"Right now on "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter,"" "we're going to hear from the producers of the year's most-admired films." "Quentin is a filmmaker who doesn't hold back." "He takes the bullets and goes out on the front line." "But there has been criticism, especially from the African-American community." "Mm-hmm." "Do you agree with that criticism?" "They seated us next to each other to set us up for this whole thing." "Film production's a little bit like childbirth." "When it's over, you forget about it, 'cause, otherwise, you'd never do it again." "(laughter)" "He didn't actually sleep in any animal carcasses." "It wasn't a real animal carcass, and he didn't sleep in it." "He was in it for about two hours." "(laughter)" "Is there anyone you wouldn't work with again?" "You think I would tell you that here?" "Welcome to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "I'm Stephen Galloway, Executive Editor of Features." "And I'm Matthew Belloni, Executive Editor." "(Stephen) Join us as we sit down with the year's most acclaimed producers." "Let's get started." "Cube, was "Straight Outta Compton"" "harder or easier than most pictures?" "Harder." "I've been producin' movies since 1995." "You know, "Friday,"" "which I did with Gary Gray, which-- his first movie he directed, the first movie I produced." "It was kind of building up to this moment." "We was honing' our skills to this moment." "But this was the hardest movie ever, you know, not just because of so many dynamic personalities, so many different stories, so many different legal problems, outside threats, you know." "It was like, we kept tellin' ourselves that no good movie is easy to make." "It wasn't easy to make "The Godfather."" "It wasn't easy to make these great movies that we love, so we need to endure this pain and make sure that we have a great movie." "What was the most painful moment?" "Seein' it about to fall apart... (chuckling) at many different times." "It looked like the movie wasn't gonna get made." "Our biggest thing was using all of our powers to keep it together, 'cause it just wanted to unravel in so many different areas." "Because nobody wanted to compromise our love," "(chuckling) you know, for the film." "And everybody felt passionate and, you know, there was a few different times where everybody was saying," ""It's better to walk away than to make something we're not proud of."" "And, um, you know, I think the hardest thing for me has been to, you know, get different studios to promote, you know, push the movie, market the movie, you know," "as wide as they can go, you know, especially overseas." "There's a lot of challenges to get the movies that I make overseas and get a market goin' and..." "You know, we're starting to scratch the surface, really, on that, which is-- which is great." "Look, every year, I had to hear, "You're making a black western,"" "when we were making "Django"-- "You're making a black western."" "And then when we made 1/2 billion dollars internationally on that movie, it was so great, because it was like, "Yeah."" "Yeah, you know, so..." "Exactly." "It's a thing where they'll say, you know, a black movie doesn't, uh..." "Travel." "Yeah, and it's like, "Well, are y'all promoting?"" "Yeah. "Well, no."" "Well, that's probably why it doesn't travel, you know." "Right, self-fulfilling prophecy." "Yes, you have to-- Yeah, exactly." "How do you guys push the studio to do what you want?" "How-- how do you make them go that extra step?" "I'm lucky to work with Donna Langley, you know, and she believes what's going on" "She has the pull?" "You pick up the phone, you call and scream at her, say," ""Donna, Donna, they're not doing enough"?" "Well, I don't scream at Donna." "(laughter) But, uh..." "You know, we, uh, put our heads together and push and push, and, you know, we've been very lucky in our last few releases to-- to start cracking these markets." "What you see when you go outside your door?" "I know what I see." "And it ain't glamorous." "You get AKs from Russia and cocaine from Columbia." "I mean, none of us got a passport, so... (chuckling) Yeah..." "Might want to check the source." "Yeah, next question." "Will you be more careful about what you say, how you say it?" "No." "Probably not, no." "Freedom of speech includes rap music, right?" "So we exercising our first amendment, as far as I'm concerned." "And the government wrote that." "(chuckling)" ""Straight Outta Compton"" "taught me a lot about the era that I lived through." "You know, I learned what we mean to a lot of people and that this is a slice of American history." "No matter how you look at it, this is a slice of who we are." "You know, it did teach me a lot about what I've done in my past and, you know, what I can do in my future." "(Scott Cooper) You learn a lot about yourself as you're dredging up past experiences, uh, people that you've dealt with in your life." "Then you're writing it and then you're shooting it and you're having other actors interpret that." "And then you're releasing it into the world, and those movies, you put 'em out for people who are film writers who, uh, don't have to take the same kind of courage to criticize one's film." "Do you read all the criticism?" "Oh, no, I don't." "Robert Duvall said to me, he said," ""Scott, don't, uh, read reviews."" "But you hear, because my wife does read them." "Uh, or other people read them and say," ""Wow, I can't believe he didn't like that."" "And your wife says, "Wow, they really don't like you, Scott."" "(Matthew) What was your pitch to Johnny Depp for "Black Mass"?" "Well, interestingly, I got a phone call after "Crazy Heart" that Johnny appreciated the film." "And his agent said to me, "You know, Johnny doesn't" ""see many movies." ""He happened to catch that one, and he's a musician," ""so he appreciated Jeff Bridges' performance and-- and ultimately, the film."" "So I met with Johnny." "I think I showed up around..." "noon, and I left at 8:00 p.m." "And we just talked about sharing sensibility in literature and in music and in film." "We both really wanted to work together." "He reached out to me after my second film," ""Out of the Furnace," and said," ""I really want to make a searing drama, and I hear that you're shaping and considering 'Black Mass'."" "And I said, "I am," and-- and he said," ""Well, let's discuss this."" "I