"Being a producer is not like being a doctor of psychiatry where you have to get a bunch of degrees to prove you can do it," says Larry Kasanoff of Lightstorm Entertainment. "The term varies because the job varies."

"A producer's job is never the same," notes Cary Woods, currently in New York producing Copland, starring Sylvester Stallone and Robert DeNiro. "You wear different hats on different movies. Overall, you do what it takes to get the movie you want made."

For a first-time independent filmmaker, producing means wearing different hats every day. For Paul Schuyler, it meant putting an ad in Dramalogue and Backstage for auditions on a "no-pay feature" he'd written about suicide, called Wasted. It meant maxing out his credit cards to finance the film, which he shot on weekends so he could keep his day job as a graphic designer. Now, as he's trying to edit the film together, it means arguing with a lab company that's withholding the last of his film until he pays them what he owes. He's also being sued by a car rental agency for an RV that was accidentally smashed during shooting.

"Producing is not something you can go and learn," says Schuyler. "There's no course you can take. The key, I think, is how you deal with people, and the tactics used to make them feel they're getting something out of it, too. It's about making mistakes and having the self-awareness of learning from what you've done."

Kathryn Arnold produced The Coriolis Effect, which won the 1994 Venice Film Festival's award for Best Short Film. Now she's getting ready to tackle her first full-length feature, Nevada, about a small desert town run by women, and the dynamics that take place when a mysterious female passes through. Getting the project off the ground took years of stops and starts. A foreign company agreed to finance the film, then went bankrupt. A domestic distribution company agreed to put up the money, but wanted casting approval. It insisted on "A-level" actresses, but to Arnold's dismay none of them would work for less than her regular fee "with an unknown director on a $5 million-dollar movie." So that deal, she says, "kind of faded away."

Various producers and directors drifted in and out of the project before Cineville, an independent production company, optioned the script. The casting process began all over again, this time with a budget in the $2-3 million dollar range. "This time the level of actors didn't have to be as high," says Arnold. She cast Amy Brenneman, Gabrielle Anwar, Angus McFadden, Kathy Najimy, Bridgitte Wilson and Karina Lombard.

Cineville then worked with a foreign sales agency, Storm Entertainment, that deals with distributors around the world. The agency set up an office in Cannes during the film festival and pre-sold Nevada to different territories.

"A lot of foreign sales distribution companies have what they call 'output deals' with each distributor," explains Arnold. "A distributor from Germany, a distributor from Japan and a distributor from the U.K. will agree to buy four films from the sales agent at, let's say, a total of two million dollars. Then the agent divides the money among the four films. If several of these sales can be acquired, you've got the budget for your film. You usually cover about seventy-five percent of your budget from foreign sales, and once you have those contracts from the sale, you bring them to the bank. And if you have a good relationship with the bank, the bank will then give you $2 million dollars based on $1.75 million in foreign sales. Then they do what they call 'gap financing,' which means they'll give you the additional $250,000 to gap the difference so you have a complete budget of two million dollars.

"This means your whole budget is covered from six foreign sales. When our film is completed, we'll have the rest of the world to sell it to. The domestic market is wide open, so if we make a great movie, the potential to make a huge sale and have everything become profit is very likely."

With financing and a cast in place, the next step, says Arnold, is getting bonded, which is "like a protection policy that low-budget films take out. Usually the banks require it because if anything should go wrong-if you're behind schedule, or over-budget, printing too much film-the bond company can come in and take over the production. Basically it acts like a policing force to make sure everything will be delivered on time and on budget."

Arnold hires key department heads, the director of photography, the production designer, the editor, the line producer, the unit production manager. These people, in turn, hire their own department workers, while Arnold works closely with the director and talent in the day-to-day filmmaking, all the way through to post-production, marketing, poster design, and release.

Not all producers remain with a film from conception to inception. "An executive producer can often be a 'godfather' to a project," says Albert Berger, who produced Crumb. Often you'll see smaller movies that are executive-produced by the likes of Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese or Robert Redford. Although these producers may not have physically produced the film, their names help to open doors for the filmmaker.

