Rick Rosenthal (Transparent, Bad Boys, Halloween II) discusses wearing multiple hats in both film and television, and the efforts of his production company, White Water Films.
We talk about:
- Selling vs. Not Selling Scripts
- Bonding in Television vs. Film
- Producing vs. Directing in Television
- Working on ‘Transparent’
- Script Notes and Editing for the Long Haul in Television
- Improvisation and Mapping Out Seasons in Television
- “Is this Story a Movie or a Series?”
- Today’s Movies and Budgets
- Producing vs. Directing in Film
- Investing in Productions and Setting Expectations
- Balancing Film and TV Projects
- Casting Big Names
- Building and Maintaining Relationships
Quotes from the show:
“You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make a duck wear a saddle. I thought that sort of summed up Hollywood well for me.”
“Television needs… to sort of look at the way novels are structured and layered, and [how] things are set up and developed over time. Most television hasn’t been like that.”
“Your role as a producer… is to make sure that the ship doesn’t hit the rocks, or at the very least, doesn’t hit the rocks under full steam. Yet, at the same time, you have to give a certain amount of creative freedom to get dangerously close to the rocks.”