What a Good Film Producer Actually Does

Producer Nick Morton spent 30 years in Hollywood, first as a development executive at Philip Anschutz's Bristol Bay Productions on films like Ray and Sahara, then at Phoenix Pictures, then at Whitewater Films, where he executive-produced dozens of indies, including Joey Soloway's Afternoon Delight and Jacob Estes' Mean Creek. He co-created the Emmy-nominated AMC sitcom Cooper's Bar with Better Call Saul's Rhea Seehorn. (He took a break from the industry in 2024 to work construction.)

In a recent Film Courage interview, Morton looked back at what he learned about producing, storytelling, and the fundamental tension between writers and executives. He talks about the producer job he grew out of, the audience insight he got from doing stand-up, and why the movies that define the marketplace always break with what's "popular" or conventional.

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What Producers Want in a Story

Sometimes you'll hear about mandates like, "We need horror about nuns," or "Write more stories featuring 40-year-old characters." Morton doesn't get that specific because those specifics change sometimes week to week.

So what is more important? What makes a good story?

"Generally, a lead character who thinks they want something, and they try to get it, and fail repeatedly," he says, "and they get something else that ends up being the thing they need. I think that is generally what makes a great story, is the difference between want and need. An active protagonist trying to get that thing that they want and learning the lesson of what they need is always a satisfying story."

This is the basic building block of want vs. need at the heart of most durable narrative structure. The character's desires drive the plot. The need is what the story is really about. When those diverge productively, you get satisfying character arcs.

Morton cites F. Scott Fitzgerald's "action is character" from his notes for The Last Tycoon.

"So, an active protagonist trying to do things reveals who they really are. I think it's always interesting, you know, when a character says one thing but does something different and relies on the audience's intelligence to distinguish between what they're saying and who they really are."

He points out that a good antagonist is a necessary building block, too. An opposing force will help create the conflict that forces the protagonist to act.

The Producer Doesn't Need to Shape a Movie

Morton provides a unique perspective as a former executive and what that job realistically entails.

"When I first started as an executive," he says, "I thought my job was to shape the production into my vision. Or the vision of my bosses, which was my job to some degree was to make sure that the production reflected what my bosses had hired the creative team to make."

But with more experience, he learned what a producer could be instead, and that was a tool to build stronger teams.

"As I got older and I think better at the job of being a producer or an executive, I found that my job was to identify the best people, the people who were most capable of telling the best story, and empowering them to do the best job that they could and to trust them to do the best job they could."

The best producer isn't the one with the strongest creative vision. It helps, sure, if an executive knows story and knows when something on a production might be going awry. But a great producer is the one who can identify the right creative vision and get out of its way… while providing honest feedback when asked.

Why Writers Clash with Executives

You might run into a situation where executives or producers do not understand what you're doing at all.

That could happen for any number of reasons. Maybe they never really understood your vision. Maybe you've taken the story in a surprising direction, or a character changed, or action is developing in an unexpected way. You get on that notes call, and things are tense.

It might be that an exec doesn't have the language to articulate what they think is wrong. That's where you get the generic "I'm bumping" note (or… they're just unable to be harsh with you for whatever reason and want to talk around the issue). Sometimes the notes are bad. It happens. That's why it's so important to find a creative partner you trust.

Writers also need to understand that executives are on the business side. They're thinking about investing a lot into a work, and most of the time they want to know there's a guaranteed return on the risks they're taking. That's why they so often look to what has worked in the past.

Morton tries to explain this tension between creativity and investment.

"I think the writer's job is to be as authentically true to their lived experience and to the story that they're trying to tell," he says. "And I think it's often difficult as an executive to just believe in that, you know, even if it doesn't conform to the conventional ideas of what makes for a successful movie."

The movies that end up defining the marketplace always break conventional wisdom. Pulp Fiction rewired independent film. sex, lies, and videotape did it before that. Scream redefined horror. American Pie exploded the R-rated teen comedy. The Blair Witch Project practically invented found-footage as a commercial genre.

It's worth pointing out that the indie film ecosystem those movies grew from is even riskier than the studio system. Most indie producers just know they're not going to make money, and it's all for the love of the game.

What Else Makes Producing Hard? Subjectivity

We already touched on the difficulties on the business side. He's also mentioned how important bringing a team together is. Morton also brings up casting as one of the more subjective parts of making a project. You might have your heart set on one leading actor, but they pass. You still have to fill that role.

"So, in my mind, any movie has the ability to be many different movies, depending on who's directing and who's starring and where it's shot and how much money there is," he says. "That range of possibility was always a little paralyzing for me because it's like, yeah, maybe that's right. Well, that's a different movie, but maybe that's the right movie."

Multiple versions of A Star Is Born and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all work to varying degrees of success, for instance. If you're a producer, you just have to try your best to build the team you're dreaming of.