Berger and his partner Ron Yerxa, at Bona Fide Productions, were producing the Steven Soderbergh-directed King Of The Hill, a film based on the novel by A. E. Hotchner. They took the project to Redford's company, Wildwood Enterprises Inc., who agreed to executive produce the project. "With Redford attached, we took King Of The Hill to Universal Pictures and they financed the film," says Berger.

Redford's name also came in handy when contacting the author to obtain the rights to turn the novel into a screenplay. "Redford had a personal relationship with the author of the book," Berger explains. "For twenty years, Hotchner had refused to option the book, and the fact that Redford knew him, coupled with his stature in the film community, opened that door that allowed us to option the book and finance it."

Executive producers aren't usually involved in the day-to-day process of producing a film. "They often don't sit on the set," explains producer Jim Jacks (Tombstone, Dazed and Confused). "Their function can be as little as just getting the money. When I executive produced the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona, basically all I did was bring them to Circle Showcase, who put up the money."

Berger and Yerxa are currently executive producing Spree, an MGM/Showtime thriller now in pre-production. "In this case, we found the script and helped develop it. However, since we're working with producers that have a deal with MGM and Showtime, they'll be directly responsible for the day-by-day production of Spree. Once the film starts shooting in Vancouver, we won't be there." They could have insisted for a straight producer credit, but Berger says, "On some things, you recognize that if it's gonna take a lot of work and you've got four or five other things going on that you're more connected to, sometimes it's better to take a back seat."

"An associate producer credit is like a tip of the hat, something you give to a person because they've done good work on your movie," says Jacks, who gave cinematographer William A. Fraker an associate producer credit for his work on Tombstone. "He's been nominated for six Academy Awards, and we asked him to do the movie for very little money compared to his normal fees, so we gave him an associate producer credit for helping us out."

"When you get into producer credits like president of a production company, producer, co-producer, executive producer, associate producer," explains Larry Kasanoff, "sometimes it varies by function and, quite frankly, sometimes it varies by the deal."

Kasanoff is president and co-founder of Lightstorm Entertainment, a production company he started with director Jim Cameron. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was their first producing project together, and even though Kasanoff helped produce the film, he didn't get a producer credit.

"All the producer credits were in place contractually when I came into it," he says. "The film was already packaged when we started our company, but I spent every day, all day, seven days a week, for a year, doing anything I could to help get that movie done on time. I helped oversee production, dealt with the press, managed the cross-promotional efforts like the toy line and the other spinoffs we had from it."

For Kasanoff, producing Terminator 2 without a producing credit was "worth it just to get the experience of making a movie like that." With T2's success, he's never had to go without official producing accreditation. Kasanoff executive produced True Lies, produced Mortal Kombat and is now working on Mortal Kombat 2.

"The credit you receive on a film depends on what your relationship is to the company you bring it to, how important it is for them to make this movie, and what you're in it for," says Berger. "Whether you're trying to get a career in producing, or looking to make some money by getting a finder's fee, or just doing someone a favor. Sometimes you're a producer by virtue of the fact that you either found the material, or you brought something essential to it that helped get it made."

The day-to-day production responsibilities belong to the line producer, who is not usually involved in the development of the project. "A line producer most typically would get involved in a project when it's already financed and needs to be manufactured," says producer Marc Boyman (The Fly, Dead Ringers).

"He's more involved with the nuts and bolts of a movie," adds Berger, "like being responsible for the budget, working out deals with the unions, stuff like that."

Just as producing credits vary, producing deals vary, too, depending on a person's producer status. "There's a wide variety of independent producers," says Berger. "There are producers who do business all over the place and are free to work with whomever they want. They don't have a strong allegiance to a specific place. Then there are producers who have studio deals, either 'first look' or 'exclusive'."

A "first look" deal with a studio means the producer is usually given office space on the studio lot and fees to cover expenses such as script-development money. Any time the producer finds a piece of material he wants to produce, he's obligated to bring it to that studio for a first look. Should the studio pass on the project, it puts the script in what's called "turnaround," where the producer can take that project back and bring it to another studio.

An "exclusive" deal differs in the sense that the producer is tied exclusively to that studio, produces only for them, and receives a lot of money to be affiliated with them. On the downside, if the studio passes on the project, the producer can't take it anywhere else and the project dies-or gets picked up by a different producer for a different studio.

