Carol Polakoff: Producing With Passion
Shortly before heading out to the 2009 Cannes Film Festival & Market, enterprising producer Carol Polakoff briefly spoke about her new production shingle, Carol Polakoff Productions. An enterprising producer with innumerable television and film credits, she has spent the past fifteen years living and working in Paris before finally returning to the States to launch this new venture. Passionate and thoughtful about her work, Polakoff was a pleasure to speak with and one can easily look forward to the films coming soon from this new and exciting company.
IFQ: To kick things off, could you briefly summarize the aim of your new production outfit, Carol Polakoff Productions? i.e. kinds of projects & overall focus of work you wish to accomplish with it?
Carol Polakoff: I have put together this little development company, for a couple of specific reasons. I’ve been a producer for a long time and having lived overseas, I decided to come back and try to access material and contacts from here and there. The company’s aim is to develop from an idea to a script, from a book to a script, and find either original or existing material to develop to the point where I can attach talent, directors and actors. Ideas I find compelling; I come from a journalism background so I think that if I had to outline the kinds of things I want to do they’d be cracking good stories with some social awareness background to them but also with very strong dramatic foregrounds.
The material I’m looking for is always something that takes you from one place to another while providing context, whether it’s a political issue, social issue, familial issue or emotional issue. Most of the stories are pushed along by real events that have impact on our lives and hopefully access a pretty universal audience. I haven’t pigeonholed myself to any one genre, although I come from a strong dramatic, traditional background because of my education, experience, as well as the things I’m drawn to. I can go through a whole broad range of subjects but they do tend to unify around strong drama.
IFQ: Before returning here now, you lived and worked in Paris for the past 15 years, what prompted your move there in the first place and additionally what experiences did you take away from your time there that has affected both your life and work?
CP: Yes and yes (laughs). What took me there is a project; I had been living in LA for about 10 years at the time developing a lot of things. I had a stint at Aaron Spelling Productions as a producer of mainly television but with some features along on the side and there was a movie, which I will call The Bermuda Triangle of development. I found one of the best stories never told; I had a terrific idea, a studio looking for exactly this kind of material, a very high-profile actress to play the role, a blank checkbook and still couldn’t get this movie made. I’ll give you the title of it and you’ll know exactly the subject and why it didn’t get made. There were a number of different reasons, but it was The Jean Seberg Story.
IFQ: Ah (*Despite initially gaining fame in Hollywood, Jean Seberg became an icon with her role in Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave Classic, Breathless. Politically outspoken, she voiced her support for The Black Panther Party and other such groups in the late 1960’s, earning the ire and harassment of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. After a number of failed marriages, Seberg tragically committed suicide in 1979.)
CP: Yes, super idea, extraordinary ability to bridge Anglophone and Francophone audiences; Canal Plus, which had just set up their new production company at the time, were all over trying to develop this thing, I had Jodie Foster attached to star in it, and eventually we ended up developing it with a relatively unknown writer. It took me to Paris every eight weeks for four weeks of research, at which point I met absolutely everyone from (second husband) Romain Gary, all of their ex’s, all the old filmmakers, fading film stars, Black Panthers, bodyguards, the gamut. So all that took me to Paris then every two months for about four weeks and at a certain point I saw that the movie wasn’t able to materialize because in fact the material is very, very difficult to access.
Jean Seberg was in fact what we would call the eye of the hurricane, a Zelig of her own time. The project never materialized, but the great news about it was that I had a look at Paris and I thought “you know, I think I’m going to live in Paris and go to LA every two months for a month”. So that was what prompted my relocation to Europe; also in combination with that, I’d studied in London and spent probably more of my time outside of high school in Europe rather than the States. So I think there was a real compelling argument for me to situate myself there and try to develop movies and ideas around things that in fact I’d been much more familiar with than things Stateside.
IFQ: A project that you’ve worked on whilst in France, Before The Radar, focuses on contemporary racism in France what is your take on the situation there between the immigrant classes and the French, especially in light of the banlieue riots that occurred there a couple years ago?
CP: Well, I’m still working on it; the project started with those riots. I decided that having lived there for many, many years and watching how the general French population treats the “other”, whoever they are, was of great fascination to me. I was always trying to find my way to the bottom of that question as to whether there was anything inherent in French culture or history that would lead me to some conclusion as to why and how these various factors had come to bear on such racial strife and misunderstanding. Quite frankly, it came about because much of the Jewish population was being targeted for a long period of time and I can’t tell you how many people would call me and ask “is it safe to travel in Paris as a Jew?” I just thought that it was an extraordinary question at which point I launched this project as a way for me personally to understand anti-Semitism and its causes, roots, and effects.
As I got into the picture itself though, I realized that I wasn’t willing to nor do I believe that it’s just a French problem alone. I felt like it was a somewhat universal issue but the French problem at that time was racism and I sought to learn how it’s manifested in the culture there and whether it’s manifestly French or not. What I came up with was a very complicated, and still is, story where you look at a country’s history and you’ll then understand its present. You probably know this yourself, the colonies that had fought bravely for France had the idea that they would be able to move to there and have freedom and freedom of movement there. As a result of that encouragement, they ended up living there as a kind of underclass. With exceptions mind you, lots and lots of people have transcended that, like the Algerians. You know, now that we’re talking about this, the actual thing that made me decided to want to become a filmmaker was The Battle of Algiers.
