The Misfits - Four killer producers on the cutting edge of
independent film by Paul Cullum
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/52/features-cullum.php

Producers are very misunderstood. Of course, there's a lot of pigs --
I won't mention names -- who sit in New York and buy every piece of
literary property they can and get a studio to pay for it. But people
like Don [Murphy] and Chris [Hanley] are really struggling, because
they have to do things on a very small level. Those guys are the
lifeblood of this industry, the fertility. So more power to them. We
need them.

--Oliver Stone,

interviewed for this article

It's about people who sell their work, but won't sell themselves.
Anybody who holds out is a misfit. If he loses, he is a failure, and
if he is successful, he is rare. This movie is about a world in
change.

--John Huston, from The Making of The Misfits

ONE LASTING EFFECT OF THE INDEPENDENT-film boom of the '90s is the
perception that all the interesting American films come out of New
York. Here, rather than being a Trojan horse that subverted Hollywood
from the inside, the indie cycle became a pretext for Hollywood
proper to do and say what it wanted, no matter how crass or
commercial the effort. American Pie? Freddie Got Fingered? XXX ? Why
not? There would always be some Harvey Weinstein or Scott Rudin or
Ted Hope or Christine Vachon back East to uphold standards.

And yet, interesting, oddball, even outré films still get made -- in
Hollywood, within the shadow and amid the crushing machinery of the
studio process. They always have. And for every director or writer or
actor who lends his or her talents to big films that wind up smart,
or to little films that turn out edgier or more subversive or less
programmatic than might be expected, there is inevitably an
independent producer, toiling in obscurity, who actually makes it
happen. These figures, surreptitiously or flamboyantly, inhabit an
ill-defined purgatory between management and labor: They impose
parental controls on wayward talent from above, while soliciting
creative concessions from skeptical studio heads from below.
Depending on the day, they're the nudges at the party, or the sore
thumbs in the boardroom. But they rarely belong.

This is the story of four of them: Don Murphy, who, with partner Jane
Hamsher, discovered Quentin Tarantino and brought his script, Natural
Born Killers, to Oliver Stone, and who now has a studio deal at Sony;
Chris Hanley, who has cobbled together foreign financing and "found
money" to produce some 20-odd eclectic projects featuring micro-
budgets and top-shelf talent; Stuart Cornfeld, who ushered David
Lynch into the studio system and put David Cronenberg on its map, and
who now runs Ben Stiller's company, Red Hour; and Steve Golin, who,
with ex-partner Joni Sighvatsson, founded Propaganda Films, a TV-
commercial, music-video and management company that launched many of
today's top directors, and who would like to do more of the same with
his new company, Anonymous Content. Between them, they have produced
some 70 movies, more often than not on a wing and a prayer. And they
all agree it's getting harder.

These people are misfits -- mavericks, visionaries, savants, bullies,
cardsharps, egomaniacs -- who follow in a tradition that stretches
from Samuel Goldwyn to David Brown to Ed Pressman and Keith
Addis/Nick Wechsler. They do it to get made the movies that nobody
else will make, or that they want to see made.

But still, given the odds and the obstacles -- to say nothing of the
seat at the big table they've given up for the sake of tilting at
windmills -- it's an odd way to spend one's life.

THE SCRAPPER
DON MURPHY AND THE ANGRY SMILEY FACE

DON MURPHY IS INDUSTRY POINT MAN for the geek Zeitgeist. Walk into
his office on the Sony lot, and you're overwhelmed by toys and
tchotchkes: Gigantor, a life-size Astroboy, Iron Man and Spawn and
Star Wars figurines. Accompany him to Meltdown Comics on Melrose, and
it's like Elizabeth Taylor strolling into Harry Winston -- staff and
management stiffen and enthuse, clearly in the presence of a
preferred customer.

So it should come as little surprise that following a string of
outsider opuses chronicling opera-buffo mass murderers, comical
junkies and dueling Nazis (Natural Born Killers, Permanent Midnight
and Apt Pupil , all with former partner Jane Hamsher), his current
slate should be focused almost entirely on the worlds of comics,
horror, science fiction and cult cinema. His last film, the Jack the
Ripper story From Hell, and his next, The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen , a Victorian sci-fi opus, are based on graphic novels by
Alan Moore. Meanwhile, he and partner-fiancée Susan Montford are
producing an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of
Madness with Guillermo del Toro, and an update of the Lee Madden
biker saga Hell's Angels '69, called Speed Tribes, re-purposed for
the phenomenon of Japan's underground motorcycle culture.

"He's a comic-book junkie from way early on," says Apt Pupil/X-Men
director Bryan Singer, a friend since USC in the late '80s. "He
understood the film industry early on too, but he never lost his --
for want of a better word -- geek status. He's the real thing. He's
always at the conventions."

