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Q: Why do the Oscars honor producers when a movie wins best picture? What exactly did they do?
You’re confused for good reason: Producers themselves have trouble describing their work.
“I do the impossible for the ungrateful,” said one when I asked. “You can learn it, but you can’t teach it,” another told me, referring to something professional wrestler Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon used to say about his profession. A longtime producer advised me to abandon this mission altogether. “Forget it, Jake — it’s Chinatown,” he said, using the classic film to sum up how difficult it is to debunk the play.
Such drama queens! Fine, he admitted: Producing is a complicated, underrated job. But there hectare some ways to think about the gig that explain why producers — and not, say, directors — get the best picture Oscar.
What is and what is not a producer
For the purposes of this discussion, throw in anyone credited on a film as an “executive producer” (someone who plays a big role early on, usually securing financing and critical rights). Only people credited as “producers” eventually have a chance to win small gold statuettes.
Producers shepherd films from inception to release. They identify film ideas, sometimes by reading books or news articles, and work with writers to develop scripts. They are looking for directors. Some securing funding and helping to find the right leads for various departments — casting, production design, wardrobe. Producers also oversee budgets, location scouting and scheduling. They consult on marketing campaigns once a film is completed.
“Everybody produces differently,” said producer David Hinojosa, a best picture nominee last year for “Past Lives,” whose recent films include “Babygirl,” a love thriller, and “The Brutalist,” an immigration epic drama.
“Basically, though, the job is the same,” Hinojosa continued. “You download into your DNA every aspect of the project — financial, logistical, emotional.”
Many producers (but not all) spend a lot of time on the sets.
“I show up with my hose, my oxygen and my ax and I’m ready to fight any fire, do whatever I have to do to protect a project,” said Peter Jaysen, founder of Veritas Entertainment, one of the production companies back. “A Complete Unknown”, about the rise of Bob Dylan.
It can be a long distance. Jaysen said Veritas began working on “A Complete Unknown” in 2018 when HBO decided not to move forward with a different version of Dylan’s origin story.
How many producers do you need…
Individual producers didn’t always take home the Best Picture award. In the early decades of the Academy Awards, the honor (then called outstanding production) went to one company. Studio bosses—Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner and the like—were usually the ones who received and gave a speech.
Individual producers were first nominated at the 1951 Oscars. Records at the academy’s Margaret Herrick Library indicate there was “prolonged discussion” among Oscar organizers about the adaptation, but do not offer an exact reason for the move. It probably had something to do with the post-war collapse of the studio system. Three of the four previous Best Picture winners came from independent production companies or a foreign director.
Another rule change – how many producers can get the top Oscar — egged on by Harvey Weinstein. In 1999, five producers, the most ever, took to the stage to collect the best picture trophies for “Shakespeare in Love.” Weinstein, the since-jailed co-founder of Miramax, was among them and edged out a colleague in a race for the microphone. An embarrassed academy then limited the number of producer nominees to three.
To accomplish this, the academy first relies on the Producers Guild of America: Who the producers were most involved; The guild has a complex control system that includes an appeals process. You can see which producers were selected by looking at the titles on the screen. they get a “producer’s mark” next to their names consisting of the lowercase letters pga
The academy’s producers division then makes a final decision, including bending the three-nominee rule. In 2024, a Best Picture contender, “Maestro,” had five producers authorized to receive material. (Lost to “Oppenheimer.”)
And the Oscar goes to…
Production gets a bad rap because the tasks are so vaguely defined and because so many people on the fringes of film call themselves producers when in reality they are just charlatans.
But since producers – genuine the producers — have such comprehensive responsibilities for the films, keeping faith even when doors slam in their faces (and working without much pay until relatively late in the process), their case for the best picture Oscar is strong.
“Producers ARE filmmakers,” producer Mynette Louie (“Land Ho!”) wrote in Bluesky in November. “We are not financiers, executives, managers, agents, etc. We are creatives who happen to be good at leadership, organization, logistics, business and math.”
“Please make it clear,” he concluded. “We’ve been doing this for over 100 years.”
