Podcast: Don't Kill the Messenger with Movie Research Expert Kevin Goetz
Guest: Producer and Executive, Susan Cartsonis
Interview Transcript:

Announcer (00:02):

There's a little-known part of Hollywood that most people are not aware of, known as the audience test preview. The recently released book Audienceology reveals this for the first time. Our podcast series, Don't Kill the Messenger, brings this book to life, taking a peek behind the curtain. And now join author and entertainment research expert, Kevin Goetz.

Kevin Goetz (00:23):

My guest today is a true lover of story. It is in fact her leitmotif. She has originated them, developed them, shepherded them, produced them, and advocated for them. Most notably, they are stories about women, by women, and for women. I have with me today, producer and former executive at 20th Century Fox, Susan Cartsonis. She's on the board of The Writers Lab, founded by Meryl Streep, co-funded by Nicole Kidman and Oprah Winfrey, and the nonprofit Screenwriters Workshop, CineStory. She also teaches at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. And fun fact for you all, she's my wife. Welcome, Susan. Oh, hold on. Lemme do it again. Susan, I'm home. All right. Hi honey.

Susan Cartsonis (01:18):

Hi honey. How are you?

Kevin Goetz (01:19):

Alright. Tell them how you're my wife.

Susan Cartsonis (01:21):

Okay. So we were testing Nell. It was Nell, right?

Kevin Goetz (01:25):

With Jodi Foster.

Susan Cartsonis (01:26):

With Jodi Foster.

Kevin Goetz (01:27):

Directed by the wonderful.

Susan Cartsonis (01:29):

The late Michael Apted.

Kevin Goetz (01:31):

Wonderful

Susan Cartsonis (01:32):

Director.

Kevin Goetz (01:32):

And a wonderful human being. Michael Apted was the greatest.

Susan Cartsonis (01:35):

So we tested that movie everywhere. We went to the south. We went to the North.

Kevin Goetz (01:42):

Seattle.

Susan Cartsonis (01:44):

Didn't we go to Richmond, Virginia?

Kevin Goetz (01:45):

Probably.

Susan Cartsonis (01:46):

I'm pretty sure we did. And we were coming through Newark. We had to spend the night at the airport.

Kevin Goetz (01:53):

For some reason. Yeah.

Susan Cartsonis (01:55):

And they had lost one of our rooms. I was without a room in Newark, New Jersey at probably midnight.

Kevin Goetz (02:03):

Correct.

Susan Cartsonis (02:03):

And you came to my rescue. You said, this is my wife. Wait a second. Why would you say that? Why would they give us separate rooms then if you already had?

Kevin Goetz (02:14):

I don't think we were in the same hotel. So I said, so I gave you my room and I had another room or something. That's what it was. So it's been a running joke for about 30 plus years now that I think.

Susan Cartsonis (02:25):

It makes no sense. This is my wife. No, well then share a room.

Kevin Goetz (02:29):

Right. No, there was clearly a reason for me saying that. So, okay, let's go back in time to 20th century Fox, rewind, which is where we met. We sort of bonded right away.

Susan Cartsonis (02:42):

Well, we were grunts then.

Kevin Goetz (02:44):

You wanted to be an actor.

Susan Cartsonis (02:45):

I was interested. I was a theater geek like you.

Kevin Goetz (02:49):

Did you major in?

Susan Cartsonis (02:50):

I majored in theater at UCLA. You and I had that in common. I know we did. We recognized each other immediately.

Kevin Goetz (02:56):

Which is also our love of story.

Susan Cartsonis (02:58):

It is. It's also, you can recognize somebody who studied theater, who's a theater geek, because upon seeing each other, they just scream. They're very dramatic.

Kevin Goetz (03:07):

Just when you came in this morning and you came in from the restroom and I was in the studio here and you said, hi.

Susan Cartsonis (03:15):

It's the theater geek and it's like a virus. We never quite get rid of it.

Kevin Goetz (03:20):

I'll never forget something early on when I was being considered for a job under Laura Ziskin and I said, Susan, give me some advice. And you said to me, Kevin, one piece of advice I want to give you is when you go into the room, know the room. Sometimes you're a little bit bigger than the room.

Susan Cartsonis (03:38):

Read the energy in the room

Kevin Goetz (03:39):

Read the energy. And I thought that was a great piece of advice.

Susan Cartsonis (03:42):

Very Buddha and Zen.

Kevin Goetz (03:43):

Well, it was also something you might've heard that he's awfully energetic and awfully bouncing off the walls or something like that perhaps. And you were, I thought maybe being a little kind and elegant the way you were sort of giving me that note. But it was a great note that has stayed with me.

Susan Cartsonis (03:58):

One of the things I love most about you is your energy and the energy you bring into a room. So it makes me a little bit sad to think that.

