Episode 35: Jennie Lew Tugend, Producer

Jennie is a Producer. She has produced and co-produced some of the industry’s most memorable franchises:  Free Willy, Lethal Weapon and HBO’s Tales from the Crypt.  As she continues to develop and produce today, she is also sharing her experience by teaching film production at UCLA Extension and Columbia College Hollywood, and in 2016, she joined the faculty of AFI as a producing mentor. 

This episode jumps right into class and she talks about what makes a creative producer and what is the process of developing a film - it takes longer than you think, and sometimes the actor with a script in his back pocket turns out to be an amazing gift.

We eventually circled back to her history and how she came up through the ranks, all the way to a studio deal. Spoiler, she took a detour through a saloon.

And this: it’s not just who you know, it’s who you know and what they think of you.

Episode 26: Lydia Dean Pilcher, Producer

Lydia is an Executive Producer and is the Founder and President of the production company Cine Mosaic. Her many credits include Queen of Katwe, Here One Minute, The Sisterhood of Night, You Don’t Know Jack, Amelia, The Darjeeling Limited, Iron Jawed Angels, Hysterical Blindness, just to scratch the surface.

Lydia is also a member of the Producers Guild of America and started their Women’s Impact Network.  She was key in producing the Ms. Factor Tool Kit which serves to debunk the many myths around the notion that female-driven content is not commercially viable. She also teaches a class at NYU that sounds so juicy, I may re-enroll.

She defines “badass” as this: not being afraid to be effectively subversive.  May we all be badasses.

Episode 22: Liz Sayre, Production Executive

Liz Sayre is the Executive Vice President of Physical Production at Fox Searchlight Pictures. Catch that?  EVP. She cracked the code. She worked her way up the production ladder fairly quickly, working with Paul Mazursky, where she learned every aspect of producing a film, from development through distribution.  From there, she served as a Production Executive at Walt Disney Studios and currently at Fox Searchlight.

We talked about distribution of labor at home, the essential morning walking meeting, and what partnership really looks like. Also, she wonders why young women would distance themselves from Feminism. What do they think it means?

And, she worked with J.J. Abrams before he was J.J. Abrams.

If you would like to hear more from Liz, you are in luck.  Here is her BONUS episode - Tales from the Trenches.

She has stories from 9/11, the unfortunate Black Swan, and an alarming number of moviemakers smoking marijuana in all the wrong places.  SMH, Hollywood.

Episode 9: Cynthia Kanner, Post Production Executive

Cynthia is currently the Vice President of Post Production at HBO. She started in a big accounting firm in New York, working on audits, mergers and acquisitions as a CPA. Realizing that was not her cup of tea, she took a risk, moved to Los Angeles and started working in production. She worked her way up, learning everything she could, until she found her home at HBO, where she has worked for 22 years.  We talked about everything from toe cleavage regulations, staying up all night making the Valentine cookies for her daughters’ classmates, and how her corporate women’s leadership group evolved from naming themselves “The Tiaras” to the more appropriate “The Badasses.”  There is also a lot of juicy talk about negotiating your deal.

Episode 1: Janet Graham Borba, Production Executive

Janet Graham Borba is a Senior Vice President of Physical Production at HBO - known for Game of Thrones, among many many others.  There have been various times in her career where women in leadership was top of mind, and now is one of those times. We talked about the realities of the celluloid ceiling, what it will take to get more women to the very top level, and how we teach our girls to take on the world.  And she has some funny stories from when her twins were toddlers....