Awards Season
Awards season
Awards Season
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And why do they get the trophy for Best Picture at the Oscars?
By Brooks Barnes
Do you have a question for our culture writers and editors? Ask us here.
Q: Why do the Academy Awards honor producers when a film wins Best Picture?What exactly did they do?
You’re confused for good reason: Producers themselves have a hard time describing their job.
“I do the impossible for the ungrateful,” one cracked when I asked. “You can learn it, but you can’t teach it,” another told me, referencing something the pro wrestler Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon used to say about his profession. One longtime producer advised me to abandon this assignment entirely. “Forget it, Jake — it’s Chinatown,” he said, using the classic movie line to sum up how difficult it is to demystify the work.
What queens of drama! Very well, he admits: generate confusing and underestimated pictures. But there are several ways to think about films that help producers (and not, for example, directors) get the Oscar for Best Picture.
For the purposes of this discussion, exclude anyone credited on a film as an “executive producer” (someone who plays a vital role from the beginning, securing very important financing and rights). Only other people credited as “producers” in the end have the chance to win small gold statuettes.
Producers advise films from their inception to their screening. They identify movie ideas, through reading books or news articles, and collaborate with screenwriters to expand the scripts. They court directors. Some get investment and assistance in locating the right leaders for other departments: casting, production design, costumes. Producers also oversee budgets, location scouting and planning. They consult on marketing campaigns once the film is finished.
“Everyone produces differently,” said the producer David Hinojosa, a best picture nominee last year for “Past Lives” whose recent films include “Babygirl,” an erotic thriller, and “The Brutalist,” an epic immigrant drama.
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