In person, Murphy borders on physically intimidating -- 6-foot-2, an
Irish brawler with an asymmetrical haircut who speaks so fast it
often requires an aural double take. At his most manic, he seems like
a cross between Richie Rich and Godzilla -- a precocious 12-year-old
irradiated into city-crushing leviathan. But close your eyes and
listen, and the result is even more incongruous: With his halting
rapid-fire delivery, slight lisp and overrefined sense of justice,
he's a dead ringer for Rudy Giuliani. (Hamsher's nickname for him in
Killer Instinct, her tell-all of the Natural Born Killers roller-
coaster ride, is "hyperanxiety boy.")

The son of a well-to-do Long Island ad man, Murphy spent his
undergraduate career at Georgetown University as film critic for the
student paper and head of the campus film program. At the last
second, he dodged the bullet of Georgetown Law School and entered the
USC graduate film program, where Singer cut sound on Murphy's student
feature film. There, Murphy also met future partner Hamsher, a
sardonic ex-punk editrix (San Francisco's Damage fanzine), and their
faith in a stray script by the undiscovered Quentin Tarantino led
them to Oliver Stone, who not only committed to direct the Tarantino-
scripted Natural Born Killers with a $35 million budget, but
installed them as on-set producers -- the equivalent of a crash
course in filmmaking. "We wouldn't be where we are if not for
Oliver," Murphy says. "He had every opportunity to fuck me on
multiple occasions, and he didn't."

Another byproduct of the Hamsher book is that Tarantino, stung by
criticism, spotted Murphy dining at Ago on Melrose in October 1997
and -- looking for headlines, revenge or maybe just the cheap thrill
of the sucker punch -- began pounding Murphy in the side of the head,
forcing Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein, of all people, to act as a
mediator and pull them apart. The story became a Tarantino staple on
talk shows, and there was talk of a lawsuit before the inevitable
reconciliation. "Quentin and I are absolutely fine," states Murphy
for the record. "I wish him nothing but the best."

But somewhere along the way, Murphy's reputation as a hothead and
loose cannon was codified. Once JD (for Jane and Don) Productions had
disbanded, he settled on the shingle Angry Films.

"That's a joke," says Murphy, defending the moniker. "The stationery
has a really angry smiley face. I know what my reputation is in town -
- difficult, great taste, gets movies made. To me, that's fine. I'm
not trying to win a popularity contest. You don't get movies made by
being friendly. You get movies made by saying you have to make this
movie. There are so many people involved in making a movie, there's
so much petty bullshit and egos and personalities that get involved
that at a certain point you realize the only way is to just put your
head down and ram. It's not really about being liked. They like you
if you make a movie that makes $200 million. They like you a lot.

"Anyway, I have mellowed somewhat as I've gotten older. But at the
end of the day, I'm from New York. I don't have kids, I don't have
dogs, I don't have a big huge house with a pool -- and there are
easier ways to make money. I just want to make movies. So don't get
in my way, and I'll be your best friend. But if you get in my way,
don't be surprised if I smash this ashtray into your head. Maybe that
makes me a colorful personality."

And yet filmmaker Larry Clark (Bully), not noted for his affinity for
producers (he once punched Another Day in Paradise producer Stephen
Chin onstage at the Venice Film Festival), is borderline-ecstatic in
his praise: "I can't say enough about Don Murphy. I think he's a
great producer and a really good guy. I like him a lot. I think Don
and I are probably cut from the same cloth. We're determined to get
it done. Nothing's going to stop us."

"He certainly wants to make good movies," says screenwriter David
Goyer, "but I think he's trying to appeal to his own sense of what's
good and what's not, and he really doesn't give a shit what other
people think. Sometimes it makes him reckless, and sometimes it makes
him his own worst enemy, but he really fights for this, and he
doesn't care about the politics. The funny thing is, he's actually a
huge softie."

Maybe so. But according to screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who co-wrote
a project called The Book of Skulls with his brother Phil for Murphy
at Universal, "Don's a throwback to the old days of the bombastic,
bellicose, belligerent producer. Takes no shit from anybody. Does not
suffer fools gladly. But at the same time, he has this incredible
taste for the most out-there, insane stuff. There's not a whole hell
of a lot of mavericks in this day and age -- no Sam Peckinpahs, no
Richard Brookses. Or even actors -- there are no Lee Marvins, no
Robert Mitchums. Every now and then, though, you get an Oliver Stone
or a Mike De Luca or a Don Murphy, and it's refreshing."

Murphy is also the guy who has stood up to industry powerhouses like
Jerry Bruckheimer by threatening to go to the press. ("Years ago, I
was involved in a project at Touchstone, and because of the way it
was orchestrated, I think mostly by agents, it was putting me in a
position where if I didn't get out of the way, the very successful
Jerry Bruckheimer was going to cancel my Christmas. And I stood in
front of the tractor and said, 'You know, run me down, this is not
okay what's happening here.'") And when German financing entity
Senator backed out of financing a Manson biopic last year, Murphy
made sure its credibility suffered at every agency in town. ("You
know, you have your little checklist of people who must die? Most of
them now are people who fucked up that movie.")

