J.F. Lawton – the writer of Pretty Woman, Under Siege, The Hunted, Mistress – was a client since the very beginning. Little did we know that, a few short years after I began to manage his screenwriting career, we’d take the plunge and dive into new roles. The both of us, together. J.F. as a director, me as a producer.

The writers’ strike of 1988 shut down the entire business for almost a year. One day, J.F. came to my office. I think I surprised him when, out of the blue, I said “You’ve nothing to do and I want to make a film”.

I asked him to choose a script from the many he’d written, the one that we could shoot in Los Angeles, on a shoestring budget, that he’d most want to direct.

I’d never raised money for film production, but it never occurred to me it would be a problem or challenge. So I began dialing the phone and taking meetings. Within weeks, I’d raised Two Hundred Thousand Dollars. And off we went to make our first film ever – Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.

It was a comedy of errors, guerrilla filmmaking at its finest. Neither of us had an inkling what we were doing. We had barely four weeks until he and I were due to be at the Sundance Institute’s production lab. We thought about waiting to make the film til we returned from Utah.

But ignorance is bliss. We’d no idea four weeks was not enough time to properly prep, produce, post-produce and deliver a feature length film. So we chose to make the film before we left town.

We plotted two weeks for pre-production, eleven days of photography (with one day off in the middle) and a few days to edit and post the film. Seemed sensible at the time.

I converted my offices to production offices. One week into our two week prep period, J.F. and I were the only two people there, each wearing way too many hats. I was the film’s creative producer, line producer, casting director, assistant director, and more. J.F. was acting as writer, director, editor, location scout and more.

So one night around midnight, we called all our friends. We told them to tell everyone they knew to show up the next day. Our seat-of-the-pants plan was to hire ‘on the spot’, and instantly fill each and every production job (script supervisor, cinematographer, line producer, and some 30-odd other positions).

Without knowing these people, we simply eyeballed them. J.F. and I had a very scientific approach and a subtle way of communicating. If someone was well-dressed, we’d point and nod and they were instantly our head of wardrobe. If someone had ever held a camera or shot a documentary, they were our cinematographer.

Within hours, we were “crewed up”. We crammed thirty plus people into a couple of offices and, crawling all over each other with one week left, ignorant of what we didn’t know, we forged ahead and started shooting on the appointed day.

I seem to recall we made more than 25 company moves (changes of location) in eleven days that took us from Riverside, to Malibu and Hollywood. It was barely controlled insanity. The poor actors and crew – we barely paid them enough to fill their gas tanks.

With only a handful of days left, the editing was ‘almost’ completed before the financier grabbed the film away and declared it ‘finished’. J.F. and I jumped on a plane to Sundance’s production lab on another project (later to become Pretty Woman).

While it was a matter of the blind leading the blind, we completed the film with what little time and money was available – and had a riotous good time. A feminist spoof of Heart of Darkness, the film is absurdly funny, made money, and ran on cable tv for fifteen years. And that is how we got into the business of making films.

I grew up in San Francisco in the 60’s, living only blocks from The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airlane, Janis Joplin – and spending almost every night and weekend immersed in the culture of that amazing time – all music and politics. I attended U.C. Berkeley during the maelstrom of the late 60’s and early 70’s.

I’d developed a rather romantic notion about criminal defense. It echoed the reformist ethic of my upbringing. It felt consistent with the ‘values’ of my colorful Haight-Ashbury past. So I made a choice. Off to law school I went.

So I began my career in law, only to quickly discover my temperament and being a criminal defense attorney were a very bad match. Oil and water. So I fled.

I realized the one other thing I often fantasized about was the world of writers and writing. So I ran away to the circus – Los Angeles in the 80s appeared rather like a circus to my naïve eye – hoping to become the Maxwell Perkins of the screenwriting trade.

Maxwell E. Perkins was the single most influential book editor of the 20th century. He single-handedly discovered many of the most prominent American writers of the first half of the last century. During his tenure at Charles Scribner’s Sons, Perkins discovered and nurtured the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Ring Lardner, Ezra Pound and James Jones. “Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins” is a brilliant book, filled withg correspondence between Maxwell Perkins and his many authors.

