111
Lesser Gods, but Colossal
NEXT TO THE FRONT-OFFICE bosses at the
studios are the producers, one of the very important controls
in Hollywood. The contrast between the producer's power and role
with his ability is rather marked in most cases.
The producer usually selects the kind
of story he wants to film. He may suggest to the front office
the purchase of a certain book or play (called a property) in
which he is interested, or offer his own idea to be worked out
by a writer. Or, he may follow a formula currently successful
at the box office. Or, the picture may assigned to him by the
front office. However the story is initi- ated, the producer then
controls in greatest detail the writing of script. He works closely
with the writer, reading what he writes, and continuously criticizing,
suggesting and commanding during the entire process. It is the
producer who decides if and when other writers should be brought
in, and the producer's O.K. is necessary before the picture passes
to the front office for final approval.
The producer's power is not limited to
control of the writer and the contents of the script. He has authority
over the casting, and his judgment in cutting, one of the most
important aspects of movie making, supersedes that of the director.
It is the producer's O.K. which is necessary for the work of the
composer, scene designer and everyone else connected with the
production of the movie.
Producers have been compared to foremen, since they tie together and supervise the diverse ends of production. But the foremen in most factories have technical knowledge and understanding of processes which they supervise, and they never control of the engineers and designers. Most producers know nothing or very little
112 HOLLYWOOD, THE DREAM FACTORY
about writing, acting, directing, composing,
or painting, but they control others who do, and set the boundaries
within which they all work.
The explanation of this paradox lies
in the past. The producer's role in the movies began humbly. In
the days of the silent films there were no producers. The head
of the studio directly supervised all its output and the director
carried many of the present producer's functions. Toward the end
of the "silent" era and the beginning of the talkies,
the industry grew rapidly and each studio multiplied its production
many times. The studio head could no longer directly supervise
everything and delegated authority to assistants called "supervisors"-the
predecessors of the producers, who in the beginning had little
status. Then various departments became increasingly more efficient
and the supervision therefore more mechanical. But the producer,
instead of becoming less important, as would have been the natural
evolution, became more powerful and took on the function of representing
the front office in the never-ending struggle between the business
and creative aspects of production.
The producers do not always see themselves
in this light. Many of them seem not to be completely satisfied
with the typical business goal of wealth for themselves and profits
for the studio. They talk also about being creative. One told
how he sneaks anonymously into a theater to see one of his movies,
and as he sits there in the darkness he feels like God. He thinks
to himself, "In three minutes I will cause this audience
to laugh; in ten minutes they will cry." He is the one who
has produced the magic to which the men all women in the theater
are responding.
The creativity of most producers is rather
debatable. But it is interesting that they, as well as the executives,
are often not content to be businessmen controlling artists. They
want to be artists, too. Because they have so little understanding
of the creative role it easy for them to think they are playing
it. The producer may mistake his power, to control the content
of the movie and the people who work on it, for creativity. This
situation creates more problems than would a clear-cut struggle
between artists and businessmen, each sticking to his own role.
Although the producers are in positions of power, they are at the
LESSER GODS, BUT COLOSSAL 113
same time scared employees, which is
another part of the Hollywood
paradox. Most of them work under the prevailing option contracts,
by which the studio can drop them at the end of six months or
a year and they cannot leave of their own accord for the seven
years' duration of the contract. A few have straight contracts
without option clause. The range of salary varies from $350 to
$4000 or more a week, determined by ability, prestige, bargaining
power, and all the tricks of playing the game. Their income is,
however, not always limited to the salaries paid by the studio.
Many are entrepreneurs on their own. It is part of the Hollywood
mores for some producers to have actors directly under contract
to them personally at one salary, "farm" them out to
the studio at a higher salary, and pocket the difference. The
actor is a piece of property which the producer, in these cases,
rents out on a profit basis.
Thus, producers likewise know all the
insecurities of everyone else in Hollywood. The studio may not
renew the option on their contract and they will be unemployed.
They shift from one studio to another as do other Hollywood workers.
Of the seventy-two producers employed in the seven major studios
in 1936, only eleven, 15 per cent, were still in the same studios
in 1947. Seventeen were unemployed, fourteen were producing at
other studios, and fourteen were independent producers. The remainder
had gone into other businesses, disappeared, or died. Only thirty-nine
of the original seventy-two were working as producers.