MUCH OF WHAT SETS MURPHY OFF IS business as usual -- people so
mortified of being the bearers of bad news, to themselves or others,
that they refuse to return a phone call, or pass on a project, or
admit that their line of credit has come to an end. But his sense of
right and wrong also extends to matters that, arguably, he has no
business getting involved in -- and which invariably come back to
haunt him.

"I was developing a film with Mike De Luca at New Line that was
basically the Teena Brandon story," he says. "We knew there was
another project with Lindsay Law at Fox Searchlight, a joint
production between Diane Keaton's production company and Drew
Barrymore's production company. Drew was desperate to play the lead.
Also, Drew was best friends with [Fox chairman and CEO] Bill
Mechanic. So Drew and Diane had their rights, and we had these
rights. There really weren't any rights left. Then we heard that
[independent producer] Christine Vachon in New York was doing her
version of the story -- Boys Don't Cry. And Lindsay Law bought it.

"The worst thing of all was, the Chloë Sevigny character, Lana
Tinsdale, I'd gotten to know her through all of this. She was a nice
girl. She was fucked, because she was living in Bumfuck, Nebraska,
where people are calling her a dyke. And I said to Lana, 'You know
what? You need to meet this attorney I know, a really good litigator.
And I know they don't have your rights, because I do.' And she did
see them, and she did sue Fox Searchlight, and they settled.

"At the time, people told me I was crazy. They said, 'You're about to
start a film with Fox, and you're sending them lawyers?' And okay, it
did fuck me up. But it was wrong. Here's this 24-year-old kid who I
think they gave her maybe 60, 70 grand to shut up. Where she comes
from, that's a fucking house. At one point, the chairman of Fox told
me I'd never set foot on his lot again. Then, a year and a half
later, I was not only premiering From Hell for them, but the head of
the studio was no longer the head of the studio. He had his own
company and was buying projects from me."

Mechanic, who's gone on to produce The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen with Murphy, says diplomatically, "Well, you know, Don's an
excitable guy. He's fought for what he's got. He believes that is
what has gotten him there. As with anybody who fights for stuff,
sometimes they fight when they don't have to. I'm the one who kind of
banned him from the lot. There were some behavioral issues, in terms
of what I thought was inappropriate for somebody who was making a
movie for us. But," he sighs, "Don and I made peace."

"The one thing I have learned," Murphy says, "is the value of the
long-term. Should I kill this guy now, or should I just wait until it
presents itself later, when it's less overt? Should I get upset about
this or," in the words of Charles Manson, "realize that what goes
around comes around?"

[FILMOGRAPHY]
Monday Morning
(executive producer, 1990)
Double Dragon (1993)
Natural Born Killers (1994)
Permanent Midnight (1998)
Apt Pupil (1998)
Bully (2001)
From Hell (2001)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
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Stuart Cornfeld

THE HIPSTER
STUART CORNFELD: "YEAH, THAT WAS PRETTY WEIRD."

HAD HE NEVER BECOME A PRODUCER, Stuart Cornfeld would still be
remembered as the fast-food boss in Fast Times at Ridgemont High , as
an enduring symbol of minimum-wage humiliation. "Hamilton, you're
going over there as a representative of Captain Hook's Fish and
Chips," he tells a laconic Judge Reinhold, who's about to change out
of his pirate costume. "Part of our image, part of our appeal, is
that uniform . . . Show a little pride."

"He produced my student film at the AFI," says the movie's director,
Amy Heckerling. "As far as working with him, he's the most fun guy in
the world. He just looks like the world's worst boss -- especially in
a pirate outfit."

Coming out of the American Film Institute in the late '70s, Cornfeld,
at 23, was reportedly the youngest producer of a studio film up to
that time (Fatso, starring Dom DeLuise, but still). It was a short
walk from that film's director -- Anne Bancroft -- to Mel Brooks,
Bancroft's husband, and Cornfeld's employer for most of the '80s.
Soon after, he began sharing an apartment with legendary hipster
Mason Hoffenberg (Terry Southern's collaborator on Candy), just then
in the latter stages of heroin addiction. It is between those two
poles -- borscht-belt comedy and bohemian rhapsody -- that Cornfeld's
hipster sensibility was galvanized.

With his bald pate, red beard, roly-poly physique and power-casual
Hawaiian shirts, Cornfeld vaguely resembles Santa Claus if he had
spent his early years as a pot farmer on Maui. He grew up in
Hollywood, and his first conscious memory is of appearing on the Art
Linkletter TV series Kids Say the Darnedest Things -- which he did
twice, both times managing to broach the subject of death. His
mother's cousins played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, and at 12, he
himself appeared in the religious short subject The Day the Temple
Disappeared , which, he says, instilled in him to this day an
aversion to moral absolutism. His father was an efficiency expert at
Mattel toy manufacturers, and in some ways, Cornfeld inherited the
family business: He's still the guy in the toy store charged with
making the model trains run on time.

