When we talk about producer Christopher Newman, We are talking about one of the personalities of the audiovisual industry who is behind the success of titles such as Game of Thrones, with which he won 4 emmy awards, o The Lord of the Rings: the rings of power, the adaptation of Tolkien's universe that Amazon presented last year, blood brothers, Bones o Roma. But Newman's work begins in the seventies with titles such as Star Wars and other movies like Superman (the first, con Christopher Reeve), Peter's friends, Much ado about nothing, What remains of the day, Notting Hill, Love actually, Match Point o Oh mama. Newman was passing by the LabdeSeries festival that is being held this week in Valencia to give a keynote talk to the public, today friday 28 at 6 p.m.. at The Film Library. Taking advantage of your time in our city, The media chatted with him about his work as a producer and many other things..
In general, I think the majority of the public does not know what a film or television producer is.. For a start, Could you describe to us what the producer's job is??
The production title covers a variety of jobs, and they can all be different depending on the project. A producer can raise the money for a project, you can buy the rights to a book, etc. But, above all, is the person who takes the project from the written word to the screen. I say that the best definition of a producer is someone who carries an idea, a book, a script, from page to screen. The director, of course, is the one who films it, but the producer is the one who starts with the idea. At least, I like to think that's how things are.
You are the producer of game of thrones, but you have also worked with Woody Allen. What is the difference between a large production like game of thrones and a small film like Allen's cinema?
Bueno, actually it's the same because there is a camera, There is an actor and there is a story between the two. I think part of the job, after having done so many projects, is ignoring the size of something because, in the end, It all comes down to what happens in front of the lens and microphone and what appears on the screen.. Everything else is noise. So the size of something shouldn't scare you or distract you from what the work is about.. The work is the story. The advantage I have of having done so much is that I think I can filter out the size noise better., precisely because I had that problem when I was younger. Now I have learned to avoid that. The advantage of having someone who has experience, is that that experience will help the film in ways that are unknown when that venture begins. There is a quote from Aldous Huxley that says: the experience is not what happens to you, It's what you do with it.. That's important.
Since you've come to talk about fantasy, and looking at your resume, what is the difference between a series like Game of Thrones y The dark crystal, in which you also worked?
(laughter)
I mean, how has fantasy changed, your language, in general since then?
Bueno, It is interesting to compare the two because they were both quite innovative, in your way. The dark crystal It was very unusual. The story is very simple, It's like many stories, It's good versus evil, the important thing is the journey you take. Sometimes I think that the difficulty of making a film with puppets is that, if you are not careful, You can get caught up in how to do something and forget the importance of the story., because you spend days and weeks figuring out how some puppets, they don't have muscles, They can carry something from one place to another. In The dark crystal there were no visual effects like we have now. So I couldn't trust to fix things later, in post-production. So, having to do real things made you try harder. In game of thrones, We obviously had more money and more skills., but the beginning of telling the story, without depending on artifice, it's the same. In other words, It's about old-fashioned storytelling and how we do it without breaking the bank.. In The dark crystal It was something similar because, in the same idea of making it, the possibility of ruining us was already implicit because no one had done it before. George R.R. Martin wrote stories that are based on the reality of a land in a time of civilization that we can all relate to.. It wasn't a place we'd never been, so if you are a fan of Game of Thrones you can go to the places where we filmed it. You can't do that in The dark crystal. So I think the trick to telling a fantasy movie is to make sure it feels so real that you think you've dreamed it.. It is not so dissociated from your own experience. And so, the experience, it could be your imagination. It sounds very simplistic, but I have told people that, if you can get an audience to use their imagination to complete the story, to continue with the story, you will succeed because there are not many people who find fault with their own imagination. You are not going to criticize your own imagination. When you are a child and you play a game, that game is the best game you can imagine. You don't end the day and say: “That wasn't a very good game.”. Because you are inside your imagination.
Do you think the audience is the same or has it changed since those days when you did The dark crystal?
