#6 - Rick Rosenthal (film director & TV producer) at White Water Films

TheProcess.Ink

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.”

“Investing in the movie business is this strange combination of buying a painting and going to Las Vegas.”

“If you do good work, that’s what it’s all about. It is about good work, but it’s also about understanding the advantage of having really strong personal relationships with people.”

“…If you really care bout the process, then the outcome will take care of itself. Even if it doesn’t appear to be the outcome you want, you don’t know that outcome, that loss as it were, isn’t pushing you to a greater level of process.”

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