After getting a psychology degree from Berkeley and a series of odd
jobs on the periphery of show business -- managing the Ash Grove rock
club in Santa Monica before it mysteriously burned down, opening mail
for Joni Mitchell, taking the U.S. Census along the seamier stretches
of Hollywood Boulevard -- Cornfeld found his way to what would soon
be christened Brooksfilms. There, he and fellow assistant Jonathan
Sanger decided to set up a script by Sanger's baby sitter's
boyfriend -- The Elephant Man -- and dragged Mel Brooks to the Nuart
on opening night to see David Lynch's Eraserhead.

"Mel's reaction to it," Cornfeld remembers, "was, he said to
David, 'You're the only guy who truly understands what parenthood is
about.' Mel used to call himself my 'mentor-tormentor.'"

"Stuart's a talented guy," says Brooks. "He was very prescient back
then. He showed me this weird flick, and I got it immediately. So I
said, 'Stuart, set up a meeting with me and this guy David Lynch,
whoever the hell he is.' I really expected a guy in a cape, kind of a
Max Reinhardt type. And in walked Charles Lindbergh -- close-cropped
hair, white shirt buttoned at the neck. He couldn't believe I was
serious about having him direct something.

"Stuart goes through a lot of strange transitions. Some of them are
physical -- he gains weight, he loses weight. He's a crazy guy. If
Franz Kafka had worked the Improv, that would be Stuart. Living with
his demons, only a tortured soul could come up with such creative
flights from it."

While at Brooksfilms, Cornfeld also produced David Cronenberg's The
Fly , which ended up being the highest-grossing film in America for
three weeks running. "Stuart's a fantastic guy," says
Cronenberg. "He's very witty, very well-read, and he's got a
ferocious intellect. So in pre-production, when it was conceptual, he
was terrific. But when it came to actually figuring out how to be a
producer, I think he was still learning. And I had already figured
out pretty much how to be a director. So Stuart is the only producer
that I've ever thrown off my set. It was kind of a friendly throw,
but a throw nonetheless."

Cornfeld also logged time at Barry Levinson's Baltimore Pictures
alongside veteran producers Gail Mutrux and Mark Johnson, where he
produced Kafka for Steven Soderbergh and Glenn Gordon Caron's little-
seen Wider Napalm . Offered the job of head of production at New Line
in 1990 by Bob Shaye -- the job Mike De Luca eventually took -- he
instead opted to suspend his career as a producer, to write and
regroup. (That hiatus produced at least one memorable screenplay -- I
Have Smelled the Future -- co-written with Bryan Higgins.) Later, he
returned to AFI to teach part time for several semesters, and among
his protégés was future Pi director Darren Aronofsky.

"I can understand why Stuart is reluctant to call himself a mentor,"
says Aronofsky, "because Stuart definitely tried to treat us as
equals. But when I showed him an early cut of Pi, he was the first to
give me a confirmation from Hollywood that this could actually play
outside my mom's basement. And when I first wanted to do Requiem for
a Dream, it turned out he was a huge Hubert Selby Jr. fan, and he
said, 'You've got to do it!' just at the time when everyone else was
saying, 'Why don't you do something more commercial?' People who have
taste and a conviction of what's good and what they like, that's
worth its weight in diamonds."

Finally, through the intervention of longtime friend Bill Horberg, at
Sydney Pollack's company Mirage Productions, and writer Jerry Stahl,
who had approached him for notes on his long-planned adaptation of
Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run?, Cornfeld came to the
attention of Ben Stiller, just then bathed in studio attention from
There's Something About Mary and looking for someone to run his
production company, Red Hour.

"He's just a very interesting guy who has a really eclectic
background and interests," says Stiller. "I liked his sensibility and
I liked his taste. He's really good at working with writers and
understanding how to make a script better, in both a specific and a
general sort of way. Because he's a writer, he has a real respect for
it."

For his part, Cornfeld consistently downplays his own efforts and
denies having any overriding agenda. "I like movies," he says. "It
doesn't go too far beyond that. I've always looked at myself as a
footnote in other people's films. I do outsider stories -- that's
just kind of my fundamental paradigm. I don't know if it's because I
was a fat kid or what, but you look at the times that the movies were
really good, it was in the '30s, when the European émigrés came over
who had a view of America that was both cynical and optimistic. They
had an outsider's perspective, where they felt detached enough to
comment on what was going on. The '70s was the same thing, because of
the them-and-us countercultural fault line that was in place. Once
again, these were outsiders saying, 'This is not what I'm a part of.'"

IT IS CORNFELD'S ENDURING WIT THAT makes him both a friend to writers
and the front-runner to be the modern Herman Mankiewicz, whose bons
mots once summarized an era. Many of Cornfeld's best lines border on
the aphoristic: "If you want to see how well someone can write, take
a look at their arbitration letter." "The blank page is God's way of
letting you know how difficult it is to be God." Or the
enigmatic: "I've got plenty of irons in the freezer."

