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00:00Great Gatsby, working with Baz Luhrmann, that was an amazing movie too.
00:07I learned one little lesson on that movie about getting older.
00:11A few of the PAs would ask us on the movie, how did you get involved?
00:16And I would say, well, my roommate in college was F. Scott Fitzgerald.
00:20And they would say, not thinking that was 30, 40 years before, they say, wow, what was
00:25that like?
00:28So then the joke was really on me.
00:39It is an art, choosing gladiators.
00:42They're usually prisoners of war.
00:47I claim this city for the glory of Rome.
00:53You have something in you.
00:55Rage.
00:58Never let it go.
01:02Those fighters won't survive.
01:04You must help him.
01:07Strength to mother.
01:10I don't fight for power.
01:14I fight to free Rome from men like them.
01:20Your name will be forgotten.
01:24To instill order, I must have power.
01:29Everything is forgotten in time.
01:33Empires fall.
01:35So do emperors.
01:38This is war.
01:40Real war.
01:44The odds are against you.
01:45The odds are always against me.
01:53Welcome to Behind the Lens today.
01:55A really special day because their latest film is opening everywhere.
02:00Actually, it opened around the globe last week and now here in North America.
02:04Of course, it's Gladiator 2.
02:07They are also husband and wife.
02:09They are partners in Red Wagon Entertainment.
02:12And veteran producers of so many movies.
02:15This is Doug Wick and this is Lucy Fisher.
02:18Welcome to Behind the Lens.
02:21When I look at your credits individually and together, it's really impressive.
02:27You actually are the winner of the David O. Selznick Award from the Producers Guild.
02:32You were the first couple ever to get that.
02:35Dick Zanuck and David Brown got one, but it was quite an achievement.
02:40And Lucy, you headed the Producers Guild with Gail.
02:44Yes, many years after that award.
02:46Many years after that, but that's exciting.
02:48Because she didn't give it to herself.
02:51Well, congratulations on Gladiator 2.
02:53Such a great movie. It's so fun.
02:56Today's the big opening.
02:58Are you excited? Are you nervous?
03:00Because it opened internationally in some markets last week and became Ridley Scott's biggest opening ever.
03:07We did great in Europe.
03:10I think the day we stop being nervous for an opening weekend, we'll just give up the job.
03:15Yeah, you got to. You never know which way it's going to go.
03:20You can't help yourself. You care so much. You hope it has a great life.
03:24And for this one, it's been a long time coming.
03:28This is 24 years after the first one, for which you won an Academy Award as producer of that.
03:34Now you are both producers on this one as well.
03:38Why did it take so long, guys? Come on, 24 years.
03:41Usually we have a sequel going every other year with these hit movies and things.
03:45Well, there were a few things, some of which may raise some questions about our confidence as producers.
03:51But we killed off two of the leads.
03:54Yeah, that's not a good way to make a sequel.
03:56Yeah, so that puts a little gap there.
03:59We were very aware that we got really lucky on the first one.
04:02Everything went right.
04:04There's a lot of bad sequels in Hollywood.
04:06So that would be an excuse for maybe it taking five or ten years.
04:10The next ten years was looking for a story that was worth telling.
04:15We knew it was going to be Lucius, the only boy in the movie.
04:18We knew he'd be estranged from his family.
04:20Paul Mascow's character.
04:22Paul Mascow's character.
04:24But what the journey would be was several years in a room with two different writers and always Ridley.
04:30Wow. Oh, that's cool.
04:32Did you have some really bad ideas at any point in the 20 years or so that you developed this?
04:40Personally?
04:41Yeah, or anybody.
04:43I'll take all the heat.
04:44Did people come and give you an, yeah, this will be great, you know?
04:48He can speak to some of those better than I can.
04:51I met with a lot of writers to hear their pitches.
04:56And, you know, even with the most talented people, there's plenty of terrible ideas.
05:00So we cycled through a lot of bad possibilities.
05:05You know, a lot of ideas so you could keep Russell.
05:09Russell going through the afterlife to get back to his family.
05:12He was dead.
05:13He was dead.
05:14Okay, he's coming back.
05:15He's coming back.
05:16Movies do that all the time.
05:17Yeah, you know, there were a lot of very problematic ideas.
05:24Russell's agent called me just after the movie opened big.
05:29And he said, look, I've got an idea.
05:31At the end of the movie, they're carrying Russell's body out of the arena.