The producers' insecurities are not purely
economic. They are extremely sensitive to public and to Hollywood
reactions and are fearful if they are not continuously having
box-office hits. Unless they are successful in every picture,
they are apprehensive that the big stars may not be willing to
appear in their pictures or that the studio will not take up their
options. Like the executives, they usually follow formulas or
rely on their "instinct," in the selection of a story
to be filmed. When the "instinct" goes wrong, as it
often does, there is an attempt to shift the blame or conceal
the mistake in complicated bookkeeping.
They follow the Hollywood pattern of being carried away by enthusiasm which often later turns out to have been unwarranted.
114
Many go "all out" for a story
or idea which someone sells them. They sink so much money into
trying to get a movie out of it that they are compelled to go
ahead, even after it is obvious that the story is no good or not
suitable for a movie. In one case a producer made a mistake in
purchasing a bad story, and then asked a writer to do the impossible,
that is, do a good script by making changes completely inconsistent
with each other and with the original story. Another writer was
later called in to "doctor" this script. She was a person
of considerable skill and realized immediately that the original
story with the revisions was impossible, and so rewrote the whole
thing, changing the story completely. All that was left of the
original purchase was the title. Many times even that is lost.
In spite of the producers' paradoxical position they belong with the front-office executives to the in-group, while most of the writers actors and other artists are members of the out-group. Some form of in-group-out-group division prevails in all societies. Naturally, most people want to belong to the in-group, and each society has its own ways of becoming a member of it.
Among the Maori, a Polynesian people living in New Zealand, the in-group is an aristocracy dependent, in part, on biological relationships. In Hollywood, kinship is also important. Since producers do not need to have technical knowledge, it is the easiest position into which the head of the studio can put a relative or friend, and the charge of nepotism is fairly common in the industry. However, cultural kinship is as important as biological. Executives can trust and feel at home with relatives, old boyhood friends, and others who speak their language and who concentrate on profits and power. There is one tale of how a man who had been a production manager, a kind of super-bookkeeper, became a producer. He had a big fight with a director over costs, and the front office was so pleased with the way he put money before the creative needs of the movie that he was promoted to producer. This happened a number of years ago; but the man is still a producer, and of A pictures
Another way of becoming and remaining a producer is through the prevailing Hollywood pattern, "playing the game." Producers
115
appear to participate in this practice more than most of the other occupational groups. If the front-office executives go in for horse racing, the producer does likewise. If the executive likes bumming around the town in night clubs and getting drunk, the producer goes along. Becoming "pals" with the boss is a kind of social security. If a picture is not a box-office hit, or if the studio releases a number of people through a reorganization, a producer is not so apt to be fired or to have his option dropped if he and the boss are pals.
Another technique for holding on to a job is playing cards for high stakes with the front-office executive, so skillfully that he loses a lot of money. The producer is very tactful and does not mention the gambling debt, and his job is safe as long as the boss continues to owe him money. The debt may never be paid but the producer considers it insurance for keeping his position. There is a story about a man who attained the position of producer through gambling. His background was not even remotely connected with making movies. He came to Hollywood about twenty years ago anxious to break into the industry. He managed to get himself invited to a week-end cruise on the private yacht of an executive of a major studio. The weekend was spent mostly in gambling with high stakes, and the would-be movie maker lost several thousand dollars to the executive. On Monday he showed up at the latter's office and said he regretted that he could not pay the gambling debt because he was unemployed. He then told the executive that he was a talented man in movie production and that if he could be given a job as producer he would pay the executive three hundred dollars a week until the gambling debt was paid. He got the job and is still a producer.
Others have acquired their positions because they have been around Hollywood for a long time. These came during the period of "silent" films and more or less accidentally fell into producers' berths. They may have begun in a humble capacity and become producers at the time the job was primarily that of supervisor. Some of them are conscientious hard workers, but only a few appear to be men with real knowledge and ability. There is today a rather strong trend for a writer, director or actor to take on the producer's
116
role. Most of them do so in order to gain at least partial control over their own creative work. These men always belittle their producing role, saying that there is nothing to it.