"He's also the king of the obscure metaphor," says screenwriter John
Hamburg (Zoolander, Duplex ). "When I first got to know him, I would
nod like I understood, but it would never make sense to me. Or
anybody you mention, he'll say they're the smartest, the best, the
whateverest in Hollywood. Harold Ramis: 'Hands down, smartest person
in Hollywood.' He does this completely seriously, under the
assumption that everyone knows this. 'The thing about Ben Hecht is,
he had the smallest hands in Hollywood.' 'David Cronenberg makes the
best seared tuna in the business.'"

"He knows every musician, every band, every book, every writer, every
author, every random figure," says Nancy Juvonen, president of Drew
Barrymore's company Flower Films, which just co-produced Danny
DeVito's Duplex with Cornfeld and Red Hour. "And literally, casting
with Stuart is like being dropped off in Taiwan and trying to find
your way around. It's all these names, to where you're going, 'I
don't know this person. Please let me know just one.'" Screenwriter
David Goyer, Cornfeld's longtime neighbor, adds, "Stuart has had one
of the most storied lives I've run across. Anybody who is remotely
interesting, Stuart's a good friend of: Ricky Jay, David Lynch, Jerry
Stahl, Karen Finley -- whoever they are, they know Stuart. One time I
asked him what's the strangest thing he's ever seen, and he was
apparently playing poker with Barry Levinson and Herve Villaichaize
one night, and they decided to go fishing, so they rented a boat off
the Santa Monica Pier. And Stuart looked up at one point, and Herve
Villaichaize had caught a barracuda, and he was wrestling with the
barracuda in the boat, stabbing it with this big huge knife he used
to carry, this life-and-death battle going on. And Stuart kind of
nodded and said, 'Yeah, that was pretty weird.'"

Yet after 20 years in the film business, Cornfeld resolutely declines
to lay blame with either those who make the decisions or those who
prosper by them. "Over the course of my career," he says, "I've only
met two studio executives who were really stupid. Everybody else was
smart enough to get in the room. So I don't look at it like I'm this
great guy with amazing taste. It's just that my real enthusiasm is so
much better than my fake enthusiasm. I just can't get it together to
be that kind of cheerleader, because when I do, my voice and my eyes
totally fucking let me down. I just broadcast desperation. If you
make some morally corrupt film that makes a shitload of money, if you
give $600,000 to Cedars-Sinai that's going to save kids with cancer,
[then] at the end of the day you're not really beating yourself up
for having done a movie that's all about things going boom."

[FILMOGRAPHY]
Fatso (1980)
The Elephant Man
(1980, executive producer)
The Fly (1986)
Kafka (1991)
Wilder Napalm (1993)
Mimic (co-executive producer, 1997)
Zoolander (2001)
Duplex (2003)
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Chris Hanley

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THE MAD SCIENTIST
CHRIS HANLEY ON DRUGS, CYBERPUNKS AND SERIAL KILLERS

WITH HIS BUSTER KEATON DEADPAN and wild tangle of hair behind thick
black Philip Johnson glasses, the soft-spoken Chris Hanley most
resembles a European intellectual, or perhaps a mad scientist engaged
in experiments involving small animals and electricity. A world
traveler -- his Web site, www.musefilm.com , features extensive
photos from Tokyo, Phi Phi Island in Thailand and the house he keeps
in Lamu, Kenya -- Hanley has speech patterns that reflect an eclectic
host of influences, from brain chemistry and chaos theory to his
former lives as an electronic musician, art dealer and karaoke mogul,
as well as the colorful figures he has encountered along the way.

From a beachfront loft in Venice, Hanley's Muse Productions, which he
runs with his wife, Roberta, has produced roughly 20 films in a mere
decade, luring adventurous, often first-time directors with the
promise of final cut, and attracting major actors at far below cost
with challenging material unlikely to get made elsewhere. Muse is
currently awaiting the release of three features: Love Liza, starring
Philip Seymour Hoffman as a grieving widower who takes up gasoline
huffing; Spun, the story of speed tweakers in Portland; and Tiptoes,
a comedy/melodrama from Freeway writer-director Matthew Bright in
which Gary Oldman will appear computer-composited with a dwarf body
double.

"Chris and Roberta's life is just like an Interview magazine
article," says a former employee who wishes to remain anonymous. "The
whole Warhol '80s, 'Look at all the crazy people around me, isn't it
cool' kind of thing."

"Chris is from outer space," explains Larry Clark, for whom Hanley
produced Bully with Don Murphy. "He definitely is from another
planet. But it's what makes him interesting, I guess. And somehow he
has the knack for raising money for these difficult films."