Kevin Goetz (04:08):

No, it wasn't negative at all. You're talking to people who are not of your frequency perhaps. I don't even know who was in the room at the time. I think it was actually Beth Gabler, Elizabeth.

Susan Cartsonis (04:18):

So I knew the room and I knew that you had to calibrate.

Kevin Goetz (04:21):

Exactly. So I thought it was a great piece of advice. Let's go back to Scott Rudin.

Susan Cartsonis (04:26):

Oh my gosh. Scott,

Kevin Goetz (04:28):

Tell us the story of how you got to Fox.

Susan Cartsonis (04:32):

Oh my gosh. I was just out of grad school at NYU. I had studied dramatic writing and I'd gotten to study with amazing people like the playwright, Tina Howe, Wendy Wasserstein had been in residence there. There were just incredibly inspiring playwrights and screenwriters. Lorenzo Semple Jr. came and did a couple of semesters. It was an absolutely incredible place to be, and New York City is so vibrant and wonderful, and I got to live in New York. I loved it. And I got a job that stemmed from an internship at 20th Century Fox, which then had offices in New York City, and I was working for an amazing, amazing executive later turned producer named Sara Colleton. Now Sarah Colleton is one of the great beauties of all time. The Hollywood reporter George Christie used to refer to her as a latter day Ava Gardner, and she dressed almost in 1940s style and these beautiful pantsuits, Chanel, I mean, she just looked fabulous and just beautiful and glamorous and incredibly smart too. Does that description remind you of anybody? Because it's rumored that Mike Nichols based the Sigourney Weaver character in Working Girl on Sarah.

Kevin Goetz (05:51):

Oh.

Susan Cartsonis (05:52):

I mean, certainly she wasn't mean. Sigourney was in that movie, but she had that presence.

Kevin Goetz (05:59):

Regal presence.

Susan Cartsonis (06:00):

And intelligence. And she would say things to me like Susan always put on lipstick. And so I would try to remember to put on lipstick. She always had lipstick on. Always do your job like you're not afraid of being fired. That was the best advice she ever gave me.

Kevin Goetz (06:15):

Oh, and we'll get to Barry Diller in a moment.

Susan Cartsonis (06:18):

That advice came from Sarah. So anyway, I started working for Sarah as a reader, and my boyfriend at the time had just sold a script to her. So she was like, oh, I've got to interview the boyfriend's girlfriend. This is going to be a wreck. So I spent like 48 hours.

Kevin Goetz (06:37):

Hold on. How many times have you since interviewed the boyfriend's girlfriend or the girlfriend's boyfriend or the cousin of the boyfriend's girlfriend? I mean, I've done it.

Susan Cartsonis (06:46):

So many. We do favors so many times. We do favors all the time. But sometimes the boyfriend's girlfriend or the girlfriend's boyfriend or the girlfriend's girlfriend, sometimes they're talented. So you have to judge people on who they are. Thankfully that's what Sarah did with me. She was really good to me. So I spent like 48 hours on this coverage. If I worked at that pace for the rest of my script reading career, I would've never made a send. But I really poured over it. I made sure it was right and I turned it into her and she loved it. And she said, okay, you're hired. And I got paid by the piece. I was not a union reader. New York didn't have union readers.

Kevin Goetz (07:29):

What'd you get paid for something like that?

Susan Cartsonis (07:29):

I think I got paid like 30 or $40 a script. And then.

Kevin Goetz (07:33):

Not too bad.

Susan Cartsonis (07:34):

If I read a book and I can read really, really fast for the first 500 pages, it was like $50 and then it was $10 for the next.

Kevin Goetz (07:44):

Bring the books, bring the books.

Susan Cartsonis (07:45):

For each hundred pages after. Well, I could zip through books. So I was actually racking in some money and I was loving it because I was living in New York. I was out of school by now.

Kevin Goetz (07:54):

Learning time too.

Susan Cartsonis (07:55):

And I was learning so much. And I love to read. I love good books. And I was getting to read these books. I read books like The Handmaid's Tale. I got to read all kinds of books that later became things. I read Sleeping With the Enemy, which I gave a strong recommend to, said it was a Hitchcockian thriller, and later got to champion it because my career evolved. You were the executive on that. I wasn't, but when you bring up Barry Diller, I'll fill you in.

(08:22):

So anyway, I started reading and I was so fast that they started sending me things from Los Angeles to read and remember, they didn't have email then, so they had to send it by FedEx because they knew they could get a really quick turnaround. I would just read really fast and I would write my coverage right into the computer. So after doing that for about a month, she said, I really like having this girl around. And she liked my point of view about things and she said, come use my conference room. She had a big office and then a conference room. That'll be your office. So now I had a place to go. So I installed myself in her office. I was still a freelance reader, but I had an office to go to and I would read scripts and manuscripts and do these synopses and I was basically in this little boiler room of my own. And I loved it because everybody in the world would come streaming through. She was friends with all the literati in New York. I got to meet people. She was very generous introducing me.