said, "You know, Johnny, you typically play" ""very likeable characters in all of your films," ""and we empathize with them, and I've never really seen" ""the kind of danger in your work that I want to see in Whitey Bulger."" "And after many conversations and discussions about how we might be able to really effectively approach this part, we agreed that we were making the same film, and he was r-- could not have been more ready to go and to make this film, because he knew" "that I was going to make it, as I have in my last couple of films, in a very unflinching manner." "I have it on very good authority that Gennaro Angiulo is plannin' to have you murdered." "Is that so?" "And how does he plan to achieve that?" "That's the kinda information that my side gets." "And that's the kinda information that we can provide." "John, do you know what I do to rats?" "It ain't rattin', Jimmy." "It's an alliance." "An alliance between me and the FBI." "No, no." "Between you and me." "I said to Johnny, I said, "You know, most gangster pictures" ""truly romanticize and glorify these gangsters, and I want to do just the opposite."" "In fact, we aren't making a gangster picture." "Because I, with great trepidation, make this film, because many of my favorite films and many of the best American films ever made live in the genre." "Coppola's work, of course, and Scorsese and Lumet and Jean-Pierre Melville, filmmakers whom I have long, long admired, and I said, "You know, that's a-- that's a big trap," ""and that's a bar that we can never approximate." ""Instead of making a film about criminals" ""who just happen to be humans," ""we're making a film about humans" ""who happen to be criminals." ""And that is not going to likely reach the audience" ""that most of your films reach," ""and your large fan base are going to see you in a way that you've never been seen."" "That line, "It may not reach the audience,"" "was the studio aware that you were telling him that?" "(laughter) Well, sure." "Because they are aware of my first two films, that they-- they tend to be challenging for the viewer in a way that hopefully will leave an everlasting impression." "And those types of movies typically don't reach wide as an audience as others do." "Hmm." "Hmm." "But I will say that, uh, though I've only made three films, it was, uh, by far the best experience of having a studio support you in every aspect and having the head of the studio and Greg Silverman" "say to you, "Scott... please, don't forget to take risks."" "I said, "Whoa, Greg... heh, you're telling me that, you" ""Just" " I want to make certain at the end of this" ""that-- that we have this conversation, because you know that I'm gonna do that."" "Stacey, how do you work with a superstar director like Quentin Tarantino?" "Y-You go into this film, "Hateful Eight,"" "you have a three-hour-plus version that-- that is the roadshow version." "With a 12-minute intermission and a 4-minute overture." "Yes, it's..." "And a shorter version." "What is a producer's role in that?" "Well, there's also still a very, very, very challenging movie to get to the screen, and there's also, um, a challenging release plan." "Quentin, you know, everybody knows he was working on this script." "It was a different kind of movie." "The script was leaked." "He did a public reading of the script." "The film that we've shot is substantially rewritten, and the reason he was so upset about people leaking his script was because it was truly a work in progress that he had only given to a very small number of us" "as he was playing with it, because it's a mystery and it's, um, very tense." "It's about a lot of things, and it's also this big, giant, snowy western." "Get him, boys!" "(dramatic music)" "(wind whooshing)" "This here is Daisy Domergue." "She's wanted dead or alive for murder." "When that sun comes out, I'm takin' this woman to hang." "(chain clinking)" "Is there anybody here committed to stopping' me... from doin' that?" "Well, well, well, looks like Minnie's Haberdashery is about to get cozy for the next few days." "Yes, it does." "The thing about Quentin Tarantino is he's the only filmmaker that I've ever worked with who, at the same time, can simultaneously be both an auteur and an audience member." "And he's always calibrating, because he wants the audience to have a good time and he wants his films to be entertaining, um..." "We work together the same way we have." "We met before he started shooting a frame of film on "Reservoir Dogs" and-- and formally started working together on "Pulp Fiction."" "So I've always been involved with auteur filmmakers, and it's about supporting their vision, so this was" "We knew we were shooting in 70mm." "We knew that we were gonna release in a roadshow style, which is a classic throwback, sort of romance of cinema." "And-- and our particular version, um, which is Ultra Panavision 70, which hasn't been used since 1967, I think, on "Khartoum,"" "and it only existed from 1955 to 1967, it was particularly challenging technically because we used lenses that hadn't been used since "Ben Hur" or other films that were made in this short period of time." "And he had this notion-- he loves going to the movies in a theater." "And this notion was to bring the glamour and the romance of cinema back with an old-fashioned roadshow performance." "So on Christmas Day, we open in 100 70mm presentations of this roadshow version, which is ten minutes longer, and that will run for this limited time." "You'll get a program and a t-shirt and you'll come to the movies and have this experience." "It's about bringing that feeling that you can only get in a cinema, I think, was something that was important about it." "Amen." "That's exciting." "♪" "Hit every mark." "Thread every needle." 