Elaine Rogers has a room with a view, which looks northward from Boston’s financial district. With such an inviting panorama, it’s no wonder she faces her desk inward. But while Rogers takes pains not to be distracted in this commercial stone-and-steel tower in the law offices of Fish and Richardson, her sights in the film and literary world stretch far beyond her range of vision. Since she transplanted to Boston twelve years ago from New York City, she’s been aggressively positioning herself as an entertainment lawyer and as a film agent. She’s also director of subsidiary rights in film and TV and handles foreign rights as well. Recently, Rogers dove into new waters as hands-on co-producer of an independent feature, SPIN, written and directed by Jamie Redford, yes, the son of famed Hollywood legend Robert Redford.
Speaking in her office on a sunny November afternoon, Rogers sits with her back to the sparkling vista over her shoulders. On a wall hangs a poster of THIRTEEN DAYS starring Kevin Costner for which she acted as agent of literary rights. She appears smaller than her actual stature amid piles of papers on her desk, which grew while she was away on the West Coast promoting SPIN. And though her resume of active involvement in television and film productions grows, she’s eager to talk about her newest role as producer, despite the fact that navigating SPIN to the screen was a “tough, tough road.” Any indie filmmaker would enjoin, “so what else is new?” But for a first-timer in a commanding position, producing can look like Kilimanjaro.
Two years ago, Rogers met Jamie Redford while discussing another project. The oft said ‘let’s keep in touch,’ was not idle chatter this time after real estate developer-turned-novelist and poet Donald Everett Axinn piqued Redford’s interest in his novel, SPIN. “Axinn was looking to bring someone on as a screenwriter,” Rogers recounts. “He had worked with a couple of screenwriters in the past, but he wasn’t getting the screenplay he had hoped for. Jamie read the book and liked the characters, and he decided to write the screenplay. That’s when he brought me to the project.”
SPIN is a coming-of-age story set in the 1940s and ‘50s when Eisenhower was president and the surfaces of life in the United States were tranquilly smooth but often deceptive. The film unreels in two parts. In the first part, 8 year-old Eddie (Ryan Merriman) loses his parents in a plane crash, and he’s turned over to his uncle, Major Haley (Stanley Tucci), who brings him to his ranch to live. Wanderlust tugs the Major away, and he’s off to Guam but not before he hands Eddie over to ranch workers (Dana Delaney and Ruben Blades) to act as surrogate parents. Then, time jumps ten years ahead. Eddie has grown into a rebellious teen living the life he’s been dealt in a cross-cultural outback in southern Arizona. He’s attracted to a local Mexican girl, Francesca (Paula Garces), who has her own issues with her widowed, overprotective father. His life turns on a dime, when his uncle returns to assume custody. Major Haley uses the only passion he knows best-flying-to win the boy over. Suddenly, Eddie is forced to reconcile his past with the present and embrace an uncertain future come what may.
According to Redford’s director’s statement, “…SPIN affirms our ideas of America in the 1950s while simultaneously challenging them…. It dares to explore complex relationships in a subtle way and (even more daring) without irony.”
Still, the pop culture shibboleth of ironic detachment dominates much of filmmaking in the twenty-first century, and SPIN snags against the grain. Redford told one reporter, “There’s something retro about this film. It’s set on an enormous landscape that harkens back to Elia Kazan’s dramas of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it’s an honest-to-god drama lacking ironic detachment.”
Still with cynical mindsets dominating the sensibilities of demographic audiences in megaplexes, can SPIN succeed with its head-on sincerity? And, given some of its subject matter-racism and interracial marriage-can it be sensitive without being sentimental?
“It touches upon the issues on the one hand, but on the other it is colorblind,” Rogers says. “I think it was handled in a sensitive way.”
Even a project with a high-profile name attached to it is still a hard sell in the competitive movie marketplace. “In the independent film financing world, dramas are very difficult to attract financing,” she says. “It was a Catch-22. Financiers would say, ‘bring me the talent, the A-list talent, and I’ll give you the money.’ It was the same way with talent. They would say ‘make me an offer and we’ll do it.’ It’s very unusual to have a script financed without talent attached to it.”
