Producers are both revered and maligned in the industry – described as both facilitators and gatekeepers, enablers and note-givers. But they’re some of the hardest working people on the team, navigating the money and the politics that makes everything else possible.

The Hollywood Reporter sits down with six top awards season filmmakers — Peter Chernin, Eric Fellner, John Lesher (Birdman), Marc Platt, Cathleen Sutherland (Boyhood) and Emma Thomas (Interstellar).

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Oh, and if you have some more time, and would like to learn more about Pete Docter, check out this one hour video!

So here I am about to approach three years in L.A. (June 10 to be exact) and I feel the need to share my journey once again despite completely falling off the radar for well over a year with this confronting piece of my Hollywood sojourn.

As I look back, it’s been an up and down rollercoaster ride full of trials, tribulations, emotion and adventure. But then what else was it ever going to be. While I have disappeared for months at a time (across social media, email and more), I am still alive, I’m still kicking, and I’m still flying the flag as best I can.

 To be honest, that’s not always been easy. In fact, it’s been bloody hard at times.

 There have been days where I have wanted to be anywhere else but this city. I’ve not left the country, let alone this state, in the three years I have been here, and if you know me you know how much I love travel. So it feels like I have been going stir crazy. 

 But I found some solace as I discovered but then subsequently lost a relationship – my first here in the U.S and my first in over three years. And while I look back on that year we had with mixed emotions, I can only smile and say thank you to one very special woman who took her own serious leap of faith, and embraced me and my journey and in the process turned me into an even greater version of myself than I could have ever imagined. I am forever changed as a result. 

 But she wasn’t the only woman I had to say goodbye to that year.

 I lost a grandmother and step sister all within six months of each other last year but I didn’t go back. I was super close to my gran and she used to take great delight in reading these articles. I miss her, and writing postcards from abroad just isn’t the same.

I left Australian shores knowing I may never ever see her alive again. But it was with her gentle words of encouragement that I was able to make peace with that cold, hard reality.

 When she died last Mother’s Day, not only did I cry as the news filtered through, but I also had a beautiful vision of her that morning. She appeared before me and whispered: “Keep writing.” It was a profoundly affecting vision.

While all this disquietude, chaos, and loss was going on around me, somehow the only thing keeping me sane was my writing. And thank fuck! Because I am not sure where I would have been without it.

 I found myself sinking into a slow depression-like state during July yet I kept writing. My relationship was breaking down all around me but still I wrote. My grandmother passed, I wrote. My step-sister slowly had her life taken away after battling a brain tumor for years, more writing.

In the space of that one year, while my entire world was collapsing around me (even now I can shed some tears if I allow myself to reflect), my writing was my saviour. I wrote more than I ever have, I became more professional than I’ve ever been, and I churned out four feature scripts over the course of that year. One of which I pitched and which subsequently beat out over 40 other submissions vying for the gig.

 After my relationship broke down I also found myself in the position of moving out of the only apartment I had ever known during my entire time here. I stepped up as a man and offered my ex-girlfriend the space. A space that no longer felt like home. A space that allowed her a better chance to survive in this town than me.

I then found myself in North Hollywood, and while that sounds glamourous, it really isn’t. There are two very distinct parts to North Hollywood. The cooler, funkier ‘Arts District’ and what is unaffectionately called, “the ghetto”. Somehow I went from the clean, green, central beauty of Studio City, to a dirty, dry backwater Mexican suburb (nothing against Mexico).

From a private, spacious, comfortable apartment for myself and my girlfriend, to a smaller, cramped two bedroom place with two other guys – one of which slept on a couch in the lounge room.

 At times I have felt embarrassed by my living situation but this town can be brutal and sometimes you are forced to go backwards to move forwards. But when you are freelance copywriter and the Australian dollar drops (and hard), you are forced to make some serious changes.

 I hated going to bed alone. I didn’t like where I now found myself. I was miserable.

While I never ever lived above my means, I had to go where I could afford. It made me withdraw even further and made me truly understand the definition of humble, but what was more important, to look myself in the mirror and ask some very genuine, honest questions of myself.

 But it has all served to only strengthen my resolve and succeed where many others would have failed, fled or simply given up.

