My observation is that most other industries are very conservative when it comes to handing out the title "executive" to any of their employees. Anywhere else, it's a rare title of distinction. But in Hollywood, it almost seems as if anyone in any one-office, Mom & Pop boutique gets called an "executive," even the receptionist or the kid in the mail room.
Can you guys dispell this myth for me?
What truly is an "executive" in Hollywood, and what precisely is it that they do?
It really isn't all that complicated.
In Hollywood, an executive is anyone that is in a decision-making capacity. A corporate officer, a V.P. in charge of anything. A director of development, senior story editor, a "creative exec" -- which, in smaller companies is something that's the equivalent to a director of development although they often have wider ranging responsibilities.
A script reader is not an exec. An assistant is not an exec. Agents are not execs.
Basically, these are the men and women who are -- at the *corporate level* (as distinct from the production or creative level) involved in the buying, selling, and making of movies. Obviously, there's some overlap, since execs also supervise the development of screenplays and the budgeting and physical production of movies.
Generally, there are a bunch of senior execs and below them -- junior execs. All of them are tasked with finding material. If you find it and it progresses - it's your responsibility to carry it through, supervise the notes, be in on the various meetings that discuss the project. It's your "baby." And if it is ultimately greenlit and gets made, then your cache, being the junior exec that brought it into the company, will rise accordingly -- unless it bombs, then you may find yourself out on your ass.
A studio exec (especially a junior exec) may or may not get a producing credit on a movie that he's worked on. That depends (and despite the word "executive" it doesn't have anything to do with "executive producer" which is a whole other thing). But those producing credits relate to the corporation and to internal corporate politics -- that's all about the corporation, about the financial/corporate aspect of the movie having been made -- that's distinct from the "physical production" of the movie.
The physical production is the job of a line producer -- someone who is hired to do that job.
He's not an exec. He's a guy who is going to supervise the physical production of the movie.
There may be other producers -- a producer may have brought the project to the studio and may maintain some significant measure of control over the project. He may supervise physical production, if he's qualified, or be an "executive producer" if he's simply a money guy, or he may be somewhere in between and essentially be senior producer above the line producer (but obviously below the studio who's financing the whole thing).
But he's still not an "exec" -- in the sense of being a studio executive.
There may be other studios involved (if it's a co-production) -- and they will have their execs who will have their notes and their "creative" input -- which represents "corporate" creative input.
Those guys *are* execs.
For instance, I was once hired to adapt a book for Company A -- wrote the screenplay. Then they had to try to go sell it. In the course of selling it, they made a deal with Studio B, but also with Company C -- so in the course of subsequent meetings, I would find myself getting notes from exces from company A, from Studio B, and from Comany C -- notes which, by the way (and this is not at all uncommon) -- were completely incompatible.
And when this happens, as a rule -- it's the notes from Studio B that really count, because it's generally the studio that's providing the money (of course in this case, the whole rewriting process took so long that that whole set of execs got fired, then a new set of execs came in who wanted the script back the way it was, so it needed a whole new rewrite, but by the time that rewrite was done, there was a whole new management at the studio and they decided that they neither wanted to make nor put into turnaround anything that was in development at the time they came in so -- adios project. Welcome to Hollywood).
NMS
