INTERVIEW WITH DEFENDOR PRODUCER

Here is an interview with the producer of the Woody Harrelson movie, Defendor. Nicholas Tabarrok is a successful producer who has his own production company, Darius Films, and was nice enough to grant me an interview. Enjoy!

NOTE: The following is paraphrased do to my recorder not working on the day of the interview.

INTERVIEW:

What attracts you to a project?
The script, the director, the writer, who’s involved in the project, what it entails, it all varies.

You recently made Defendor with Woody Harrelson, what was that like?
Great. It was a blast to work on. This was very close to woody. Him and his agent were a big part of this.

How were you able to do it on a three million dollar budget?
It was very close to woody as I said. He loved the script and really wanted to get this thing made. It helped that he was so interested in it.

You deal mostly in low budget movies, is that a preference?
No. I’m attracted to movies that are off beat, funny, not your typical action flick. Sure I’d love to make a 50 million dollar movie, but the movies I like tend to be more low budget. I like movies that are driven by their material.

Where do you get your material? Some production companies have in house writers, others hire out. What is it for you?
Well most if not all production companies hire out writers. I don’t think there are that many that have in house writers. We get our material from everywhere; agents, mangers, writers. Some directors will bring me a project they’re interested in. It all varies. The writer of Defendor, Peter Stebbings, he brought the script to me. I’ve know him a long time and gave him his first job in the business. But we get it from all over. I’ve optioned books and things like that too, but a lot of it comes from the talent.

So what about Spec scripts? Do you take submissions?
All the time. To this point I believe all our movies have been based off spec.

What’s your favorite part of the job?
It’s the development process. I love being there trying to get a story flowing, or being there when we cast and the director and me talk about who we think will be good. The physical production is probably my least favorite because it’s not convenient. Unfortunately while making a movie you’re not just making one movie, you’ve got others going into production, so things need to be done with those. Towards the end of a film in the final weeks of editing I’ll spend most the time with the editors. The director will have been there most the time, but towards the end I like to be there as well. I just love the work.