One writer-director-producer said that if he were asked how much he should earn for his three functions, he would reply: "Twenty five hundred dollars [a week] for being director, twenty-five hundred as a writer, and twenty-five dollars for being a producer." This expressed the attitude of most of the men I met who combined being producers with another function. They did not have to pretend to themselves or anyone else that the producing job was of itself creative. They viewed it as purely administrative and not difficult to handle, and had their creative satisfaction in writing, directing or acting.
Much of the producer's power is similar to that of the front-office executive. Both tend to project onto the movies their own personalities, their ideas of love and sex, their attitude to mankind, and their "solutions" to social problems. If the producer thinks that every dame is a pushover, then the dame in the picture, whether she be a dancing girl or a doctor, is a pushover-of course, within the tricky limits of the Production Code. If his idea of love is that of an adolescent boy, that concept will most likely emerge in the film. If he is interested in social problems they too will be reflected in the films. One producer interested in those that make newspaper headlines makes many a picture involving a social problem, but always with an unrealistic and overeasy solution. Another producer's warm humanitarian interests, on the sentimental side, are regularly reflected in his pictures. The satirist's outlook on life is part of another producer-director's personality and reflected in his film. Another producer-director, a rather sadistic person, is at his best when he produces and directs a picture dealing with cruelty and violence. There are other films on which mature and intelligent men leave their stamp of honesty and understanding, not only of the film medium, but of human beings.
Mr. Rough-and-Ready is a successful producer-director of Westerns and serials, who has his own independent unit at a major studio,
117
through which his pictures are released. He refers with a matter-of-fact honesty to his background, that of a poor New York boy with little formal education. His first movie job, back in the days of the silent films, was as an office boy in a New York studio. From that he went on to property man, cutter, and a little acting, all before the days of the talkies. He now functions efficiently as a producer and director of Westerns and serials whose budgets range from $200,000 to $500,000. He completely controls and dominates his pictures, which are concerned with heroic escapes from danger and an exciting rescue at the end. A boy and girl are in the film but rarely any romance. The characters are all clear-cut. The hero is pure white and the villain pure black, in old melodramatic style. The formulas he uses are almost unchanged since the silent movies, but the locales are different. Today the setting may have something to do with aviation or electronics-anything which appeals to the youth who make up most of his audience.
On each serial there are four writers, one of whom is a supervisor of the team. The characters are definitely set and each writer works on certain incidents which the supervisor ties together. After the supervisor has done his job, the script is handed to Mr. Rough-and-Ready, who edits and suggests changes to the supervisor, who carries them out. On the set Mr. Rough-and-Ready works very quickly and is all activity. There is none of the slowness and the many retakes of the big productions. The rapidity of the shooting resembles the tempo in his films. He knows exactly what he wants and is able to verbalize to the actors. He once played some minor roles in the old, silent days and still considers himself an actor, although he has no ambitions along that line. However, he still has his superstitions. On each picture he walks across the set at least once taking a very minor part. This, he thinks, insures the picture's success.
He does not live in the usual Hollywood manner. His home is unpretentious and furnished in a mail-order catalogue style. He belongs to no social circle. There are a number of relatives to whom he has given minor jobs and he has a number of business associates but he appears to have no group of friends. Mr. Rough-and-Ready rarely reads anything outside of the scripts for his movies. He says frankly that movies are for him good business, and that he knows
118
and cares nothing about the "art" of the films. He regards his Westerns and serials as the "bread and butter" of the industry, saying that there is always a demand for them, while the A pictures have their ups and downs. Among producers he is unique in that he has none of the gambler's attitude, for he asserts that he has never lost any money and that his profits are always good.
However, serials and Westerns are not just good business for him. He loves them. He does the kind of picture he would like to see if he were a member of the audience. Excitement and fast action are his "meat" and he projects himself completely into his movies and has a grand time. He is not a man of subtlety nor has he any artistic pretensions. He knows what he wants and how to get it efficiently. He is independent, producing a staple product for which there is always a demand. He appears to be both economically and psychologically secure. He has no ambition to compete with the big-time A producers, is unworried about prestige, and his working life stands out in Hollywood for its relative lack of conflict and frustration. There are no discrepancies between his goals, achievements and abilities.