Born in the upper-middle-class suburb of Montclair, New Jersey, where
they shoot exteriors for The Sopranos , Hanley -- the son of a
dentist and a dancer with the New York City Ballet -- became an
itinerant student at Columbia and Oxford (briefly) before settling at
Amherst College in western Massachusetts, where he collected degrees
in literature and philosophy. It was at the affiliated Hampshire
College's electronic-music lab, which featured the first sequencers
and drum machines in the country, that he met his future wife.
Relocating to Manhattan, where he and Roberta spent most of the '80s,
Hanley found his way into the downtown "no wave" noise-music scene,
where he formed a company called Intergalactic Music, initially
providing vintage guitars and synthesizers to musicians like John
McLaughlin, Heart, and John Entwhistle of The Who. Intergalactic
later opened its own studio and recorded contemporary acts such as
Afrika Bambaata, Soul Sonic Force, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, the
Ramones, and Blondie minus Debbie Harry.

Soon, as an offshoot of Intergalactic and financed, in part, by a
thriving art dealership (on occasion, he paid people with Warhol
paintings), Hanley formed Rock Video International to distribute the
first music videos in Russia, the Eastern Bloc and Japan -- and then,
reversing direction, brought karaoke to the U.S., producing more than
400 video clips for the burgeoning fad. In the latter capacity, he
wound up hiring practically anyone in New York who had an independent
feature to his or her credit.

In February 1992, the Hanleys closed out their various businesses and
relocated to Los Angeles, first stopping off in London long enough to
produce Split Second , a subpar Rutger Hauer action film financed by
Roberta's father, a London banker. It put them on the map. "We worked
with Harvey and his gang at Miramax," says Hanley. "The entire net
worth of the company was a pumped-up $6 million. At one point,
actually, Harvey came to our house in London, and we could have
bought 50 percent of Miramax for $6 million. We called our friend
Gary, who worked with Paul Allen, who put October Films together, and
he said, 'Oh, man, they're so much in the red. That's a dangerous
investment.' Then The Crying Game came out."

Relying on New York contacts, Hanley quickly partnered with Nick
Wechsler, of Addis-Wechsler, on Steve Buscemi's Trees Lounge .
Through Wechsler, he met Matt Bright, who dragged him to a meeting
with Oliver Stone, who in turn impulsively offered to produce
Freeway, a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood , starring Reese
Witherspoon, and Kiefer Sutherland as a serial rapist. Hanley tapped
his New York music pal Vincent Gallo to direct Buffalo '66 and
partnered with New York producer Ed Pressman on Two Girls and a Guy,
and American Psycho (to which Leonardo DiCaprio was infamously
attached for a heartbeat, before reason prevailed).

TODAY, MUSE CARRIES BETWEEN 15 and 20 projects at any one time, many
of them literary properties, including, at present, two Philip K.
Dicks (Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and A Scanner Darkly); one
J.G. Ballard (High Rise); current literary pinups Amy (A.M.) Homes
(Music for Torching and In a Country of Mothers) and J.T. Leroy (The
Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, to be adapted-directed by Asia
Argento); and Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim. "There's a drug
genre, a cyberpunk genre and a criminal genre," says the
aforementioned former employee. "Everything fits into one of those
three. At one point, we had 10 books, and six of them were about
serial killers."

For fear of having projects stranded in turnaround, Hanley avoids
development scenarios, preferring to retain the rights and use the
studios to finance them upon completion under a negative pickup or
production deal. Consequently, his financing tends to come from
wherever he can find it, often a loose, overlapping consortium of
foreign entities in the Canal Plus orbit. Describing the division of
labor at Muse between himself and Roberta, Hanley says, "I'm the
president of Muse Productions. She's the chairman. Chairman's higher.
She probably produces as much as me, but she makes me do the
hardcore, in-the-trenches stuff -- financing and on-the-set. She gets
the screenplays going, and she's written several of our properties,
or co-written them with people. I have to work the festivals more,
hang out with Wild Bunch, Studio Canal, and do more of the traveling
into Germany, England, Paris, Madrid, closing the deals. I'm pretty
good with legal things. But Roberta and I trade off
constantly."(Roberta also directed Woundings, based on a Jeff Noon
play.)

"I think there's a kind of parallel world that Chris inhabits, of
random bankers and found money and instinct and openness," says
director James Toback (Two Girls and a Guy). "And it's not really the
so-called independent world, because that phrase has ceased to mean
anything. There's an almost Don Quixote-like courage to persisting in
it, because it's so out of step, really, with what drives movies
ultimately, which is money and marketing."

"In some ways I'm seen as being subversive, but it's not my
intention," says Hanley. "I didn't come out here trying to fight the
system. I just assumed that if you had an interesting idea, it would
be well-received. I think the brilliant moments in all of history
would be like what they say in complexity theory -- right at the edge
of chaos. It's not actually chaotic activity, but it's near-chaotic
activity, where mutations take place at the most frequent rate. My
films are kind of like these little mutations. I don't calculate what
a contemporary audience is looking for. I don't think about that. I
could, by accident, choose that, but that's not what's causing me to
push something. Blair Witch, to me, was an exploration of minimalist
filmmaking. I mean, as a former art dealer and artist, I think, this
is great -- half the movie is a shot of leaves on the ground at
night. What could be more interesting to me? But I don't understand
why anybody else likes it."

