I'd say there's two parts that are the most exciting for me personally
[about filmmaking]. One part is when you're in the room putting it
together, at a certain stage, there's a group of people and the sum is
so much greater than each part; when you feel like it's a smart room
and feel like the idea is getting enhanced minute by minute. It's
geometrically getting better as the costume designer says, "What about
this?" And the director says, "What about that?" And the actor says,
"Well, what about this?" And the producer says, "What about this?" And
all of it gels.
For me, that's the best possible thing, when you sort of say, "I could
never have done this on my own and none of us could have. It took
everybody." Obviously, the director is the leader, but it took
everybody's insight and everybody's point of view and everybody's
specialty to be at their peak for it to be good. So that's the part
that, as a producer, you can control a little bit of, and that I find
the most fulfilling -- just watching something get better.
And then there's a moment where you actually sit in the dark room and
it works, and it's so much better than you ever could have hoped for.
It's a very rare pleasure to experience that. ...
Or you'll be sitting in the theater and hear an audience member that
you don't know saying, "I want to go to the bathroom so bad, but I
can't leave." That's when you know you did your job right and you feel
really, really great.