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"I'll take some of that schmotch!" "Alright." "Schmank you!" "(VO) Get rid of cable and upgrade to DIRECTV." "Call 1-800-DIRECTV." "OK." "How would you like to pay?" "Are you sure that's gonna work?" "Yeah, why wouldn't it?" "I've just never seen anyone pay with their phone here." "I think those only work at like, fancy grocery stores." "Introducing Samsung Pay, the new mobile payment that works virtually anywhere your cards can be swiped or tapped." "So you can use it without changing the places you shop, just the way you pay." "We fancy." "♪ ♪" "WE LOVE," "LOVE," "CHOCOLATY," "CREAMY," "WITH A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA." "MMM DELICIOUSNESS." "COOKIES" "OR ALMONDS." "YUMMINESS." "HERSHEY'S IS MINE," "YOURS," "OUR CHOCOLATE." "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're talking with some of the most accomplished producers." "Steve, uh, you have two films this year," ""Spotlight" and "The Revenant."" "And "The Revenant" seems to have been a much more challenging shoot." "Well, the two films are so completely different." "They were both incredibly difficult to get made, but "The Revenant" was the most difficult production in terms of the logistics." "You know, Alejandro is extremely demanding, choosing locations, completely unrelenting demand for perfection and what he wants." "So it was a very, very difficult shoot and Leo was really great." "Leonardo DiCaprio has said that he's been sleeping in animal carcasses and almost had hypothermia." "He didn't actually sleep in any animal carcasses." "(laughter) I mean..." "There's a scene in the movie where he sleeps in an animal carcass, but it wasn't a real animal carcass and he didn't sleep in it." "He was in it for about two hours." "(laughter) So that's a little exaggeration." "But, um, it was a very difficult shoot." "I mean, we were shooting in Calgary." "The-- the conditions were freezing." "It was a real interesting thing, in a sense, reliving, you know, what those actual people lived." "Only we had, you know, the right clothes and warming tents and people going out of their way to keep us without hypothermia." "The weather was very, very uncooperative." "I guess" " There is global warming now." "Yeah." "I'm convinced." "It was just very, very difficult." "It was a very ambitious film." "I think we didn't know exactly what we were biting off when we started." "What happened?" "(man) We did what we had to do." "He was buried right." "(groaning)" "(whispering) All I had was that boy." "And he took him from me, you understand?" "He's afraid." "He knows how far I came to find him." "It's been a grueling process." "You know, and Alejandro is just a force of nature, so you have to keep up with him." "And that, without question, was the most difficult thing that I've done in my career." "(Stacey) Snow is hard." "Yeah." "I" " I mean" "Snow is really hard." "Snow in the mountains." "Yeah." "Snow at altitude." "Snow in the mountains versus..." "We had-- we had" "We had the same problem." "(Stacey) We had similar issues." "We had different situations, because, I think Quentin was much more flexible in the way that he would shoot." "We had three call sheets prepared every single day." "Yeah." "We had" "If it was sunny, we went inside and shot inside the haberdashery." "If it was cloudy and overcast, we went into the stagecoach and shot on the stagecoach." "And if it was snowing, we were out wherever we had to be to get our exterior snow shots." "Christine, your toughest moment?" "Film production is a little bit like childbirth." "When it's over, you forget about it, 'cause otherwise, you'd never do it again." "(laughter) You know?" "It's very tough right now." "You know, there's extreme downward pressure on our budgets." "Mm." "We joke, you know, that now we're making the movies we used to make for 15 for 5, that we used to make for 5 for 3, you know." "So, you know, 3 is the new 5, 5's the new 10, (laughter)" "And that's really tough, because it's starting to have an effect on the kind of stories we can tell." "Toughest for us, I think, is we make a lot of female-driven films." "Convincing financiers, studios, et cetera, that there's an audience for those movies, when there obviously is, is difficult." "And the casting pressures that it puts on us..." "You know, as we've said, it's called "Still Alice," not "Still Alice and John."" "Uh... (laughter)" "What financiers are often asking you to cast people that-- or to consider people that you wouldn't ordinarily consider?" "Everyone." "(Christine) All the time." "All the time." "And then there's also, you know, if you are making a female-driven film, there's a tremendous amount of pressure to cast someone of equal, you know, financial stature with your female star." "But we're very" "I mean, we're very director-driven." "Killer, it's very director-driven." "And we work with a lot of writer-directors, although not exclusively, and Todd Haynes did not write "Carol."" "I think it's the only movie he's directed that he hasn't written himself." "How did you and he become involved with that film?" "First of all, I read the book probably 25 years ago when it was called "The Price of Salt."" "Mm-hmm." "And, you know, it's a Patricia Highsmith novel, but it's not typical of her." "She tends to write thrillers that are kind of mean-spirited in a fantastic way. (laughter)" "And people had been trying to make it into a movie for years." "And it came across my desk at least three times over the past 20 years." "And a producer named Elizabeth Karlsen got ahold of the rights, got Phyllis Nagy to write a pretty extraordinary screenplay, and then we were literally on the phone together, just like complaining to each other, as producers do," "and she was complaining because she had just lost her director on "Carol."" "And I was complaining because it looked like the new Todd Haynes film wasn't gonna go the way I thought it was gonna, because this actor wasn't-- whatever, you know, et cetera." "And then suddenly, a light bulb went off, and we sort of said simultaneously," ""Let's show it to Todd."" "And literally, 48 hours later, he was attached." "Wow." "(soft jazz playing)" "What do you do on Sundays?" "Mm, nothing in particular." "What do you do?" "Oh..." "Nothing lately." "Maybe you'd like to come visit me sometime." "You're welcome to." "At least there's some pretty country around where I live." "Would you like to come visit me this Sunday?" "Yes." "(chuckles)" "Was it a difficult film to get off the ground?" "Well, a lot of the groundwork had been done by Liz because she had attached Cate Blanchett very early on and had put together the financing with Film4, the BFI, HanWay." "So... it was very difficult to make, though." "It was a very ambitious film, and Todd is also, you know, very exacting in the best possible way, so it was-- it was tough." "It was tough to pull off." "Was there any moment where you really