Whether you realize it or not, when you're in a studio, you're pitching all the time. So even though you're receiving pitches, you've got writers, directors, producers coming in and pitching ideas, you're constantly having to try to build consensus and build support for projects you're passionate about throughout the studio. So you're never not pitching. Welcome back to Produce by I'm Kevin Fairchild, your host.
And I'm joined on the phone today by Hutch Parker. Welcome to Produce by thanks very much, Kevin. Let's kind of start with your most recent film, Logan. Can you talk a little bit about the film and how you sort of came to the project?
Sure. My connection to these films goes back a long time, because it really started when I was at the studio at Fox. And so had been working on and around these films for that window of time, which is sort of roughly 18 years at the studio or so. And then as a producer, came into both the X-Men movies and subsequently into the Wolverine stories, in part because I had a long standing connection, in part just in the way that those projects evolved and what the needs were on them.
Logan in particular grew out of the experience we'd had making the Wolverine, which precedes it in that particular series. And was a collaboration between Jim Mangold and Hugh and myself, and sort of all the things we discovered and loved about making the Wolverine and finding things we wanted to do and explore that took us beyond what we got to do on that film. And that was really the basis for that evolution of Logan. Now you guys shot on location, is that right?
Can you talk a little bit about the production of the film? I mean, you were in the middle of summer in 2016, right? And on location? Yes, exactly.
I mean, part of it grew out of the story. Jim had a very specific idea in mind for what story he wanted to tell. And as you know, that story is sort of modeled after a classic Western and has a road movie component to it. And part of what he felt was critical to that, predicting the journey that they go on as this dysfunctional family goes on is that we actually take the audience on a journey.
And that we do something that isn't often done with certainly in these films, but not much in any film, which is actually move the production and shoot different landscapes and really feel the textural difference of the locations that we ultimately used as part of the backdrop of the movie. And it was fascinating, because as a producer, most of the work that I've done, and particularly within the excellent universe, is sort of a stage-based production. So you're in a controlled environment. Weather isn't necessarily much of a factor.
That was actually a couple of days on Logan. But I came to love it, as I think everybody did, because you really felt in making the film, you really feel the power of the various landscapes that we got to work with. And there was a visceral excitement about shooting on location and navigating the weather and changing light. And that I think becomes a character in the movie.
So for that, it was challenging and certainly had its shortcomings in terms of some of our process. But we were all, I think, really thrilled with the result. And the result is a very sort of different feeling for the genre, right? I mean, it's a lot more, for lack of a better term, sort of raw and natural.
There's just something about it that really sets it apart from other films in the series. Yeah, and that was intentional, too. It was, again, growing out of the kind of story that we were hoping to tell was an unvarnished version of this character. And to some degree, the beginnings of the genre have a little bit more of a theatrical feel to them.
They're a little bit glossier. They're a little bit, I'd even say heightened times by comparison. And Jim really wanted to strip the varnish off of it. And really, and look, I think he excels in that style of storytelling both in terms of performance and casting.
And it's something he's done exceptionally well in a lot of his other films. And part of what we were excited about was the idea of taking his new love and insight into the Wolverine-Logan character and marrying it with his sensibility that probably had a little bit more in common with Walk Aligner or Girl Interrupted than it does with X-Men. And allow us to really lean into that aesthetic. As you said, much grittier, more raw, more emotional in that way that we could get at real behavior and real feelings and real conflicts.
That just happened to be played out between characters that have powers. And I think you're kind of feeling that in the visual aesthetic, in the Seth's End World Landscapes. And we tried to echo that in costumes. We tried to echo that in every facet of the film.
And part of what makes Jim, I think, such an incredible filmmaker is in the best sense, filmmakers, you hope they will be the architects at every moment of every component. And Jim very much is and was that on Logan. You started talking a little bit about you working with certainly Jim and Hugh Jackman. Can you talk a little bit about that sort of collaborative process and how involved Hugh is in shaping not only the character, but in the tone of the film?
Extremely involved in this one. And I think he's been in varying degrees involved in the past, depending. And I think many of the actors in the franchise have had some measure of input. For the most part, we would develop trips independently and share them with them at a certain point and get their input.
But it was a little bit authored ourselves, in this case, partly because the aspiration was to do something totally different than we'd done before, partly because we knew the story was going to dimm up more of Hugh in a way that was exciting to him, that the story was going to be the final chapter, which was both exciting and I think dolting. And Hugh and Jim have gone back a long time. It's not their first film together. So have a great relationship.