Lauren Shuler-Donner and her husband Richard Donner have a first-look deal at Warner Brothers. Their office is on the Warner lot, and they not only receive money to develop new ideas, or option novels and spec scripts, they also have access to screenplays already bought by the studio. "If you're an independent producer floating around out there, it's hard to get access to that material," she says. "So I very much like being attached to a studio."

At one time her company had an exclusive deal with Disney, but she vows never to be exclusive with any studio again. "At Disney, I brought them Dave and they didn't want to make it. Then I brought them Mississippi Burning and they didn't want to make that, either. That's when I realized I was not cut out to be exclusive."

After her three-year contract with Disney expired, Shuler-Donner was able to set up Dave at Warner's, but lost Mississippi Burning to producer Frederick Zollo.

Jim Jacks says his company, Alphaville, with partner Sean Daniel, has an exclusive deal with Universal. Unlike Shuler-Donner, he's very happy with the setup, which appears to be more like a first-look deal.

"Universal's been relatively generous about letting us make movies elsewhere. For instance, Tombstone was made with Cinergi and Disney. Michael, which we just wrapped shooting on, was made for Turner. In both cases they were scripts we developed at Universal. With Tombstone, writer Kevin Jarre came to me and said he wanted to make a movie about the real story of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. So we got financing from Universal for him to write the script, but when Kevin Costner announced that he was gonna do Wyatt Earp, Universal decided they did not want to race or get into any kind of battle with Costner and Warner Brothers. They backed off and let us have the project back in turnaround. We took it to Cinergi, an independent production company, who put up the money.

"With Michael, it was a disagreement between the director and the studio about casting," says Jacks of their Nora Ephron-directed film starring John Travolta and Andie MacDowell. "So in both of these cases, Universal was generous enough to say, 'If you can set it up elsewhere, go ahead.' They could have been really difficult and just said, 'Look, we insist on you changing the casting, so either make it this way, or no way at all.' Since we're exclusive with them, they don't have to give anything back in turnaround if they don't want to. They paid for the development of the script; they own it. They're the owners of Michael."

It is this kind of ownership that frightens many independent producers. Ross Bell and Joshua Donen of Atman Entertainment (The Great White Hype) are determined to have the best of both worlds. They produce studio pictures and use their own the money to fund smaller, independent films.

"If you do a film for a studio, you never own it," says Bell, who along with Donen is producing a remake of Tarzan for Fox Family Pictures. "The joy of making independent films is that you can end up owning the copyright. Eventually Josh and I want to have our own film library, and that will give our company value." This value would come when Atman sells the films from their library to "television in Poland, or cable in Argentina," thus prolonging the film's shelf life and putting money in the company's pocket.

On one hand, being tied to a studio is financially rewarding and, as Marc Boyman says, gives you credibility because "it portrays you in a light to others that says you're established." On the other hand, there's a trade-off. Albert Berger says, "We're starting to get a couple of projects at the same studio now; when that happens you think that maybe there's a way to forge an ongoing relationship with them, but once you start on that path you don't make culturally provocative films like Crumb anymore. You have to decide what's best for you."

What's best for Lauren Zalaznick is to stay independent. She's had success producing the independent features Kids, Safe, and this year's Sundance Film Festival winner of the Filmmaker's Trophy and Special Jury Prize, Girls Town. "It's tough to balance the corporate with the creative," she says. "I think I would probably have less control over projects that I physically produced if I was with a studio."

The need to have control over their art is why many actors start up their own production companies and produce projects they feel compelled to see on the screen. Robert Duvall recently produced A Family Thing with his company Butcher's Run Films. Jodie Foster produced Nell and Home For The Holidays with her company Egg Pictures. And Mel Gibson's most recent producing credit was Braveheart, through his company, Icon Productions. Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Kevin Costner, Bette Midler, Denzel Washington, Drew Barrymore and Alicia Silverstone are among many actors who are now producing through their own production companies.

Screenwriters such as Bob Gale, who wrote all three Back to the Future films, also produces through his company, Big Wind Productions. "I became a producer as a way to keep my hands involved in the scripts I wrote," he says. "I never had a producing credit on anything where I didn't have some kind of involvement in the writing." Gale sees producing as a way of protecting his writing. "It's like raising a child and then suddenly turning it over to strangers," he says. "You don't want to do that."

