In praise of Art Linson

In preparation for a freelance piece I’m rereading What Just Happened, Art Linson’s book on what, exactly, it means to be a “producer.” You know, that credit that you sometimes see? Not executive producer, mind you, or associate producer. Not even co-producer. I’m talking about the producer. He’s the guy who gets the picture made. If you want to know what a producer does, you should buy his book and give it a good, thorough read; as he told me back in 2008, he wrote that book so he’d never again have to answer the question “So what does a producer do, exactly?”

The shorthand answer to that question is “He gets movies made.” And Linson has gotten some great freaking movies made. There’s Heat, one of the best films of the 1990s. Fight Club was his baby. The Edge, the making of which is focused on at some length in What Just Happened. He’s also produced a number of films by one of my favorite writer/directors, the great David Mamet: In addition to The Edge, he brought us The Untouchables (which Mamet wrote), The Heist and the (criminally under-seen) Spartan, which stars Val Kilmer as a secret agent-type who has to rescue the president’s daughter from being forced into a life of white slavery. Seriously. As far as zany, twisty Mamet films go, Spartan‘s pretty much the creme de la creme.

Getting that movie produced by a major Hollywood studio must have been quite the undertaking, something I would pay good money to read about. Hopefully he’s saving all the juicy details for his next tell-all. Until then, let’s all raise a glass to Art Linson