05:35Why don't they just take it around the corner?
05:38Russell gets down off it, says, hey, it worked.
05:41They believe I'm dead.
05:42They high five, and we start the new movie.
05:45Why not that idea?
05:47Exactly.
05:48Thanks, Pete.
05:49That would have been the end of my career.
05:52It sounds fun, though.
05:53You know, yeah.
05:54Was Russell into that idea?
05:55Did it ever get to him?
05:56Yeah, Russell did.
05:59Russell was interested in the afterlife, of his journey as basically a dead person going
06:04to rejoin his family, passing through the Roman underground.
06:09Thank God you didn't make that movie.
06:11Yeah, thank God.
06:12The movie you did make is great.
06:15It is like what Denzel Washington, one of your stars, said, Cecil B. DeMille on steroids,
06:20which is a line I love, you know?
06:22I know.
06:23But it is.
06:24I know that you, Lucy, said something about this is the last world-building movie in the
06:29age of AI and green screen, where they can just do it with all these technical things.
06:34You guys went back to Malta all over the place and built this world, like the old Cecil B.
06:40DeMille movies.
06:42It's really fun to work that way.
06:44I hope it's not the last one, but it felt like it might be, just because people don't
06:48do it that much anymore.
06:50And Arthur Max is an architect as well as a production designer, and he built a city.
06:56What is it like producing a movie on this scale?
06:59They don't do them like this anymore, as they say.
07:03We thought we'd seen a lot when we did Memoirs of a Geisha, because we built, I think, three
07:08blocks of-
07:091930s Kyoto.
07:11In the valley.
07:12Right.
07:13Is that where that was shot?
07:15Most of it was shot there, but we did shoot also in Kyoto and in the Sea of Japan, and
07:21then we shot at the Huntington Gardens, the Japanese garden.
07:24Oh, why not?
07:25Yeah, that's great.
07:26I love that.
07:27That little garden that everybody likes.
07:28That movie was great, and by the way, has, along with Schindler's List, my very favorite
07:33John Williams score.
07:35I was so upset when he didn't win.
07:37He was nominated.
07:38Zell was nominated.
07:39But he didn't win, because I thought that was one of the-
07:41We were surprised.
07:42That was one of the best scores he's ever done.
07:45But, to Lucy's point, we then built the 1920s Long Island for Gatsby in Sydney, Australia.
07:52Oh, God.
07:53We had been involved with some world building before, but nothing like ancient Rome and
07:59Malta.
08:00And there were literally blocks of ancient Rome.
08:05There were life-size, aside from the Colosseum, there were life-size statues of Pedro Pascal
08:11on a horse.
08:12He was a great Roman general.
08:14And our drive to work, which, as it was occurring, we knew we were really lucky, is, as we drove
08:21in towards the set, literally we passed hundreds of extras in Praetorian uniforms, togas, costumes.
08:32And all the actors said that, to Lucy's point about how rare it is to have everything physical
08:39there, that for them to get in character, to be in the arena, to be in the emperor's
08:45box, looking down on ... It's not a cutaway later on, looking on the action on the arena
08:52floor.
08:53That's amazing.
08:55And this has so many what they call set pieces.
08:58But, I mean, from the idea of filling it with water and having sharks there, giant rhino
09:06marching in there is amazing right there.
09:08The baboon brawl is one of my favorites.
09:12I mean, I know there's nothing Ridley Scott can't do.
09:16It's, what is he, 87 now?
09:18He has a very unusual way of working, which is that he personally storyboards every scene
09:24in the movie long before we ever get to the set, long before we've even finished the script.
09:28He'll actually start conceptualizing and visualizing the scene before we even have dialogue.
09:33If we think a scene is going to be a battle scene, for instance, he'll be thinking of
09:37every angle.
09:38And he not only draws them, he paints them, colors them in.
09:42Wow.
09:43They're gorgeous.
09:44There's going to be a passion book of them for this movie.
09:47But he started as a painter, and so he thinks in visual terms.
09:52And so then he can hand these storyboards out so all of his eight to 14 cameras all
10:00know what everybody's shooting.
10:01The production designer knows, the script supervisor knows, the cameraman, everybody
10:07knows.
10:08And so everybody's on the same page.
10:09So he shoots with so many cameras that when we're watching, we're watching eight cameras.
10:14Wow.
10:15And he's directing eight cameras.
10:16So while he's directing the actors, he's also saying, you know, you go look there.