[FILMOGRAPHY]
Split Second (executive producer, 1992)
Trees Lounge (1996)
Freeway (1996)
This World, Then the Fireworks (1997)
Two Girls and a Guy (1998)
Buffalo '66 (1998)
Woundings (1998)
The Virgin Suicides (2000)
American Psycho (2000)
Bully (2001)
Love Liza (2003)
Spun (2003)
Tiptoes (2003)
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Steve Golin

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THE LIFER

STEVE GOLIN: "FOR GOOD AND AGAINST EVIL"

PERHAPS MORE THAN ANY OF THE producers profiled here, Steve Golin is
equally at home with small, quirky upstarts (Being John Malkovich)
and strictly ä commercial fare (Beverly Hills 90210). And it is
precisely such properties as Charlie Kaufman's Malkovich -- legendary
scripts within the development community -- that aren't likely to get
made without the intervention of a name producer or studio executive
who takes it on as a personal mission.

"Not only can Steve break down doors," says Steve Unger, Golin's
former assistant and now an agent at ICM, "but he also knows which
doors to go through. And he overcomes obstacles brilliantly. I'm in
awe of his ability to get things done. Producing is a relationship
game, and he's proven that his are long and fruitful."

Like Don Murphy, Golin is the son of a successful New York ad man, a
biochemist in Rockland County who specialized in medical advertising.
After NYU film school, Golin transferred to the AFI producers
program, where he met Joni Sighvatsson, a former Icelandic rock star
who'd been up at Berkeley on a Fulbright scholarship. After producing
several best-forgotten titles -- Hard Rock Zombies, American Drive-
In -- together to ramp up their learning curve, they formed
Propaganda Films in 1986 to capitalize on the cresting music-video
wave. At its height, the company produced some $50 million in revenue
and more than 150 music videos annually, or roughly one-third of
those being aired. Yet unlike others at the time, Propaganda managed
to leverage its production skills and contacts into an R&D process
for feature films, incidentally launching the careers of many of
today's top Hollywood directors -- David Fincher, Michael Bay, Spike
Jonze, Dominic Sena, Simon West, Antoine Fuqua, Mark Romanek and
Michel Gondry -- and adding commercial production and management arms
along the way.

They also produced half a dozen dark, edgy thrillers, much of early
David Lynch (Wild at Heart, the Twin Peaks pilot) and, although no
one remembers it today, misfit-auteur director Todd Solondz's first
film, Fear, Anxiety and Depression.

"Joni and I were definitely like fire and water at the end," says
Golin, reflecting back on a split that still carries battle scars on
both sides. "Joni likes to wind people up, and I basically had to
calm them down. It was a little bit like Ronnie Meyer with Ovitz. I
admire Joni, and I think he's very clever, but we ran out of steam.
We had very similar skills, and I think that we complemented each
other very well. We still have a very interesting shorthand between
us that I don't have with anybody else."

"I think it was a very successful partnership," says Sighvatsson,
choosing his words carefully. "And I always felt that a big part of
the things I have managed to accomplish in America are due to my
partnership with Steve. So I look back on it not necessarily with
nostalgia, but with great fondness."

After Sighvatsson left to head Lakeshore Entertainment in 1995, Golin
and Propaganda produced The Game for David Fincher, Portrait of a
Lady for Jane Campion, two films by Neil LaBute (Your Friends and
Neighbors and Nurse Betty) and Spike Jonze's first feature, Being
John Malkovich.

"You know, I grew up with a lot of directors," says Golin. "I've been
friends with directors for a long time. I try not to fuck people
over, and I try to do what I say I'm going to do, and pay people what
I say I'm going to pay them, and do all those things that build up
trust -- and it takes a long time to do that. My job is to back
filmmakers. Postproduction is the place where I can have the biggest
effect on movies. If I have to get involved during production, it's
bad."

In person, Golin is the opposite of eccentric, his New York
intimidation factor effectively muted by the slightly rumpled,
slightly comical persona he employs to allay skittish moneylenders
and artistic temperaments alike. Those who have worked with him
invariably cite his honesty and directness.

"He's a great conduit between all the disparate kinds of people who
get together to make a project work," says Neil LaBute. "Business
affairs, musicians . . . he's got a hand in all those worlds. But he
doesn't have six different faces that he wears. He doesn't slip into
his heavy eye makeup with Marilyn Manson and then back into his
Brooks Brothers shirt to talk to the attorney, or into a large plaid
shirt to talk to me. He has this absolutely specific and unique
taste, and yet it doesn't guide his every move. He doesn't dress
eccentric or drive a strange car or have a secret handshake. He has
good taste -- and the good sense to be normal."

