It’s the great debate: Los Angeles vs. New York. Soft or hard. Hot or cold. It’s aerobics vs. psychotherapy. "Everybody has a different version about why they don’t like L.A., and they are all clich s. It is what it is," says Steve Wax, executive producer of Chelsea Pictures, which has been thriving for 11 years at its New York address. As more production companies open for business in New York, they chip away at the cultural stereotype, disproving the notion that the City of Angels is the end-all and be-all in film and spot production.
Some executive producers open shops exclusively in New York because, they say, they live in Gotham and so do their directors. Another familiar (and persuasive) reason for being a New York spot shop is being close and cozy with Madison Ave. One executive producer confided to SHOOT that he is in New York because the city has the best Italian restaurants. Whatever the reason, the people who choose New York do so not because they like L.A. less, but because they love New York more.
New Edge
"We started this company to do the more creative, edgier work, and we see ourselves as discovering and developing new filmmakers," says Jody Raida, executive producer at upstart Shiny Pictures, New York. Although Raida grew up in Pittsburgh, which she considers practically the Midwest, she got her cues to open a small production shop from a three-year stint as an agency producer at McCann-Erickson, Budapest. "There is a much more entrepreneurial spirit among agencies in Europe," says Raida. "When I came back I couldn’t see working at another big agency. So I opened a shop that had that same entrepreneurial spirit."
Raida, who represents directors Salamo Levin, Alejandro Garcia del Rio, Alan Lawrence and Midori Ikematsu, says part of her mission when starting Shiny Pictures was to target the independent film scene to find talent. She says she looks for a certain edge and energy that she feels permeates New York. "I am more interested in being tied into that [independent film] vibe than the Hollywood scene," she explains.
With the increasing crossover between commercial and independent feature directors, it is no surprise that the clever, low-budget spirit of independent filmmaking greatly influences New York’s commercial production. Wax calls this synergy "new edge." "There are two types of edges in this business now, and I think we are in a period of transition," says Wax. "The old edge is music videos-it’s what Propaganda built its base on. The new edge has to do with emotions and storytelling and ideas, which more people are looking positively towards New York for because of the independent films." Just ask any New York-based production company what they’re all about, and four out of five will tell you that their work is based on storytelling and emotions.
Salamo Levin of Shiny Pictures recently finished shooting a comedic short, "Black People Hate Me and They Hate My Glasses," which Raida executive produced. Levin, a former editor with New York-based Editing Concepts and cutter on the 1997 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Frat House, came to Shiny to make the transition from editing to directing. "After Frat House I had done a PSA and a couple of low budget videos, and when I met Jody she just decided to take a chance on me," says Levin, who believes that there are opportunities for young directors starting out in New York. "It’s just the law of numbers," says Levin. "There is so much work coming out of Madison Avenue that there is an inevitable overflow." Levin is a graduate of NYU Film School, where he says he learned a "guerrilla filmmaking" approach to shooting. "I come from a documentary background, and the locations and everything about this place are so real, and the diversity and everything that goes down here just breeds more creative work. With L.A., everything is so sterile because it is all part of a studio system," says Levin.
Since joining Shiny Pictures, Levin has shot two documentary-style PSAs for Big Brothers Big Sisters, "Drawing" and "Basketball." The latter features a series of close-up, quick-cut shots of a young African-American boy heckling his opponent in a pick-up game of basketball. The voiceover says, "New York City has 8 million people; most kids would love to have just one," as the camera pans wide to reveal that the boy is playing by himself on a New York rooftop. Levin also directed the documentary-like PSA "Imagine" for Fire Fighter Recruitment and a touching PSA for the Breast Health Institute’s "Race for the Cure."
Another startup outfit, Peak Pictures, a fledgling division of New York production house Travisano DiGiacomo Films, is dedicated to growing new, untried talent. Frank DiGiacomo Jr., Peak president, plans to build the reels of new directors, who will eventually graduate to directing with the parent company, which is owned by his father Frank Sr. and Ron Travisano. DiGiacomo Jr. is currently in the process of nailing down assignments for new directors William Cahill and Joe Ferone, who are both from New York. "They’re just getting started, so we’re working on building their reels, and hopefully it will take off soon," says DiGiacomo Jr.
Foreign Guns
Executive producer Tony Harding says that starting his new production company, Conspiracy, in New York is a natural progression for him, not only because he is a native New Yorker but also because he signed two foreign directors, Jean-Marc Pich from Avion Film Productions, Toronto, and Fran‡ois Ruggieri from Paris-based TSF Productions. Both have shot countless commercials for foreign markets and each has a feature film under his belt, yet they ultimately remain unknown in the U.S. "All of the big advertising agencies are here and it’s great to be able to walk into an agency and introduce your new directors to the creatives," explains Harding.
New York apparently draws foreign talent. Chelsea Pictures represents London-based Mehdi Norowzian and is about to move director David Gaddie from Australia to New York. Another Australian director may be in the pipeline. Bill Perna, executive producer of Voyeur Films, New York, represents directors from South Africa and London, and Shiny Pictures works with director Alejandro Garcia del Rio of Argentina. All feel that, ultimately, New York is a better stepping stone for foreign talent. "Most European directors I talk to can relate to New York a little better than L.A., not to mention logistically, with the time difference. It is much easier to cope with a 5- or 6-hour difference rather than a 10-hour time difference," says Wax.