I too wanted to discover great writing talent. I could envision myself nurturing their creativity, championing them to the world and building their careers. I imagined helping many excellent films to get produced along the way. I had a picture in my head, imagined being inspired by a tantalizing collection of creative minds, enjoying a seat at a latter day ‘Algonquin Round Table’.

I was sorely surprised to find it would not be so easy, not nearly so romantic an undertaking.

When I arrived, I knew virtually nothing of “the business” [the entertainment industry] and proceeded to interview with quite a few places, primarily studios. I couldn’t come close to getting a job. I knew no one and knew nothing about the business. They looked at me as if I was a stranger in a strange land. And it felt strange and foreign.

So I naively thought “oh well, I’ll just start my own company.” ‘Management’ was a relatively new and unregulated area, so I immediately started a literary management company. I focused on writers and writer-directors, because writing and storytelling were my first loves. The first few years were lean, to say the least.

I’d long been enamored of both contemporary and classic films. I knew it was the calibre of the writing that separated out those that made a lasting impression on me.

Though impossible to list all that top my list of ‘great’ films, Graham Greene’s “The Third Man” would be near the top of the list. The creative prowess underpinning the unfolding mystery and relationship between Joseph Cotton’s ‘Holly Martins’ and Orson Welles ‘Harry Lime’ remains to this day a perfect fascination. This is the sort of magic that inspired me to want to discover and champion young film writers.

As much as I admired the work and contributions of directors, actors, producers and others, it is the writer who inhabits the cradle of creation. The process of writing is arduous, mysterious, challenging and inspiring to me.

I managed writers for better than ten years, the first six years just managing, and the last four or more years producing on the side. My initial foray into producing included some fun, if not well-known, small-budget independent films (Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, Pizza Man, a CBS movie-of-the-week Victim of Love, among others). My experience with writers, and my desire to collaborate ever more closely, led me to choose producing as a full-time pursuit.

My admiration for writers and the years spent fighting battles on their behalf, giving story notes, making deals and learning how to be their best advocate afforded me the single greatest preparation to be an effective producer… and to develop career strategies that deliver consistent and measurable results.

I’m excited to continue collaborating with writers, developing more exciting films together. The surprise of discovering another brilliant story, another inspired writer, is its own reward.

I’ll be eternally grateful to the many creative and talented writers who’ve entrusted me – as their manager or as their producer – with their work and their careers. I’m certain they’ve taught me far more than I taught them.

With talented writers and well-crafted screenplays, I was able to ‘up my game’ and begin producing with and for major studios. One of the keys to playing in that arena is to forge relationships with bigger name actors and their agents, managers, attorneys, publicists… anyone close enough that you can get them to read and attach to your project.

I found Julia Roberts by attending a pre-release screening of “Mystic Pizza”. By merely accepting an invitation from the producers of that indie film, I struck gold and they were kind enough to introduce me to Julia and her agent. Not long after, she’d attached to ‘Pretty Woman’, then titled ‘3000’. Not yet a household name, but my instincts nonetheless screamed this actress was destined to be ‘Vivian’ – the lead in our film.

I’d sold ‘Under Siege’ as a script to New Regency who, at the time, had a deal at Warner Bros. Knowing the studio had just signed a deal with a then up-and-coming Steven Seagal (after his success with smaller films like ‘Hard to Kill’ and ‘Above the Law’ etc), I encouraged everyone to get the script into his hands as his first project with the studio. And it worked. Sometimes an actor responds well, other times you have to be persistent beyond reason.

Richard Gere loved the storyline and lead role in ‘The Mothman Prophecies’, and tracked the project for months even reading various drafts as we were developing it. Securing Richard as our lead in ‘Pretty Woman’ was quite a different experience.

Richard Gere had turned down the role of ‘Edward’ in ‘Pretty Woman’ on multiple occasions. Ed Limato, Richard’s agent for many years, responded enthusiastically to the project. Despite his support, Richard first declined the project when I’d originally optioned it to Vestrong, and again later when I’d moved the project from Vestron and set it up at New Regency.

After I’d submitted and ultimately sold the script to Touchstone (Disney), and now had a major studio and director on board, I was able to convince the studio executives (along with the film’s director, Garry Marshall) that Richard Gere was the absolute best choice for the male lead role and to make him an irresistable offer. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The lesson learned is simple: trust your instincts and then just become single-focused in your determination and advocacy and pursuit.