But Hugh was very deeply involved in this one from the outset because of all those factors that made it a particularly important one to get right. And so he was very attentive and very present and deeply involved with Jim and the writing of it and then the breaking the story and all that kind of stuff. Did you have a long pre-production lead up to this, or was it fairly short? Neither.
I mean, it was kind of a healthy 16 or so week prep, and on the one hand is never enough, but always seems to somehow get the job done. Yeah. I think we were blessed with an incredible team, both those that we brought from out of town and those that were local, which goes a long way to making prep more efficient and effective for you. I think it does help that we had a very clear sense of what we wanted the movie to be.
One of the benefits of making films within a franchise or in a series is we knew Patrick very, very well. We knew Hugh and his familiarity with the characters. And there's a shorthand sort of all the way around that really comes in handy in terms of the technical preparation and the communication. A lot of the people in the movie were people we had done worked with on the Wolverine.
So there was a tremendous amount of overlap, or on some of the excellent films, that comes in really handy. So yeah, I would say prep was the normal amount for movie of the size, not too long, not too short, sort of go-de-lock's just right. And then the challenge really then was more frankly, which we alluded to earlier, which is we weren't going to be based in any one location. So those company moves and finding ourselves in pre-challenging locations at 8,500 feet for the finale of the movie and navigating New Mexico for like it's Jorms.
And all these things that you don't have on stage, became more the challenge for us. The traditional sort of basic technical challenges, I think were met exceptionally well by the team. And that's largely in credit to Jim. He's just a very self-assured, very confident, collaborative filmmaker.
But also a real credit to the team. You're as good as your department heads. And the department is as good as the team. So we're pretty blessed.
And by Foxxo, this is a less expensive version of these movies. But we were handsomely supported and given the resources we needed, all of which goes towards happier and sainer and more effective shoot. Yeah, exactly. And I know that it's a very different field when you're out shooting on location.
And like you said, suddenly you're subject to weather as opposed to in a controlled environment. It's a very different field. It's very different. And thankfully we lost in that finale, we were shooting up in northern New Mexico, which as I say, it gets up to set was at 8,500 feet.
So you have altitude you're dealing with. And I didn't know this before, but they're more lightning strikes in the state of New Mexico than any other state in the country. And as my producing colleagues know, when there's a strike with a certain radius, you have to shut down for 30 minutes. And we figured out that we'd lost a day and a half of shooting into these lightning strikes, which is pretty crippling.
That's a lot of time to lose to shelter in place kind of stuff. And in a challenging sequence anyway, time is always at the essence on set. And that would be particularly difficult. But it certainly helps focus the mind.
And everybody rose to challenge. So I guess I shouldn't complain. Is it something you want to do again? Go out of location.
Absolutely. You know, the truth is, yes. I loved it. And loved what it brought.
As I said, there's kind of a vibrancy to being on the go that many, many producers get the luxury or the joy of that experience a lot. I hadn't had it very much. And with the exception, you know, Patriots Day, we moved around a lot in Boston. But that was in a fairly contained space.
This was starting in and around New Orleans, and then moving to Northern Louisiana, and then moving to New Mexico, and sure to the state, for three different looks. And it just, the challenges it presented as often as the case invited a lot of very collaborative, smart, on your feet thinking that I think improved the film. And as many challenges as there were, I think we were grateful for the reality of those environments, you know, kind of almost to a person. You know, other than it can be a little bit fatiguing.
I now have an empathy for people who spend a lot of time on the road. But it was pretty great. And I would absolutely do it again. And what does that, I mean, certainly this goes back to when you were working on the studio side.
But what is the relationship with Marvel like when you're working in this universe and telling these stories? Is it very close or you guys just sort of left to work within the universe as you see fit? Yeah, it's more the latter in that the Fox Marvel titles are really Fox's titles. And they're Marvel studios has some participation and voices their opinions along the way.
But they really are pretty much Fox Marvel properties. And therefore Fox is really the godfather of the process. That said, you know, no Kevin for a very long time, perspective immensely. And some of the other executives over there, we're always happy here from then and see what they're doing.
The work they've done is pretty extraordinary in helping to expand the breadth and the reach of these movies. And begin to do what I think is newly most exciting, which is the expanding storytelling into different genres. Yeah. And Guardians of the Galaxy, in particular to me, was an astounding thing because it broke the wall, the total wall, and opened up the idea that these can be action copies.
And then I think Deadpool pushed it to in a different direction and certainly Logan yet again. As the movies are explored, it's all range. New Mutants is I think that's just really exciting both from storytelling perspective but also cinematically for filmmakers to draw on different aesthetics and different conventions and allow the audience to explore these characters and these scenarios with whatever tone best suits the story that's being told. And that's pretty exciting to me.