Mr. Mediocre, an elderly man, had been a producer of B pictures before he was given A ones. His quiet personality is in sharp contrast to Mr. Rough-and-Ready's boisterous one, which communicated the excitement he was continuously feeling on the job. Mr. Mediocre has a long unpretentious role in show business. Both his parents were in vaudeville, and when he was still young his first job was to take tickets at the box offices of vaudeville houses. Later he wrote skits, did publicity work for shows, and many other odd jobs. After the "talkies" came in, vaudeville declined and he had to look around for some other field of work. He knew no world except the theatrical one and he thought the movies had a good future. Besides he had always wanted to live in California; so he came to Hollywood, where he had a few friends and acquaintances. One of them gave him the opportunity to write scripts for B pictures. The producer for whom he worked took Mr. Mediocre along when he went to a major studio. For a while Mr. Mediocre assisted this producer
119
in making B pictures. When the producer
left the studio Mr. Mediocre was given his job. After a number
of years, he was promoted to A pictures
Mr. Mediocre says that his choice for
a new picture is influenced by the theme of whatever movies are
currently successful. If the psychological murder thrillers are
enjoying box-office success, then he decides to do one of them.
Of course, many times he simply does whatever is suggested by
the head of the studio.
In one case the studio purchased the
rights to a novel, and a script which had been written from it,
and assigned him to that. He worked in the following manner. He
thought the script needed considerable change, so assigned Writer
Number 1 to the job, indicating the kind of changes he wanted;
when Writer Number I had finished, Mr. Mediocre showed the script
to the director, who thought there should be more romance in it.
Writer Number 2 was then called in to put in the romance. Writer
Number 3 was called in after that to sharpen and polish the dialogue.
Mr. Mediocre then decided that the script needed comedy gags and
Writers Number 4 and Number 5, who worked separately and not as
a team, were employed to give it comedy touches. Mr. Mediocre
suggested the lifting of gags and other funny incidents from successful
movies, which were not always relevant to this one. The writers
did as they were told. It took about six months to complete the
script. This movie, like some of his others, was less than mediocre
He thinks of himself as born to the show business. His enjoyment of the job is rather passive, and while he does not talk pretentiously about art or say that he is an artist he does talk about the "thrill of creation," he experiences when he sees his movies on the screen. He has no definite opinions about anything and is reluctant to commit himself to anyone's point of view, for fear of being held responsible if it should fail. He works rather mechanically with a number of people, in an assembly-line manner and within a well-established frame of tried formulas and gags. He is happy if his picture has success at the box office. He tells of one time suddenly thinking, at a preview, when it was too late, that the ending of the picture was all wrong; for a while he felt quite badly. A bit later the front office
120
congratulated him on the success the picture was having at the be office-and he says he felt badly no longer.
Mr. Kowtow, in his middle thirties, with
some success already although not yet in the big producer class,
is clever and intelligent and has great ability for compromise.
He knows his way around and has made a point of getting along
with people and having them like him. He is particularly quick
to seize any opportunity presented.
He too started his movie career when
he was fourteen by selling tickets at a movie house and had a
number of lowly jobs such as that of "prop boy." Later
he worked on some of the trade papers and has had miscellaneous
jobs at various studios. His last one before becoming a producer
was as assistant to an executive producer and his functions included
supervising the work of writers and directors, the casting of
actors and serving as a liaison person between the executive head
and all the people who were working on a picture.
In this capacity he learned a great deal. He saw that one picture which the executive head planned to produce was headed for failure. He knew that the script on which several writers were working was coming to a dead end and that it would be impossible to film. He foresaw this several weeks before it actually happened; he knew in advance that the executive would have to turn down the script and would then be left "holding the bag" and in an anxious position. For the executive had commitments to a producer, to a director, and to two stars for a certain type of picture, for which studio span had been reserved at a definite time.
Mr. Kowtow, however, gave the executive
no advance notice that the picture was going to fizzle out, but
instead used the time so the he would be prepared to save the
situation when it occurred. He took a property which the studio
owned, in which he thought were the possibilities of a good picture,
and immediately began making a script from it. He worked on this
at night and at home.
Everything happened as planned. The executive
saw the first scan when it was finished, knew immediately that
it was no good and that it would be better to write off the expense
incurred as a loss and start with something different. However,
he did not have the
121
"something different" ready.
He was in the usual panic which prevails
at such a time.