10:21And they're dressed in costume many times so that you don't see them and they're scuttering
10:26around.
10:27Wow.
10:28So it's a completely different way of shooting a movie.
10:30It doesn't do the normal coverage where I'm on you, and then I'm on us, and then I'm on
10:34him, and then I go over there, and then you get out there.
10:36It's all at the same time.
10:38It's amazing.
10:39So it's more like a play.
10:40It's very much in the present.
10:42And everybody has to bring it right away because you're not getting your own separate close-up.
10:48You're part of the ensemble, and one camera or another is always moving.
10:52Wow.
10:53Did you guys freak out when the strikes hit?
10:55Because you were in production, like a lot of stuff, and you couldn't rush to finish
11:01this.
11:02You had to shut down?
11:03Shut down.
11:04We knew it was maybe coming.
11:05Then we knew it was coming.
11:06Then it came, and there was a couple of days until we knew it was going to be the last
11:10day.
11:11And we had this whole city built.
11:15I mean, sometimes we say four blocks.
11:18Sometimes we say 14 blocks.
11:19All I know is I would get lost on it for like the first two weeks.
11:23It was that big just to find the lunch place.
11:25You'd walk through the Coliseum, and then you'd walk down these windy streets, then
11:28you'd walk past the giant foot statue, then you'd walk past this.
11:32Anyway, we see the sun setting in Malta over the water, and 2,000 people are on that day
11:39approximately, between the 450 crew members and the 1,000 extras.
11:46And the sun sets dark.
11:50That's it?
11:51Yeah.
11:52Wow.
11:54And we didn't know how long it would be.
11:57So Paul at first said, well, I can stay here and keep working out.
12:02We don't know.
12:05Part of the job is always looking for the silver lining.
12:10And here was a gigantic silver lining.
12:13The writer's strike had stopped us from doing some final polishing on the script.
12:18Right.
12:19And in the middle of the movie, Ridley's editors are constantly working.
12:23We got to see with Ridley an assembly of the movie up to that point.
12:28That's so valuable.
12:30So then that was really which performances were working, which needed a little help,
12:37where was the storytelling working.
12:39And so I would say that really ended up contributing to the quality of the movie.
12:44Does it help?
12:45So I have to thank Zach for that.
12:47Wow.
12:49Was casting difficult here when you're following an Oscar winning performance by Russell Crowe,
12:54no less.
12:55But was it difficult or did Paul Mescal just fall into your lap?
13:00How did that happen?
13:04We saw normal people.
13:06And that just screams gladiator.
13:08No.
13:11Really cute guy and talented actor.
13:13And we had the benefit of, I wasn't on the first movie,
13:17but they had the benefit of the studio letting them go with a person who wasn't that well-known,
13:22Russell Crowe.
13:23He had done one movie and gotten a lot of attention, but he wasn't a star yet.
13:28But people knew and they centered a movie around him, which is a big deal.
13:32So we had the history of maybe taking a little bit of a gamble.
13:36And we fell in love with Paul right away because he's Paul and he's as fantastic
13:41a person as he is on the screen.
13:43And we were trying to sort of nose around and try to figure out,
13:47could he ever be a gladiator?
13:49Because here he plays a sensitive guy and he's really intelligent and articulate.
13:55And we finally said, did you ever play sports in high school?
14:00And he said he played Irish rugby.
14:02And so Doug, also a crazy rugby player, knew what that meant, which is many concussions.
14:09And a few broken bones.
14:11Oh, well, that's good news.
14:12Yeah.
14:13So exactly.
14:14It was good news.
14:15It was, thank God.
14:16And then right then, you saw he's so good.
14:20We had seen such excellent work of the sensitive inner life of a young man.
14:24But you got a real sense of the alpha.
14:27And then, of course, Ridley also saw normal people.
14:31As soon as he met with him, a half an hour, he was ready to go.
14:38And the studio, remember for the studio, it's obviously a big movie, an epic.
14:43They'd always prefer a star, an established star.
14:47We had no second choice.
14:49But they went to see him in the London theater.
14:54Oh, he did the Sweet Bird of Youth?
14:56No, a streetcar.
14:57A streetcar.
14:58Yeah, a streetcar.
14:59And they called after seeing his performance, a streetcar, and said, we're in too.
15:04This is the guy.
15:05Oh, wow.
15:06Everyone had their little journey of, we're not going to go with a conventional movie star.
