Well, we’re now about 10 meetings into Inside Pictures 2008. We’ve traversed a studio lot, debated with lawyers, chit-chatted with casting directors, discussed the relative merits and demerits of superbowl spots with marketeers and eaten large quantities of Korean Beef. A good few days. Here are a handful of highlights:

• Discovering that Chuck Roven, one of the biggest and most successful producers in Hollywood, and the man behind my favourite film of the year, and the second biggest movie of all time, The Dark Knight, is a genuinely decent, profound and eclectic human being. A living, breathing exemplar of the fact that you can triumph within the system without dumbing down one jot. This is a man who in his time has written and acted in films, breeds horses, managed race-car drivers, and a roster of musicans including Alanis Morisette, The Goo Goo Dolls, Weeza and many others, was married to the redoubtable Dawn Steel, first female head of a studio, and some how along the way produced some of the best and biggest movies of all time, including Twelve Monkeys, City of Angels as well as both the Nolan Batman movies. Chuck was our first meeting and an inspirational one.My three take aways from his talk:

1. Producers prove themselves by making hard decisions in hard situations.
2. Audience testing tells you somethings, but not everything. Listen to the audience, but don’t listen blindly. Interpret and when push comes to shove, trust your gut. It’s the only one you have.
3. Grab. Opportunity. Now.

• Meeting some nice agents and managers at our agent and manager panels and drinks party today, including a brace of folk from Paradigm, Endeavor and William Morris.
• Korean beef. Lots of it.

Whilst we have been having fun, of course, the world continues to go to hell in a handcart, with the melt-down in the financial markets continuing unabated and the real economy clearly balanced precariously. The most we can say is that at least we inhabit a counter-cyclical industry. As Content Rights Management and Entertainment One both raise large production facilities.
We hope.

Finally, as a courtesy to some of my colleagues who have felt left out that they have not been mentioned in the blog to date, I should point out that Gemma is with the band, Rachel has nice shoes, Adam uses words like ‘non-correlated’ and ‘granularity’ casually;  and Laura should be on everyone’s list of go to Producers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 08:55 and is filed under Arvind Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.