I think the public generates expectations in two ways. When you go to any cinema or on television, you want to hear a story that you like. If you see something that is advertised as having a show, so the expectation is to be impressed. And the effort to impress people means that you are trying to create things that people have never seen before. And that can cause you to end up with a final result that is not part of the story, because all you want to do is impress people. There was a silent film director named Allan Dwan, who compared watching a movie to the pyramids of Egypt. There are only so many shots you can take of the Egyptian pyramids before they get boring.. The pyramids of Egypt are wonderful, but not too much. So the most interesting point, In fact, It is the story of a slave who works in the pyramids. It's not the pyramid, he is a spectacle in himself. You have to be careful. But this is all my opinion. I don't know Louis B's opinion. Mayer.
I was thinking about you and I remembered a book by William Goldman, the screenwriter: The adventures of a screenwriter in Hollywood. In the book he comments that there is a moment in the world of cinema in which company executives begin to have a greater influence on projects than creative teams.. Sometimes it seems that it is very difficult for a creative to see their project as they have conceived it at the end of the process.. How do you see the industry at the moment?? Is this the same thing that Goldman said?
Bueno, The key to this is the fact that it is a business. you have to earn money. There may be a difference between old Hollywood and now, but, even so, They had to make money and there was always someone's point of view that would affect the story. The writer creates something and then complains when someone changes it. And they're probably right., but, because it's a business, If you are going to get into that business, you have to accept it. Unless you want to pay for it, someone else can have a look at your work. I think the interesting point is finding where the two things come together., when the money you want to spend corresponds to the quality of the story. And that's what we're all trying to do now. The problem is the amount of things they are doing now on television. It's like a gold rush. Everybody's looking for gold, but some people are making money by selling the shovels. The services of streaming They are making money by putting products and, for that, they only need a large amount of products. I think it's like night follows day, inevitably the product will not always have the same quality because there are different criteria, different type of movie, different actor cost. There are many things that go into the decision., but I think in old Hollywood you could say that there was also a person who made a decision, whether it was Louis B. Mayer, Warner Brothers o Irving Thalberg, a classic. He was a genius. Or that's what we read. we don't know. Did he alone decide that this was the film to make or did he have another opinion?? There are many things that go into having an opinion on anything.. In my case, If I get a script, I have to be excited. If I get a script and I can't stop turning the page, So I know it's a good script.. I don't have to be a movie genius to know this.. I was lucky to work at Charlie Wilson's War con Tom Hanks. When I joined the project, They were already filming in Morocco and I read the script written by Aaron Sorkin. I read it on the plane and it was page by page, I couldn't leave it, he was compulsive. The story was very interesting. Although it may only interest me. Summing up, if i had to make a movie, I would like to work on something that I would like to do and in which I hope to bring more people with me. game of thrones, they did it like this… To David Benioff and Dan B. Weiss [creators of the series], they loved the books. They were convinced they could turn it into a compelling television series. At no time did they think: “We are going to conquer the world of television”. Simply, You're doing the best job you can do with the story..
With all this growth of the platforms of streaming offering products, Do you think it is more difficult now to have great success?
It is a space that is full of people. So you must be confident, Or maybe you are the beneficiary of the word of mouth on social media that makes your program successful. How is it so full, How do you get your audience to hear about you?? Con game of thrones there were huge posters. That doesn't happen so much now because it's very difficult for the health services. streamig know where they have to put their effort when selling. Where do they leave it so that it is on the shelf? In the old days, you went to a video club and chose a movie to watch. The trick was for the filmmaker to place his tape on the shelf to pick it up.. If it wasn't on the shelf, no one was going to catch it. It's the same problem that exists for streamers, and it is that, when you turn on your home page, something you spent on 200 millions, you want people to look at it. Y, Luckily, that's why people subscribe. But there are too many things out there. Maybe The rings of power helped Amazon gain a subscriber base because people were curious. But it's a double-edged sword.. How much does a curiosity cost? So I must keep an eye on it. It's not how good the story is, I have to see it. When we did blood brothers, HBO knew that they were not going to make money with it as a project because it was going to go to television. But it helps attract people, they want to see it, so they buy the service. It's a showcase for the rest of your things. blood brothers It was the first project in which they decided they could sell the DVD box afterwards. Nobody was doing that in the 2000. Nobody's making boxes now, of course. DVDs are no longer bought, but the idea of a collection arose from that series. And it was only because it was a unique experience. Just doing it was an extraordinary experience.. The characters, The narration… I don't know anyone who hasn't seen it and didn't feel it was a great series.. So that's a long-winded way of saying I think it's a very crowded scene., but there will always be something that becomes an event. A story will always appear that is attractive and will capture the imagination.. Although it's hard to deal with because, as i say, there is a lot.
