..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Among the many life-and-death issues that tend to consume the minds of Hollywood’s deep thinkers during award season is the Motion Picture Academy’s requirement limiting to three the number of producers who can expect to hear their names read on an Oscar-cast as nominees for Best Picture. No one wants to be left out of the fame game, least of all the big-money boys … and girls.

In the wee hours of January 25, as the world waited with bated breath for word of this year’s class of nominees, the brain trusts behind The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby -- Ray having just beat the deadline with its list of three -- had yet to agree on who among them would make the final cut. Instead of hearing their names read live on national television, the producers of The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby got, “Nominees are still to be determined.”

To the amazement of no one, the sun actually rose again on January 26.

Seemingly, the backers of Finding Neverland and Sideways had no such problem … or, at least, one they chose to share with the media.

Under academy rules, adopted in 1999, if more than three people are credited as a producer, the Oscar will go to "those three or fewer who have performed the major portion of the producing functions." In the case of The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby, an executive committee applied Producers Guild of America guidelines to rule on eligibility, and the finalists were announced a week later.

For the viewing public, at least, the question of what a producer actually does to earn such an honor remains largely unanswered. Lawsuits often follow perceived slights in the process of awarding due credit.

For guidance, we turned to one of the uncontested nominees: Richard N. Gladstein, who, along with fellow producer of Finding Neverland, Nellie Bellflower, did hear his name announced on the morning of January 25. Even more happily for all involved, the picture --which profiles J.M. Barrie, the creator of “Peter Pan” -- also was nominated in six other categories, including Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction.

Gladstein, president and founder of the L.A.-based production company, FilmColony Ltd., traces his participation in Finding Neverland back six years, to a question asked by associate Gary Binkow, “Boy, wouldn’t it be an interesting idea to do a movie about J.M. Barrie?”

The answer, according to viewers and scores of critics, turned out to be a resounding, “Yes.”

“Gary was able to locate Allan Knee’s play and screenplay, ‘The Man Who Was Peter Pan,’ -- whose rights were owned by Nellie (Bellflower) -- and we sold the idea to Miramax,” recalled Gladstein, who was rushing to catch a plane to London and last weekend’s BAFTA ceremony. “We then proceeded to develop the screenplay that we had read.”

Prior to the formation of FilmColony, in 1995, Gladstein was head of production for Miramax Films, where he worked on such pictures as Pulp Fiction, The Crossing Guard, The Journey of August March, Ready to Wear, Smoke, Blue in the Face and From Dusk ’Till Dawn. Before that, he was vice president of production and acquisitions at Live Entertainment, and was involved in such projects as Bob Roberts, King of New York, Light Sleeper and The Bad Lieutenant.

In 2000, his work as producer for FilmColony and Miramax’s The Cider House Rules netted Gladstein his first nomination in the Best Picture category. In the ensuing five years, he also found time to produce or exec produce Duplex, The Bourne Identity, Levity and She’s All That, and he’s begun preparations for the comedy Paper Man, starring Paul Giamatti.

“The producer credits usually don’t really signify a whole lot, but in my case they do,” said Gladstein, who’s also served as director of acquisitions and distribution for Angelika Films. “On a project like Neverland, which I conceived and worked on day-to-day through development, production and post-production, I was the producer of the movie. If you’re an executive at a company or are involved to a lesser degree with a project, that’s when you get the executive producer credit.

“The Producers Guild has gone out of its way lately to ensure that a ‘produced by’ credit goes to the persons who are there physically, emotionally and spiritually, and work directly with the directors and actors when problems arise. Executive producers, who may shepherd a project through a studio or production company, also play a valuable role … but it’s different.”

Of course, executive producer credits also have been bestowed on individuals who’ve simply agreed to lend their names to an otherwise obscure project, required an additional incentive to act in or rewrite a film, taken money to pass along the rights to a particular property, offered financial, spiritual or chemical inspiration to cast and crew, and are blood relations to the major players. Given the over-sized egos involved at every level of the filmmaking process these days, it was only natural that the onslaught of names belonging to all the various real and honorific producers would start raising the eyebrows of credit-savvy audiences and become an embarrassment to the PGA and academy.