Yeah, in a way, I think it's fascinating from a pretty sort of point because you're sort of working in collaboration in a way with all these different storytellers in this universe because none of these projects sort of stands on its own. Everything is sort of quoting something else. There's references. There's this much larger world.
But there's still that freedom and that ability to, as you say, create stories with different genres, different looks, different feels, but yet are still true to that underlying connection. Yes. And I think Jim even did that on the wall because it really owes its style to Noir. And that was a very specific aesthetic choice that Jim was making and embedded in the story he was telling.
And I think as I say, I felt like Marvel kind of kicked the doors open with some of the stuff they were doing. And the other component in this to me was the audience. There was no question to me that the audience was demanding more unique films that the degree to which we were. And I think we did fall prey to this a little bit.
And the X-Men films repeat ourselves or not be bold enough and not aspire kind of enough. I could feel it a little bit. And the response in taking on an already logo or what Fox did with Deadpool, I think all of that is a very exciting answer to a demand being made by the audience who's consuming so much good entertainment, be it on various platforms and Netflix. There's a lot of great stories coming from being done.
And in a challenging way and in a really exciting way, it's called on all of us to try to raise the bar. And that's to me that's part of what also Pacific Film Like Logan. So let's turn a little bit and talk a little bit more about you. What was your sort of coming through process?
How did you get into the industry? I guess I'm sort of a strange story. I'm an East Coast who grew up in a family where my mother was a stage actress and my brother was a television actor. And I as a result began doing commercials and some soap upper work and some small film work in high school and going into college.
And it went my appetite for not for acting ironically, I guess, but for some sort of involvement on the behind the scenes of it. Not knowing at the time whether that was potentially producing or studio or what form that might take. But I really loved movies and what I've gotten to see on sets really intrigued me in terms of what was this unique intersection of creative and financial and logistics. And so after college moved out to California where my brother was and put away pictures and resumes and started hoping to try to find any work I could in the behind the scenes of it and found myself in a job at Paramount, working for an executive there.
And that sort of began my journey. Really found fascinating what he was doing as a creative executive for Vice President Paramount and quickly found myself then working for Simpson Bruckheimer, producers at the time, and subsequently Orion. But building all the creative executive side of things where I really liked this challenge of developing material and guiding it and packaging it and the idea of then seeing those concepts and ideas and aspirations that lived on the page translated into an actual plan and budget and business, if you will. Although, obviously always very uncertain of the results.
And that was a series of those at Orion and then HBO and then subsequently at Fox where I really had been for what now is a very long time. But always in the same kind of drawn by the same components in jobs that took me from senior vice president to EVP, to president to vice chairman. And all of which to some degree doing the same sorts of things, maybe with the exception of the vice chairman role, which becomes a little bit more exclusively managerial and strategic and a little bit less hands on, which is candidly the part that I have always liked the most. And part of what drove me back to the idea producing was getting back to a closer proximity to the project and the process.
So what is your life like as an executive? Your average day, I mean, is it, is it, is it, I think that for some people there is this sort of thought of, oh, you're just getting pitch meetings and everything like that and just sort of the normal day to day. But is there anything in there that people would find surprising? Maybe.
I don't know what people would find surprising. It's maybe because I lived it for so long, but it seems surprising to me. The instinct behind it was, I think, when I got to Hollywood, the idea of producing was probably front of mind. Part of what I saw was that very quickly realized how hard it is to get things done.
That the truth is talent get movies made and studios write the checks. So the people who are, they're playing people who work in and around it, but there are very few people who actually determine which movies get made and how and when. Harder would throw me to the executive side of the ledger was feeling that I want to try to have a hand in some of that decision making and some of that decision making be connected to more of the process. And I think that was true for me.
I found being executive does, because you are identifying what scripts and champion scripts that you want to buy and identifying what writers to work with and what directors you hope to work with and same thing with actors and fight for budgets. And I liked the process of being trying to be an arbiter between the creative side and the financial side. I always saw my role as executive as not necessarily doing whatever this wanted. I believe my job was to help make the best possible movie.
So sometimes that was challenging the filmmakers in whatever ways, but it was often challenging the studio. And finding ways to protect talent from what can be corporate values or corporate objectives on behalf of an institution that isn't fluent, the creative process or the creative realities. So I felt like that was for responsibility. But in terms of day to day, I think it probably is pretty much what you imagine.
In my time, it was very long hours. It was a lot of pitch meetings. It's a getting number of staff meetings, because it's a large institution. So there's a high emphasis on trying to keep everybody connected and fluent with the information, which ultimately there's a fair amount of redundancy and fair amount of your staff meeting to death.
