Tag: partnerships

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Truly Free Film

10 Steps To Determine If This Is The Right Partner For You Right Now

In my producing pursuits, I have had some of the best partners in the world.  I think we have served each other well.  But what was good at one time, does not always apply to your situation today.  People change faster than relationships do.  It’s hard to keep up. A good business and creative partnership is constantly evolving to shift with the personalities involved.  It’s hard sometimes to step back and see it how it really is.  The answers and the problems are often hidden in plain sight.  How do you evaluate what is right?

Work with those you know will turn the wheel to the right
Work with those you know will turn the wheel to the right
  1. When the truck is careening down the road and your partner is behind the wheel, which way will they turn?  If they are in America, you need the partner that will alway turn to the right, putting themselves between you and the truck.  Likewise, if
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Truly Free Film

Answering The Questions: “How do I make sure that in twenty years I will feel good about the choices I make today?”

Earlier this year I proposed what I saw as the five most critical questions for someone to answer in order to have a fulfilling and sustainable career producing films.  I went on to list out eighteen more. I think the answers to these questions don’t have a right or wrong answer; they should be profoundly personal.  Yet I also think it is very hard to answer these questions on your own.  Frankly, I think the answering of these questions should be part of any film school curriculum — but I am also not sure that film school is a necessary component for all producing careers.  Anyway, I thought it might be helpful for those considering this path to have someone try to answer these questions.  Today that someone is me.

Producing benefits from having addressed certain moral and ethical challenges before they actually confront you.  Hell, what field or way of life doesn’t?  I have encouraged the consideration of some of these “challenges” before in virtual party game manner, but I do think it is always worth considering.  I think it comes down to the questions of “what do you value?”  People? Money? Principles? Property?  And how much do these matter to you?

If you’ve set your values — or at least have a firm handle on them–, if you then seek to make the product of your labor (i.e for a film producer, your movies) reflect your values, you will be on your way to still feeling good about what you are doing twenty years from now. Essentially this is the “Know-what-you-care-about-and-reflect-that-in-your-work” approach.  But it alone is not enough to carry you through the twenty years.  It is the content driven approach and you will have to also consider the process and the environment you inhabit to stay satisfied.

To feel as good twenty years from now as you do today (and that is assuming you feel good today of course), it is not just

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Truly Free Film

What Makes A Good Partnership?

The NYTimes Sunday Magazine has a must-read article on my former Good Machine partner James Schamus. The author, Carlo Rotello, does a thorough job on the difficult task of capturing most of the complexity that makes James someone that is fun to collaborate with: he is not easily defined, has many interests (sometimes conflicting), and enjoys deeply both the process and the product.  People so often look for people they get along with to collaborate with; I think that is is mistake.  Harmony may work in other types of relationships, but in a creative one, it is a formula for mediocrity.   If you truly care about the end result of your work, you should look for someone you enjoy arguing with to partner with.

Rotello sums up our Good Machine partnership by defining David Linde as the business mind, Schamus the intellectual, and me “Hope, an advocate of radically decentralized media democracy, was the revolutionary;”.  I like how that sounds, but what really worked at Good Machine, and in other creative relationships, is when people can argue clearly and without ego for what they feel will make a story work best.  Trust is the next most required ingredient in a successful partnership, quickly followed by a willingness to accept that you may not be right (that non-ego thing again).

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