“The way I became a producer was pretty f*cked, then I got lucky, then it was all pretty hard anyway,” said former Sony Pictures Entertainment co-Chair turned tentpole producer Amy Pascal during her sage and pragmatic acceptance speech for the David O. Selznick Award at the PGAs tonight. That sarcastic
The PGA’s David O. Selznick Award recognizes a producer or producing team for their extraordinary body of work in motion pictures. Tonight Pascal joined a distinguished line of recipients that includes Steven Spielberg, Barbara Broccoli, Billy Wilder, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Mary Parent, Tom Cruise, Martin Scorsese and last year’s Chris Meledandri.
The producer of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, Spiderverse animated trilogy and the upcoming Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary laid out a list of axioms for being a producer.
“All my life people have said relationships are bad for business, I really struggle with that,” she said paying thanks to every she worked with including, but not limited to “the Columbia Lady”, Sony Motion Pictures Chairman Tom Rothman, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Bela Bajaria, Amazon MGM Studios’ Mike Hopkins, Sue Kroll and Courtenay Valenti as well as PGA co-Presidents Donald DeLine (Pascal met him at UCLA and they “leapfrogged across West Hollywood from apartment to apartment) and Stephanie Allain (“allowed me to tag along with her to Aunt Kizzy’s back porch where I watched as she persuaded John Singleton to make Boyz in the Hood with us). She also gave thanks to her husband Bernie Weintraub, son Anthony, sister Jenny and producing partner Rachel O’Connor (“who when Sony got hacked, begged me to take her to wherever I was going”).
“How can it be possible that relationships are not at the heart of it all?” exclaimed Pascal.
“When I first became a producer sitting in the office I stole back from Seth and Evan, recently fumigated to get rid of the weed smell, I was wondering why directors and actors and writers no longer agreed with everything I said. Well duh. I was no longer holding that metaphorical green light gun in my hand.”
Beamed the current producer of the 007 movies, “Receiving the David O. Selznick Award from my peers and by my peers, I mean all of you in this room have the audacity to make things happen, well that is really something. But let’s be honest, the only thing the legendary David O. Selznick and I have in common is that we both write a lot of notes and both love uppers which probably explains all the notes.”
“Being a producer is sitting in the editing room with Chris and Phil having stayed up all night long, watching every cut of our movie, certain I have the most brilliant idea then politely listening and then doing something totally different and thanking God they did.”
“Being a producer is trying to do jedi mind tricks out of a port-a-potty wearing pairs of hand warmers.”
“Being a producer is sitting in a meeting hearing the germ of an idea and having the patience not to kill it before it even exists.”
“Being a producer is having the self-confidence or at least pretending that you do so that when Kevin (Feige) says I think I can help you, you let him.”
“Being a producer is falling in love with a book, the author choosing Plan B or Luckychap or David Heyman instead of you.”
“Being a producer is the shocking realization that you’re not gonna be good at everything and that some people are just better than you. You better figure out what you are honestly obsessed with and fight like hell to make it happen.”
“Being a producer is knowing that there is no such thing as a great movie without a great director.”
“And being a producer is knowing that no matter how bad things get, how many mistakes you make, and how many failures you have, it’s never really over no matter what anyone tells you.”
The honor was presented to Pascal by 4x Oscar nominee Greta Gerwig, the former having produced the latter’s Oscar winning Little Women and upcoming Netflix mega film, Narnia.
Gerwig spoke about pitching Pascal to allow the actress to direct Little Women. Gerwig was bowled over by how Pascal took a chance on her. Gerwig quipped that Pascal tonight is “honored, excited, and she wants to leave because she wants to go back to work.” Gerwig says Pascal gave her note about her presentation speech tonight, to specify that not all the films in her reel she produced. Some she greenlit (i.e. Superbad, This is the End, Men in Black) and greenlighting and producing are not the same thing.
Said Pascal at the top of her acceptance speech, “I knew how important Greta was gonna be to me when I told her my favorite book was the Little Fur Family and she said ‘Oh, my God! My favorite part of that book is the page where the little bear watches a tinier bear disappear down a hole and I gasped and said ‘Me too!’”