Idea Side
Wax says there is a qualitative difference between "traditional L.A. production" and the "New York-style office." "I think an L.A.-based executive producer is more focused on production, while the New York-based producers are much more idea-orientated and more entrepreneurial," asserts Wax, who says he is very much involved with selling his company to the agencies and talking about ideas. The inherent connection to the idea side of the equation has a lot to do with the fact that so many advertising agencies are based in New York, a factor that New York production companies have come to capitalize on. Both Frank DiGiacomo Sr. and Ron Travisano worked at Della Femina Travisano & Partners (now defunct) before leaving to start their own company, which reps Travisano and handles East Coast bookings for Brian Coyne (repped by Level 7 Productions, Studio City, Calif.). "Our roots are in agency creative, and that is a large part of why we stayed in New York: to be close to the work," explains DiGiacomo Sr.
Jack Cohn, president of New York-based Lovinger/Cohn & Associates, says that although L.A. has the advantage of having so many directors, New York has the golden egg-the agencies. "I’d rather start a director in New York than L.A. because of the immediacy of having directors meet agencies. I think in New York you have a better chance of getting the job because there is that face-to-face relationship," says Cohn, whose roster of directors includes Jeff Lovinger, Paul Cade, Laura Belsey, Michael Rowles, Derek Gardner, Paul Goldman and Kim Dempster.
For those who transplant themselves to New York from L.A., creative freedom is often cited as a motivation. New York native Dan Levinson, a director at bicoastal Moxie Pictures, returned to New York a year and a half ago to open Moxie Pictures East after spending 10 years with Moxie in L.A. He claims he was in need of a personal and creative change in his life. "New York offers a new idea every minute simply because it’s New York. Your brain is energized just by walking down the street and talking to people," he says.
And there are those who have moved to L.A. from New York and who have misgivings about the transition. "There is a texture in New York City that doesn’t exist in L.A.," admits Moxie’s L.A.-based executive producer Gary Rose, who half-jokingly characterizes L.A. as a "sprawling wasteland" and a "cultural void." Alex Blum, executive producer at bicoastal Headquarters, recently made the decision to relocate to the West Coast from New York. He says the move simplified his life because it’s just plain easier to handle the volume of shooting in Southern California. By the same token, he admits that sometimes rowing upstream in New York is a positive point. "People are always looking for something different," says Blum.
L.A. Connections
Almost all New York production companies admit to having attempted forays into the West Coast scene, each promptly shutting down the new base, often because of a sense of the cultural disparity between the two offices. "We had a large office in L.A. in the early ’90s, and even though we were all friends, we were all on a different wavelength," says Wax, who made a go at the L.A. scene, opening an office there and then closing it four years later. "There was a lot of creative culture clash. It was like being the president of two different countries, like trying to run Yugoslavia," he laughs. Although the first time around didn’t work out the way Wax had envisioned, he’s open to trying again soon; but this time, he says, he will establish an L.A. office with a New York style. "I don’t know exactly how that’s done, but we want directors that represent our tastes and don’t necessarily represent traditional L.A. production," explains Wax.
New York production is constantly faced with two inescapable truths: L.A. has a larger pool of directors-and better weather. Both factors weigh heavily when choosing to be headquartered in New York and deciding how to handle business once that choice is made. "We know we don’t really have much of a presence in L.A. and that there are a mother lode of directors out there, but when we consider everything, it’s just something we are happy we have done," says DiGiacomo Sr. of choosing to remain in New York. For close to 10 years DiGiacomo Sr., a self-proclaimed Jersey guy, had an office in L.A., but he dissolved it because he and Travisano were not willing to make the ultimate commitment: moving out there. "It turned out to be a tremendous drain on the company, and it wasn’t particularly productive for us," says DiGiacomo Sr.
Five Union Square Productions, which has been open in New York for almost eight years, found a way to get around the New York winters and the high job density in L.A. by having a production office open in L.A. only when actively shooting there. "We just don’t feel the need to have a full-fledged office in L.A., so we are all set up in L.A., but we don’t have a staff there unless we are in production," says executive producer Barbara Gold.
Any way you cut it, it’s harder to start a production company in New York because of the lack of directors, it’s harder to shoot here because of the weather and it’s harder to live here because of the cost. But you know the saying: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
On the other hand, neither Wax nor Harding intends to risk martyrdom. "There was a long time where you were able to remain small, but it is getting harder and harder to remain a small company and survive in this business," admits Wax, who continues to contemplate his New York-style L.A. office.
Harding is already hunting down an executive producer/ director team to start up Conspiracy West. "The reality of this business is that it is important to have an L.A. office because a lot of the work is produced out there," he says.
Raida is more optimistic about keeping her business in the Big Apple. "To me there are reasons to be in New York as a company, and there are reasons to shoot in New York, and those are two separate things. Sometimes there are just drawbacks to shooting in New York," says Raida. But for every production hazard that presents itself to a New York-based production company, there is a movement towards making shooting in New York a little easier. New York production unions have become more flexible, and places like The Shooting Gallery and The Tribeca Film Center are dedicated to making filming in the city more user-friendly. Concludes Raida, "It is definitely a lot easier now to shoot in New York than it ever was before."7
