In a normal job, you go in at 9am, do the assigned tasks, and at 5pm you have something to show for it. There are new customers, or forms are filled out, or a home has new paint on it or whatever it is you do, you can point to something tangible and say, "That is what I did today."
It's not like that with a movie. At it's best, making a movie is controlled chaos; every day you have numerous different tasks that call on completely different parts of the brain, require your full focus, and show no immediate results. Take for example one day last week I clearly remember. Over the course of the day, we did all these things:
Script revisions: Nils and I spent two hours going over some small changes and assorted other minor script issues.
Financing call: I spent at least an hour dealing with various issues surrounding the financing of the movie.
Meeting with a potential line producer: Me, Nils, Max and Bob had a meeting with one of the people we were considering attaching as a line producer.
Casting session: Two and a half hours, very typical casting session, read about 10-12 actors/actresses.
Meeting with an actress about a part: After the casting session, took a meeting with an actress.
Walking to the car after that last meeting, it was like 6pm, and Nils and I had been going basically non-stop since 9am. I turned to him and said, "Dude, I am dead tired...and I'm not sure I could tell you one thing we actually finished today. How weirdly demoralizing is this?"
There is such a huge difference between the effort you put in and the results you see, that being a producer is unlike any other job I know of. If you want immediate gratification, this is the worst job on earth. Every thing we did on that list was a continuation of a process, not the beginning or the end. No matter what you do, there is always something else to be done, and you are never done. Even when you finish something, that act creates multiple things to do. You attach a director? Now you have to attach a crew. You get a casting director? Now you have to get actors. You got actors? Now you have to shoot the movie. Ad infinitum.
It's so funny, because none of this has any immediate result either. It's all in the service of one 90 minute movie that won't be released until about this time next year. My entire life, everything I do in this job, is completely focused on that moment in time. So all these things I am doing are going to be judged by what happens then, not what is going on now. This is antithetical to how so much in life works.
Someone asked me the other day if I ever got swept up in the hype and excitement of making a movie. I told them that the opposite is true--I am so bogged down by the day to day duties of the movie I have problems getting excited about the big picture.
Dude, I am making a fucking movie! About my life! And you know what? All I can think about right now is getting the line producer's contract done, getting the offer out to the DP, figuring out the tax implications of the payment schedule we've set up for the casting associates, etc, etc.
My old editor, Jeremie Ruby-Strauss, once told me a very wise thing. When I was writing I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, I called him one day and started yapping some nonsense about turning it into a movie and how big it was going to be--seriously, this was early 2005 right before I turned the manuscript in--and he stopped me:
JRS "Tucker, quiet. You are writing a book. I don't care about the movie. If you focus on the prize, you'll miss the target. But if you focus on the target, you'll hit it...and then you get the prize."
Writing a book was the target. I kept my eye on it, hit it, and got the prize. What was the prize? The best-seller list was nice, and money is never bad, but ultimately, it was the chance to turn the book into a movie. This is the prize.
But making a movie--the prize--is itself a constantly shifting, endless set of targets. You focus on one, hit it, and two more pop up to replace it. You hit those, four more pop up to replace them. And you can't rest, you can't relax, you can't start thinking of what happens if you hit all the targets because then you start missing targets.
No one wants to think about a 100 million dollar domestic box office or winning awards or fucking starlets more than me, but if I do that then I'll start missing targets, and if I miss too many, I don't get the prize. So I have to forget about everything except the target in front of me, nail it, and move to the next. Rinse and repeat, without much feedback or correction or gratification. Everything, good or bad, comes in a year, at the release. But I have to forget that, and just keep hitting targets. Eventually, I'll run out. And when that happens, if I hit enough, I'll have a great movie. Which is the real prize.
Like I said: If it was easy, more people would do it.
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