This was the cue for Mr. Kowtow to step
in and show the script he had been working on. The producer liked
it, was naturally grateful to his assistant for saving the situation,
and promoted Mr. Kowtow to the position of associate producer.
From that he quickly rose to producer.
Mr. Kowtow says that the pictures he
likes best to do are those with a great deal of feeling and somewhat
on the sentimental side. But he does many different kinds. The
executive head of his studio is known as a very arbitrary and
dictatorial person and Mr. Kowtow has the reputation of getting
along well with him-that is, giving in. However, he has a picture
of himself in which he would like to be the kind of person who
can say "no" and fight, if necessary, for the picture
he wants to make. He says he thinks it necessary to do this for
his own self-respect, that one cannot give in all the time. In
the same breath, he adds that most of the time he knows he cannot
win and there is nothing to do but obey-or get out. He is not
willing to do the latter.
Mr. Kowtow is the kind of person who
is described as having "needled" his way into his present
position. He has the reputation for never getting mad at anyone
and always keeping his temper. No one at the studio ever speaks
badly of him, and this is unusual. Of course, no one speaks very
highly of him either.
He has no particular flair for new ideas, and even if he should have one he would not have the strength of character to forge ahead with it in the face of opposition. His is the ability of handling people and compromising. One sees him becoming more and more successful, not doing anything spectacular and always in the middle of the road, yet slightly wistful that he has not done something better. At the present time his attitude is a combination of being pleased with his success and at the same time disappointed that he cannot respect the mediocre films he produces.
Mr. Persistence is another middle-of-the-road producer, considered a bit better than the ordinary, whose career, particularly in its beginning, illustrates some of the difficulties which come from
12 2
the front office. His first jobs were
on newspapers and magazines, and he more or less drifted into
pictures through a close relative. He started his movie career
in one of the smaller studios producing "shorts," and
finally landed a job at a major studio as a Writer with the understanding
that he would be given an opportunity, at production. The executive
kept his word and, after Mr. Persistence had been there a while,
told him to read the studio properties and see if there was anything
among them he cared to produce. He picked out the one he liked
best, a rather sentimental love story, which represented his own
fantasy of love. The executive approved of his choice and told
him to go ahead on the treatment. He worked hard and the boss
liked the result.
A writer was assigned and work on the
script began. It went along satisfactorily until, to Mr. Persistence's
great disappointment, the front office took the whole thing away
from him because they decided it was too big to give to a new
and untried producer. It was handed to another one, more experienced
and with a record of box-office successes. A bit later Mr. Persistence
was given another picture and again worked on it with a writer.
Then, within too weeks of the shooting date, when it was practically
ready, a deal was made with a Broadway producer to put it on as
a play first. Again nothing had come from all his hard work. Although
discouraged, he accepted it as part of the general situation and
wrote it off as good experience.
Then, the first picture, which he had
so wanted to do, was handed back to him. The other producer had
not been able to lick the script. Finally, he and the writer got
the script ready. Then came the question of casting. They had
made a "package deal" with another studio for the loan
of two actors, in which they got one they wanted; and another,
whom they had to take in the package, was assigned to the male
lead, although not appropriate for that part. Fortunately he became
sick and had to leave the picture; they were then able to get
the actor originally desired, who not been free earlier. The picture
was a box-office success a bit better than the average. Mr. Persistence
was "made" as a producer.
In discussing it, he feels that his success was entirely due to
123
lucky breaks. He did have a couple, such as getting a good male stare after starting with a poor one. Yet he had also worked very hard, had done his best, and had suffered many disappointments. These he discounts, and is startled at a question as to whether they too might have counted. Like so many Hollywood people he is accustomed to thinking of success only in terms of breaks, and has not confidence in his own hard work and ability. He is happy in his job as a producer although he has many headaches in connection with it. His aim is to do pictures which are good entertainment, and which "lift people up a bit." He says he is not interested in messages or social implications, and what he likes best is a good sentimental film. That also is the kind of novel he selects when he reads for pleasure. He regards production as a creative job because he says the idea to do a particular picture is his, and he stays with it until the final product is on the screen. He is in constant huddles over the problems which come up during production, and it is he who ties together the innumerable details. This job of supervision makes him feel creative.