15:10Yeah.
15:11And hopefully, we'll make one like we did on the first movie.
15:13Which is the smartest way.
15:14Yeah.
15:15Yeah, but it's got a risk, because there's plenty of stories where everyone felt secure
15:19that person didn't happen.
15:21Yeah.
15:22And nor did the movie.
15:23There were a couple of moments when I was watching the movie that I thought I was seeing
15:27Kirk Douglas in Spartacus a little bit.
15:30Not Russell Crowe.
15:31Kirk Douglas.
15:32I just saw that.
15:34He's got that kind of thing.
15:36It was really interesting to me.
15:38Are you going to do Gladiator 3?
15:40Because Ridley was throwing around the idea that he had another one.
15:43We'd love to.
15:44I mean, the only thing I will say is we have very appropriately high standards.
15:50The public has been really good to these movies.
15:53So we would like nothing more than having a story, a script, that's not only worthy
16:00of making, but worthy of the audience.
16:02Yeah.
16:03We're not there yet.
16:04But we would certainly, it would be, what could be more fun for us?
16:08No.
16:09Did you ever think you were going to win the Best Picture Oscar with this when you embarked
16:13on this?
16:14No.
16:15You did not.
16:16No.
16:17No, because what first turned me on was someone came to me with research about how the Roman
16:22Arena was the epicenter of the Roman Empire.
16:27And that technology, even flooding the arena, animal husbandry, it was such a focus that
16:33all the technology was developed to accommodate it, engineering, politics, everything like
16:38that.
16:39So it felt like a great topic.
16:42Then more in the research, we would hear about people who had been at the top of society
16:47who suddenly were slaves in the arena.
16:49So you look in the producer's manual, it says, oh, that could be a good performance.
16:53So we saw that.
16:56We were just hoping to make a really good movie.
17:00Yeah.
17:01And also, the default on a movie like this is that the boys will go to see a fight movie.
17:08Yeah.
17:09So if the drama is disappointing, you sort of have a way to possibly get your money out.
17:13Sure.
17:14Opening weekend, Lucy and I were in a car.
17:17We went to theaters Friday night, and it was all boys in all kinds of leather, edgy fight
17:27tattoos.
17:28Wow.
17:29And literally, by the next night, Saturday, all the women were out too.
17:34The word was that quick about the romance, about the heart of the movie.
17:40It was great.
17:41It was great.
17:42And now they're all doing this Glickid and Glickator, and they've got all kinds of names
17:49to make it another Barbenheimer.
17:52Do you like that?
17:53Is that good for the business, to have two movies coming out, huge movies, against each
17:58other and having them play off each other in that way?
18:02We just want people to want to go to the movies.
18:04Yeah.
18:05Right?
18:06That's how we honestly feel.
18:08Everybody should go to the movies, see them all.
18:11By the way, the more good movies, people go into the theaters, they remember what they
18:17liked about the experience.
18:18Right.
18:19Yeah.
18:20By the way, same with Broadway.
18:21I mean, it's more localized, but there's theaters all over the country.
18:23But when something like A Chorus Line comes along, everyone goes and falls in love with
18:28the theater.
18:29That's right.
18:30And the more movies that come out that enthrall the audience, they see that one week and they're
18:38going to think next week, hey, let's go back.
18:40That was really fun.
18:41It feeds the habit.
18:42And now they're selling popcorn in big, giant tubs.
18:44I saw one for this movie that's like a coliseum.
18:47I said, wow, OK.
18:49They think of everything.
18:51They do, but it's good.
18:53And it carries on the experience.
18:56People will always, I believe, like to hear stories in a group.
19:01Yeah.
19:02And it's happened from Campfires for Cavemen probably through the Greek theater to Broadway
19:07to movies.
19:08And then people like to see them on their phone too.
19:11But we really do hope that this movie, because it is so much spectacle and there is so much
19:16in every frame, will want to see it in the movie theater.
19:19Because a lot of people have said to us that it makes us feel really happy when we hear
19:23it.
19:24So I remembered why I like to go to the movies.
19:26Right.
19:27It's absolutely true.
19:28Now, I have to say, so you are married.
19:31You were married in 1986.
19:33OK.
19:34And you, Doug, were Yale.
19:37You went to Yale cum laude.
19:39You went to Harvard cum laude.
19:42So did the cum laude of it all get you together?
19:45Or are you just too smart for anybody else?