disagreed?" "I may say, "You really need 100 extras?" "You know, I think we could"-- You know." "I mean, that kind of thing." "But once the vision is clear to me, then it's about supporting that vision." "(Stephen) Simon, what surprised you with Ridley and with the Star Wars universe?" "What surprised me about Ridley was just" "He's the hardest-working filmmaker I've ever met." "And he's made a lot of movies, and he's 78 years old, and he has more energy and more focus and is more demanding of everyone around him, in a good way, than any filmmaker I've ever seen" "who's a third of his age." "And the clarity of vision that he had, which I think all great filmmakers have, and I suppose everybody has had that experience with their directors." "Um, he had, really, the whole movie in his head." "And I felt like we were translating what was in his head onto screen, as opposed to discovering or even creating it." "It was-- literally felt like there was this 1:1 ratio between the vision in his head and what ultimately ended up on the screen." "And on Star Wars, I'm-- I'm early days on the one that I'm actually writing and producing." "It's a process of a bunch of people that love Star Wars." "So it feels like we would all be writing and making fan fiction." "(chuckling) Right." "Except we get to actually make it at a higher budget level." "Do you feel extra pressure there because of that?" "Um..." "I feel pressure as a fan of it." "I don't really feel pressure fromthefansofit." "So I" " I feel the pressure of the six-year-old me." "But you also don't want to be the guy that creates the new Jar Jar Binks." "(laughter)" "♪" "Is that coffee?" "Yea, it's Nespresso." "I want in." "♪ ♪" "You're ready." "♪ ♪" "Get ready to experience a cup above." "Is that coffee?" "Nespresso." "What else?" "[ Julie ] THE WRINKLE CREAM GRAVEYARD." "IF IT DOESN'T WORK FAST..." "YOU'RE ON TO THE NEXT THING." "CLINICALLY PROVEN" "NEUTROGENA® RAPID WRINKLE REPAIR." "IT TARGETS FINE LINES AND WRINKLES" "WITH THE FASTEST RETINOL FORMULA AVAILABLE." "YOU'LL SEE YOUNGER LOOKING SKIN" "IN JUST ONE WEEK." "ONE WEEK?" "THIS ONE'S A KEEPER." "RAPID WRINKLE REPAIR." "AND FOR DARK SPOTS RAPID TONE REPAIR." "FROM NEUTROGENA®." "Red 97!" "Set!" "Red 97!" "Did you say 97?" "Yes." "You know, that reminds me of GEICO's 97% customer satisfaction rating." "97%?" "Helped by GEICO's fast and friendly claims service." "Huh..." "Oh yeah, baby." "GEICO's as fast and friendly as it gets." "Woo!" "GEICO." "Expect great savings and a whole lot more." "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're at the table with some of the minds behind the most talked about films of the year." "I don't know about you guys." "Do you like testing your films?" "Because I don't love it as the film director." "I do." "I love testing' 'em, man." "You do?" "I like screening them." "I mean" "(Scott) Oh, I like screening them." "But just to put it in front of an audience and see what the reaction is..." "I think is so important." "You have to." "And you know," "I think some of the research... you can kind of throw out the window, but you get a real sense of it when you screen the movie." "(Ice Cube) Yes, when you screen it, and when you test it, you can always fight for your arguments a little better," "(chuckling) 'cause you have numbers to back it up a little bit." "That's assuming that the-- the" "(laughter) If they're in your favor." "If the numbers are in your favor." "Uh, yes." "What did you change in "Straight Outta Compton"" "following the testing?" "It's just pace, you know." "It's like, with a movie like that, you have to really, you know, worry about pacing, and things needed to be tightened up, and we were living in spaces way too long." "When do you take your moments and, you know, make a meal out of it, so to speak, and when do you kind of get to the next issue at hand?" "Last thing you want to do with a good movie is hold the audience hostage, you know, with a good movie." "You want to make sure you tell what you gotta tell, get to it, make sure it's a great experience, and... time to move on." "You leave 'em wanting more." "There was like a three-hour 30 version, then it came down." "I could have watched that movie for another hour," "I'm not sure if you know." "(laughing)" "I loved it." "Don't tell Gary Gray that." "(laughter) But, uh..." "Who pressured you to bring it down, and will there be a longer version?" "Always tell people, you know, you don't want to see a four-hour version of "Straight Outta Compton,"" "but you don't want to see a 90-minute version of it either." "I knew that would be the hardest part of editing the movie, was to get the perfect balance, because we were trying to do a lot of different things." "You know, tell a period piece, you know, be entertaining to the NWA audience, but also make a real movie that, if you knew nothing about NWA, you knew nothing about rap, you would love a story" "about five guys who were friends and came together to try to do something cool and great." "And we knew that everybody could respond to that." "I mean, the thing for me that was a challenge on "Martian"" "was that it's a very optimistic movie." "Mm-hmm." "And I actually think I'm not a naturally optimistic person, maybe as a Jew, maybe as a writer, all of the things that have stacked against me being optimistic, or genetically stacked against me." "And when I read the book of "The Martian" and the script, it is so unabashedly optimistic, intelligently optimistic, and those are two things" "I hadn't really seen before." "Usually intelligence comes with a certain amount of cynicism or edge or criticism." "And there's a passage at the end of the book." "It's about how the human spirit is fundamentally good and that when people are trapped in a mine or an earthquake hits a city, people from all around the world send supplies, and that that is, no matter what your race, religion," "nationality, that is your basic instinct." "And I felt when we were making the movie that there was a chance we would lose that optimism... that in a science fiction movie, and directed by Ridley, who's made darker films in the past," "that we would lose that spirit." "And it was something that everybody just worked hard to hold on to." "(beep) Let's do the math." "Our service mission here was supposed to last 31 sols." "For redundancy, they send 68 sols worth of food." "That's