Producers wanted

Without a producer, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights would have never been made. Hard to imagine, huh?

So read the classifieds in the latest news email from the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-op. It seems several young filmmakers need producer partners for this year’s FILM 5 program. Having briefly flirted with that role myself, several years back, I have to say the lack of aspiring producers is disappointing.

Clearly, we all want to be directors. Directors are sexy and artistic and have such “vision.” Producing, on the other hand, is work. It’s grinding away to assemble the thousands of individual components which make a movie. That’s noble enough reason to try it out, but producing is also a master class in understanding every tiny aspect of the film industry (spoilers: film’s an industry).

Give a producer a credit card and cell phone and they’ll make anything happen. Just look at the name—a producer produces. They birth a movie from some intangible dream into reality. It might not be art, but it’s craft. There’s a reason it’s the producer who accepts the Best Picture Oscar.

So give it a whirl, if you think you’ve got the chops. Then buy some beer for your crew. Always buy beer for your crew.

This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2012.