What's my line, producer?

When Stanley Motss, the egocentric producer of David Mamet’s “Wag the Dog”, utters the above lines, many people laugh. Those people aren’t producers. They definitely weren’t line producers, unless they were line producers with a sense of humor?

What is a line producer? How is that different than a Unit Production Manager (UPM)? It depends on what type of film you are on, but I’ll try to give you a broad overview.

First, let me give you a little background on the term “line producer.” Like most film terms, it comes from the “Studio” days (as if those ever ended). A film budget is broken down into two sections, with a line in between. “Above-the-line” are talent-related items: writer, producer, director, and cast. “Below-the-line” falls everything else: crew, equipment, film development, and the like.

Now, it was always understood that the first responsibility of the producer assigned by the studio was to secure the “above-the-line” items. That is still true today. A producer looks to attach the best cast, often looking for the proper level of name recognition to get the film sold. He looks for the right director for the project. At the beginning, he is probably looking for the best script.

Oh, and the money. There’s always the money.

Today, when you see the term “executive producer”, you can pretty much figure that this was the person responsible for getting the money. On some indie’s, it may actually be the person who put in the money. Thus, the confusion starts.

Understand that there is no absolute rule here. The credit for producer is negotiated, but it is widely understood that the executive producer was responsible for the funding. When you see an actor listed as executive producer, it is often because it was the lending of their name to the project that got the film funded. Sometimes, this credit is assigned after the fact. Depending on the project, this could be the end of their involvement, or they can be heavily involved every day.

The line producer is the person brought in to prepare the budget, and execute it. He is the person primarily responsible for the “below-the-line” items, and the original studio term was “Below-the-line Producer.” That has since been shortened to line producer. Hence, the term “line producer.”

That bit of history out of the way, I like to think of the term line producer a little differently, and this is where we start getting into the distinction between a line producer and a production manager. This is the area of responsibility.

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