A founding member and principal partner in Mann
Management, (a personal management firm for actors,
writers and directors), Janet Zucker turned to film
production (First Knight, Rat Race)
after marrying and joining creative forces with
writer/director Jerry Zucker (Airplane!,
Naked Gun, Ruthless People,
Ghost).
Despite the considerable success of Zucker
Productions, Janet Zucker happily describes her company
as a ‘Mom and Pop operation.’ “We’re a small director-based
production company so our focus is working on three or four
projects that we care about and not a lot product.”
When their daughter developed Type 1 diabetes, the
Zuckers did much more than just donate money to research for
a cure – they devoted two years of their time, energy and
creativity to fight for stem cell legislation. “We spent the
last two years at our company working on the stem cell
issue,” explains Janet. “Jerry wrote and directed some of
the 30 second spots and we produced them. And we did a lot
of public speaking, a lot of fundraising, a lot of
organizing within the industry and outside of it. We took a
two year hiatus because we felt we had to give back to
society and our daughter.”
As Janet says, “We’re not your typical film
production company.”
In the sun-soaked Santa Monica offices of Zucker
Productions, Janet spoke with me about film production,
happy sets, ruthless people and China.
HGEN: What do you
like best about production?
JANET ZUCKER: I
love the activity of it. I love the excitement, the
collaboration and the constant motion. It’s invigorating for
me. And I love the process of taking an idea –-just a germ
of something –- and seeing it through to fruition…..I like
the whole experience of it.
I also love the family that you create on a film. We
always have happy sets, knock on wood. We’ve never really
had a bad experience on any of our films. And so, I think in
that environment, even though you’re working under the
pressure of meeting your days and staying within your budget
parameters, it’s a creative, exciting environment.
HGEN: Do you
think it’s a happy set because of the people or because of
the material or …?
JANET ZUCKER:
No, I think the emotional tone of the set is set by the
director, for sure. And it’s supported by the producers. I
think if you have a director that knows what they want,
[and] has a steady hand, then that trickles down. I think
it’s like any organization, actually, I think that’s true of
businesses as well -- they’re reflective of the attitude and
the vision of whoever is at the top.
HGEN: I haven’t
actually met Jerry. How would you describe his personality?
JANET ZUCKER:
He’s easy going and ‘in the clouds’ a little bit. Very
creative. Very supportive and full of life. A great sense of
humour – I mean his roots are humour. I think he uses humour
to understand the world.
HGEN: Can I ask
how you two met?
JANET ZUCKER:
Sure. I was managing an actor by the name of Judge
Reinhold. …In the early days, when Michael Eisner
and Jeffrey Katzenberg left Paramount and went
to Disney, initially one of their concepts was to
emulate the old studio system and have deals with talent.
Bette Midler was under one of those talent deals where
they developed material for Bette. They felt that she was a
huge talent who’s career had kinda stalled. They actually
had approached me as Judge’s manager about the same kind of
deal for Judge….Jeffrey told Jerry [and his co-directors]
Jim Abrahams and his brother David, ‘You have to
meet with this guy right away. He’s incredibly hot. Everyone
has to fly to New York and meet with Judge.’ So I got a call
from Jerry, actually, saying, ‘We think Judge is great and
we’d love to meet with him.’ I explained that…I was a little
bit suspicious of a triumvirate directing team. I had a hard
time imagining how that would actually work. And so I
remember, when I called Judge, I said ‘Well he seems like a
very nice guy but I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be
directed by three directors.’ But I loved the script of
Ruthless People [so] Jerry & Jim Abrahams and I
flew to New York together to meet with Judge. We flew there
and…by the time we had flown back and Judge had already
fallen in love with Jerry and Jim and agreed to do the
movie, [Jerry and I] found that we were interested in each
other. So…we met through Ruthless People.
HGEN: A little
ironic.
JANET ZUCKER:
It is a little ironic. Yes.
HGEN: Our readers
are entertainment professionals in 27 countries so we’re
always interested in global connections. I understand you
have a special connection with China.
JANET ZUCKER:
We love China. We went to China on our honeymoon, a
number of years ago. This was before Tiananmen Square…And so
we were just thrilled with a chance to go back to China
[last] August --we took the family as a fun trip.
The Chinese guides that take you around and act as
translators are very well educated people and it’s actually
a plum job for the Chinese to have a job like that where
they get to interact with people from all over the [world].
It turned out that our guide was an avid film buff. I can’t
remember how it came up -- the kids, I think, mentioned that
Dad was a director. That night [our guide] Googled Jerry and
so he came back the next day all excited and said, ‘When you
go to Beijing would you be willing to meet with the
University of Beijing film department?’ So Jerry went over
and they kind of had an interchange about American
filmmaking and Chinese filmmaking.
One thing we were struck by when we were in Shanghai
and Beijing was the incredible amount of construction and
growth that’s going on in China. China is really exploding.
The other thing that was discouraging to us was the
amount of piracy that we observed. Everywhere you went there
were bootleg DVDs everywhere. Our guide wanted Jerry to sign
a copy of Ghost. It was actually a lot of work
to find a legitimate copy. They do have some stores where
you can go and purchase a legitimate version of it. But [the
effort it took to find it] was discouraging. And we did
lecture everyone we saw about how damaging that is to their
own film industry as well as ours.
When we were in Shanghai, [I told our guide that] my
grandfather lived in Shanghai in World War II. He looked at
me and was like, “Are you Jewish?’ And I said ‘Well, yes!’.
What had happened was there was a whole group of Austrian
Jews during WWII in 1938-1939 that got permission from the
Chinese government for visas to come into China and a whole
Jewish ghetto in Shanghai developed. When I was talking to
the guide about this, he said, ‘I have to take you to the
Jewish section. Maybe you’ll find where he lived.’
So we went to the Jewish Synagogue, which was a
little two story building – just a rectangle—and he led me
up to the second floor and there was a curator who’d been
there during World War II. And he said, ‘What was your
grandfather’s name?’ I told him the name, Franz Kraus, and
he brought out this red book and said, ‘Let’s look it up.’
They had compiled a list of the Jews in Shanghai that lived
there during World War II and sure enough [my grandfather’s]
name was there with the address of where he had lived.
And if you looked out the window [of the synagogue],
it was like going back in history. We had our two kids with
us. It was an amazing experience. They felt that they were
detectives going back into history. And if you looked out
the window, you didn’t see the [construction] cranes. You
just saw all the old buildings. And you felt, it’s like when
you go to the Great Wall of China, you feel like you’re
going back centuries. If you really walk out towards the
end, there’s a feeling of just timelessness…and I felt the
same type of feeling. And then we… found the house that [my
grandfather] had lived in [during WWII]. There was a Chinese
family that lived there. It looked like a ghetto house. It
was pretty extreme.
A vivid story from an atypical Hollywood player – who’s also
a devoted parent, a political activist and an adventure
traveler. Janet Zucker is definitely not “your typical film
producer."
Note:
Janet Zucker will the guest
speaker at the May 26, 2005 Hollywood Networking
Breakfast® at Paramount
Studios.
***********************************************************************************
| Liisa Kyle is the Managing Editor of HGEN:
In the Loop and is a prize-winning international
journalist
who has written for every major newspaper in her native Canada. |
© 2005 All Rights
Reserved
Reproduction of this article, in whole or in part, without the
written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.
** For comments on this article or any article in this month's issue of
HGEN In The Loop E-newsmagazine, write to:
news@hgenonline.com.
|
![](http://hgenonline.com/images/pixel_trn.gif"){kind=tracking}