Kevin Goetz (09:22):

What did Sara do?

Susan Cartsonis (09:23):

She was VP of development and production out of New York, and she was covering the entire publishing world for 20th Century Fox. She was working for, first it was Larry Gordon, and then Scott was installed as president of production. And Scott would come through. He liked coming back to New York. He was originally from New York and he met me. He and I hit it off. I thought he was just this cute young guy. We were exactly the same age and I was not at all intimidated by him. I didn't know about his ferocious reputation. To me, he was just this smart, cute, young guy. And we would chat about things and then he got installed as president and he said something to Sara about wanting to hire me. And Sara said, if he approaches you, make sure you negotiate what you want. And I went, okay. And he started calling me.

(10:19):

Scott was very much about the pursuit. And he goes, why don't you move out here and you'll be kind of like my assistant and you'll research things for me. And I had lived in Hollywood before. I had been an assistant at an agency, the Coner Agency. I knew what it was to be an assistant in Hollywood. I didn't want to be anybody's assistant. And I knew that that leap from assistant to executive was the largest leap that you can possibly make. And I wasn't going to move back from New York, which I loved. I loved New York. Good for you. I loved going to the theater. I loved the East Village. I loved my life in New York. I was not moving back as an assistant. That would feel like failure to me. He kind of wanted me to move into his conference room and sort of do what I was doing for Sarah. And this came as a result of me having written basically a treatment for What Life and Loves of a She Devil could be as a movie. Sarah had an assistant named Lisa Melmed who'd read the book and thought it was a really good book and could make a good movie.

(11:24):

What was it called? Life and Loves of a She Devil. Anyway, Scott used that treatment that I wrote as currency with a director who he wanted to do something and he wanted to convince Susan Seidelmann to direct something for him. And he used that treatment and it sort of got him the favor that he wanted. And so he saw my value. 

Kevin Goetz (11:47):

You wrote the treatment?

Susan Cartsonis (11:48):

I wrote the treatment. I think I collaborated on it with Lisa, but I was the reader and I was the person with the most time. She was the one who identified the material, but that he was very impressed.

Kevin Goetz (11:58):

It caught his attention.

Susan Cartsonis (11:59):

It caught his attention because that wasn't my job. I just did it because I was entrepreneurial.

Kevin Goetz (12:03):

Now he's like, oh my God, I have a rockstar in my midst.

Susan Cartsonis (12:05):

I didn't know I over functioned. And by over-functioning, it drew attention. So now he was really motivated and Sara's like, don't settle for less than what you want. And I said, Sara, what I want is to be an executive. I went to graduate school, I wanted to work with writers. I knew I probably didn't have the patience to write, but I wanted to understand writing from the inside. So what do I do? And she said, tell him to make you an executive. Next time he called because he was persistent.

Kevin Goetz (12:35):

His superpower.

Susan Cartsonis (12:35):

Yeah. He would just call and call and call. I said, Scott, I'm not coming out there. I have a really good life in New York. I love New York. I know you love New York too, so you know why I love it. Why should I come out to LA to be an assistant again, even being an assistant for you, that's not what I want in my life. He goes, well, what do you want? He was now fed up. I said, I want to be an executive. He goes, okay, you're an executive. I said, okay, I'll be there Friday. I was living with my boyfriend. I said, Stan.

Kevin Goetz (13:08):

I'll be there Friday.

Susan Cartsonis (13:09):

Pack up our stuff. Follow me. I'll find a place for us to live. I'm moving out at the end of the week and I'm going to LA.

Kevin Goetz (13:17):

So I didn't know you knew Stan in New York?

Susan Cartsonis (13:18):

Yeah, we met at grad school.

Kevin Goetz (13:21):

Oh wow. The late Stan.

Susan Cartsonis (13:23):

The late Stan, the writer of One Night at McCool's that Michael Douglas produced. He was a really, really great guy. We were together for 17 years.

Kevin Goetz (13:34):

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Susan Cartsonis (13:35):

Yeah. So he followed me.

Kevin Goetz (13:36):

Did Scott Love that you said I'll be there on Friday?

Susan Cartsonis (13:39):

I don't know if he loved it, but I showed up on Friday and there was nobody to greet me. And I had zero money. I think I had the $500 I'd made the week before I'd sublet an apartment that my friend Howard knew about from the writer of the book. He hadn't written the book yet. Save the Cat, the late Blake Snyder, rest in peace, in Beverly Hills. And I started work the next day. The story editor, Laura Lee was put in charge of me. I got signed up by 20th Century Fox. It was amazing to drive onto the lot. The Hello Dolly Street was still there when you drove in.

