Melbourne Herald Sun, 15th December 2009
In a world of stars and celebrities, spare a thought for the producers - the hard-working business men and women, maybe a bit like you, who have the courage to take risks and invest their meagre funds on someone’s talent.
Take Seymour Stein. This legendary record producer was in a hospital bed when he heard some Madonna demos and signed her on the spot, in 1983. A year later he risked accusations of heresy by pairing Madonna with a new song Like a Virgin. The rest is history.
Stock Aitken and Waterman were a production team in London. The Neighbours “wedding” of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan had been watched by half of Britain in 1987. The Aussie girl had a good voice and they thought they could put her through their “hit factory” and make a buck or two.
But when she arrived they had forgotten she was coming. While she sat in the waiting room they wrote a song that she could immediately record. I Should Be So Lucky became a number one hit around the world. And the rest is...
Perhaps genius is coming up with the smart idea at just the time when it is needed, so it’s pretty close to luck. In the history of music and theatre, luck has been ever-present.
In 1786 the hottest property on the European stage was playwright Beaumarchais. When Mozart offered the Imperial Theatre a musical of his most popular play, they snapped it up bidding 450 florins - three times the annual wage Mozart used to get back in Salzburg. The opera Marriage of Figaro became a big hit.
Seventy years later the hottest stage play was The Lady of the Camelias by Alexandre Dumas. Composer Guiseppe Verdi snapped up the rights to make a musical. “We’ll call it The Prostitute, that’ll bring the punters in.” Sure enough La Traviata became one of the most successful operas of all time.
The point is, great art is often the result of good business. History glosses over the fact that these geniuses were businessmen, just like Cameron Mackintosh producing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, which has become the most successful entertainment project in history. It’s still running in New York and London 24 years later.
The producer’s job is to find a great idea and develop it with the most talented people he can find. Sometimes it means taking a risk - usually because he can’t afford the price of the established people in the field. Then he applies an obsessive demand for the very best production values.
My personal experience of this was back in 1979 in a small production studio in Elsternwick where I made commercials. In the next suite a curly-haired doctor worked obsessively over the film editing desk cutting together a movie he was making for a ridiculously small budget.
But he gathered in the most talented actors and crew in Australia - the young ones he could afford - and cast an unknown lead called Mel Gibson. We watched this movie coming together over his shoulders and were increasingly impressed - it was much more intelligent and better made than the shlock we had imagined.
When Mad Max was released later that year it took Australia by storm, and then the world box office to the tune of $100 million. Miller was not just the director but the producer, along with his mate Byron Kennedy. Which just goes to show you how important a brave producer is in making history.
ray@ebeatty.com
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