Mr. Scoop is one of the top successful
producers at a major studio, with a long list of box-office hits
to his credit, among chick are some regarded as decidedly very
good and others more or less run-of-the-mill. He began as a hack
writer, first for newspapers and radio, then for the movies, without
any particular success. But as a producer his progress has been
consistent. However, his standards and thinking are still close
too those of the newspaper, with its interest in headlines. His
goal is to do a movie involving a problem of current interest
and with social implications, and do it quickly before anyone
else does. His method of getting ideas is through an omnivorous
reading of newspapers and popular magazines, listening to radios,
and keeping a very careful record of all ideas with any possible
appropriateness for a movie, gleaned from any of these sources.
The ideas are filed in hundreds of folders, filling a number of
cabinets, which he constantly consults.
His technique of work is to give the idea for a movie and something of a story line to a writer, who then develops a treatment and a script from it. Mr. Scoop says he regards his relationship
124
with a writer as a "marriage of
brain, heart and soul," and he usually picks able, skilled
authors who share his interests. He them considerable freedom,
relatively speaking, although to there are frequent story conferences
in which, of course, his is the final word if there is disagreement.
The director usually is in on these conferences from the beginning,
and the principals of the cast and the set designer may participate
in later ones. He tries to give his pictures an integration frequently
lacking in the assembly-line type of production. He thinks of
his job as that of guidance and of himself as a kind of pilot,
giving direction to talent. He regards script as the one most
important element in production, since he says, without a skilled
one, a good picture cannot possibly result.
Mr. Scoop works all the time and very
hard. He lives and breathes movies. They seem to ooze from his
pores. They are his god, whom he continuously serves. Everything
he sees, read reads or hears is possible material for his pictures.
He has great persistence and argues at great length with the executive
head of the studio about a picture he wants to make. He may lose
out, but he does not give up. He returns six months or a year
or two later, if he still thinks his idea good, and this time
he may win. In conversation he gives the impression that he listens
to other people only as long as they are saying something which
might be useful to him for a movie. This single, wholehearted,
almost fanatical concentration combined with intelligence, has
produced results. He has attained a position of prestige, with
sufficient power to carry out many of his ideas.
Yet his pictures, although rather well
constructed and smoothly produced, and decidedly better than the
average, are for the most part limited to reflecting his standard
of the newspaper "scoop." He is more concerned with
being the first to do a picture on some social problem previously
considered taboo to the movies then is illuminating the problem
with understanding. He sees himself a courageous person, "sticking
his neck out." Yet in most of his movies the problems are
so oversimplified as to become phony. Their implications are rarely
treated with insight, and his solutions do not ring true.
His pictures reflect him as Westerns reflect Mr. Rough-and-
125
Ready's personality. Mr. Scoop is a man of mildly humanitarian ideals but with apparently limited knowledge and understanding of the social problem which he is so eager to be the first to present in a movie. He is a strong man with an earnestness and concentration on the medium which transcends that of the usual producer, whose concentration is mostly on himself. At the same time he is still a newspaperman with the goal of being first with his story. He resembles Mr. Rough-and-Ready in being relatively unfrustrated. Each knows what he wants and how to get it, and each one enjoys enormous personal satisfaction in achieving his goal.
Mr. Schizo differs from both these men
in that he suffers from a real and obvious conflict in goals.
He is in his thirties, from a New York, middle-class background.
He had literary ambitions, but was never able to write anything
which achieved recognition. His work was limited to that of an
unknown newspaper reporter. He came to Hollywood with a rather
minor job and immediately began playing the social "game."
He met the right people, was invited to the big parties and seen
at the best night clubs and restaurants. He has considerable charm
and people liked him. He was a great success, and made a "good"
marriage to a wealthy girl with studio connections.
And so Mr. Schizo became a producer.
But he had been too busy with his social activities to learn anything
about how movies are made, and he never seems to have acquired
the knowledge since.
He did not lose his old ideas and continued
to think of himself as a literary person. He can hold an interesting
and intelligent conversation about contemporary authors, discussing
their virtues and faults from the point of view of a writer. At
the same time he is intensely ambitious to be an important person
in the industry. He wants money, but even more the power that
comes with it, and he sees himself as a kind of major general
dominating the situation and everyone in it. The rival pictures
of himself as a literary artist and big business executive appear
to be in constant conflict. Neither goal wins out sufficiently
to provide direction, and the result it the appearance of impotency
in his work.