But the money finally came. “Don Axinn knew a number of equity investors, and we brought that money together. It was a relatively small budget, but it grew over time.” In the fall of 2002, they began making offers.
Principal photography for SPIN was slated to begin in Arizona in February with an allotted six-weeks’ shooting schedule. As much as high-profile actors liked the script, they couldn’t sign on because of previous commitments. SPIN’s target date had to be adjusted. And that was a good thing, Rogers believes, because “the weather in February in Tucson was cold and rainy.”
Almost all elements coalesced in March when the time approached for cameras to roll. But as the countdown began, “almost” became the operative word. Still the lead role of Eddie’s father was not fully locked in. Forty-eight hours before the first clapper was to strike, the actor was not on location. “Stanley had a lot going on,” Rogers says, “so it was a close call. I remember the look on Jamie’s face when I said, ‘We’ll give it another twenty-four hours.’
“But it all worked out. I knew how much Stanley liked the script, and I had this instinct that he was going to show up.”
Rogers waxes ebullience describing the first-time thrills of seeing the production unfold. “It was like preparing for battle in a military encampment. It was so intense on a daily basis. We shot for six weeks with 200 to 300 people on the set every day. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. We had nights with little sleep. Then on the last day of principal photography about 280 of those people were ready to move on to their next film. And suddenly, it was over, and 10 to 15 of us went into post-production. But it was fun and challenging and a learning experience.”
With its sepia-toned cinematography focused on the grand Southwest locale, SPIN, according to Rogers, has a “sweeping epic effect. For a smaller-budget film it has big production values. When you look at the film, you would say it feels like a $15-20 million film. People that have seen it at festivals have said the same thing. It has a big American film look.”
She and Redford have begun making the rounds of film festivals with SPIN in search of a distributor and to prime the pump of industry buzz. Redford wanted its premiere to be at the Mill Valley Film Festival in Marin County where he lives, and where, he believes, there exists a sophisticated film audience that he “would like to speak to.” SPIN had two sold-out screenings at Mill Valley, and later garnered a Crystal Heart Award for a feature at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis. Also, it screened at the American Film Institute Film Festival in November in Los Angeles. For obvious reasons, SPIN won’t be entered at Sundance Film Festival. “It’s complex to enter a film as a Redford at Sundance,” Rogers says.
Time was when moviemaking was centralized in Los Angeles with pockets of action in New York. Now, someone with passion, tenacity, a seductive script, circle of supporters, and a lot of chutzpah, has a shot at success. “Ten years ago,” Rogers says, “when I was beginning in the business, the first time I pitched a project on the phone, people would say, ‘Where are you? What are you doing in Boston as an entertainment lawyer and agent?’
“It never had been difficult for me to get on the phone and pitch a project. What was difficult was networking in the business from Boston. I would make trips out to L. A. It was a challenge. I would set up 13 or 14 meetings a day networking myself and showing them the projects we represent.
“Along with that, I got to know people, and they would call if they were looking for a movie of the week or feature film for development-one with a strong female survivor, for instance.
“Eventually people knew who I was, and what the agency was, and who we represented. We became readily accepted into the Hollywood group.
“With independent film, you can be anywhere as long as you have a viable product that eventually will appeal to a distribution company. If you have connections, or someone who does-enough to attract talent to a project-you can make inroads.
“In the past the independent production financiers were based in L.A. or New York. But now I know a lot of independent filmmakers who secure financing from private equity investors who are based anywhere.
“As an independent, you don’t have to be based in Hollywood, but you do have to know what is marketable, what financiers are looking for, and what distributors are looking for. It’s very hard for somebody who’s not in the business in some way to know how to pull all this together.”
Rogers thinks that a state-sanctioned and supported film office is a must for Massachusetts. Without one, she says, “It makes it more difficult.” Of the now defunct Massachusetts Film Office, a victim of budget cuts in the summer of 2002, the producer says, “They were really trying to build this awareness that Massachusetts is a great place to shoot. There’s a lot of talent here. I’ve always felt there were a lot of great writers here. It was sad when it collapsed. We were really trying to get attention. It would be nice to see the film office come back into existence.”
As far as advice to up-and-coming filmmakers, Rogers believes, “The first step is to get an agent or an entertainment lawyer, one who is going to spend time on your project.”