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Moira Kelly plays Dorothy Day |
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Moira Kelly plays Dorothy Day |
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What does a producer do?
a. puts up the money
b. is married to the director
c. makes an introduction
d. has the final say
e. all of the above
f. none of the above
A feature film producer's tasks are as varied as can be. It's a lot easier to understand what the gaffer or the key grip does: the former designs the lighting and the latter hangs it. But there's no one definition of the producer's role; there's no union or guild that defines it. Some producers never even walk on the set; others, according to some directors, are on the set too much.
What I know is what I did as a coproducer on the feature film Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. I was involved from development to distribution, a range of activities that includes preproduction, production (or principal photography), and postproduction.
I'd had some experience in television at the PBS and CBS affiliates in New Orleans; my provincial agreed with me that television and film are primary educators and that Jesuits should be involved. After ordination I attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, trying to develop as a filmmaker, someone who begins the conversation -- not someone who tells people what to think, but to think. Shortly after I joined Fr. Bud Kieser, CSP, at Paulist Productions, an independent production company that plays in L.A.'s film business with the goal of creating values-based movies.
Bud (Romero) had commissioned a script about Catholic activist Dorothy Day from writer John Wells (ER, China Beach). (In this business you generally put a show or two with which you've been involved right behind your name so others will have something with which to identify you.) Bud was raising the money and trying to find an actress. All I had behind my name were a few documentaries, commercials, and short films, so I was the one who prepared lists: lists of potential actors and actresses, lists of potential directors, lists of potential locations, lists of how we could or couldn't spend the money.
By spring 1994 we had the money and a completed script, and Moira Kelly (Chaplin, The Cutting Edge) agreed to play Dorothy, and Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now, Wall Street) took the role of Peter Maurin, the French philosopher who was Dorothy's mentor. By December we had a director, Mike Rhodes (Christy, Heidi, and associate producer for Romero).
In January we put together a production team to pull off what had been Bud's dream for many years. Forming that team was more than just hiring people who could do the job; it was probably the most important part of preproduction. We needed people who would share Bud's vision. In a short time we hired those who would be involved in the visual style of the film: the cinematographer, the production designer, the costume designer, the location manager, the unit production manager, and the coordinator.
We set an eight-week prep schedule to pull together such elements as wardrobe, sets, period cars, and locations. We set a seven-week shooting schedule to film the story of Dorothy, one of the most remarkable people of this century. How do you cram such a fascinating life into two hours on screen? As a producer I wanted to know as much as possible about her time. I'd read a great deal about Dorothy and by Dorothy and had watched every interview she gave, including a great one with Bill Moyers (PBS) in the early '60s. I immersed myself in the '20s and '30s.
Our most important resource was our prep time; if we used it well it would save us money down the road. Shooting a period film can be very expensive: horse-drawn wagons, antique cars, and lots of extras in period costume do not come cheap, but we wanted to put as much money as possible on the screen for the best production value.
We put the dollars on the table and asked the department heads how best to spend them. Director of photography Mike Fash (Whales of August, Christy) would say, "I'll shoot down this side of the street so production design can concentrate the set dressing on that side of the street only." Such give-and-take allowed us to do the story justice and stay on budget.
Production designer Chuck Rosen (Taxi Driver, Free Willy) suggested that we use a matte-shot at the beginning and the end of the New York City sequences. These oil paintings were blended with actual footage shot on a Paramount back lot. Filming a New York street scene in Los Angeles was a stretch, but the existing relationships and contacts we had with studios, labs, and other vendors in L.A. made it much more economical than location shooting in New York.
Production, the actual filming, went smoothly, which made that part of my job easy. We finished the principal photography two days ahead of schedule, something that rarely happens in the business.
The postproduction process was a learning experience. I worked with a great editor and producer, George Folsey, Jr. (Blues Brothers, Grumpier Old Men). He knew how to handle any of my questions about problems at the film lab. He freely shared with me not only his years of experience but also those of his father, a cinematographer who received his first of eleven Academy Award nominations in 1933.
I have little knowledge of music (in TV we usually bought canned music or jingles) and cannot carry a tune in my pocket; luckily I met up with composer Bill Conti (Rocky, The Right Stuff); we would sit around his piano as he played different themes while watching the film on a monitor. After his compositions were scored and orchestrated, they were recorded in Salt Lake City. It was a thrill sitting with the musicians as they matched their performances with those on the screen.
Last September, after test screenings, the film premiered in Los Angeles and New York and at the Toronto Film Festival, moving on to about 20 cities after that. Bud's dream was finally out there.
The main thing that made my job easier was not the credits behind the names of those with whom I worked but their willingness to share in the craft they love. As a producer I am inspired by a line from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet: "When you dream alone, it remains a dream, but when you dream with others it can become a reality." What a producer does is dream with others.
Fr. Chris Donahue, SJ, who received two "best documentary" awards from the New Orleans Press Club, is an independent producer in Los Angeles working on a story about Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat during WW II.
Page created and maintained by R VandeVelde, vande@math.luc.edu. Updated: Sat., February 08 1997
