At the recent press day for Stardust, I asked former Warner Bros. executive turned independent producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers, Shooter) about the phenomenon of the runaway producer’s credit, and how the moniker is now passed out seemingly willy-nilly, to every actor’s manager, studio vice president, star’s family member or what not. It was unusual and a very big deal a decade ago when Face/Off had nine producers; now that runs about standard for big studio projects and genre fare. Recently, Material Girls had 19 credited producers, for Chrissakes.
Still, despite the gold-foil-star absurdity of it all, di Bonaventura doesn’t see a way to fit the genie back in the bottle. “I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it,” he says. “A lot of people are granted producers’ credits for different parts of the function, so what’s happened is that there’s been a sort of dilution of what it means to be a producer. …It was resolved in terms of how many people could go up and be presented an Oscar, but in terms of how many people get credit on a movie, there’s no contractual limitation on it.”
“There’s vanity credits, sure,” di Bonaventura continues. “But the truth is that there are a lot of people who don’t go on set who make great contributions to movies. So it’s a tricky [situation], because it’s not clear-cut who’s doing what. If you bought the project and you put the director and star into it, you did pretty good, right? So you mean you’re not a producer if you don’t at least go to the set? It’s one of those arguments where you can argue any side of it unfortunately.”
He’s right, of course, except that the dilution of other Hollywood credits (just like any out-of-work yahoo can call themselves an actor, director or writer) doesn’t typically engender the ability for one party to materially take advantage of another. A dodgy producer who’s amassed a passably legit credit list can leverage that cachet into option windows on written works or, ya know, sex with stupid aspirant starlets or other favors. The charlatans and jerk-offs may certainly be known within the industry’s core, but Hollywood does its second-class citizens no favors by not addressing the issue more aggressively.