Lorenzo DiBonaventura: 'The Only Leverage We Had Was Shame'
My first in a week of talks with The Mavens of Hollywood; today, the legendary producer reveals how to win the power game and get what you want
Welcome to my first edition of The Mavens this week, a series of conversations with some of the smartest people I know in this industry to talk about the state of the business. These are people who have accomplished big things in their time and continue doing so, and who have, notably, built careers with longevity, and more importantly, have the ability to share their thoughts uncensored today.
My first Maven is the legendary Lorenzo DiBonaventura, who has been a central figure in Hollywood for the better part of three decades. First, as an executive, he served as president of production at Warner Bros. in what was one of the studio’s golden ages, presiding over the making of The Matrix, among other pantheon films. After leaving the studio, he became one of the few executives to defy the odds by transitioning into a powerhouse independent producer, whose titles include the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies.
He was also one of the key instigators behind the formation of Producers United, an organization that advocates for the producing profession in Hollywood. Producers United has already achieved great success in bringing attention to the plight of producers and scored an early victory in getting the studios to agree to provide health care for producers of their films.
Today, our conversation covers some brutally candid territory: How producers can claw back the meaning of their title; the hell of studio greenlight committees (“I think a lot of the executives today are phenomenal at avoiding any responsibility”), how you maintain your value as an executive or producer, sharp words for how Seth Rogen’s The Studio does Hollywood a “disservice,” and what goes wrong without proper streaming measurement.
Enjoy.
Richard Rushfield: So are you heartened by word, based on the summer’s box office, that Hollywood is saved?
Lorenzo DiBonaventura: I think it's a good start, for sure. We have a ways to go. God, I could go on for hours about what we need to do.
Well, where to start?
It was a disaster when we gave up making R-rated movies because we lost young males, and young males were always our most dependable audience. Period.
How did that happen?
A bunch of studio heads went to Washington and caved to the senators. At the time, there was an anti-violence movement that somehow kids were getting negatively affected by action movies. What’s so silly about it is that, if you’ve ever played a single video game, we’re so safe in comparison. So if you think about it, if you’re a young male, and you have all that testosterone, what appeals to you is the sharp edge of the sword at a certain level. Well, what are you going to do? You’re going to play video games. I really believe that was a disastrous decision. You can’t give up your most fervent audience.
We also gave up comedy in general, but really gave up R-rated comedy.
I don’t understand that, honestly, because they were making a lot of money. I think one of the things I know — it was true for me, and I think it’s true for a lot of people, because I’ve talked to people about this — is that any kind of movie that’s R-rated is closer to the truth of what we live than a PG-13 is. And for me, growing up, it was a window. I learned a lot about the world through those movies. Seeing Serpico turned me on to police corruption. I just think many of the best movies I’ve done are R-rated movies, in part because they can go to places that others can’t.
You're in the producing profession, and you’ve started this movement, Producers United, to address the issues facing the profession. How do you think it’s going for producers?
It’s not going well. It’s interesting because I have the perspective of running a studio like Warner Bros. that was very producer-friendly, and actually had a belief system that had to do with producers. What I mean by that is the belief we had was that the producers provided a clear additional point of view and professionalism on the set that you can’t replace as an executive. You can’t show up and spend every day on the set. One, you don’t have the credibility. And two, no executive is doing their job if they’re on the set every day. So you depended on a lot of senior producers, and we had a lot of junior producers. David Heyman and Andrew Lazar, for instance — we put up a small amount of money, relatively speaking, on the belief that these guys could create something. [They did: Heyman produced the Harry Potter franchise and Barbie, while Lazar worked on multiple studio films including American Sniper.]
There's a generational thing that occurs, and the younger generation represents itself. And so if you’re not supporting them, you’re not getting the kind of movies that their generation represents. I think that’s one of the problems today, because overhead deals have been cut back, and there’s no training system. It used to be that many talented producers began their careers working under the guidance of senior producers. They were executives for them, and they learned the ropes, then went on to establish their own identity. Third, there is a tendency now to cut producers’ fees.
Tell me how those discussions go. When a fee gets cut, how does that process work?
When I was an executive, and a situation like this occurred, we might cut a little bit, but now they’re cutting half or a third. You want this star, and he’s coming with a producing partner, and all of a sudden, now you’re down. It’s a piece of material you want to do, and then the manager says we control this piece of material, so we’re producers too. There are a lot of versions of that, and you're sort of boxed into a corner, because do you want that star? Do you want that piece of material? Do you want to get your movie made? And the answer always is yes.
I think most producers do what’s right for the movie, which usually means getting it made. So what that ends up doing is there’s leverage against you, and you don’t have much leverage. You have some when you’re in my situation, where I have a track record, but even so, I cut my fees in several situations. In fact, many situations, in part because I don’t think it’s right how they treat other producers. It’s really a phenomenal problem. When we started Producers United, we had a set of grievances, for sure. Then, as you got into it, it became more and more evident that for young producers, they were in deep trouble. They don’t have health insurance, and they don’t get paid fairly for developing a piece of material. So we shifted our priorities to the younger generation. And it wasn’t that we’re all altruistic; it was that we saw the fundamental unfairness of it. If you care about the business and the young talent, it needs a breeding ground. It needs to have air pumped into it. We got together and pushed, and many buyers have now shifted how they pay for development; most buyers give health insurance.
How did you make that happen?
We were surprised how fast it occurred, really. Because everybody’s saying, Never, you don't have any leverage. And the truth was, the only leverage we had was shame. When you look at it, in 1973, they set the development fee at $25,000. And up to a year ago, it was at $25,000.
This isn't a great way for studios to incentivize producers to make their movies better or invest more in them, as it ultimately comes out of their own pockets.
That’s a really good point, because what happened? I remember at Warners, the first time we paid a manager an executive producing fee, and it was a big deal. We had a whole long discussion about it, and we decided, in that case, it was really warranted. That was a big deal, and then agents came to learn that they could get their clients an executive producer credit, or managers could know that they could get one themselves. It didn't happen at once. It was a slow bleed that lasted 25 or 30 years, to the point now where one of the big problems I think that studios rightfully have is that producers are forced to work on way too many projects because they’re not getting paid enough on any of them. You want your producers solely focused on that project. Steven Spielberg said, one thing in common with every good movie is that a producer has been on it a long time. Different people will describe what that means, but I will say that if the DNA of a project gets lost along the way because it gets sliced up or defanged, it’s often because the power of the initiating producer has been taken out. And so, constantly in the development process, you’ll see these scripts that have 16 writers on them, and so often, I think, it’s emblematic of not really understanding where it started.
With the title bleed, we got to a place where what a producer does kind of got away from us.
It was a slippery slope. People were looking for an edge. If you’re an agent or a manager and you can get your client a producer fee, why wouldn’t you try? One of the beliefs we have at Producers United is that it doesn’t serve the studio to have this kind of level of dysfunction, because it creates dysfunction. Who’s in charge of that exactly? Who’s holding the power here? Who do I count on if I'm an executive? Who’s doing the work? So when you come back to it, we’re fighting for the people who are doing the work and want to make a career of it, and don’t get money by writing. I wish I were a writer, but I’m not. I’m just a producer. I’m not a director. I’m not an actor. I can’t earn an income elsewhere. I can only get it from what I’m doing. And that’s fundamentally what we’re trying to fight for.
So how do we claw back the meaning of the producer title?