You talk about social networks, How do social networks affect a producer?
Bueno, I don't enjoy any of that, so I don't read anything. I prefer Greta Garbo's point of view, What is “leave me alone?”. For example, I think there is more mystery around actors the less you know. I don't want to know what Matt Damon does on his day off.. I don't do it, because I don't want to think of Matt Damon as Matt Damon. I want to think of him as Jason Bourne. I may be alone in this, but I think that, the less you know about an actor, more convincing is in his interpretations. I think that, if you know how everything works, then you are less interested. In the natural world, you may be interested in penguins and how their social life works. It's interesting, but you're not going to go see them move, unless you go see Happy Feet (laughter). It is the same as knowing the daily life of the actors, I think they must be mysterious. If you are someone who is a product of social media, whether on game shows or reality shows, so, of course, It's something different because you're feeding the public with that.. But in the case of actors who give themselves completely to their performance, I don't want to know anything else. I read biographies of actors like Spencer Tracy. Nothing you've read about Spencer Tracy as an actor and Hollywood star ruins his work. For me, will always be that character. If you know too much about people, You're always thinking about your real life when you're looking at the screen. Real life should never get in the way of the story. And social media sometimes torpedoes that..
Returning to fantasy. Why do you think there are so many people who like fantasy today?? Is it an escape from reality or the opposite?
Yeah, I guess it's human nature to want to escape the reality of the moment.. How do you escape that reality?, It's an individual thing.. Sometimes for me it's about finding a good story to watch, I also watch movies. It doesn't have to be a fantasy from another world or another time.. When I say fantasy it's not just about people who can lift things, or jump things and fly. I was a big fan of the comics I grew up with., but it was a slightly simpler time. I love the original movie Superman because it evokes a time and a place, and we all spend time looking back. The older you are, the more you look back. And that seems nice to me. I find that Lawrence of Arabia It's a fantasy movie, but people would never call it a fantasy movie. It's a story about something, and someone has told that real story about a real person and you can experience that in the same way as if you were watching Christopher Reeve fly for the first time. It's that moment of emotion. Seeing Peter O'Toole walk on the train with the sun behind him... It's the same thing Superman says to Lois Lane: "Don't worry, I have you” And she tells him, “if you have me, who has you?"Those kinds of moments bring joy to my brain.". It's a visual stimulus and if I can find those moments and be part of those moments in any film, that's great.
You named one of my favorite movies: Lawrence of Arabia. To finish and return, as you say, to the past, I would like to ask you the last question. It's a personal curiosity. you worked in Orlando de Sally Potter. I think it's a wonderful movie. How do you remember that experience??
Bueno, When I took over the film they had already filmed a part. The assistant director had to leave, so I joined the team. Bueno, I can't tell you where we join in the narrative., but they had already filmed the ice sequence in London, which was made in St. Petersburg, when the thames freezes. I didn't film any of that., but I did a lot of things around the house, not long after Orlando became a man and I was lucky enough to continue. We went to Uzbekistan to film in Khiva, which is one of those cities on the Silk Road, That is to say that we are talking about Marco Polo. So, Yeah, It was an incredible experience. And then I made another movie with Sally because we enjoyed working together.. But Orlando It was a highlight for me.. I was very lucky to get the job.. when I say luck, I mean I was in the right place at the right time.. And it was a challenge because there was very little money and it took a long time to do it.. The hairstyle, the makeup, The locker room was big and that took a long time and then, of course, you have fewer hours to film. But I really enjoyed the movie.. It's not for nothing, but my son's name is Orlando. It wasn't because of the movie, but we liked the name. Although I like the idea that it was for the movie.