It's an incoming phone call job as much as anything else. So you're bombarded by submissions and by phone calls. So what little time you have between meetings is dedicated to trying to get back to everybody and trying to be responsive. I think I wish I could say more time was spent.
And just thinking out of the box and being able to breathe, the truth is studio jobs are pretty relentless between the demands of people on the outside. Your need to find things and be searching through the haystacks for the needles, in addition to all the demands inside the system to be met. And that became increasingly true. The further along in the system I went, there were actually more amounts to feed, different divisions, corporate.
You've got more demands on your time, which left less for that thoughtful detail work than I think is so important. So I'm not sure any of that would come as a surprise. I think for me, some people are better suited to it than others. I did it for a long time, probably longer than I should have, because at some point I started feeling fairly burnt out by the demands of that job.
And began to question, was I still being effective at championing kind of original ideas and original filmmakers and doing sufficiently at protecting them and facilitating on their behalf? Was I still doing that as well as I set out to? And again, part of the shift to producing, though it comes with much less control over my life. I am now in that role of being dependent on other people to say yes, but I definitely can focus much more of my attention on trying to create the workstays that beautiful business need to do great work.
And that gives me, that's the primary satisfaction from what I get to do. I love also talking to people who've been both on the producer side and then moved to the executive side and moved back about pitching and just what it's like being on both ends of those pitches and the things that you learn when you're receiving them and listening to people tell stories and how that informs the way that you then present stories back. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I also find it very fascinating that even people who've been in the industry as long as you have are still pitching.
Are you still pitching? Are you still going back to videos? What does that process like for you? Sure.
I'll tell you, I don't find, for me anyway, the pitching from one side of the table versus the other is not that different. Because whether you realize it or not, when you're in a studio, you're pitching all the time. So even though you're receiving pitches, you've got writers and directors and producers coming in and pitching ideas, you're constantly having to try to build consensus and build support for projects you're passionate about throughout the studio. So you're never not pitching.
I mean, even yesterday I was pitching to the, you know, to the Fox Hill video guys on Dark Phoenix, which is coming up. The callback was, I used to do that every year when I was at the studio, pitching our slaves and trying to kind of get them as excited as possible what we were doing and if not dissimilar from meetings going up the ladder, whether it was with Rupert or whoever, where you're pitching. Yeah, I'm so pitching. So in that sense, it's no different to me now.
I think, you know, what is different, and I do think probably the most valuable skill set, if you can call it that, from having been at a studio, is understanding the organism that is a studio. I think for people who haven't worked at a studio, they can be pre-intimidating places and, you know, they have a lot of power. And for many years, certainly as an executive, I found that a lot of people in the process approach the studio with a fair amount of distrust and antagonism. And in my experience, that was a mistake.
Not because you should trust a studio necessarily. I don't know that you should. I don't think you should distrust them, but I don't think you should inherently trust them. It's more that they're not as antagonistic an organism as was often what they are.
They are organisms and institutions that are in the business of making movies. And most of the people that are working in them, oh, for the same reasons. They love movies. They want to be part of movies.
They think they're something magical. They too could have gone to Wall Street or some other place and they chose to come here. And probably the most important skill that I feel like I bring to productions is knowing that as a studio executive, you're trying to ensure the success of a very expensive, very fragile enterprise. And you're sort of willing to do whatever it takes to make that possible within reason.
And so the thing that studios really want is for you to be a full and open partner to kind of anxieties when they're doing something pretty brave, which is putting their jobs in writing a big check for a movie. And I think the most valuable skill I have is knowing how to, I know what their anxieties are. I know how to speak to them. I know how to make them feel comfortable that their needs are being looked out for without impinging on the filmmaking process.
And equally important, I know how to talk, help explain for the filmmakers, what, where to push back and where it's just an anxiety that needs to be addressed in some sort of open way. The trap I can keep falling into is when they try to hide the bad news from the studio or treat them as something other than true partners. And I think that's the scenario where I can say from experience, that's going to provoke the worst possible reaction. So I think in this high stakes of the industry that we have today, so much of it is about frankly, I think locking arms.
And some of that goes to who are you working with and making sure that you see projects the same way and doing the due diligence of that, which I don't know that I believe is done. Certainly when I was at the studio, I didn't do that enough. The emphasis was on the transaction and not on who's buying my project. And making sure that there was genuine alignment with that.
