.

      This is all too understandable. After all, script and casting are everything. A first time director, no matter how brilliant, can make only a mediocre movie if he is saddled with a mediocre script and a weak cast. If the movie is mediocre, he will be held responsible and will be deemed mediocre, no matter how brilliant he actually is. He may be tempted to direct the film because he is impatient to launch his directing career or because he needs the paycheck. But he would be well advised not to give into these short-term concerns and to wait until he is given a script and a cast that will do justice to his talent. Otherwise, his talent may go forever unnoticed and unappreciated.

      One big reason why so many bad movies are made, year in and year out, is because producers in general and low budget producers in particular do not really know what it takes to make a good movie. As studio executives are so fond of reminding those of us who think of ourselves as artists, it is called show business or the film business, not show art or the film art. The skills and talents needed to raise the money to make and sell films are very different from the skills and the talents required to actually turn out the product.

      Most of the low budget producers whom I have met or worked with were brilliant salesmen. They could all sell ice to the Eskimos. But they understood the product that they sold in the same way that a shoe salesman understands shoes. They knew the trends. If that year, square toes were in, they knew that. “You want square toes? We got the best square toes in the world!” That was their line. They could use it to raise the money to make and sell the product. But when it came to understanding the process by which the product that they sold was made, they were about as clueless as a shoe salesman when it comes to making shoes. This is why during the years when I was directing low budget films there was one Fatal Attraction and at least a thousand knock-offs. It took one producer who actually knows good content when he sees it to establish the trend: Michael Douglas. He read the script and had the guts and the brains to get the script made into a film, because it was a great script, not because erotic thrillers were “in” that year.

      What the first time director has to try to figure out is whether he is working with a real producer, like Michael Douglas, or a shoe salesman. This is a very hard call to make, especially during the early stages of preproduction. At this stage, the first time director has known the producer for all of a couple of weeks…a month at the most. It is hard to get a solid fix on anyone's true capabilities that fast. And then, since the producer is a human being, he is going to be a jumble of contradictions.

      I explained earlier how the script for Crystal Heart was fatally flawed, and how I did serious damage to my relationship with Pedro trying to get him to understand that it was pointless to shoot a love story in which the audience never gets to see exactly how the boy and the girl fall in love. I also knew that another project I directed, Never Too Young to Die, about the son of James Bond which was going to be made on a $3 million budget — when real Bond films were running about $40 or $50 million a pop — would never fly and just look like a cheap rip-off. Its only chance was if it acknowledged what it was, made fun of itself, and came off campier than the campiest moment in any Bond film. I could not admit any of this to the producer, СКАЧАТЬ