Producing

Behind the Silver Screen Series

by Jon Lewis (Contributor), Mark Lynn Anderson (Contributor), Professor Joanna E. Rapf (Contributor)

Of all the job titles listed in the opening and closing screen credits, producer is certainly the most amorphous. There are businessmen (and women)-producers, writer-director- and movie-star-producers; producers who work for the studio; executive producers whose reputation and industry clout alone gets a project financed (though their day-to-day participation in the project may be negligible). The job title, regardless of the actual work involved, warrants a great deal of prestige in the film business; it is the credited producers, after all, who collect the Oscar for Best Picture. But what producers do and what they don’t or won’t do varies from project to project. 
Producing is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the roles that producers have played in Hollywood, from the dawn of the twentieth century to the present day. It introduces readers to the colorful figures who helped to define and reimagine the producer’s role, including inventors like Thomas Edison, moguls like Darryl F. Zanuck, entrepreneurs like Walt Disney, and mavericks like Roger Corman. Readers also get an inside look at the less glamorous jobs producers have often performed: shepherding projects through many years of development, securing financial backers, and supervising movie shoots.   The latest book in the acclaimed Behind the Silver Screen series, Producing includes essays written by seven film scholars, each an expert in a different period of cinema history. Together, they give readers a full picture of how the art and business of producing films has changed over time—and how the producer’s myriad job duties continue to evolve in the digital era.  

216 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 2015

About the author

Jon Lewis is the Distinguished Professor of Film Studies and University Honors College Eminent Professor at Oregon State University and the author of Hard-Boiled Hollywood, and several other books on film.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mostly solid and interesting history of various figures and their roles in producing throughout the different eras of film and how those roles changed over time, however the last chapter on modern practices nearly ruins the book. The last chapter is like something out of a different book, and the essay, while attempting to make what could be interesting and valuable points, fails to actually talk about filmmaking - only talking about what the author's see as the social and cultural responsibilities of filmmakers in today's model. Whereas the rest of the book was about the practice of producing, the last chapter is about an apparently out of control and largely negative film industry destroying the social and industrial fabric of the world. I get that the history of now is still being written, but the last chapter (while I can see value in its substance) left a bad taste in my mouth.