Producers in the hot seat

Each year during the Cannes film festival there is an invitation-only gathering of film producers and financiers - a kind of hoods' convention. "Don't let them know you're a journalist," I was warned, "let them think that you're one of them."

I had the impression that I was inside a shark tank. One producer walked past with a Desperate Dansized buffet helping of lobster, salmon and oysters. Another brushed past, leaving me feeling as if I had been buzzed by a manta ray.

Producers, rather than actors or directors, have always fascinated me. They have the power in film. The popular view is that the director is the "author" of movies. According to auteur theory, the "below the line" talent - actors, camera crew, composer and producer - simply execute his creative vision.

But those who work in the business know who calls the shots. The producerstays with a project from conception to writing, casting, shooting, editing, marketing, all the way through to DVD release. The director just handles actors on set. Years later, the producer is still re-cutting the film for television.

In Hollywood's heyday, the producer's name was often more prominent in the credits than the director's. There are still some films today in which the producer's hand is visible - David Puttnam's, for instance, in Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields. "Someone in France decided film was a director's medium," complains Puttnam. "And with the gleeful participation of directors, the press swallowed it."

Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of Pirates of the Caribbean, has no compunction about taking full credit. "It's kind of like building a house. First you get an architect in to draw the plans - that's the writer. Then you hire a team of the best builders you can find and build it. Then you try to sell the house." A retired naval admiral who served as technical adviser on Top Gun saw Bruckheimer standing on the boardwalk, looking at teenage boys and girls sprawled on the beach. The admiral suggested that Bruckheimer was trying to get inside their heads, imagining what they might want to see. "Oh no," said the producer. "You've got it backward ... I dictate what they want to see."

Being a film producer is not a career for the risk-averse. It is a nerve-jangling job, where a project can fall apart on a single phone call. The producer may have to re-mortgage his house to get a film started or, as Richard Attenborough did to make Gandhi, sell his cherished collection of paintings.

And the rewards? Every producer dreams of winning an Oscar. The Academy Award is the supreme representation of profit, glory and power. More than that, however, the Oscar is a symbol that the producer has achieved the ultimate, which comes from making a worldwide audience laugh or cry.

What qualities serve a producer best? Persistence, scepticism and ruthlessness. A useful trick is to fire someone on the first day of shooting, pour encourager les autres. Bruckheimer, Tim Bevan ( Thunderbirds), Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven) and Scott Rudin (School of Rock) are the cream of the current crop but consistency is scarce.

F Scott Fitzgerald, in his Hollywood novel The Last Tycoon, said that movie-making can be understood only "dimly and in flashes ... Not half a dozen men," says his narrator, "have been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads."