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After one month, I finished the book my friend gave. I don’t know if my friend knew my frustrations about making it big in the movie industry, but the book “Hello, He Lied – and Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches” (Lynda Obst, 1996) that she gave made me ponder with my love affair with movies.
I cannot remember if I have loved movies since I was a kid; I don’t think I can be compared to that boy in Cinema Paradiso. But I do know that every time I went out of a movie house, I would relive the scenes again during playtime with my friends (think Care Bears: The Movie, even Robocop).
Things got a little bit serious when I went to college; thank God for the Photography and Movie Production subjects that I took. Suddenly, I saw myself integrating film theories and application – sitting down to watch a Martin Scorsese movie on one day, then meeting with teamsters for the preproduction the next day. During that time, even if we were working our heads off for a grade, I loved every minute of it..
Why will I not fall in love with movies? Who doesn’t want to go inside a big movie house, with a popcorn and soda at my hands, and forget problems for at least two hours? Who doesn’t want to imagine his or herself gunning down bad guys, becoming a part of a powerful mafia, or saving the world? Who wouldn’t want to be pursued by Brad Pitt, Patrick Dempsey or Orlando Bloom? Who wouldn’t want to be a sought-after star or director of a next attraction movie that everyone’s talking about?
But based on the book that I read, movies are just five percent of the above, or should I say, just the fame part of it. Few take a closer look at the job of a producer. In Hollywood, a producer has its many forms – executive producer, co-producer, associate producer, line producer. But it only has one purpose – start movies, finish them, then bring to the audience to enjoy. I will say that they also really play a big part in the movies.
There are a lot of things that I learned from the book. I learned how producers search for a material, fight for it with studio heads (or with other competitors), then either hit the bull’s eye (got the attention of the big bosses) or say “They won. We lost. Next.” I learned about how producers must know how to talk to the very important people, manage them and give them “green light” (getting a yes to start the preparations) for a project. The book related how it is to work in Hollywood – from dealing with directors and stars, managing the whole crew and listening to them, to learning the old formulas but still being open to all uncertainties.
I guess some of us love movies but only because we want to escape the reality of life. We watch movies because in the big screen, we are assured of happy ending – we know that everything will be fine. So when the lights are on and we’re back to reality, we hope that our lives will just be the same as what we watched.
But the fact is movies depict life. Like a producer who searches and fights for a material, we continue to search meaning in our lives, and do our best to survive. As a producer struggles to hit a bull’s eye and green light, we also struggle for society to see and accept us for who we are, regardless of our reasons. We deal with different people and events in our lives. We love them or hate them, but we either forgive and forget, or never forget at all. We live like there’s no tomorrow – though we continue to plan as if tomorrow must come. As much as we are stars of our own movies, we are also producers.
Obst said that “making movies prepares you for life.” This holds true even for us movie buffs. We are our own producers – we create our lives. But I think, as long as we have found our purpose and passion, and we are aware that a Divine Director is calling the shots, we are assured of a happy ending that would either be Now Showing or Coming Soon.
Or maybe, even a Next Attraction.
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