No matter what kind of producer you are, or what motives fuel your producing ambitions, film festivals are always important to a producer. Whether it's finding distribution for their independent films or making contacts and possible partnerships for future projects. It was at the Sundance Film Festival where Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa first met Steven Soderbergh, a meeting which, years later, resulted in King of the Hill.

"We stumbled into the first screening of sex, lies, and videotape and there were only fifty people in the audience," recalls Berger. Following the screening, they approached Soderbergh and made arrangements to meet with him two days later for coffee. "Each time his film showed during the festival, more and more people showed up at the screenings. By the end of the festival, agents were chasing him down the street and people were throwing scripts at him left and right. By stumbling into that early screening, we were able to start up a relationship that four years later resulted in a film."

"I go to Sundance to keep up on who's coming in and coming up," says Jacks. "After seeing Clerks at Sundance, I went up to Kevin Smith. [I'd] been involved with Raising Arizona, Dazed and Confused, and Tombstone, so Kevin was complimented by my interest in his work and said he'd be very interested in doing business with us." Jacks and Daniel ended up producing Mallrats, Smith's follow-up. Jacks also became familiar with Richard Linklater when he saw Slacker at Sundance. Months later, when a critic friend of Jacks mentioned that Linklater was trying to get "this American Graffiti in the '70s" off the ground, Jacks got in touch with Linklater and "we paid for him to come out here and tell us what he had in mind. Then we got the studio to finance it, and that resulted in Dazed And Confused."

Every producer hopes either to be or find the next Soderbergh, Linklater or Smith at film festivals. Kathryn Arnold plans on submitting Nevada to Sundance. But even when she's not entering her films in festivals, she still makes a point to attend them because "as an independent producer, you usually don't have money to spend on acquiring materials. You have to rely on your relationships with writers and producers who have the projects."

On remakes and sequels, a producer has other factors to consider. "The advantage of doing a remake or a sequel is that there's an original to look at, which gives you a sense of what it was, and what the new one could be," says Boyman, who's now in the process of remaking Morgan! a 1966 British film that starred David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave.

When Boyman produced the remake of The Fly with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, he had to make sure his version not only "appealed to the younger generation, but to the generation that had been familiar with the previous one. The original instantly gives you a known quantity that you start with and that can help give a focus around which to tell the new story. You use it as a benchmark to measure against the new one, and you hope that what you're creating matches or exceeds the previous effort."

The benchmark factor can either be an advantage or disadvantage, says Larry Kasanoff, "Even though you have a basis to start with, your challenge is: 'How do I give the audience what it wants, but also give it something new?'" Kasanoff says that with a sequel, if "you don't show people a movie that's close enough to the first one, they're gonna say 'What did you do?' If you show them a movie that's too close, they're gonna say, 'I'm bored, we saw that already.'"

Proper casting is also important to a producer for several reasons. "At the moment at which I know exactly what actor I have," says Boyman, "that will dictate, to a certain extent, the budget I'll get, which affects the level of filmmaking. One wants to match the project with an actor who'll not only help make the film work, but who'll give comfort to the financiers."

A name actor can help in more ways than one, especially for a nonstudio picture. "You try to use everybody's machine to your advantage," says Kathryn Arnold, who'll be doing just that with actress Amy Brenneman and Nevada. "Amy's gonna be coming out in a Stallone movie this November, and when she starts doing press for it, reporters will say, 'So what are you doing next?' And she'll say, 'Nevada,' which is great publicity for my film."

"In addition," continues Arnold, "By the time my film comes out people will recognize her, and my potential for making a great domestic deal skyrockets."

More than anyone else in film, a producer's job really does vary from project to project. In the end, though, certain qualities are evident in the best ones.

"You need the ability to stand back and see the big picture of what you're doing," says Lauren Shuler-Donner. "Which actors will make the right cast, how to market the film, and how to pull all those pieces together. You also need a sense of humor because a lot of things go wrong. You have to have a certain motherly quality too, because you end up taking care of everybody." MM

Zorianna Kit recently moved from Toronto to Los Angeles, where she writes for The Hollywood Reporter and other entertainment publications.