I’ve talked before about how runaway producer credits, aka vanity credits, are the new STD of the movie industry (most notably here, and here as well). Understandably, many producers aren’t exactly thrilled to chat about the subject, lest they be seen as taking shots across the bow at their own. Lakeshore Entertainment honcho Gary Lucchesi isn’t much different, but his take on the matter did offer up an interesting comparison that I hadn’t previously pondered. To wit:

“I’m on the board of directors for the producer’s guild so it is an
issue,” Lucchesi admits. “It’s become more profound now because it takes so much more to
get a film made. Twenty years ago, if a studio made Henry Poole, it
would be [with] a producer who’d have an overall deal with the studio. He’d
bring the project in, and if an executive liked it, they’d make the
movie. And there would be one producer or perhaps a team, not a
plethora of producers. Nowadays, on a movie like this, we brought it to
Lakeshore, where Tom [Rosenberg] and I take a producer credit. And then there were other
people — Tom Lassally was (director Mark Pellington)’s manager, who actually introduced the material to Mark, so he had a credit. And then Gary Gilbert brought in some
money, so he got a credit. Most of the executive producers are money
people, and if you have to cobble a movie together you all of a sudden
have seven or eight credits. So I get it, I understand it, I don’t like
people that didn’t contribute getting credits, but on the other
hand we’re a little bit like Broadway now — there are angels, and they
throw money at it, and if the movie gets made it’s good for everybody.
I know what my contribution is, and I think that at the end of the day
we all know who the actors are… I get the problem, but it’s because
our business is so much harder now.”

Is it really harder, though? More movies are made than ever before, it’s just that studios are looking to let other people spend the bulk of that money, and plug films into their distribution pipeline, right? So outside of its tentpole releases — big summer fare, genre offerings and a handful of awards-bait contenders — they don’t really care what names are on posters and press kits. If it’s actually markedly more difficult to get movies made these days, wouldn’t honest-to-God hands-on producers want to be more proactive about protecting their credit? “Fine line” and all, I get it. But no one gets to scratch a seven-figure check (or bundle the same) and just call themselves a special effects coordinator, do they? So where’s the outrage, or even leadership on this issue? Just throwing this out there…