 My year turned and I met and fell into the most amazing, supportive writing group I have found during my time here, after I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a new writing program I applied for.

 It was the first time I felt ‘home’ among like-minded people. A writing group that despite my repeated searches and hopes, I had never ever found in the two years prior.

 And now this group of people I can call friends. How I have craved that. As I retracted from the outside world, I found my friendship base here shrink. In part due to changing dynamics as others disappeared, while a couple of others put their head down to become more professional themselves but also because I was seeking something deeper from myself, my writing… my heart.

It’s a writing group that’s made up of some talented and successful people where I have seen their valuable input and feedback further enhance, improve and rocket my writing skyward. A group of only seven other people who I get enormous pleasure from in so many ways. I cannot thank them enough.

Somehow I overcame a very tough, emotional year and became not only a greater writer for it but a kinder, more sincere, more authentic and honest me.

It’ll be three years in June since I first made the leap, and it’ll be three years I will celebrate in my own quiet, genuine way as I look back. I’m thankful for how far I’ve come, for what I have achieved, for where I now find the level of my writing, but most important of all, where I now find myself as a man.

So raise a glass and cheer on a man who continues to stare down this town. A man who is not afraid of a single thing. A man who will not make up the numbers. A man who will succeed. Because I have faced hardship, loss, death and yet I continue to smile and write.

Here’s to an even greater year of writing, greater success, greater wealth, and so much more as I continue to pursue dreams, my passion, and love.

– Mark Rasmussen

Mark Rasmussen

Mark Rasmussen has been a professional writer for over 15 years. He has written and produced three short films (two of which have IMDb credits), as well completed four features. One of his films ranked inside the Top 10 for the World Wildlife Fund competition (WWF). He is currently working on three feature scripts, two book adaptations, a TV pilot, and a web-series, as he increases his thirst for great writing and storytelling.

To celebrate the return of the king (of television), we take a look at a 2012 interview with Game Of Thrones creator George RR Martin as he discusses finding his earliest inspirations in the DC and Marvel universes, his experiences as a novelist, and finally his entrance into Hollywood as the creator of one of TV’s most successful shows.

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“I’m just a writer, so I get to avoid the fundraising and groundwork…”

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Writing better dialogue from John August on Vimeo.

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Of the top ten budget films of 2014: seven have been sequels, one has been a reboot, one has been an adaptation of an existing comic book, and the last (Maleficent) is an adaptation of a long-standing Disney classic.

This is not to say that original films are not being made. Only that the films with the biggest budget, talent, and marketing are re-using their ideas more often than your last clean shirt on laundry day.

How much longer can studios reinvent the same ideas over and over? A visit to the Cracked offices might tell us more…

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The Monuments Men, a film with a heavyweight cast – Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, even John Goodman – is the result of a collaboration between George Clooney and Grant Heslov (with whom Clooney collaborated with for Goodnight and Good Luck). But is it a vanity project, an impending disaster, or a genuinely good flick?

Both actors, both producers, and both lovers of Art with a capital A, the two talk about the battles to preserve culture from the erosion of war and the of men who fought them; and plucking amazing stories from the annals of history.

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‘There’s no way that I could ever compare a movie of mine to the films that formed me… people say you’re a master at times… but the beauty of it is that you never really know. Part of the fun and the fear and the anxiety of it is that you find out as you go along.’

In a fast-paced interview, Martin Scorsese (Wolf Of Wall Street) talks about why he doesn’t want to watch his own films, and the mastery of filmmaking.

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Screenwriter Bob Nelson got a job in TV by writing a spec script for a feature film – that was made 7 years later as a little $2 million project directed by Alexander Payne. Nebraska (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821549/).

If you’re wondering how to get a foot in the door of Hollywood, either in TV or film, you could do a lot worse than half an hour with Bob Nelson.

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by Tim John

I lost my own home in LA because I found the film business too hard to navigate year after year. It’s easy to do – because Hollywood can be bizarre. Many know it as “Sodom-on-Sea”. Pauline Kael called it “the only town where you can die of encouragement”, buti t’s still possible for new writers to make a fortune.

Here are a few lessons I learned the hard way…

Be careful who you “get into bed with”.