He rarely knows what he wants. While one picture was in pro-
126
uction, he discussed a particular scene
with the director, making the point that he thought it should
be more involved. So the two men worked all morning on adding
complications to the scene. At the end of the morning's work,
when it was time to go out for lunch, Mr. Schizo walked from the
desk to the door, turned at, and said, "You know, this scene
was all right, but now it is complicated."
Although he has his own independent unit, his reputation is of giving in very easily to the head of the studio or to the star, or to anyone else with power. He will talk to a gifted writer or director about a picture he plans, the idea of which may be quite different from the run-of-the-mill to get them excited, and to make them promise to work on it. But when the time comes, it invariably turns out differently because drastic changes have been made. Many times he is caught with studio space assigned to him and no story. Then he buys one in great haste though it offers no possibilities for a good movie. He appears completely unable to plan ahead, and the few weeks before shooting is scheduled to begin are characterized by hectic, frenzied inefficiency. He seems to have a need to get himself into a panic situation, which he communicates to all those who work for him. He is always "on the neck" of his writers, never leaving them alone at the studio or away from it, constantly interfering and interrupting them. The harassed writer may want to "bow out" of the whole situation. Then Mr. Schizo implores him not to leave, not to "desert" him in this crisis; and the writer, out of a sense of personal obligation to the men and in accordance with the obligation of "not walking out on a picture," remains. Schizo usually picks able writers with prestige, in the high-salary brackets-probably the kind he would have liked to be-and establishes a personal, friendly relation the underlying tone of which is his dependency on them. What Mr. Schizo projects on to his pictures are not his fantasies but rather the state of confusion and conflict that exists between them and in his personality. As might be expected, none of his pictures has been very successful, either from the point of view of box office or in receiving critical approval.
127
Mr. Good Judgment is different from any
of the producers yet described. He is in his early forties and
has been a producer for the last four or five years. He is a college
graduate and majored in the theater arts, doing all kinds of things-acting,
directing, writing, producing. His ambition then was to become
a Broadway producer. After college he came to New York and earned
a meager living in a number of jobs connected, some way or other,
with the theater.
About nine or ten years ago, Mr. Good
Judgment came to Hollywood and wrote original stories which he
tried to sell to the studios but with no success. Sometimes he
almost made a sale, but for some reason or other it always fell
through. During the first year and a half he lived mostly on borrowed
money. Eventually, through a writer friend who was working at
a big studio, he got a job at the same place for $50 a week. He
worked there for nine weeks, teaming up with another writer on
B and Western scripts, and at the end of that time they offered
him a contract at $50.
He refused because the salary was so low. In the beginning he
had been willing to work as an apprentice writer at this figure,
with the assumption that if he stayed he would get more. (The
Screen Writers' Guild has since set $75 a week for an apprentice;
if promoted, they must get the minimum of $187.)
For a number of years Mr. Good Judgment
then earned his living on free-lance writing jobs on Westerns
and B pictures. He had considerable success, and his salary went
up first to $150 a week, later to $350 and eventually to $750.
His reputation was that of a skilled writer on B pictures.
He never considered himself a particularly
good writer and his ambition was still to become a producer. Eventually
he was offered a producer's job on B pictures. He hesitated in
accepting it because he wanted to get out of the B classification.
However, no one was offering him anything in the A group, and
the executive who was offering the job said that the studio wanted
to do better B pictures, which he thought could be accomplished
if an intelligent and skilled writer handled the entire picture.
Mr. Good Judgment accepted the job and looked over the properties owned by the studio. He found a novel from which he
128
thought an excellent melodrama could
be made. He asked producer if he could put on an old New York
friend with whom he had worked on a magazine, as a writer at $150
a week. This man had not written any movie scripts but Mr. Good
Judgment; convinced that he could and that they would work well
together. The salary of $150 was considered so low that Mr. Good
Judgment had his way. The two men worked hard together and in
three weeks they had an eighty-five page treatment which the front
office O.K.'d. They started on the script, working night and day.
Mr. Good Judgment helped the writer on the structure and on many
technical movie points.