I think that's actually critically important. But assuming that's been done or assuming that's been achieved by the time you go to make a movie, I think the critical thing is really embracing the team as a whole, recognizing that your studio, the executives are working with you, are your partners and that they deserve to be heard. And they prefer it to be both an effective process for the studio and a fulfilling process for the artists and healthy and constructive experience, not necessarily painful, not necessarily distrust and all that other stuff. No, that's great to hear because I think that there is often some sense of distrust from the studio or this sort of perception out there of someone who's only looking at the financial bottom line and only looking at certain things to understand that that may not always be the case.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But going into it with that sort of preconception can be a dangerous thing for both parties in a way. Yeah, and look, and there certainly are examples of studios and people that have approached it that way. The reputation has been earned, I will say.
But the answer to those moments is not, in my experience, it's not to kind of retreat to your opposite trenches. It's actually a work to understand, to actually get in there and communicate. Here's why this expenditure, this additional expenditure is actually in your interest, in the film's interest. And my experience, generally speaking, and Fox certainly was one of the tougher places, you know, kind of from a bottom line standpoint during my time around town.
But even then, my experience was when passionate articulate people came in and made reasoned arguments, I almost never saw us not support those arguments and not support those choices. And to some degree, Tom, who was Robin at the time, who was known as a very, you know, sort of strong minded and bottom line guy was great about that. You know, as tough as he was, there was always room for that. There was always room for filmmaker coming with a new scene idea that he thought was critical.
There'd be a discussion about it. There'd be an exchange of ideas and a vetting. But it speaks to the fact that I think the institution wants to succeed. And the institution recognizes it's dependent on these artists and these craftsmen and all the people who are in the field.
And so if given the chance, they will try to do the right thing, the most part. That's been my experience. And certainly the way I go about doing the job of producing is trying to always help build that bridge and make that bridge particularly healthy. So that if we do find ourselves in a situation where, okay, we need to do an alternative ending or we need this additional photography or whatever it is that we've got support for that.
And I can honestly say I've yet to have an experience with it hasn't been the case. Fantastic. So what are some of the things you're looking at now for inspiration, whether it's different types of media or storytelling that really kind of feeds your own creative energy? I'm a pretty added viewer of content.
So my eyes kind of cover a lot of ground. I'm particularly inspired by what's happening kind of in the Netflix platform and Amazon and some of these very bold productions. And I think there's some superb stuff working down there. We're in that season where I always find it amazing, some of the films that arrive seemingly from functional.
So that's always a source of inspiration for me. Personally, a lot of my view will come from nonfiction. Pretty added consumer of nonfiction material and partially just because I guess I find it interesting food for life. But partially it plays into stories and the myths we hunger to explore and to help inform our own lives.
I find that to be an incredible well of inspiration. But it kind of comes in all. It's come from my kids at times. It's come from music I might listen to or there are lots of different trigger points for creative impulses that lead to an idea about a show or about a potential movie or a character or there are a lot of different trigger points.
But in terms of specifically the work as a producer and what it's really those first you with a heavy emphasis on the nonfiction. And I think honestly that that I can see that coming through in the work that you've done in terms of bringing out even fictionalized stories that speak to the truth of what's happening or something that's happening in the world around it. I think I can definitely see that. Well, I find it hard.
If I don't find that in a story, it's hard for me. It's like going to see without a compass. The thematics and the ways in which they may be an obscure and undolished way. But the ways in which they resonate with either contemporary issues or dynamics in the culture or whatever form that takes becomes the way I understand the story we're telling and argue all the creative choices, what seems to be cockroach.
What seems to me to go further? What seems to me to go too far? All of that modulation, all of that calibration for me comes through that foundational understanding of what it's about. And that spine is the way in which I approach script, screenplays, and then movies.
And for me it's been pretty important. I feel lost if I don't have that. I wouldn't know if you gave me two choices and said which one I can tell you which one I like. I can't tell you which one's most appropriate unless I have that sort of core understanding.
So those other touch don'ts become very helpful in that. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
And I can't wait to see what's coming up next. Well, thank you. Your questions are fantastic. It's nice to talk to somebody who understands the various issues and dynamics and great to have a thoughtful conversation about all this stuff.
So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And that's what we're here for.
So we like talking to producers because producers aren't the backbone of the industry. I love that. I love that. That's what we're about.
I think I'm going to put it on a t-shirt. Perfect. I'll just take 20% thanks. All right.
All right. All of that. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Cheers. Thank you for listening to this episode of Produce by the producers Guild. Find us on the web at www.producerscale.org.
You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at producersgale. In the meantime, help us out by subscribing, commenting, and sharing wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other people find us and lets us know how we're doing. Until next time, I'm your host, Kevin Kirtz.