Stan Bickman - First You Have To Make the Movie

When I first started practicing Zen, I asked a Zen teacher how I could pass along the calmness I had learned from Zen in the hectic pace of a film set. His answer was that if you lived the lessons you learned, you would teach in the best way possible - by example. In a one-on-one situation, such as a teacher-student relationship, this is known as transmission. In my case, the transmission was from a man named Stan Bickman

When I reflect upon my career in film production, I see it in two parts - the time before I met Stan Bickman, and the time since. At the time I met him, I knew a great deal about film. Now, I understand a great deal more.

A little background on Stan Bickman.

Stan worked as a producer, production manager, production supervisor and assistant director on independent films for over 30 years, including over 60 motion pictures. Stan is a specialist at putting together films on a limited budget, dating back to his days as production manager and assistant director for Roger Corman. Producer of Not of this Earth and Assistant Producer/Production Manager on Machine Gun Kelly, he served as production manager for Silent But Deadly, Carried Away, Rolling Thunder and Tobruk. He additionally served as Production Manager on such cult classics as The Pit and the Pendulum, Fall of the House of Usher, Bucket of Blood and (yes) Beach Blanket Bingo. He was production supervisor on The St. Valentines Day Massacre and Mama Bloody Mama.

I first met Stan when he took over as line producer on a film on which I was Assistant Director. Production was going badly, and had Stan not come on, it would have folded. The first thing that impressed me about Stan was his incredible sense of calm. He refused to feed into the hysteria that often surrounds a film set. To everything, there was a solution. Stan was in charge, without ever needing to take charge. In his presence, you knew everything would be alright.

Stan was a rather short man, and wore square glasses. When considering a problem, he would often fold his arms, and look up at you over the top of his glasses. In one of the first production meetings we had, the director described a location that we had secured. "How much are we paying for this location, " Stan asked. When the director told him the location was free, that it was the home of his uncle, Stan looked up at him and said "How much is this free location costing me?" By the way, the uncle changed his mind after we arrived with all of our equipment, and we were booted out.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic