Why Study Producers?

1. Why Study Producers? Andrew Spicer

2. Michael Klinger

3. The Image of the Producer • ‘A cigar-chewing, language fracturing, power-mad, philistine ignoramus’ (Philip French: The Movie Moguls) • ‘A portly Jewish gentleman, with a cigar in his mouth, a peculiar vocabulary and a distasteful penchant for starlets.’ Irwin Shaw: Evening in Byzantium) • ‘The producer is a sort of bank guard. His objective is to see that nothing is put on the screen that people are going to dislike. This means practically 99 per cent of literature, thinking, probings of all problems.’ (Ben Hecht)

4. The Film Producer – critical neglect The paradigm of auteurism – the individual authorial ‘signature’ as the mark of creativity Caricature of/confusions about the role Focus on texts as formal objects & practices of textual analysis rather than production contexts Film as art vs film as industry - Alexander Walker: ‘The tendency to ignore the role of the producers or production chiefs has to be resisted if films are to make sense as an industry that can sometimes create art.’

5. Michael Klinger Papers - Contents 200 suspension files 50+ screenplays Bound scripts; including unproduced films Klinger News and Avton publicity material Contracts with personnel Financial agreements; company accounts Distribution deals Letters and other correspondence

6. The creative organiser Leo Rosten: ‘The producer should possess the ability to recognize ability, the knack of assigning the right creative persons to the right creative spots. He should have knowledge of audience tastes, a story sense, a businessman’s approach to costs and the mechanics of picture making. He should be able to manage, placate, and drive a variety of gifted, impulsive, and egocentric people.’

7. Overview of the production processThe mediator/intermediary Michael Balcon: The one person who can apprehend ‘a film as an entity and be able to judge its progress and development from the point of view of the audience who will eventually view it’; a mediator between art and industry, having: ‘a dual capacity as the creative man and the trustee of the moneybags’.

8. The opinion-former ‘A film producer has two responsibilities: to the public and to his backers. If he is an imaginative and courageous producer, the two may coincide. The ideal producer, it seems to me, must always look ahead and try not merely to acquiesce in box-office trends but to lead public opinion and gauge future audience requirements.’ (Sydney Box)

9. The Overview • Vincent Porter: ‘The producer brings together under his or her unique control an assessment of public taste, the task of obtaining adequate production finance, the decision as to which individuals should be employed in the key creative roles in the films and on what terms, and the overall supervision and management of the production process. It is precisely through the way in which these four factors are interrelated that the producer imposes his or her creative mark upon the film. Although the guiding hand of a producer may be difficult to perceive in an individual film, it is precisely in the longer term that the key role played by the producer become clear.’

10. Contexts Klinger was : • An Independent (not a studio producer) • Part of a particular national cinema (Britain): • Working during a specific historical moment: active in the 1960s & 70s

11. Michael Klinger1920-1989 Andrew Spicer, University of the West of England

12. Klinger’s Early Career • 2nd Generation Polish-Jewish Immigrant • Owned Soho strip clubs in 1960s • Partnership with Tony Tenser: Compton Films: Cinema Ownership Production/Distribution • Roman Polanski: Repulsion (1965); Cul-de-Sac (1968) • Avton Films – Nov. 1966: Peter Collinson: The Penthouse (1967); Alastair Reid: Baby Love (1968)

13. British Film Industry in the 1970s • Decline of cinemagoing (42% drop) • Withdrawal of American finance • Demise of the medium budget film • Reluctance of UK companies/institutions to invest in the film industry (risk capital) • Weak production base (Rank, EMI, ITC) • Marginal government investment (NFFC): unclear/inconsistent policy

14. Klinger in the 1970s • International big-budget action-adventure: Gold (1974); Shout at the Devil (1976) • Quasi-Art House cinema – Something to Hide (1972); Rachel’s Man (1976); Chabrol: Les liens de sang (Blood Relatives,1978) • Sexploitation: 4 ‘Confessions’ series • Crime thrillers: Get Carter (1971); Pulp (1972); Tomorrow Never Comes (1978)

15. Michael Klinger- on the set of Gold (1974)

16. Klinger on the Set of Gold (1974)

17. Gold (1974)

18. Klinger’s Importance? Varied oeuvre straddling different production tiers: • Sexploitation cinema and sex comedies • Art house/experimental films • Middle-range crime thrillers • International action-adventure films Window onto important social and cultural issues: • Soho sex industry • British film industry • Impact of Jewish entrepreneurialism

19. Implications/Issues The study will: • Install Michael Klinger as a significant figure in British cinema history • Revise accounts of 1960s and 1970s British cinema • Indicate the importance of the Jewish entrepreneur in the British entertainment industries • Demonstrate the significance of the producer’s role – challenges to stereotypes & conceptions of creativity • Suggest the need to rethink our understandings of film, the construction of canons and how we write film history • Argue for the importance of archival documentation to understand the production process – an ‘invisible’ art with pedagogical implications

20. New forms of creativity • ‘The importance of the producer-artist seems to be a specific feature of British cinema, an effect of the need continually to start again in the organization of independence.’ John Caughie (‘Broadcasting and Cinema: Converging Histories’)

21. Pedagogical implications • How do we teach producers? • What is the object of study? • How do we make it interesting? • What resources do we need? [trade press; oral histories; newspapers; fan magazines; studio publications; press books; industry reports; government records; websites; archives (+ online)] The Klinger archive has online resources as well as a catalogue and is developing further interactive resources C/f the Sally Potter archive: SP-ARK

22. Beyond the Bottom-Line: The Producer and Screen Studies Section I: Framing the Producer Representing the Producer Types of Producers The Emergence of the Producer Section II: Producers in Contexts: History, Experimentation and Genre Documentary Producers The Producer and Avant-Garde/Experimental Cinema Popular Genre Producers The Studio Producer The Independent Producer The Auteur Producer Cross-over Film and Television Producers New Media Producers Section III: Producers in National, Regional and Transnational Contexts The Film Producer in a national cinema The European Producer The Regional Producer (East Asia, Caribbean, Latin America etc) The Bollywood Producer