"He's really straightforward," says Spike Jonze. "I think on the
financial side, people are probably calmed by him because he's
practical in terms of knowing what their situation is. And with
filmmakers, he has opinions, but he's also supportive. He's honest,
and he genuinely cares." Adds Malkovich screenwriter Kaufman, whose
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Golin is currently producing
for the newly formed Universal Focus, "I like his taste, and I like
his honesty. He's a direct, decent, honest person. I think that's
rare in any position. People lie to you about everything, even about
whether or not they like your work, just to keep in practice, or
more, to keep you under their control, to have you on their side, or
as a friend, or whatever they need to have you as. From the two
movies I've been involved in with Steve, I feel like I trust him."

"Look," says Golin, "everybody's for good and against evil. Everybody
wants to make good movies. But at the end of the day, Hollywood is a
place where a lot of people -- a lot -- live by their word. A lot of
deals get done here on your word. I think people in Hollywood are
basically straightforward and honest, as much as the system allows. I
really do. I mean, if I give my word, that's it, and I expect the
same from other people. And I'm not disappointed too many times."

IN 1998, PROPAGANDA WAS SOLD TO Universal as part of owner PolyGram's
divestiture of its film assets, and then to Barry Diller's USA Films,
before being taken over by a consortium of private investors in 1999,
at the peak of the free-money bubble. Golin was summarily fired, and
replaced by former William Morris agent Rick Hess. Two years later,
the company collapsed. By then, Golin had formed a new company,
Anonymous Content, which similarly sought to subsidize feature-film
production with ancillary businesses -- commercials, music videos and
talent management. The company currently enjoys a first-look deal
with Universal Focus and a second-look deal with Ridley and Tony
Scott's Scott Free Productions. But despite Anonymous Content's
innovative forays into advertising, such as BMW's online series of
short films/commercial spots directed by people like Guy Ritchie,
Wong Kar-Wai and Alejandro González Iñárritu, the studios have only
recently begun to respond to the company's material.

"We started at the worst possible time," says Golin. "It was right at
the end of the whole Internet bubble, stupid money, blah blah blah.
The first year, there was a massive commercial strike for six months.
The second year, there was a de facto writers' and actors' strike.
And then there was 9/11 and a big giant advertising recession. It's
been a tough time. And it's been five times the amount of work I
thought it would be -- five times, without fear of contradiction. I
honestly think you can't count on what you could count on before. The
business is a lot tougher. If I had it to do over again, maybe I
wouldn't do it. I mean, I'm glad I did it now. But I couldn't do it
again. I don't have the energy."

Although he has been reluctant to comment on it up to now, he is
referring to what amounts to an open secret within the hermetic film
community: In January of this year, Golin was diagnosed with bone
cancer, one of the most corrosive and resilient of all cancers. Yet
after eight months of intensive treatment, including a grueling,
intensely painful surgery, he seems to have put the worst of it
behind him.

"I was diagnosed in January, and I had chemo and radiation through
June," says Golin. "Then I had surgery in August -- they actually
removed my shoulder blade and replaced it with titanium. When they do
that, they cut a lot and take out a lot of bone and whatnot. I'll
never be able to raise my arm over my head -- I can almost raise it
straight, but not quite. Then I had to have two more rounds of chemo,
and now I'm done. Everything with the surgery went according to plan,
so they're optimistic. But who knows? I've learned a lot about
everything having to do with this, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst
enemy. But everybody's been really sweet. That's the thing about
Hollywood. When you're doing well, everybody's a bunch of assholes,
and when you're doing shitty, everybody's really nice."

In assessing a life lived in the trenches, Golin cites as role models
inveterate lifers such as David Brown and Saul Zaentz, or his friends
Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner at Working Title, or Ed Pressman, "who is
really the grandfather of it all. He's probably not that much older
than I am, but he's somebody you really have to admire. He's done it
for a long time.

"The biggest thing that any producer has is tenacity," Golin
says. "Because literally, every day, there's a thousand people
telling you why it isn't happening, there's a thousand bad words.
Call an agent, they don't get it -- they don't like the script,
they're not giving it to their client, their client doesn't like it,
the client lost it, it went to the wrong address, every goddamn
thing. You have to keep at it. I think if you really, really want to
be a producer, you just have to hang in there. You can never quit.
Once you fixate on that, you're ahead of every other idiot in
Hollywood. David Brown is 78 years old, and he's still doing it.
That's genius. That's what I want to do. There's no retirement.
They'll put you out to pasture eventually; nobody will take your
phone calls, because all your friends will be dead, or you'll be
dead. But this is what you do."


[FILMOGRAPHY]
The Blue Iguana (1988)
Kill Me Again (1989)
Fear, Anxiety & Depression (1989)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Madonna: Truth or Dare
(supervising producer, 1991)
Candyman (1992)
Kalifornia (1993)
Fallen Angels (1993)
Red Rock West (1994)
The Portrait of a Lady
(associate producer, 1996)
The Game (1997)
Your Friends and Neighbors (1998)
Nurse Betty (2000)
Bounce (2000)
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2003)