Polly want a close-up?

April 9th, 2007

The Parrot of Independent Film Production Perhaps the best job description for “producer” I’ve ever heard was exemplified for me in a college improv group. Upon discovering that another group was using our rehearsal space, the director said to his colleague, “You’re the producer. Produce us a room.”

It’s difficult to describe what a producer does, especially since the specific responsibilities can vary so much from project to project. Adding to the complication, some producers are very hands-on in every phase, and some stand back doing almost nothing. Some are so good that they make it look like they’re doing nothing, when actually their work load is monumental. (How to tell the ones who just make it look easy from the ones who do nothing? That’s another matter.) But that “produce us a room” mentality has always informed my thinking on a producer’s role. A producer or a producing team needs to provide anything and everything, from a business or creative or logistics perspective, so that the rest of the people in a creative project might need in order to do their jobs effectively. All while staying on budget, of course.

After meeting with a dozen or so of the different video/filmmakers who have responded to my advertisements, I had a good group of people I wanted to work with. And each of them had people they could bring on board, too. This is L.A. You can’t swing a stick. The only things in short supply are good ideas and people with the initiative to execute them. With great people lined up, I knew that if I was going to move forward with my moviemaking army, I needed to select a project for us to work on, and just do it.

I wanted to start very, very small. Something that would be of high quality but very achievable. After a short period of time working together, there should be something tangible to show for our efforts. I selected a spec commercial I had written, based on a true story that has made “oddly enough” headlines a few times. The fast pitch is this: a man discovers that his girlfriend has been cheating on him because her parrot has learned the other man’s name. I had people I wanted to work with, I had a decent script with humor to it, and I had a discreet amount of work for us to accomplish. The finished product only needs to be 30 seconds long.

Now I just needed to produce. In this case, produce a parrot.

It’s amazing what you can get by asking for it. My first approach was a posting on craigslist. I literally asked if anyone could loan me a parrot. The pets community flagged my posting down within the hour. I was pretty sure I hadn’t violated policy, but nonetheless I would be unable to reach Los Angeles parrot owners the easy way.

But producing means having a plan B (and a plan C, and a plan D…) or at least being able to come up with one really quickly. I did some web searching to see if there are any clubs or organizations in town. Many nationally, but the only parrot organizations in L.A. are non-profits that work with the populations of feral parrots that plague the city. (I have reason to call them a plague; about 60 of them used to land in a cedar tree near my room when I first moved here. They came at about 5 a.m., and they were loud.) Anyway, no parrots to be had from that resource.

I left it alone for a day or two, brainstorming in the shower about how to get a pet store to help me or something. Finally, I tried craigslist again. I added a sentence or two about treating the bird really nicely. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe I’d get banned from craigslist.

Three different parrot owners offered to help. One was a nice lady who rescues them, has eleven that can talk, and one that sings “What’s New Pussycat.” So I lucked out. Finding a parrot wasn’t so hard.

I have produced.