|
and ended long after the sun had gone down, I was an invited guest on the set of Vanilla Sky at Paramount Studios. There, I had the fascinating experience of participating in the filming of a "party scene" which included three of the stars of the movie. I also had the distinct privilege of observing director Cameron Crowe as well as Scott Martin in his professional duties as associate producer. JARBOE : How long have you worked in film production in Hollywood? SCOTT MARTIN: I’ve been working in film or television since 1993, initially as a production assistant, then as an executive assistant and finally as an associate producer for Cameron Crowe, with whom I continue to work. JARBOE : Tell me about your work for the film, Vanilla Sky. You are credited as Associate Producer. What does this entail? SCOTT : This is a question I get asked constantly, "What the hell do you actually do?"People, especially my family, get very upset that I have a hard time defining it at any given time. I work with Cameron Crowe, who writes, directs and produces. My job is to assist him in any and every way I can. Something very tangible I produced last year was a DVD called Untitled. We were working on Vanilla Sky at the same time and Cameron had hardly any time to devote to the creation of the DVD, unless it directly involved his creative input, such as the audio commentary. So I took on the responsibility of shepherding that while he focused on the movie at hand. At the same time, I was helping Cameron with casting decisions, editorial decisions and day to day production problems, depending where we were in the process. Cameron has final cut and final say in every single decision regarding the movie, but he uses me as a sounding board to help work through problems. We have now done Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, and Vanilla Sky together, so I feel like I can contribute an opinion that honors his directing style and is best for the film. Also, I bring a lot of music into the fold. We play music on the set, during takes or between takes to help motivate the actors, or establish a mood. Cameron and I collaborate on that. We have very different tastes in music, so we are able to cover a lot of ground. He used to tour with Zeppelin and The Who and I used to skate to Swans records and Bowie’s Low. It's an interesting musical partnership that has, sort of, organically developed between the two of us. That’s why we can have a soundtrack like Vanilla Sky that contains artists from Sigur Ros to Rundgren to Leftfield. JARBOE : Is it true that within the Hollywood system most directors have very little control over their finished films? How difficult is it for a director to really be able to say, "This is how I would like to see my finished film" and actually have it be that way? SCOTT : Well, my experience working on major films is limited to Cameron's movies and he has absolute final cut of his work. I do think most directors do not exert final cut over their movies. There are very few true auteurs in Hollywood that can completely call their own shots when you look at the volume of movies that are produced each year. Most directors are guns for hire and come in to do a job, nothing more. The "filmmaker’s club" in the big Hollywood system is pretty small. You think of people like Tim Burton, Michael Mann, and the mega-guys like Spielberg. But, there aren’t too many. I have been at the monitor for virtually every take of every shot of our last three films and don’t even pretend to know about what it’s like to be the guy that has the final say on every aspect of everything. And the guy that has to live with those decisions long after everyone else is gone. JARBOE : You mentioned your involvement with the "Untitled" project. Tell me about your work on the book: Conversations with Wilder as well as the DVD of Vanilla Sky. SCOTT : My involvement in Conversations with Wilder was essentially to help give the book a particular look. While Cameron would be off writing orinterviewing Billy, I would be at Vinyl Films going through every frame ofevery one of Billy’s films looking for images. We have a video printer andI would freeze frame stuff I thought was interesting and print it up. Many of the images used in the book are directly from our VCR. Additionally, I had access to Billy’s personal photo collection as well as collections from friends and business associates. Cameron and I wanted the book to have a casual feel and be an explosion of images. We avoided the Paris Review aesthetic and tried to not be self-important. We didn’t want it to look like a textbook, although it should function as a textbook on some level, for people interested in film. Regarding the Vanilla Sky DVD, I put together a short film that acts as an introduction to the feature. It’s called Prelude To a Dream and I compiled it from audition tapes, wardrobe tests, behind the scene footage and various other sources. It was Cameron’s concept for giving the behind the scenes footage a bit of a narrative, rather than just slapping it on the DVD. We try to do something unique for each DVD we put out. |
 |