19:49Well, it was very easy to get a cum laude there.
19:55I was going like, wow.
19:58We were, by the way, so careful for many years with Lucy as a studio executive and me as
20:03a producer because there's nothing ickier in Hollywood than somehow seeming to take
20:08advantage because of a relationship.
20:10So we were pretty careful about that.
20:12And also, it's much harder in Hollywood to have a good relationship and a good career.
20:17But we actually avoided working with each other for many years because, as Doug said,
20:22I was a studio executive and I didn't want to be in the position of saying no to his
20:25movies, nor in the position of saying yes if other people were saying no.
20:29Oh, that's interesting.
20:30Nor did I want to be in the position, which we soon learned, of being an early reader
20:35of one of his scripts that he was excited about.
20:38We finally got to a rule where five other people should read it before I do because
20:42I didn't want to be the first one with like, oh, I think it's really good.
20:47And I actually once did say on a movie, well, when are they going to do the reshoots?
20:52And he said, what are you talking about?
20:54Oh, no.
20:55And I said, what, nobody's mentioned?
21:00What movie was that?
21:03I'll say because it was an interesting experience.
21:05It was an early cut of Wolf.
21:07Okay.
21:08Jack Nicholson.
21:09Mike Nichols.
21:10And I was so in the bubble, I didn't yet realize that the movie didn't work.
21:15A lot of it did work.
21:16I know.
21:17But finally, it didn't work as well as it should have given all that talent.
21:21And so I'm home running it and Lucy's there and I'm seeing all the good stuff.
21:30I mean, Jack was mesmerizing.
21:32And then she says, well, when are you going to do the reshoots?
21:34And it was like, what do you mean?
21:40Reshoots.
21:41Oh, my God.
21:43Well, you do keep talking about that she was studio.
21:46She was on the other side.
21:48Listen to this resume.
21:50Executive story editor at MGM, then vice president at 20th Century Fox,
21:54head of production at Zotro with Coppola.
21:57Early on.
21:58Fascinating.
21:591981, you became the executive vice president worldwide production for
22:02Warner Brothers movies like Color Purple, Gremlins, Goonies, Bridges of
22:06Madison County.
22:07And then in 1995, vice chair Columbia TriStar, Men in Black, Jerry
22:11Maguire, As Good as It Gets, Best Friend's Wedding, Stuart Little, on and
22:15on and on.
22:16And now you left that part to partner with your husband on Red Wagon.
22:24Why were you done with the studio side of things and ready to do this?
22:28I was just really done.
22:30I was the vice chairman and I had been offered the chairmanship and much of
22:35their surprise, I said no.
22:39And they said, but there is no chairman.
22:41You'll be doing the job anyway because you're the vice chairman.
22:44We don't have a chairman.
22:46So you're doing the job whether you take the title or not.
22:48And I said, I had by that time noticed that I was in more and more rooms I
22:53didn't want to be in.
22:55And I was more and more in the rooms with the people saying no.
22:59I wasn't in the room as much with the people having the ideas of how to make
23:02the movie.
23:03I was more in the reasons why we shouldn't make the movie room.
23:07The higher up, the more corporate I was.
23:09And I didn't like that.
23:11I didn't want to be in charge of the whole slate.
23:14I liked working on a few things that I really liked.
23:17And we had three youngish daughters.
23:19And I wanted to see them and put them to bed every night for as many nights as
23:24I could.
23:25And I knew at that point that studio was making about 30 movies a year.
23:29And just the amount of previews that I would have to go to at least two or
23:33three previews for every movie.
23:35And I have to go to premieres and I have to do all this part that wasn't the
23:38part that I liked, which was sort of the ceremonial part.
23:41And I have to do a lot of nighttime work besides my daytime work.
23:45And it wasn't something that I was that interested in doing.
23:48And meanwhile, I really enjoyed.
23:50I would actually get up and leave the room when his projects were being
23:53mentioned at Sony.
23:54He was at Columbia way before I was.
23:56Yeah.
23:57Maybe 10 years or so before I was.
23:59So it was his studio and then suddenly I came.
24:01Right.
24:02So I would on Stuart Little, I would get up and leave the room.
24:05And finally, everybody said, hey, you did all the Amblin movies at Warner
24:08Brothers.
24:09You're the person who should most be in the room.
24:12Why are you leaving?
24:14And so I said, OK, well, we'll see if we can paddle through this rough
24:17waters.
