Mark Cuban lobbied for movie studios to buy theater chains. Producers bemoaned the state of the industry. Pixar showed off the tie-ins and promotions it’s creating for “Toy Story 3."
But that was just the tip of the iceberg at the Produced By Conference over the weekend on the 20th Century Fox lot. The conference, which was launched by the Producers Guild of America last year, hosted panels on everything from movie financing to digital distribution, 3D to DIY. Vendors offered software, military consulting and enticements to shoot around the country and around the world, and even dispensed some free legal advice.
We’ve already covered a few highlights, but here are more of the goings-on during the two days attended by 1,100 PGA members, speakers, students, guests and press.
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Dropouts and no-shows were a problem on the first day. One of the marquee panels on Saturday morning was to be titled “Creative Alchemy,” which had been billed as a conversation between producer Brian Grazer and director Ridley Scott about the producer/director relationship. But Grazer and Scott both dropped out, the latter only four days before the start of the conference.
Also originally scheduled but missing in action: Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”), Laura Ziskin (“Spider-Man”) and Jane Rosenthal (“Meet the Fockers”).
But the Scott/Grazer no-show was the most notable one, since the entire panel was to have centered on the relationship between the two men.
David Picker, the moderator of the panel, said that after the pair dropped out he spoke to four producers, each of whom promised that they’d deliver a director with whom they had a close relationship – but none of the four could actually find a director who was able to appear.
In the end, Picker assembled three producers – Larry Gordon, Doug Ward and Bruce Cohen – to gather in the studio’s Daryl F. Zanuck Theater and talk about alchemy from the producers’ side of the equation. (Photo above)
“First of all, you guys are lucky that you got us instead of the two guys who got off,” said the irascible, 74-year-old Gordon at the beginning of the panel. “What I just said was funnier than anything you would have gotten in two hours from those guys.”
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Most of the events were held at stages along 9th Street on the Fox lot. That street was also lined with exhibition booths showcasing 11 film commissions, a handful of organizations and more than two dozen financing, production, post-production, software and consulting firms.
Traffic was steady all along the street, but two of the most eye-catching displays sat at the west end, by Fox’s Daryl F. Zanuck Theater. On one side of the street sat a gleaming, 35-foot silver automobile that said “Packard” on the side, though it looked more like a Flash Gordon spaceship than any Packard that had ever existed.
The car, built to run on the Bonneville Salt Flats, had never been used in a movie.
