First Time Director. Gil Bettman

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СКАЧАТЬ dees.” When I protested one time too many, he reminded me, “”Oooh, but Meester Bettman, eez so seemple. Eez myyyyyyy mooonie, eez myyyyyy mooovie!”

      And he was 100% correct. He was writing the checks. He was going to call the shots. Determined artist that I was, I continued to fight with him, sometimes openly, in front of the crew. The Mexican sound mixer, Manuelito, took pity on me and tried to clarify the futility of railing against the producer's droight de seigneur. One day he took me aside and counseled, “Con dinero, baille el pero” which loosely translated means: “If he's paid, the dog dances.” This was very wise advice that I was just too young and full of myself to heed. I kept on fighting with Pedro, which simply compounded the situation. The problem with the love story in the script was a real one. I was right to see it and right to want to correct it. But once Pedro had told me in no uncertain terms that he had made his final decision to leave the script unchanged, it was stupid of me to continue to fight. It was a battle I could never win. By entering into it, I had much to lose and comparatively little to gain.

      When I started out as a director, I was inclined to fight with producers over creative directorial decisions for the same reason that I was inclined to fight with line producers and UPMs over budgets. If anything came between me and the fulfillment of my ambition, I was going to attack it. Again, such passion is useful. Nobody becomes a successful director without it. But, as a first time or neophyte director, you should never risk one iota of whatever trust and goodwill exists between you and your producer. You must quell your desire to make that stellar breakthrough film if you run even the smallest risk of getting into an adversarial relationship.

      When you get into a disagreement with the producer, it is usually because he trying to do your job for you. He is trying to “help” you sail the boat, by making a key creative decision about the script or the casting or the art direction or the mis en scene or some other realm of creative endeavor. Unless you are very lucky and happen to land a truly imaginative and gifted producer, his decision is going to suck.

      And yet you are going to have to pretend that it's great, or somehow, miraculously, trick him into changing his mind. If you are a trickster, if you are adept at manipulating people into doing things you want them to do without being up front about it, go for it! The goal is to avoid being confrontational. If there had been some way I could have gotten Pedro, all by himself, to arrive at the decision that the script needed a rewrite…if I could have made him believe that it was his decision, the decision would have been implemented. We would have made a better movie.

      As a first time director, the only way for you to get ahead with your producer is by getting along. Without the money, there is no movie, and the producer brings the money to the table. But there can still be a film, even a fine film, without you as the director. The producer always knows this dirty fact.

      The harder you struggle against the producer's right to meddle in the creative decision-making process, the more frequently and the more vehemently he will assert that right. I found this axiom out the hard way with Pedro. I was too inexperienced to recognize the irrefutable logic of “eez myyyyyy mooonie, eez myyyyyy mooovie!” When Pedro refused to let me rewrite the script to clarify exactly why the boy and the girl fall in love, I simply went ahead and did it, and then talked the male and female leads into playing it the way I had rewritten it, rather than the way it was in the script. In retrospect, I'm amazed that I was naïve enough to think that I could pull this subterfuge off without Pedro detecting it. His English was self-taught, and somewhat spotty. I guess I was hoping that this would keep him from picking up on my little rewrite. I hoped wrong. He figured it out and was furious.

      The next day on the set, after we had finished shooting, he drew me aside into a quiet, darkened corner for a little tete à tete. We were seated opposite each other. He leaned in close and lowered his voice for emphasis and told me, “Meester Bettman (pause) what chu do today…(long pause) EEZ SHIEET!!! EEZ SHIEET, WHAT CHU DO!!! My partner see deece…E SAY I CRAZY HIRE CHU! !!!@@@@! !!!!!”

      That became his constant refrain. It seemed like practically everyday he told me in so many words that, in his mind, what I had done up until that point, “Eez shit!” All the same, he never fired me. I kept on coming to the set, day after day, and doing what the director has to do.

      But when the picture was wrapped, Pedro shut me out of the editing room. I was banished from the entire postproduction process. When I called him to protest, he told me, “You no need come to the editing room. I do everything.” All in all, the postproduction job did not hurt what I had done, nor did it help. I am certain that the picture would have played better if I had had a hand in the post. But enough things had been done right on the set, so that, even though all the pieces were put together without much inspiration, the picture sometimes almost takes flight. The post was a missed opportunity.

      Crystal Heart was distributed in the U.S. by New World. It had a very brief run on the coasts and then folded. Pedro had much better luck distributing it internationally, especially in Spanish-speaking markets. Amazingly, about a year and a half after the last time Pedro informed me, “What you do today eez shit,” I had lunch with him and he asked me to direct another picture for him. It was a boxing movie called Fist Fighter. Or “Feeeast Fiiighter” as he would say, drawing out the vowels with anticipatory relish. When I politely declined, he actually begged me to do the picture. What this proves is that we both had provoked an intense conflict and had driven each other mad with anxiety throughout the production of Crystal Heart for no good reason. If we could trust each other and anticipate working together in a constructive fashion on Fist Fighter, we could have done it a couple of years earlier on Crystal Heart. If I had known then what I know now, when Pedro pronounced “dees eez da script!” I would have said, “Okay. Fine. Whatever you say.” By trying to sneak another version past him, I put him on the defensive and incited a conflict that ultimately hurt the film more than the revision of the script ever could have helped it. Yes, he did not fire me. But I had poisoned the well. I had threatened Pedro's authority. His response was to rattle my cage about everything and anything. After that, it became impossible for me to do my best work.

      You have a great deal to lose and not much to gain by alienating your producer. As the director you get to sit on the throne and act like the king. Still, the producer is above you. He is god. And no king, in his right mind, ever defied god and came out ahead. If the wisdom of the Old Testament can be boiled down to one line, I would say that line would be, “Respect the Almighty, even when he deals with you capriciously or unjustly.” As a first time director, that is how you have to treat your producer.

      One way to make sure you have a productive relationship with your producer is to socialize with him as much as possible. Do whatever he suggests that you do together, right up to having sex with him. Sex overcomplicates matters and can do more harm than good. Common sense dictates against it, but, under the right circumstances, even sex, or something like it, is worth engaging in with your producer if it's certain to solidify your relationship.

      The validity of this truism was borne out in the best preproduction experience I ever had with a producer — one which I would hold up as model to be replicated as often as possible. It was with a British producer I will call him Reg. He was a founding partner of one of the first little production companies to get a start in rock videos and then move into producing high-end commercials and feature films. We got started on the right foot and built up enough momentum so that we did not start to feud until the last day of production. This was because Reg came on the project after I had already sold it to the record company and band. Through a series of fortunate coincidences, the Vice President of Promotions at Warner Records, Jeff Ayeroff, took me into a pitch meeting with the band, Chicago, without a clue as to what I was going to try to sell to them. All he knew was that I had followed his instructions to listen to the cut, Stay the Night, and come up with a concept for the video that featured a wall-to-wall car chase.

      I came to the pitch meeting so completely СКАЧАТЬ