In the meantime, a producer of A pictures from another studio wanted to buy the novel on which the script was based. The front office knew nothing about this novel except that it was in their B department and that Mr. Good Judgment was working on it. However, when a prestige A producer became interested, they sent for Mr. Good Judgment and asked him about the script he was doing. He was very enthusiastic about it and talked in glowing terms of the picture which would come from it. The execute was impressed, particularly since someone else wanted to buy the novel, and asked him why he had not put on a better writer. Following the stereotyped executive way of thinking, he could not see how a $150-a-week writer could possibly be any good. The producer managed to satisfy him by saying that the writer's worth at least $3000, that they were just lucky in getting a bargain. The producer had confidence in the script based on a real knowledge of movie writing which is unusual in Hollywood, and he was able to communicate this confidence to the front office executive, who otherwise might have cold feet. Instead, the executive permitted the producer to go ahead in his own way. The script was finished in nine weeks, and when the front office read it, were enthusiastic and refused to sell the novel on which it based. They gave the writer all the time he wanted for polishing, which took three months. The picture was made on a bigger budget than first anticipated, not that of an A picture, but halfway between A and B. It was a smash hit, and with a known net profit several hundred per cent.
129
Mr. Good Judgment now became an A producer.
He kept the writer with him and they worked together continuously
as a team. They have similar tastes and ideas and mutual respect
for each other. The writer is shy and inarticulate verbally, while
the producer has enough aggression to stand up to the front office
when necessary, and the two make an effective team. Mr. Good Judgment
has had a number of big box-office hits to his credit, and therefore
now enjoys a considerable power in the choice of pictures. Among
his box-office hits are those which have received critical acclaim
not only for their presentation of dramatic conflict but also
for their honesty.
He does not think of himself as a creative genius, but has confidence that he knows a good story when he sees one, and that he has the ability to pick people, such as writers and directors, who can carry it through. He is one of the very few people who do not emphasize the breaks. He is an intelligent person with the technical skill and the dramatic knowledge necessary for the production of movies. He has a point of view about life, an interest in it which goes deeper than headlines. He has known what he wanted to do for a long time, plowing steadily ahead towards his goal, and achieved it without playing the usual Hollywood game. Even though he has given up his former role of writer, he agrees with other writers, and the directors and actors who have become producers, on the relative unimportance of the producer's role. He, however, enjoys it, and brings to it both skill and knowledge gained from previous experience.
Producers, like other people, get their jobs in different ways, and there are various kinds, some typical and other exception. Mr. Good Judgment, the college graduate of good taste and confidence in it, is most exception. Mr. Scoop, with his fanatical devotion to movies and humanitarianism, even though limited by his standards of the newspaper scoop, is not typical. The majority of the producers of A pictures are well represented by Mr. Mediocre, who has been a Hollywood producer for a long time and who works completely according to the formula; by Mr. Kowtow, clever and intelligent but lacking in self-confidence and courage;
130
by Mr. Persistence, conscientious and a hard worker but with no unusual talent; and Mr. Schizo, a man in conflict, who works in a constant state of panic and without direction. Mr. Rough-and-Ready, who gets so much genuine enjoyment out of producing Westerns and series, is partially typical of his group, although here too one finds pretentious and frustrated men.
The fundamental question of whether producers
in general are really necessary can be raised. It would be possible
to produce movies in which the director would have the power the
producer now enjoys, and in which financial details would be handled,
as they are now, by the budget director, who at least usually
sticks to his last and rarely thinks of himself as being creative.
But if the structure in which the producers are important is accepted,
then it seems not unreasonable that the producer should known
how to pick a good story and how to select the proper men to help
carry it through. These capacities must, however, come from something
besides the desire to "make a buck," for they depend
on knowledge and understanding of theater, literature, people,
and the movie medium, and on a good judgment and understanding.
It likewise should be important for the producer to be able to
plan thoughtfully in advance in a more or less businesslike manner.
Very few producers have those qualities,
which are important for an administrator in any field. A man cannot
be a good college president if he does not have some knowledge
of the ingredients of good teaching and scholarship. On the other
hand, an effective college president is content to be an administrator
and does not dictate in detail how each member of the faculty
should pursue his particular academic interests.
The problem in Hollywood is that while
the producer's is basically an administrative job, the people
who play his part are often neither good administrators nor content
to limit themselves to that role.