First Time Director. Gil Bettman

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СКАЧАТЬ Sheinberg and Lew Wasserman, had loved every day of them, and wisely decided to let Spielberg finish the picture at his own pace, spending whatever it cost to get it done the way he wanted. Young and arrogant as I was, I was inclined to believe that the best way to catapult myself into the top tier of working directors was to shoot artistically or technologically inspired footage on my breakthrough directing job (whenever it came along) and trust that the producer, the studio, and whoever was paying the bills and could fire me, would be so impressed with my directorial virtuosity, they would let me complete the picture — no matter what it cost.

      Any first time director who thinks he can get away with this kind of fiscal irresponsibility on his breakthrough directing gig is going to be digging himself an early grave. Jaws was not, by any means, Spielberg's first directing job. He got his break on the TV show Night Gallery. After that, he directed a special episode of the fore-mentioned Welby, an episode of Columbo, and another half dozen episodes for Universal Television. He was a “very good boy” and did all these shows on schedule and for the budget. But the directing job which made almost everyone stand up and take notice and say, “This kid is a director, a talent!” was the TV movie Duel, starring Dennis Weaver. With Duel, Spielberg established that the innovative way he set up and moved his camera enabled him to make cinema, in general, and action, in particular, more visually dynamic, more hard-hitting and suspenseful than it had ever been done before. He also shot Duel on a shoestring budget in record time. All of the old studio hands, the UPMs and the line producers whom I later worked with as a director on BJ and the Bear and Knight Rider, could not stop marveling at how he had gone to the Mojave desert with a scaled down crew made up of a bunch of journeymen Hollywood technicians and come back, in something like 15 days, with an undeniably brilliant film in the can. Yet his earlier success on Welby, Night Gallery, and the other episodic TV shows were the priceless chits with which he had built up enough credibility as a director. By the time he took on Jaws, he was the hot young thing. It had become accepted that he could take a script and turn it into a blockbuster piece of entertainment. So he went ahead and blew his budget on Jaws and survived to work another day, but only because he had already broken through and established himself as a bankable director.

      I cannot think of a single name director in Hollywood who was not a model of fiscal propriety on his breakthrough gig. Even those who, as their directing careers progressed, became notorious for always falling behind schedule and going over budget — such as James Cameron, Francis Coppola, or Stanley Kubrick — all, when they were young and starting out, played by the budgetary rules. Cameron did it on Piranha and again on Terminator. Coppola did it on Finian's Rainbow. Kubrick did it on The Killing and Paths of Glory.

      There is another path. Many directors of note were chosen to direct their breakthrough films the same way that Napoleon became the Emperor of the French Republic — they anointed themselves. They actually had more of a right than Napoleon, because, unlike the French Emperor, their breakthrough films never would have happened if they had not made them happen by raising the money themselves. In most cases, they also wrote the script (which is another way in which they made the film happen). This cadre of directors includes almost all of those who are thought of as independent and artistically gifted and inclined: Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, Robert Townsend, the Coen brothers, Doug Liman, Whit Stillman, Neil LaBute, Robert Rodriquez, Kevin Smith, Todd Solondz, John Paul Anderson, and whoever else is going to break through this year at Sundance.

      Generally speaking, these directors were the producers of their own first films and so were the power behind their own thrones. In most cases they hired all the production staff — the line producer, the UPM, and the 1st AD — and worked together with all of them to craft the budget. These circumstances made it unnecessary for them to forge a successful working relationship with the budget watchdogs. In reality, they had to act as their own budget watchdog. If they had gotten careless and spent too much money on the first half of their film, there would not have been enough money to finish. If the film had not been finished, it never would have made its way into a festival, never would have won a prize, never garnered glowing reviews, and never been distributed in theaters. In short, it would not have done what it was intended to do: launch that director's career. Instead, it would have ended up being an exercise in futility.

      With this sword hanging over their heads, most of these gifted directors were able to sacrifice their artistic aspirations to whatever extent was needed to stay on schedule and under budget. This is not surprising. It was very much in their interest to do so. Very few first time directors get a second chance if they cannot get into the mindset of being a budget hawk. It is fundamentally irrelevant whether they do so out of necessity — as in the case of all the directors who raised the money themselves — or whether they do so naturally or out of common sense, as in the case of those first time directors who were picked up as a hired gun by a producer or a studio. In either case, they had to show respect for the budget.

Producer and Director – ‘Til Death Do Them Part

      The director's relationship with his producer is rarelyFrom day one Pedro trouble-free. This is especially true in the case of a first time director, because, more often than not, the producer is a wannabe director. So if the producer wants to direct, why doesn't he just go out and raise the money to make his breakthrough film and then direct it himself? The answer holds the source of all the trouble and strife between producers and directors: Most producers are wannabe directors who lack the confidence to direct. They know they can sail and they want to sail across the Atlantic, but they are not quite sure they can make it all by themselves. So they hire the director. The director is perfectly capable of sailing across the Atlantic all by himself. In some cases, he has actually done it — once, twice, even a half a dozen times. If the producer would just let the director do what he has hired him to do, they would both make it to port safe and sound.

      It rarely works that way. Most producers want to direct so badly, they have to “help” the director, even though the director does not want or need their help. The worst of the wannabe director-producers have no taste for the dirty or difficult part of directing. They tend to let the director do all the grunt work and get everything moving in one direction, whereupon they step in and second-guess him and tell him he has to move in the opposite direction. The worst of them will do this every step of the way. Every pivotal creative decision the director has to make, the producer is likely to either veto outright or dabble with to suit his fancy. And it is all perfectly unnecessary.

      The hell of it for the director, especially the first time director, is that he has to let them muck about and get in the way. The reason for this was made abundantly clear to me over and over again by the Spanish producer who hired me to direct my first feature film. It was a little low budget rock ‘n' roll love story which, when it was released briefly in this country, was called Crystal Heart. It actually enjoyed a long run in the Spanish-speaking world, where it was known as Corizon de Crystal. The producer, I'll call him Pedro, was a semi-articulate but fairly bright businessman who at one time had been the heavyweight champion of Spain. (He had the physique and the flattened nose to attest to his accomplishments in the ring.) He and his business partner were actually funding this million-dollar venture themselves. There was no studio, no bank loan, no investors. All the funds to make the picture were coming out of their own bank accounts.

      From day one Pedro did not let me take creative control of the picture. For starters, the script desperately needed another draft. It was a love story that conveniently omitted the process by which the boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl meet. They have a little spat. They make up and, the next thing you know, they are in love. I tried desperately to convince Pedro that this little omission required a little rewrite. He equivocated. He stalled. He entered into negotiations with the writer. The negotiations fell apart. Then I offered to do the rewrite myself for free. But it was too late. Pedro declared that we were too close to the start of production and a rewrite would complicate the preproduction process and generate overages. When I tried to convince him he was cutting off his nose to spite his face, he wo uld pick up the script СКАЧАТЬ