for six people." "So for just me, that's gonna last 300 sols, which I figure I can stretch to 400 if I ration." "So I gotta figure out a way... (crunching) to grow... three years' worth of food here." "On a planet where nothing grows." "(crunching)" "Luckily..." "I'm a botanist." "Ridley saw the film as an opportunity to explore a different part of his psyche." "Mm." "The movie was very cathartic and even almost curative for him because he also has this really warm, kind, generous soul that he hasn't fully expressed in his work before, you know?" "(laughter)" "♪" "I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready" "Intel's best processor is here." "So you can take this very real, very terrifying memory and edit it, share it, play it back in 4K quality." "Introducing Intel's new 6th Generation Core Processor" "It's our best processor ever." "We're only human." "We... get... angry." "Out of control, mad to the core, angry." "So cancer, you've got two options." "Get out of the way or get rolled over." "Anger." "Just one reason more of us are surviving cancer than dying from it." "Give now to the American Cancer Society." "♪ ♪" "♪ ♪" "How else do you think he gets around so fast?" "Take the reins this holiday and get the Mercedes-Benz you've always wanted during the Winter Event." "Hurry, offers end January 4th!" "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're sitting with some of the year's hottest producers." "Is there a single film that you saw as a child that you think put you on this path?" "Two films:" "Francis Coppola's "Godfather," "Godfather II,"" "and then there's a third one, "The Conversation."" "All Coppola." "I love "The Conversation."" "(Ice Cube) It's, uh, two blaxploitation movies that I saw when I was too young." "My brother and my two sisters took me to the-- the Century Drive-In Theater, and we saw "The Mack."" "I met the Mack. (laughter)" "I met Max Julien." "Yes, I saw "The Mack."" "I've seen "The Mack."" "We saw, uh, "Coffee."" "It was a double feature." "(Stacey) Ohh!" "Uh, blew my mind." "I had two also." "They were "Clockwork Orange"" "and "Raging Bull."" "I watched it every time it came on." "Kubrick and Scorcese." "It guess it doesn't really make what I end up doing surprising when you look at those..." "(laughing)" "Don't go away." "We'll be right back." "♪" "I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready" "Intel's best processor is here." "So you can take this very real, very terrifying memory and edit it, share it, play it back in 4K quality." "Introducing Intel's new 6th Generation Core Processor" "It's our best processor ever." "♪♪" "♪♪" "♪ And off you go, ♪" "♪♪" "♪ And off you go, ♪" "♪♪" "♪ And off you go, ♪" "For every step, every stride, every start, begin strong with the lasting energy of 100% whole grain Quaker Oats..." "And off you go." "HERSHEY'S MINIATURES." "WE POUR 'EM!" "WE PASS 'EM!" "WE PICK 'EM!" "DELICIOUS FUN FOR EVERYONE." "HERSHEY'S MINIATURES ARE MINE, YOURS, OUR CHOCOLATE." "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're sitting down with some of the power producers behind the year's most acclaimed films." "Simon and Steve, you've both worked at Fox recently." "How does that experience compare with other studios, and how is each studio different?" "I've worked with Fox a lot." "I mean, I've made-- the majority of movies I've worked on have been at Fox, and, uh," "I think when you have a long- term relationship with a studio, part of how that helps is it's not just about that movie." "They know that there are more movies going forward, there are movies behind you." "And so, one, you get the fluency of knowing their rhythms." "And, two, there's an investment that's beyond that movie." "So, regardless of the sc-- the-- the scale and the expectations of that film, you know that it's a long-term commitment, and you have, you know, however many movies to make there." "And I-I've found them especially" "I work closely with Emma Watts, who's the president of production there, and she said something similar to us on "The Martian."" "She said, "Make it different."" "And that's not something that you expect to hear from a studio when you're spending $100 million on a film." "But she did, and that movie, as a process, um, was a very positive process in that we had a book that I found and people loved." "Uh, the first draft of the script written by Drew Goddard everybody responded positively to and they actually greenlit the first draft of that with Drew directing it." "Drew was initially gonna direct the film before Ridley." "And I sent the script to Matt Damon, like on a Friday." "I had worked with him on a movie called "Elysium." Mm." "Going back, by the way, to our worst experiences, Matt and I, on "Elysium," were in a landfill dump outside Mexico City for three weeks, shooting in the second-biggest landfill dump in the world." "Wow." "Everybody on the crew was wearing hazmat suits and gas masks except the actors." "Oh, wow. 'Cause they were on camera." "So Matt showed up, 'cause we were like, "It's fine." "We've checked the soil, it's completely safe."" "He shows up, you know, excited to go to work, and everyone around him is wearing a hazmat suit, um..." "Did he get sick?" "He did not get sick, uh, thankfully." "But then when I sent him "The Martian," I was like," ""No-- no dumps in the movie." "It's Mars and a-- and a-- and a space station."" "And, um, fast-forward to assuming we were gonna shoot Mars in a sound stage, you know, with green screen, the way you do if you're creating another universe most of the time these days." "But for Ridley, it was really important to create as immersive and realistic an environment as possible." "So we shot all of Mars in Jordan in the desert, which was a different challenge than the snow, but was a challenge." "And Matt's walking around the deserts of Jordan in a space suit, which, you know, is not dangerous, but is not comfortable, uh..." "Did he have the little coolers like the Iron Man suit?" "Yeah, the in-- the inside coolers, he did." "But, you know, you're schlepping out to the middle of the desert every day." "He's the greatest guy in the entire world." "He's amazing." "Yeah." "I made "Contagion" with him and he's just" "He just brings the greatest attitude to the set every single day." "Yeah." "Is there anyone you wouldn't work with again?" "You think I