24:18And we did.
24:19And we had a fantastic time working together so that we really have the
24:23work marriage we can thank Stuart Little for.
24:26Because after that, we saw that actually we didn't kill each other.
24:29We really enjoyed working.
24:30Right.
24:31Yeah.
24:32And it's so much fun to be able to share your work and not have whoever
24:35you're talking to think, when will they ever stop talking?
24:37I'm so not interested.
24:40That's so interesting because that could have gone the other way.
24:43Yes.
24:46That could have gone.
24:47We waited a long time.
24:48We were careful.
24:49You did.
24:50Yeah.
24:51Yeah.
24:52And you started as it said, Coffee Boy.
24:54I don't know what they call that now, but right away with Alan Jay
24:58Pacula, one of my favorite producers first.
25:01And then he became a wonderful director.
25:03And you were AP on associate producer on Starting Over.
25:07It's a great movie.
25:08Your very first solo producing work, Working Girl,
25:12got you a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
25:15Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith.
25:17I was at the premiere of that, by the way, on the Fox lot.
25:20I still have the scarf and everything from that.
25:24They turned it all into Winter Wonderland.
25:26I said, this is Hollywood.
25:30We said that we didn't see a premiere as big as what we've had with Gladiator
25:35since the Working Girl.
25:36Since Working Girl.
25:37Anybody that was at Working Girl would be like, oh, that was unbelievable.
25:42Ice skating.
25:43Barry Diller and Mike Nichols were really close friends.
25:46And Barry wanted Mike to be pleased.
25:49So he basically rebuilt Central Park in the middle of winter.
25:53I've never forgotten that one.
25:55Wolf, you mentioned with Mike Nichols.
25:57Girl Interrupted, which got Angelina Jolie an Oscar.
26:00Hollow Man.
26:02Of course, Gladiator.
26:03Spy Game.
26:04And then all these movies you've done together.
26:07Peter Pan, Stuart Little 2.
26:09And Bewitched.
26:11We mentioned Memoirs of a Geisha.
26:13It's great.
26:14Jarhead.
26:15Great Gatsby.
26:16Working with Baz Luhrmann.
26:17That was an amazing movie, too.
26:19These are big movies.
26:22Yeah, what a book, too.
26:25I learned one little lesson on that movie about getting older,
26:30where you realize that young people think all fogeys are more or less the same age.
26:34So a few of the PAs would ask us on the movie, how did you get involved?
26:39And I would say, well, my roommate in college was F. Scott Fitzgerald.
26:43And they would say, not thinking that was 30, 40 years before,
26:47they'd say, wow, what was that like?
26:51So then the joke was really on me.
26:54It really was.
26:55I heard all kinds of crazy things happen when you're making movies,
26:59and you as producers have to deal with it.
27:01But I heard there was something that happened with Stuart Little,
27:04maybe the sequel or something like that with the cat.
27:06Yes.
27:07And I was thinking to myself when I heard this story, I'm going like,
27:10why would they hire a real cat?
27:12I have a cat, so I know.
27:14It's impossible to make them do things.
27:19Fur was one of the real early challenges with CG.
27:23But what I kind of realized is some of the problems are a little bit funny.
27:28In those days, because the shooting was all in L.A.,
27:31we literally had a sound stage that was Central Park with a pond in it.
27:36And we were shooting a sequence with a cat who could do a certain kind of behavior.
27:40I'm in my office, which is across the lot.
27:43I get urgent, come to the set.
27:46And the message they gave me was the cat's asshole has fallen off.
27:51Oh, my God.
27:53So that's my day's work as a producer.
27:56I go over there.
27:57The cat from stress had what they call a protruding asshole.
28:01So we had to stop because this particular behavior was too anxiety for the cat.
28:07So partly you keep your sense of humor.
28:10There's always something.
28:12It fell back in.
28:13It fell back in.
28:14Or on that movie, someone trips and the actor's on crutches.
28:18And what do you do?
28:19On The First Gladiator, as you know, a key character died during the shooting.
28:25This is Oliver Reed.
28:26Yeah.
28:27And we hadn't completed his performance.
28:29So we had to figure out a way.
28:31Because the character would have just suddenly disappeared.
28:34And he's very primary.
28:35We had to figure out a way to tell the rest of the story.
28:40So there's always something.
28:42It fascinates me, real producer stories.
