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Spike Lee Faces Fellini's 8-1/2

I don’t know very much about Spike Lee except that he’s a filmmaker, screenwriter, actor and probably a lot of other things and apparently a somewhat polarizing individual, people either like him or they don’t.

A few weeks ago I happened to come across his book, Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It – Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking[1].  I had not previously known about the book and now I’ve come to the conclusion it should be included in the curriculum of every filmmaking course.  

The book is a compilation of Lee’s journal while trying to make his movie She’s Gotta Have It and has the movie’s screenplay and the transcript of a lengthy interview of Spike Lee by Nelson George to sort of pad it out.

The Role of the Producer

I think the most valuable section is the journal which really describes the somewhat unsung role of the producer as a member of the production team.  The daily concerns with getting money, dealing with people who say one thing and do another, labs, unions, people who change their minds or ignore their commitments.  How many rolls of film to buy?  Why won’t the lab release the prints?  What do you mean they pulled the permit? 

On and on it goes, day and night, throughout the production.

I’m guessing that with success and a few dollars in the bank some of the more mundane financial problems are no longer a daily concern.  Personal experience, however, is that the problems remain the same except the numbers and risks get larger. 

Like Eggroll

The point is that filmmaking is indeed about f-stops and script revisions and montage and scoring and depth-of-field and transitions but it is also about budgeting and accounting and borrowing and due bills and lots of spreadsheets and meetings and legal stuff as well.  Back in the dark ages when I was in film school, there wasn’t even so much as an elective course in any of those producing things but that was also before the rise of the independent filmmaker and the attitude at the time was that the studio did all that stuff and it came “like eggroll,” a term-of-art at the time for things that always were included in deals, like the eggroll in a Chinese lunch. 

If there are aspiring filmmakers out there who haven’t read Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It, they should do themselves a favor.  The experience will provide a strong dose of reality  but it may also make them question their choice of career, perhaps not a bad thing.

My favorite producer-figure is still “Pace, il produttore” in Federico Fellini’s 8½.  He is introduced in the iconic scene as he strolls down the grand staircase at the spa hotel accompanied, as always, by his “L’amica del produttore” played by the stunning Annie Gorassini.

Her saunter down those stairs in Capri pants became the signature graphic for the film.  I’ve always wanted a “L’Amica del produttore,” especially one like Annie Gorassini but I think that’s one of those events that happens only in the movies, at least to me.

If you remember the movie, Guido, the director, bows before him while the producer is concerned mainly with lint on his hat.  But I also recall a snippet of dialogue toward the end of 8½ where, when all seems lost, Carini, the film critic, offers this consolation to Guido:

CARINI

Remember, Guido, it is a part of the
job of the Producer to lose money.

Of course, earlier in the film the same film critic is providing Guido with a critique of the screenplay which he says could be, “definitive proof that the cinema is 50 years behind the other arts.”

He could be right on both counts.

[1] (1987) Fireside Press