would tell you that here?" "(laughter)" "I" " I knew you were gonna say that." "Hopefully no one around this table." "This is the last roundtable." "Actually, I have to say," "I have not had a lot of-- oh, these horrible experiences." "I can't really think of anybody that I've had a bad experience with." "(chuckling)" "No, I mean, there are people that you're more inclined to want to work with and, you know, it's really about talent." "Some people are difficult, but, you know, it's a-- it's a balancing act." "Is the person worth the extra effort?" "And there are people that I'm not in a rush to work with, but there's-- and there's a lot of great people that I can't wait to work with again." "But they'll all remain nameless." "That's the happiest, though." "Like Matt is a great example." "Ridley for me was a similar example of someone who is a good person and a good artist." "There's a line, actually, in a movie, that's not represented here in "Jobs," um, where Wozniak says to Steve Jobs, "It's not binary."" "Being a good person and being a good artist are not mutually exclusive." "And it doesn't mean that many artists over history and over the history of filmmaking are difficult people, and often, those things are connected, but they're not automatically." "Hmm." "I think I've been really spoiled because the two filmmakers that I've worked with the most, Quentin and Steven Soderbergh, are such good people and they care so much about their work and they care about it being a good work environment" "that everybody always says they're the best environments for them to work with, so..." "I don't know, I" "Steven Soderbergh always says, you know, repeat business and treat people well, and that's how we ended up with him on "Out of Sight,"" "because Casey Silver loved working with him so much that he actually recommended him to us." "Mm-hmm." "I don't mind if a, you know, a director's difficult or any of that, as long as he cares about the project." "Right." "Long as he's difficult to make the project better." "Right." "Is there a point where you-- where you step in and say," ""You can't behave like this"?" "You know, if they're a little too disruptive," "I don't mind pulling 'em to the side and saying," ""Look, we're all here for the same reason." "We're all here to make a great movie, you know," so..." "Uh, but I don't mind it, 'cause I know, you know, a lot of artists have their quirky ways, and that's cool, you know, long as you make a good movie" "and... we get it in the can." "You had some problems with Suge Knight." "Mm-hmm." "How did they affect you in the filming?" "Not at all, you know." "When it comes to NWA and producing those records, we didn't make the records without controversy, without danger. (chuckling)" "So this movie's not gonna be made without controversy and danger." "It's not supposed to be, you know?" "That's kind of how we felt, that it was just the nature of the areas that we were in, you know." "We knew that a lot of people didn't want the movie to be made, and that was fine." "Christine, you stayed away from the studio system by and large-- why?" "Um... the kinds of movies that Killer makes, um, you know, tend to be movies that are better served by independent financing." "In other words, they're very execution-dependent, meaning that they're not worth anything unless they're good." "And it's often very hard to get a studio involved early on on something that tends to be that original." "They often will acquire them afterwards, you know, uh, once, you know, once we've proved that what we saw in it, in fact, did exist." "But, um, but I think that's why, and that kind of independent financing gives us the freedom to make the movie very much the way we want to." "I mean, it comes with its drawbacks, too." "There's often just not enough of it and it's hard to expand, you know, it's hard to go over budget." "So there's really nowhere to go." "So, uh, so that's tough." "But, you know, we make a lot of first-time filmmakers' movies." "Uh, "Boys Don't Cry," for example." "This year, we executive produced a film called "White Girl,"" "uh, by a first-time director named Elizabeth Wood." "And I feel like I have to keep doing them because, often, first-time filmmakers are telling a story that they've waited their whole life to tell, and it reminds me to not be cynical and, um-- because that's a hard thing, I think," "as a producer." "It's very hard to avoid cynicism." "But since we work with a lot of filmmakers who have, you know, extremely original visions, which is what makes their work interesting, you know, it's-- it has served us in the best way." "♪" "Mastering irresistibly smooth." "The Lindor Truffle ...from the Lindt Master Chocolatiers." "A hard outer shell with a smooth center." "Welcome to the best time of your day." "Unwrap." "Unwind." "Experience... the melt." "Only the Lindor Truffle." "For the holidays, experience our meltingly-smooth" "LINDOR white chocolate peppermint truffles." "From the Lindt Master Chocolatiers." "If you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis isn't it time to let the real you shine through?" "Introducing Otezla, apremilast." "Otezla is not an injection, or a cream." "It's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently." "Some people who took Otezla saw 75% clearer skin after 4 months." "And Otezla's prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring." "Don't take Otezla if you are allergic to any of its ingredients." "Otezla may increase the risk of depression." "Tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop." "Some people taking Otezla reported weight loss." "Your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment." "Side effects may include diarrhea, nausea, upper respiratory tract infection, and headache." "Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, and if you're pregnant or planning to be." "Ask your doctor about Otezla today." "Otezla." "Show more of you." "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're sitting with the producers of some of this year's most acclaimed films." "I have a question about Tarantino." "Um, as someone who's worked with him for a long time, how do you respond when he gets criticized, as he often is, especially for the-- on race issues?" "Um, you know, that's come up in several of his movies." "Here's the thing." "Um, Quentin is... not a