IFQ: Well then yes, we’re on the same page (laughs).
CP: Then we totally have a reference on that one. I saw that movie and said to myself, “if I could make that kind of cinema”, and you know probably over the course of our conversation you’ll probably realize that I’m still trying to make that movie. There’s something about that moment when something hits you that strongly or deeply and is imprinted on you. There’s obviously some resonance or some bell that I’m trying to continue ringing. What it was for me was trying to find an issue that was deep and emotional and yet put into a political context in a real human way, a people, a place, a time. That’s what kind of drove me to then go from being a photojournalist in Jerusalem during the war to film school in London. There I immersed myself in the films of Satyijat Ray, all the neorealists, and things like that. Ultimately though, regarding Under The Radar, I think there are many root causes to this problem and that France is a very difficult place for people on the outside to get in. I think it’s an incredibly country with enormous resources but I don’t think that its borders’ being open, culturally or otherwise, is one of its strongest suits.
IFQ: You’ve recently signed playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Michael Weller to pen the script for an upcoming project of yours called Safe Haven, could you please provide a few words on what the project’s premise, without giving too much away, as well as what made you choose Michael as the right person to choose for writing it?
CP: The project is very emblematic of the kinds of things I want to develop. It’s a strong, searing, emotional story of people caught in a quagmire that is at its heart a family drama with a political backdrop that is quite stunning. You may already know that Nebraska was one of the last states in the country to pass “safe haven” laws, which were mainly designed by the states so that people wouldn’t be dropping off babies in churches, or God forbid dumpsters as well as politically to avoid abortions. So from the age of three hours to eight to twelve months, a family or parent could drop a kid off at a hospital or emergency room and have absolutely no paperwork, follow up, or repercussions for them. This was meant to give them a free way to give a child a good home or at least a chance. Nebraska could not decide on an age limit so decided not to put one on; this opened what I call, the gates of hell, to any parent who, for whatever reason and whatever aged child, ended up dropping off their kids for safe haven at these hospitals, mostly emergency rooms.
The system became over-flooded with what I thought were parents who were just fed up with their kids and couldn’t deal with them which were one group. But for the most part, what ended up happening was there were many, many families, rich, poor, and otherwise who had absolutely no other resource to take care of their children’s mental health problems. There were parents who literally had no health insurance to take care of their mentally ill kids and tried desperately to take them to the emergency room to get them medication or help and systematically were refused or the kids were released after twenty four hours. Anything from just bad behavior and unable to get along with others to serious mental illness, and the parents had absolutely no resources whatsoever in our healthcare system to handle it. So what happened with this law is that these parents went to these emergency rooms hoping to get help for their kids but they then had to give up custody to the state of Nebraska, which then became these children’s parent. A lot of parents knew this but a lot of them didn’t know that they were in fact giving up custody.
So it becomes a political background story about America in crisis but in a very, focused way looks at how one state at a particular time was able to pinpoint something that was so unbelievably heart wrenching that one would not have known about it before. Michael Weller has a celebrated background as you know. I recently read a play he wrote which was one of the most intelligent family dramas, it was so clear and moving in terms of relationships. I just wanted to meet him and I found out that he had some personal experience with the issue. The subject resonated with him and once we started talking there was no turning back, I knew he was right for the project. He had a real fascination with this project; this is a movie about politics, adoption, custody, and a country who can’t figure out how to support its mental health problems. The movie is going to be a confluence of different stories that meet in a Crash-like structure in Nebraska.
IFQ: In addition, could you discuss the development fund you recently closed on that will allow you to finance the company’s endeavors? How was the process of raising capital as the economy has tanked and many of the traditional equity sources, i.e. hedge funds, have dried up significantly? Were there any major issues or did you end up being pretty lucky?
CP: I think the word lucky is probably it; in terms of the money, i.e. funds or support for my endeavor as we can call it, I think this is very oddly a good time for a small, ruggedly individual company to launch. I think that investors know very well that a smaller amount of money can go much further today then for instance two years ago. As we all know, the studios have taken a very adverse view of risk; in the days before I went to France it was commonplace for you to go get a story or option a book, and the studio would come up with the development money for the writer. These days, with the exception of ten to fifteen different producers and/or directors, I think it’s not an obvious path in terms of getting development. I think the luxury of being able to develop outside of the system offers a great opportunity for these creative people, from writers, to some extent directors, and authors of books who are interested in getting their material done. For me to be able to develop something outside of the system with the kind of freedom I can offer is a very good business.
I think that the small investors realize that for a relatively little amount of money we can come up with developed, mature material that will then be catnip for the talent so that we have a pretty good shot. I think that I’m developing for well under half of what a lot of these people are spending, certainly a tenth of what a studio spends, so what happens is once I get to the point of attachment my costs are not enormous. I’m able to negotiate quite good deals with books and talent, sometimes with participation later on, I’d rather get them involved in the process. That in and of itself isn’t terribly new, independent films have been doing that forever but I think that in this climate there are a lot of people who are very anxious to get back to work; I think a lot of great ideas are floating around with not enough buyers to develop them.
IFQ: Besides acting as Producer, are you interested in directing at all under your new shingle or prefer to produce alone?
CP: Here’s my answer, I think that if the right thing comes that begs for me to be the right person to do it then I want to do it. In terms of just the process it’s kind of like opera, if you want to play an instrument then that’s great but do you ever want to conduct? Absolutely.