The breaking point over “credit creep” came in 1999, when five persons were allowed to came forward as official producer of Shakespeare in Love, including Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. The stage threatened to cave in under the weight of all the New York brass, which could have included at least three other people variously listed as producers of one strip or another.

"The title of producer has in the last 20 years become a bargaining chip, a negotiated perk, given to those who can extract it from the studios," said PGA president Kathleen Kennedy, when introducing a new program designed to limit credits. In October, the guild even went so far as to launch a "Truth in Credits" campaign, which includes advertisements featuring such producers as Jerry Bruckheimer and Star Wars creator George Lucas.

"Even in science fiction, the fiction should end when the credits roll," the Lucas ad read.

This heightened awareness of a widely perceived problem didn’t prevent Charles Evans Jr. from legally challenging his exclusion from the produced-by” credits for The Aviator. In a lawsuit filed in 2001, Evans claimed he was responsible for developing the idea and persuading Leonardo DiCaprio to portray Hughes, but was cut out of the deal by Michael Mann, who took the project to a studio of his own choosing.

A settlement put Evans’ name on the crawl for the final product -- alongside those of Mann and Graham King -- but it didn’t faze the PGA, which determined that he had no decision-making authority over the final film. The guild elected not to include Evans in the trophy presentation when it named Mann and King its producers of the year (Mann’s former deputy, Sandy Climan, also was left out). It was this lingering dispute that prompted the academy’s “Nominees are still to be determined” disclaimer on January 25.

Sure, the awarding of producer credits is one of those things about which 99.9 percent of us couldn’t give the proverbial rat‘s ass. Within the confines of certain zip codes of southern California and Manhattan, however, there are any number of well-heeled souls who obsess over the possibility that they’ll someday be among the finalists for an Oscar of their own.

If a credit dispute is the greatest disappointment one is forced to overcome in life … well, most of us would take it in a heartbeat.

If one looks very deeply into Gladstein’s resume on the imdb.com website, it’s possible to find several entries passed over in his publicity bio. They include three editions of the Silent Night, Deadly Night horror saga.

To the uninitiated, the chasm between slasher flicks and such brainy entertainments as The Cider House Rules and Finding Neverland seems as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. In Hollywood, however, there’s rarely more than two degrees of separation between anonymity and the cover of People magazine.

“During the shooting of Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, I became friends with the director, Monte Hellman, who’d previously made Two-Lane Blacktop,” Gladstein explained. “Seven years later, he called to say that he’d just read a script that he loved, but which he probably wouldn’t be allowed to direct. That film was Reservoir Dogs, and I brought it to Live Entertainment.

“The screenwriter was Quentin Tarantino -- who also directed the film -- and Monte was given an executive producer credit on it. So, good things came from ‘Silent Night.’”

Fast-forward 10 years or so, and the script that would be Finding Neverland.

Gladstein remembers spending the first year of the joint FilmColony-Miramax project re-writing Knee’s script with David Magee (also a 2005 Oscar nominee). Instead of documenting 25 years of Barrie’s life, they decided to compress several years worth’s of events into one.

Then, the exhaustive search for a director began.

“More than 50 directors passed on the project, and Miramax rejected some of the ones who did show interest,” Gladstein said. “Along the way, Marc Forster contacted me about his little film Everything Put Together, which was made for $100,000 and impressed me very much. We became friends, but there was no way Miramax would allow him to direct our film.

“Later, Marc would show me a rough cut of Monster’s Ball, which I loved. He said, ‘Now, can I direct ‘Neverland?’ ”

In the meantime, Gladstein allows, another 20 directors had passed on the project. After he screened Monster’s Ball for Miramax, Forster was hired to direct Neverland. Harvey Weinstein then contacted Johnny Depp, and, three months later, principle photography began.

(The gestation period for the film reportedly was extended another year, after Columbia Pictures pulled rank on Miramax over what threatened to be a concurrent release of Finding Neverland and its own adaptation of “Peter Pan.” Miramax agreed to delay the release by one year, in exchange for the rights to portions of Barrie's play.)