I’m talking about choosing a writing partner. One of my lawyers always tells clients to think far more carefully about choosing a business partner than they do a wife.

Know your audience.

Hollywood is not about making movies, it’s about marketing movies. Even Indie producers need to know which audience will pay to see your picture.

Hollywood is like McDonalds.

People go to McDonalds, in their millions, every week, because they know what they are going to be served. It’s something they like, it’s reliable, it doesn’t disappoint. It may not be the greatest thing they’ve ever had, it may not be something to sing and dance about, but it’s enough to satisfy them at that particular point.

That’s what millions of people want from the movies too. Sure, if you can throw in a little something extra, a nice surprise like a little toy or extra side dish, great – but a lot of film makersthink they can take America by storm by presenting an entirely new kind of meal with only a token bit of McDonalds thrown in. That hardly ever satisfies the American appetite.

On the other hand…

While there is no surefire recipe for a hit, there is certainly one for a flop – trying to please everybody.

Even Indie producers need to know which audience will pay to see your picture.

Acquire balls (if you don’t already have them).

I once went to a pitch meeting dressed in a home-made Red Indian costume I’d made with my kids. It seemed appropriate – it was for a story about dads and kids playing together more. I figured nobody would laugh at me because the meeting was at Universal Studios. Surely people would just think I was just a movie extra in costume.

Unfortunately, five minutes before I arrived, the producer phoned to say we had to meet in a Hollywood restaurant instead. I arrived wearing full war-paint and feathers. Curiously, they bought the pitch. Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Be confident but never cocky.

Never be what Hollywood people call “Too smart for the room”. But don’t be self-effacing either. “El Laysians” just don’t understand irony.

I once went to a meeting at Disney with a writing partner and when we got there the main executive said “Great to meet you. We’re looking for some funny writers” to which I replied, self-effacingly, “Then you should meet the guys I play tennis with, Dick Clement and Ian Lafrenais. They’re really funny”.

Not only could the man not see that I was joking, but as I left the meeting, his assistant took me aside, handed me a business card and whispered “If you keep having self-esteem problems, call this number. She’s my shrink and she’s really good”!

Never get complacent.

“Writer” is only one letter away from “Waiter”.

Curiously, they bought the pitch. Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Always leave them wanting more.

Never pitch your entire story, just the feel of your movie. Act out the trailer. And if you find public speaking tough and you choke on your words, pretend it’s because your story is so moving. As a senior Disney executive once said to me, “Nobody ever walked out of a movie because it was too emotional.”

Make sure you stand out.

But don’t be remembered for the wrong reasons. I made the classic mistake of taking along a prop to a series of pitches – a human prop – a ventriloquist. It seemed liked a good idea because the story was about a kids’ entertainer. But I’d forgotten that whenever you show a performer an audience, they automatically perform, even when you don’t want them to.

I’m still haunted by this guy’s puppets constantly interrupting me during my pitch to show off funny voices, tell jokes and yes, even sing a duet! Even more scarywas the moment I gestured for the ventriloquist to stop and he replied “Don’t blame me. It’s them!”

Never forget

You could be mixing with some seriously devious players. Of the many stars who allowed me to quote them in my book, I think David Mamet summed up the industry best when he said “Film is a collaborative business – bend over.”

Keep it real

Draw on real life for your writing, not just movies.

Enjoy the process.

Enjoy coming up with a great line of dialogue or fixing a single scene. Don’t let your only measure of “success” be seeing your name in lights. Most of my work is doing re-writes and polishes. They rarely get your name on the credits or on Imdb, but people often pay handsomely for writers to do what they love doing.

-Tim John

Tim wrote a few sketches for TV’s “Spitting Image”, co-wrote “The Max Headroom Show” series, worked with George Harrison HandMade Films and worked as a script doctor for most studios.

Tim tweets daily about the business @TIMJOHN1.

“Adventures in LaLa land”, his funny and refreshingly frank memoir about life as a writer in Hollywood, is available on Amazon.

Jamie Campbell

Jamie Campbell is an author, screenwriter, and television addict.

Jamie is proud to be an Editor for The Story Department.

Her latest series Project Integrate is out now.

jamiecampbell.com.au