calculating person." "Quentin is a filmmaker who really dives into things very seriously and deeply, and so when he does interviews, he really wears his heart on his sleeve." "He doesn't hold anything back." "He doesn't think about how things are gonna be packaged into sound bites or this kind of clickbait world that we live in, where people put-- pull headlines out of little things out of context." "So I think it's-- it's unfair, and I hope that he never becomes a person who's, like, too guarded to really talk about how he feels about cinema or the filmmakers that have influenced him or" "or to take risks, and I don't think he will." "But I hope that he doesn't retreat to not have conversations." "He cares very much about issues of race." "You know, I think that he's interested in exploring where we're at, you know." "And he doesn't hold back." "And he figures that the party will move on to the next kind of headline at a certain point." "He's prepared to talk about it and he's prepared to not censor himself, and if that means that there are things that happen in social media, he's sort of, you know, it's like, damn the torpedoes." "He's not gonna stop following who he is as a filmmaker or what his voice is as a writer because... you know, a blog goes after him." "I mean, on "Django," I don't think any of us were prepared for what we went through, because nobody really wanted to look at slavery in that big way before, and it kind of paved the way for films" "like "12 Years a Slave" to have the audience that they had." "He sort of takes the bullets and goes out on the front line on the things that he cares about, and he's not worried about doing it, and it's why I really admire and respect him." "Cube, do you agree with that?" "Yeah, you know, I think when it comes to art and artists, you know, you should do what you feel and let the audience feel what they feel." "But there has been criticism about "Django,"" "about something, as Quentin said, you know, within the social media universe, especially from the African-American community." "Mm-hmm." "Do you agree with that criticism?" "You know, it depends, you know, um..." "See, they seated us next to each other to set us up for this whole thing." "Yeah, but-- but "Django" had" "They're hoping I'll start talking about women in "Straight Outta Compton," too-- yeah, right?" ""Django" had more than 100 references of the N-word in it." "Yeah, that-- You know, that's fine." "You know, that, to me, doesn't make the movie, uh, you know, that much more inflammatory than the next." "It was a great Western, you know, to me." "You know, I" " I didn't mind the movie, and I usually don't mind movies that people think go overboard, because I think that's what art is all about." "You know, art is about pushing us and making us examine ourself, and hopefully, you learn something about yourself by looking at a movie like that." "And you know, I think that's ultimately what it's all about." "Yeah." "(Stephen) Did you as a producer ever want to fire you as director?" "(laughter)" "I don't think I had much time to consider firing myself, but there are probably others who-- others who would." "Simon, you did fire a director on "Fantastic Four."" "Tell us what happened." "We didn't fire a director on "Fantastic Four."" "It was the same director from start to finish." "For whatever reason, there are certain movies that the press decides they're going to focus on the process of making that movie." "First movie I ever worked on was "Mr. and Mrs. Smith,"" "and they knew every day we went into overtime." "And on "Fantastic Four,"" "it was another one of those movies that the press decided that, um, it was a juicy story." "But there was a parting of the ways in the Star Wars universe-- Mm-hmm." "so am I right to assume you had a role in those conversations?" "That parting of the ways between Josh, uh, and Star Wars was a mutual-- genuinely mutual parting of the ways." "I think he had felt like the pressure of making these larger films with a big title and a big following, and didn't love doing it and didn't want to go straight from that into doing an even bigger version of it." "So, you know, every movie has its complexities and its challenges and its compromises, and some are stories and some are not." "(Stephen) Is this a great year for producers?" "No." "Why not?" "It's the toughest job there is, and I think that we're diminished, I think, frankly." "How so?" "Just in terms of the process." "I think producers have been diminished over-- over the years, where we're looked at sometimes as baggage." "As baggage. (Stacey) Yeah." "And, um, and in the way." "It's humiliating to have to explain your value." "That's right." "You know?" "I think what keeps me more optimistic is the fact that I have all these colleagues that are much younger and much more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and haven't developed a thick skin yet." "That's what, I think, keeps me young and relevant and optimistic, because I think, like Simon, we have a similar background, and there's a cynicism to that, especially from my generation." "And I tell people to just be a pure producer." "If you can do that, I really admire you, and it's better if you have a trust fund." "(laughter)" "♪" "Give the gift of the better network." "Save up to 50% on our hottest Android smartphones like the Motorola Droid Turbo 2." "Get the best deals AND the better network." "♪ ♪" "Come on, wake up!" "Come on,why ya sleeping'?" "Come on!" "What time is it?" "It's go time." "Come on." "Let's go, let's go, let's go." "Woooo hoooo!" "Yeah!" "I feel like I went to bed an hour ago." "Yeah!" "I'll make the cocoa." "Get a great offer on the car of your grown-up dreams at the Mercedes-Benz Winter Event." "It's the look on their faces that make it all worthwhile." "Hurry, these offers end January 4th." "Thank you Santa!" "(EXEC 1) Well, DIRECTV beat us in customer satisfaction again for the 15th year in a row." "But we have a plan." "(EXEC 2) When our customers are on hold, let's up their satisfaction with some new hold music." "♪" "(EXEC 2) That's Glenn from the mailroom." "He DJs on the weekends." "(EXEC 3) Sorry, who is it?" "(EXEC 2) It's Glenn, from the mailroom." "He DJ'ed Bill's wedding." "(EXEC 3) He what?" "(EXEC 2) He goes by DJ Glenn, he works way downstairs." "(EXEC 3) What'd he say?" "(EXEC 2) Glenn, from the