IT IS FEBRUARY.
It is the Academy Awards (your first time at the
Academy Awards). Christopher Plummer is favored
to win an Oscar for a ripe performance as a gay
widower in your movie (your first movie nominated
for an Oscar). And everyone asks if you think
Plummer will thank you.
YOU ARE THE PRODUCERS of Beginners, Lars Knudsen and Jay
Van Hoy, and you answer
“no” every time. Because
you are realists, and because
you’ve been paying attention.
“He hadn’t in any speech
prior to that,” says Van Hoy.
Plummer, as anticipated,
overlooks you. But you’re still
satisfied, because you were
the guys who said “yes” to
Mike Mills after every other
producer had passed on his
script for Beginners.
People worried that the
story — based on Mills’ experience with his own father
— was too intimate, and that
Mills, who is both a writer
and director, was too hard to
corral. You disagreed.
“The way we looked at it
was, this thing is so personal
to him, there’s no way he’s
going to let anyone down,”
Knudsen recalls. “He’s not
going to let his father down.”
You had no money or connections of your own when
you got into the business and
you started off as interns in
the demanding — ummm,
frightening — hothouse known
as Scott Rudin Productions.
Rudin, the Emmy-, Grammy-,
Oscar- and Tony-winning producer of The Social Network
and True Grit, is infamous for
dropping the axe on assistants
— or throwing a phone at
them — when he thinks their
work doesn’t measure up.
One of you, Knudsen, even-