Oscar Moguls: Jeff Robinov (Warner Bros.) Q&A
Deadline is running an interesting series of interviews with the heads of production at major Hollywood Studios. The focus of the Q&A’s is on the current Oscars race, but I’ve drilled down into each conversation to highlight information relevant to screenwriters.
As I have said before, it’s important for writers to learn as much as possible about studio execs and producers — how their minds operate.
This interview is with Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group., a studio which has had an outstanding run for the last decade or so. Their line-up of Oscar nominated movies in 2011:
12 Nominations: 8 Inception, 1 The Town, 2 Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part One, 1 Hereafter
An interview excerpt about Christopher Nolan getting snubbed by the Academy for not getting a nomination for Best Director:
DEADLINE: Explain to voters why they need to give Inception another look.
ROBINOV: I would say that from a studio point of view — and to a large degree they are supported by the studio system — you have to acknowledge what a risky film this was, given the price and the complexity of it. And we’ve certainly been rewarded commercially for the risk. It’s shocking that people in the industry don’t understand the technical, directorial challenges associated with executing this type of film. To juggle all those pieces in the way that Chris does, I don’t understand how they can overlook that. I like the other movies that are nominated. I have no rap against those movies. I’ve seen them all, and I think they were well-directed, and the performances were all really great. But I think if you ask David Fincher to compare Inception in terms of the complication to The King’s Speech or The Social Network, I think he’d acknowledge that the challenges are much, much greater with an Inception type film than in keeping the audience engaged with a talking-head movie basically like The King’s Speech. True, they don’t have action to fall back on. They don’t have visual effects. So that’s challenging. But Chris has another level of complication in his filmmaking in the same way that James Cameron does, and he certainly deserves to be acknowledged for that. That is the best version of what I can say — I don’t understand it.
Key takeaway:
Risk: “…you have to acknowledge what a risky film this was, given the price and the complexity of it.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s completely absurd Christopher Nolan wasn’t nominated for a Best Director Oscar, both for the originality of his vision, the incredible complexity of everything involved in making the movie, and the simple fact that he pulled it off with a hugely entertaining cinematic experience. So here we have the head of a studio rightfully perplexed, even irritated that Nolan didn’t receive the nomination he deserved.
But there’s also some subtext at work it seems to me and that’s this: Warner Bros. took a big risk on Inception in a town where the risk-taking spirit of the original moguls is but a fading shadow. Yes, Chris Nolan has a proven track record most notably TDK, but Inception is an original movie, not a franchise, it has a dense, even bewildering narrative, the movie has tons of exposition, and its run time is 148 minutes — in the eyes of Hollywood conventional wisdom, each one of those points is a negative. So perhaps just the tiniest sliver of Robinov’s irritation is perceiving the slight at Nolan not receiving a Best Director nomination as also being a slight at Warner Bros., the Hollywood community not acknowledging how the studio had the balls to green light such a risky movie.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how much vanity points count at quarterly corporate meetings. But I do know $823M sure does.
What does this mean to screenwriters? In truth, every project a Hollywood studio acquires and develops represents a risk, especially given the current economic environment when the buyers have cut way back on their buying. You used to have to write the hell out of a spec script to sell it. Nowadays you have to write the Hell out of it.
For more of the Deadline.com Q&A with Rabinov, go here.
Tomorrow: Rick Ross (Disney).