Kate Winslet jumped on board next, along with a cast of mostly British actors contacted when the production moved across the Atlantic. Dustin Hoffman, who plays Barrie’s American-born theatrical producer, came in very late in the game.

“Dustin wanted to do it for all the right reasons, but, I think, what got him excited about the project was the opportunity to work with Johnny,” Gladstein suggests. “We had heard through the rumor mill that Dustin wanted to work with Johnny, so we decided to see if the gossip was true. He said he’d love to.”

One of the peripheral benefits that come from being a producer -- or, at least, one who spends lots of time on the set -- is being able to observe the show inside the show. In this case, it came in the form of a mini-clinic in the art of acting … or, more to the point, a lesson in how conflicting artistic recipes can add spice to the broth.

Hoffman, who played the title role in Steven Spielberg’s 1991 take on Barrie’s play, Hook, is notorious for obsessing over virtually every aspect of the filmmaking process. Depp isn’t. Both are among the pantheon of today’s greatest actors.

“Dustin will come in a couple of days early, so he can sit down and talk with the writer, director … see the set … he studies everything,” Gladstein continues. “Johnny studies things, too, but on his own. I think he wants to come in fresher.

“Both are incredibly inventive, on the spot. Johnny tends to stay in the moment, while Dustin likes to churn it around with everybody.”

The job also puts a producer on the front lines of history, especially when it comes to observing talent at various stages of development. Already a perennial Oscar nominee, at the ripe old age of 41, Depp still has a lot of good work ahead of him.

“Johnny continually re-invents himself, but he makes it look effortless … he’s always fresh,” Gladstein adds. “Johnny has such a range, going through different periods, accents, worlds. He’s on top right now … still, you get the feeling he hasn’t reached his peak, yet … he has so much more in him.

“He’s not out to prove anything to anyone. He just wants to create wonderful characters and have a great time.”

Most critics have praised the movie, but some have been distracted by the old bugaboo of historical accuracy in biopics. It’s an evergreen topic of discussion, of course, but one especially germane in 2005, the so-called Year of the Biopic.

In her review in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis contrasted several points of facts and adaptation:

“In reality, Barrie was homely, barely cleared 5 feet and might have been impotent or just uninterested in sex. He met the five (not four, as in the film) Davies boys long before their father's death. Arthur died in 1907, after Peter Pan was mounted on the London stage, and Sylvia followed him to the grave three years later. Barrie's devotion to the children was such that he might have altered Sylvia's will so that he could take stewardship of the boys. He did, and the tragedies continued: one son was killed during World War I, another was an apparent suicide. Years after Barrie died, the 63-year-old Peter, yet another son and another suicide, threw himself under a train, having long hated his connection with his namesake. For this man who did grow up, ''Peter Pan'' was, as he called it, a 'terrible masterpiece.' ”

Even though Finding Neverland was advanced by the usual admonition about it merely being “inspired by” actual people and events, the film hones close enough to what’s known about Barrie that it smacks of biography. To this end, the producer repeatedly warned reviewers about lumping it together with the year’s other film biographies.

“That was never our intention,” Gladstein advised. “In fact, we included in our press kits information about the points where our film differs from actual events. We had no qualms about being inventive -- this was a story about the creative process, after all -- but it was important for us to stay true to the spirit of the man.

“We went to the history books and played around a bit.”

Of somewhat more concern, perhaps, was the very real possibility that audiences might see too much of the current Michael Jackson psychodrama in the extremely close -- bordering on creepy -- relationship between Barrie and the Davies boys. Historians have effectively cleared the Scottish playwright of any overt sexual misconduct, but, by fudging some of the facts, a filmmaker opens himself to accusations of possibly playing fast and loose with the more sordid details of an otherwise-honorable life.

Gladstein dismissed those fears, but conceded, “If we had just named the film Neverland, there might have been some concern that audiences would confuse it with all the stories coming out from Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Neverland is far more associated with Barrie and Peter Pan than a ranch in California.”

With domestic revenues of $40 million -- and growing, as more screens and overseas markets are added -- it’s difficult to argue with that theory.

- by Gary Dretzka

February 17, 2005