mailroom!" "(VO) Get rid of cable." "And upgrade to DIRECTV." "Call 1-800-DIRECTV." "♪ ♪" "Is that coffee?" "Yea, it's Nespresso." "I want in." "♪ ♪" "You're ready." "♪ ♪" "Get ready to experience a cup above." "Is that coffee?" "Nespresso." "What else?" "[ Julie ] THE WRINKLE CREAM GRAVEYARD." "IF IT DOESN'T WORK FAST..." "YOU'RE ON TO THE NEXT THING." "CLINICALLY PROVEN" "NEUTROGENA® RAPID WRINKLE REPAIR." "IT TARGETS FINE LINES AND WRINKLES" "WITH THE FASTEST RETINOL FORMULA AVAILABLE." "YOU'LL SEE YOUNGER LOOKING SKIN" "IN JUST ONE WEEK." "ONE WEEK?" "THIS ONE'S A KEEPER." "RAPID WRINKLE REPAIR." "AND FOR DARK SPOTS RAPID TONE REPAIR." "FROM NEUTROGENA®." "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're talking to the producers behind some of this year's most anticipated films." "(Stephen) Simon, you started as a writer." "Mm-hmm." "And then moved into being a producer as well." "What advice would you give your younger self?" "I would probably give my younger self the advice to make movies you love, because it's miserable." "Every movie I've worked on at one point or another and at most points in the process is exhausting and you feel like you're making a bad movie, and it's hard to convince people to give you the money" "and the time or the effort that you need." "And when I started out," "I came out of film school, and I" "I went after movies that I thought were the movies that audiences wanted to see or the movies that the studios wanted, as opposed to the movies that I wanted to see and that I wanted." "Uh, and I think over the last 10 years-- and I've been doing this for 15 or more" "I've gravitated more and more toward the films that I grew up loving and trying to make movies like those." "So I think that's the advice I would give myself." "And what were those films?" "I grew up on the movies of the '80s, so it was classic" "Spielberg, Lucas, James Cameron, Ridley Scott movies." "It was mostly genre films." "Like, I loved studio movies when I was a kid growing up, and I really liked high-quality ones, so to sort of come full circle on that, for me, and work with Ridley Scott on a science fiction movie" "was this kind of incredible dream come true." "Uh, I think that the advice I would give to my younger self was to not be so timid." "I know that that doesn't really seem to resonate with my personality, but I think that one of the things, particularly being a woman doing what you do, you tend to defer a lot and deflect," "like, "Don't worry about me," "I'm just over here working, doing my job."" "Um, I always found ways to push the films that-- that I worked on, but I think I worried a little bit too much about how you're perceived as being a good girl or a good worker," "and I think I would tell my younger self not to worry about that too much." "Do you think that being a woman made you feel that more?" "Definitely being a woman at the time that I came up in the business." "I think that there were a lot of, ironically, a lot of the women that worked in Hollywood at that time really kind of practiced what Gloria Steinem would have called the kind of Queen Bee syndrome, and there was only a limited number of people at the table" "and they weren't really helpful, necessarily." "I think it's really changed a lot now." "I think that we all try to kind of lift everybody up, and it's not as scary." "Hmm." "Do you agree with that, Christine?" "Yeah, I mean, my advice to my younger self would probably be buy real estate." "(laughter)" "But, um, that ship has sailed, so... (Stacey) Particularly in New York." "Right." "But I--- I do" "I do agree with that." "I think that most women of our generation probably experienced a lot of, like, you know," ""I don't wanna be the bitch."" "And after a while, you just kinda, you know, you just learn that-- that it's not a popularity contest." "Nope, mm-mm." "And don't get me wrong." "I think men learn that, too." "But I think it's a little different for women, 'cause it's a little bit more stigmatized." "Well, I think it's 'cause we're labeled in that way." "If you are a strong man..." "Right." "...you're a strong man." "If you're a strong woman, you're a bitch." "Right." "So..." "Cube, did you have a problem with timidity?" "(laughter)" "Nah." "I think my advice would be, not take the process so personal." "You know, being a black filmmaker, you think, "Oh, man, is-- Why is this not gettin' made?" ""And why is this piece of (bleep) made over here and-- and-- and not this movie that I think is great?"" "And then you realize after you've been in the business so long that every movie is hard to get made, you know?" "Every movie on every level, you know." "Probably" " Steven Spielberg is probably saying," ""Damn, is it because I'm Steven Spielberg they don't want to make this movie?"" "You know, so I just realized that movies are hard to get made." "And when you finish a movie, you go back to the bottom, trying to convince somebody this is the next one that they should invest in." "And, uh, and that's fine." "You know, that process is fine." "I've learned to accept the process and not be so worried and paranoid about the process." "Uh, care less about what others think about your finished product because, as we all know, making films and directing them and producing them, um, you must grow a thick skin, because if you're making films," "as-- as Francis Coppola would say, that everybody loves, then it's likely not very good." "Just develop a thick skin early, because it's gonna be a rough ride all the way along." "And he's also right about the fact, get a movie made and it's a good movie, and then you're at the bottom of the pile again." "You're still Willy Loman trying to sell your wares to everybody out there, and it's a-- a big mountain to climb." "Would you have been able to make this picture when you started?" "I barely made it now." "I mean, no." "(laughter)" "No." "I mean, this was... the biggest picture that I've been involved in, and certainly the most logistically complicated, and frankly, I don't want to do it again." "I'm not interesting in making pictures of this scope." "It was a lot to bite off, and I'm more interested in the kind of mid-range picture." "Well, let's see." "Thank you, everybody, for taking part in" ""Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter:" "Producers."" "(all) Thank you." "All right." "That's a wrap."