28:45Because this title, as you know better than anybody,
28:47having been obviously the head of the Producers Guild,
28:50and they've made real strides with the PGA mark that's next.
28:54So we know they are a real producer.
28:56It's really hard to get because I have a producer friend
28:58that's on the Bob Dylan movie right now.
29:01And he had to go through this, and he still is.
29:04And I said, it's tough.
29:05They're being tough on everything.
29:08But it's important because I see movies as a critic.
29:11And I always go through all the credits and everything.
29:14I've seen some recently.
29:15I think it's going back.
29:17I've seen 25 producer credits on things.
29:20I thought that was fixed, that this was going to change it.
29:24But it looks like it's not.
29:27I'd like to address some of that because it's interesting.
29:31I wasn't a producer when the Producers mark began.
29:34Doug was one of the primary people along with Kathy Kennedy
29:37and Mark Gordon.
29:40And quite a few others that went to studio to studio,
29:42begging them to try to do this.
29:44And our movie Lawless was the first movie that actually gave the PGA mark.
29:48Just coincidentally, I also wasn't the head of the PGA then.
29:53So that's how long ago it was,
29:55which is however many years ago that was.
29:58And a lot of very strict criteria are applied,
30:01and it's a blind process where people don't know what movie,
30:05three arbitrators are chosen.
30:09And the people whose credits are being decided upon
30:13can veto people from the list.
30:15So if they have some beef with somebody,
30:17that person won't be one of their arbiters.
30:20And it's people that if it's a documentary,
30:22it'll be documentarians.
30:23If it's a big movie, there'll be people that know about that.
30:27And people donate their time to do it.
30:30What's happening now and why you're seeing the slippage
30:33is it's so hard to get a movie made
30:35that they need the financing from so many different sources.
30:38And people are getting pressured
30:40because they don't want to say that so-and-so
30:44didn't do anything but give the money
30:46because they want to be able to get the money again.
30:49And you see with studios, you don't just have one studio.
30:52You have several different partners on almost every movie.
30:56Not on ours, by the way.
30:58On Gladiator, the requirement was all in.
31:00But usually you see, you know.
31:02So that's part of why the credits are getting,
31:05I would say, a little diluted.
31:07The Producers Guild has worked very, very hard
31:09to redo the questionnaires
31:11and redo all the philosophy behind each thing
31:13to try to make it so you can't game it.
31:16So that it can't be, you know,
31:18somebody shows up at a meeting
31:20so they can say they checked that box.
31:22Yeah, exactly.
31:23And make sure that they were on the set.
31:25You guys are on the set.
31:27You don't have to only be on the set.
31:29You can do a lot of stuff not on the set.
31:31But you have to do 50% of a certain amount of work.
31:33Whether that could be in the pre-production,
31:36the post-production, on set.
31:38You can do a lot even if you're not on the set
31:40because that's one part of making the movie.
31:42But there's lots of other parts of it too.
31:44Like having the idea or nurturing it for 10 years.
31:47Sure.
31:48But you have to be consequential to the process.
31:50Yeah, exactly.
31:51It's not just being zealot.
31:52You can't just get it as a favor.
31:54No.
31:55And you can't get it because you're somebody's brother-in-law.
31:57And you can't get it just because you're somebody's manager.
31:59And you can't get it because you just gave the money.
32:01Right.
32:02Yeah.
32:03When I look at your credits, it's producer.
32:05It's not like, I also want to be a director
32:07and also did this and everything.
32:08It's producer.
32:09You are the pure form of that.
32:12Which is a rare species.
32:16They make it so hard, yeah.
32:19They do.
32:20I know a lot of producers who they're not making any money.
32:23They're making movies and it's hard for them.
32:26And the Producers Guild isn't really a guild.
32:30It doesn't have the health and all of that.
32:32And you're working on it.
32:33I know you are.
32:35Because I keep talking to people.
32:37One day.
32:39You've got to be doing a big part for love.
32:42Just because you couldn't spend 10 years on it because you care.
32:47And suddenly you're the one who's giving part of your fee
32:50to get the movie made.
32:54So don't buy a second home and enjoy the job.
32:58That's a great way to end it.
33:00Thank you, Doug Wick, Lucy Fisher for joining us.
33:04So interesting on Behind the Lens.
33:06And best of luck with Gladiator 2.
33:10By the way, we love talking to people who also love movies.
33:14Thanks.
33:15Such a pleasure.
33:18Behind the Lens