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Heavies and Juniors
No industry is as adept at marketing myths about itself as the movie business. Studio executives will tell you that the situation is now "wide open," meaning that young filmmakers with talent are vigorously sought after, that new projects are no longer bought simply because they resemble old projects, that a new and enlightened hierarchy has taken over the film business. These wistful fabrications and hundreds of other illusions are briskly debunked in a hip compendium of cinema savvy called "Breaking Through, Selling Out, Dropping Dead; And Other Notes on Filmmaking", by a young director named William Bayer whose own first feature, "Mississippi Summer," dropped dead recently.
It is unlikely that anyone ever learned more from a financial failure than Bayer, for he has written perhaps the most practical battle manual available to the young filmmaker. Bayer's primary purpose is to disabuse any would-be director of all illusions. "The film industry is a zoo filled with wild animals," he writes. "The young filmmaker is like a yearling deer wandering around among ruthless gorillas, vicious pigs, slippery lizards, scavenger hyenas and carrion-eating jackals."
Don't count on an agent to help you, he warns, because, more often then not, he will love you inporportion to your income. If your agent does get you together with studio people, be sure you can tell the "heavies" from the "juniors." "A heavy is a prime mover and he may or may not be the company president... When he says he is going to do something he does it. When a junior speaks, people begin to stare at the floor... Heavies say 'no' with a smile and kill you
with a grin. Juniors like to stick in the knife, twist it in the wound, and then rub in some salt just to make sure it hurts. This gives juniors a satisfaction that heavies do not need, for being a heavy is satisfaction enough."
Pot: Despite all their protestations to the contrary, neither heavies nor juniors are looking for young filmmakers, because young filmmakers have no track record, and studio executives, while they may think of themselves as creative, remain businessmen uninterested in risk. Even the new, wild-haired, pot-smoking junior harbors an actuary's heart under his love beads, cautions Bayer. "Beneath it all he is the same ambitious and striving self-seeker, speaking the language of Louis B. Mayer in the vocabulary of Abbie Hoffman."
Making "the deal" is the key, for without financing the young filmmaker is nowhere. But, even after the deal is made, it may be broken, accompanied with the dare that he sue the company. Once the cameras roll, the young director faces endless traps. As Bayer points out, his own cameraman may be a frustrated, bitter director only looking to sabotage the successful director's confidence and authority. The filmmaker may be working for a producer who tells him "I like to got involved," which Bayer calls "the most ominous words a filmmaker ever hears." Everyone from an insecure star to a cynical crew may may be out to destroy a director's command on the set, and if the envious don't bring him down, a stormy love affair between two key cast members or bad weather might.
Rubric: If the film is made, its profits, if any, are bound to be picked clean by studio mathematicians, venal distributors, cleaver theater owners and everyone else who stands to make a buck. Under the rubric "Honest Count," Bayer has this to say; "Truthful financial statements from exhibitors, distributors, and production companies of moneys received and moneys owed to you-in short an 'honest count'-is something you don't get in the motion-picture business."
For all its practicality on how to raise money, choose a cast and crew and sell a film, this book is by no means limited to filmmakers, for Bayer's random notes on the excesses of the "new" movie, on working with nonprofessional actors, on the mentality of movie moguls and a hundred other subjects that affect what appears on the screen are extraordinarily helpful to anyone interested in understanding what movies are all about. "Filmmaking, at times, comes down to simple ego warfare," writes Bayer. His book takes you into the trenches.
--Paul D. Zimmerman
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