The essential skills of a great producer

Can't act, can't sing, can raise money? Sorry but that is not the recipe for a great producer.
[This is archived content and may not display in the originally intended format.]

Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock in The Producers (1968).

You don’t have to look hard in the arts sector to find numerous unkind clichés about producers. Bossy, greedy, venal, monstrous – from Kirk Douglas’s much-loathed Jonathan Shields in MGM melodrama The Bad and the Beautiful and Zero Mostel’s avaricious Max Bialystock (described by the accountant Leo Bloom as ‘the most selfish man I have ever met in my life’) in Mel Brooks’ The Producers, to Tom Cruise’s parodic Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, producers generally get a bad rap. But they play a vital role in realising artists’ dreams; nor is their role just about raising money, as the following producers tell us:

Unlock Padlock Icon

Unlock this content?

Access this content and more

Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts