A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond (Limelight) [Paperback]

Christine Vachon (Author), Austin Bunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2007

A Killer Life is a book about just that: the killer life of an alternative film producer who's forged her own path of success between the disparate pillars of art and commerce. Strong, steady, creative, loyal, funny, artistic, and doggedly determined to produce films that have meaning and substance and staying power in the pantheon of great cinema, Christine Vachon, a member of the Academy and born and bred on the realistic, unforgiving streets of New York City, is one of the most important people working behind the scenes in the film industry today. How did she get there? Why do directors love her? What does it take to produce great movies? What happened on the set of Kids? These answers and more are in her book!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The day-to-day life of independent film production is not the stuff of charming anecdotes on DVD commentaries. Instead, as Vachon skillfully explicates, it is a constant and difficult struggle between the competing influences of artistic vision and the always present bottom line. As the head of Killer Films, which has produced such alternative hits as Boys Don't Cry and Far from Heaven, Vachon is in a difficult position: she is an insider whose job is to constantly support outsider stories. The financial reality of the world she chronicles provides the drama that sustains this empathetic and thoroughly engaging memoir. Vachon's voice is likable and slightly neurotic, allowing the reader to develop a rooting interest in her continual quest to secure financing for often controversial films. Though Vachon's account is slightly hampered by her obvious bias toward her own films, the book teems with the veracity that can only come from hard-earned experience. This is an immensely appealing view into the expensive reality of imaginative filmmaking. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Interested in the travails of big-time creative movie producers? Check out Vachon's entertainingly brooding story, that of a producer of such edgy yet profitable films as Boys Don't Cry and Far from Heaven. More than the grandiose Robert Evans (Urban Cowboy, Chinatown--but also The Cotton Club), who memorably chronicled his career in autobio The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994), Vachon tightrope-walks between making engaging movies and turning a profit, which nowadays means earning enough to ensure further opportunities to film stories different from the current mainstream fare of feelings-heavy weepers and gratuitous-explosion capers. Despite Vachon's proven track record, bottom-line considerations are never far from her consciousness, and the ingenious ways in which she deals with that situation provide much fodder for ironic reflection and pointed exposition. Her tale of professional ups and downs engagingly describes the Hollywood firmament that lies between the heady realm of big-timers like Evans and the hand-to-mouth existence of ground-level filmmakers like Lloyd Kaufman of Toxic Avenger fame. A fine, informative, entertaining addition to -inside-Hollywood literature. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Limelight Editions (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879103485
• ISBN-13: 978-0879103484
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars better than film school!, October 11, 2006

By 

picky "picky" (new york, ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond (Hardcover)

As an aspiring producer, I have long looked up to the indie queen Christine Vachon, and I was interested to read this book after having read her excellent SHOOTING TO KILL. I read that book when I was back in college, but this book is better. It's definitely more personal - in a way it reads like a memoir.

You feel like you are going through all the trials and tribulations with her. There's a lot of exciting stuff here - she battles the MPAA over Boys Don't Cry -- the bond company takes control of Far From Heaven-- she has interactions with big stars like Jude Law and Julia Roberts.
I have never been to Sundance, but Vachon's Sundance diary takes you through that festival with her.

All this makes for a book that's immensely readable; I couldn't put it down. I really liked the spotlights from other industry figures, agents, studio heads and directors like John Cameron Mitchell (who did my favorite film, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH!) If you are in the industry, want to learn about the industry or are just plain curious about how movies get made, go out and get this book now!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Film buff or not..., January 1, 2007

By 

E. DePeace (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond (Hardcover)

This book is riveting reading for the fan or the filmmaker. Vachon has a talent for balancing intensive amounts of details with storytelling skills. You really will want to know how a distribution is made before the first frame is filmed. Her personality -- tough, passionate, centered -- also makes the book a compelling read. Even when her foes are completes a-hats, Vachon does not descend into bitterness, but rather, makes another compelling lesson.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You couldn't pay Christine Vachon enough money to give a course like this..., March 1, 2007

By 

Adam Daniel Mezei "Adam Daniel Mezei" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond (Hardcover)

...which kind of gets me wondering--why the heck don't *even more* aspiring producers and D-boy and D-girl wannabes get their hands on this amazing compendium of production experiences, take them to heart, and learn themselves a whole lot about the global film game in the process. If you've got the answer to that question, let me know. I'm still scratching my noodle.

Okay, so you're going to totally dig this book. Christine Vachon and her Killer Films outfit in N-Y-C, using that well-known convention of theirs--break the bounds of traditional (read: boring) publishing with a rather unconventional approach to bookwriting. Prepare for a wild wooly ride of a read...Christine's deft collaborators (egs. directors, financiers, and studio consigliatores) have chimed in here in various sections, offering up sage advice on the pit- and prat-falls of the indie and studio sides of the filmmaking biz, and what it's generally like working with Christine and her able band of brothers and sisters. That, for this here reviewer, was a right privilege...live recordings of Christine's conversations with her colleagues wouldn't have been richer. And like I tell you in my title...you couldn't pay Vachon enough to give this course. For a couple of Lincolns, this was a gold mine.

By the way, I think I've tattooed my entire Netflix wish list with every single Killer title known to Movieland. As luck would have it, ONE HOUR PHOTO was one of the better films of 2002, and little did I know that Christine was even responsible for getting this one made. Small world, baby.

It's an unsung job, the producing game can sometimes be, but mark it--without Christine's valuable input at various stages of the process, many of these so-called little pictures mightn't have been made, languishing in that purgatory of "development hell" (or turnaround) like 98% of the projects out there are in (according to every single statistic known to the filmmaking poobahs). One of the most inspiring statements from the entire book which I triple underlined, dogeared, and highlighted in tri-colour was her frank admission that producers must maintain "eternal optimism." They are the ones who are enthusiastic at all times, oftentimes when there's no reason to be, and oftentimes when there's no production necessarily to speak of. The equivalent to selling short on the stock market. If your sources' predictions are bang on, chances are you're going to make a "buchta" of cash.

Such boundless enthusiasm the mark of a truly gifted deal-maker, and in the trenches which is the modern-day studio system (read: the business of making movies), and the relatively recent advent of the "mini-majors" (or classics divisions of the major Hollywood studios), this brand of relentlessness has become all the more critical. Remove one element from the positivity puzzle, strip away a single grain of that much-needed goodness which is a key ingredient of the all-encompassing feelgood--by definition, a must towards smooth functioning on the film set--and off your high film concept goes into the grey ether.

Just for the rekkid, listening to podcasts helps, kids! I'd heard about this title after listening to Claude Brodesser Ackner's THE BUSINESS on NPR (goo-search it). I was so intrigued by Christine's outspokenness, that I simply couldn't curb my enthusiasm to hop on over to my favourite online book purveyor and pick up the nearest copy of her A KILLER LIFE.

Where is that extra star when I need it? Five estrellas, kids. Count 'em. Cinco.

--ADM in Prague