Kevin Goetz (14:20):

I remember that. What was your first movie?

Susan Cartsonis (14:23):

The first movie was Big

Kevin Goetz (14:25):

Penny Marshall.

Susan Cartsonis (14:26):

Yes.

Kevin Goetz (14:27):

Not a bad one.

Susan Cartsonis (14:28):

Not a bad one. And Barry Sonnenfeld was the cinematographer. And I remember the first day I sat in this little room with 13 seats and we watched dailies and I was to take notes and say whether the dailies were good, bad, indifferent.

Kevin Goetz (14:47):

Who did you work for?

Susan Cartsonis (14:48):

I was working for Sarah. She was the executive on Big.

Kevin Goetz (14:51):

Oh. But Sara was promoted or something?

Susan Cartsonis (14:55):

Sara was promoted.

Kevin Goetz (14:56):

And she was, because she was a New York rep.

Susan Cartsonis (14:57):

And

Kevin Goetz (14:57):

Then she came out to be a normal sort of executive.

Susan Cartsonis (15:00):

She was an executive in New York and she was brought to LA to be an executive, but she was upped to Senior VP, I think. And then eventually, I think she was Executive VP. But I was tasked with watching the dailies. And the first day of dailies, as you know, are extremely important because.

Kevin Goetz (15:19):

Sets the tone.

Susan Cartsonis (15:19):

A director can be fired. And it also determines how closely that director is going to be scrutinized. And when that director is a woman, and no female directors in the United States have worked in the studio system for many, many years as feature film directors. It's really scrutinized hard. But Penny Marshall was no fool. And Barry Sonnenfeld was no fool. And they collaborated, and I'm sure Jim Brooks opined about it, what is going to be impressive, what's going to be beautiful? And there's a sweeping shot of the amusement park. It's like a wet down. And the camera movement was magnificent. The scope and scale was gorgeous.

Kevin Goetz (16:09):

Listeners who are starting in the business, note to self, that is a really good piece of advice.

Susan Cartsonis (16:14):

It was dynamic. It was beautiful. I think it made it into the movie, but it was magic.

Kevin Goetz (16:21):

And they knew it was going to be scrutinized beautifully.

Susan Cartsonis (16:23):

It made me gasp. And what did I know? I was a newbie watching rushes or dailies, but I wrote, this is the most beautiful movie. And then there were also dailies of performance. And of course it was Tom Hanks being brilliant and Penny Marshall being brilliant, directing Tom Hanks and the beautiful Elizabeth Perkins eventually as his girlfriend.

Kevin Goetz (16:48):

It's your first foray into the.

Susan Cartsonis (16:50):

Oh my God.

Kevin Goetz (16:50):

And then what happens to your equity, your stock at the studio? Where's the movie that has Susan's imprint on it?

Susan Cartsonis (16:57):

Well, interestingly, my first project that I ever had that I didn't get to see through, but that was assigned to me was called The Object of My Affection. 

Kevin Goetz (17:08):

Oh, I like that movie.

Susan Cartsonis (17:09):

It was very, very early on. And Will and Grace was years from ever happening. The idea tested that movie, the idea of a friendship between a straight woman and a gay guy. That was a hugely innovative idea. Can you imagine that? A straight woman and a gay guy being friends, Kevin?

Kevin Goetz (17:29):

Yeah. I don't think that's possible.

Susan Cartsonis (17:32):

I don't. They could be married. Well, you could be my husband. They could be married Newark, but we couldn't. Right. So anyway, I was given that project to oversee. I think Larry Mark, who was then a producer on the lot, asked me to be the executive. And I thought we should honor this relationship. Nobody's ever made a movie about the relationship between straight women and gay guys. And I'd had lots of gay guys as friends. I was a theater major. Gay guys were my starter boyfriends, and they were my friends. They were my dear, dear friends, you not only coexist, but you support each other. And in the days that I was friends with gay guys, a lot of gay guys didn't have family because their family had distanced themselves because it was considered very, very disgraceful to be a gay person. So I thought finally a movie that honors the friendship and the.

Kevin Goetz (18:28):

Relationship

Susan Cartsonis (18:29):

Between

Kevin Goetz (18:30):

Why did you not see it through?

Susan Cartsonis (18:32):

I don't think it wound up getting made at Fox. I think that it got put into turnaround. I think it was considered not. I loved it. Wendy Wasserstein wrote it. Larry and I worked with Wendy.

Kevin Goetz (18:44):

Did she remember you from NYU?

Susan Cartsonis (18:45):

She did. And I remember she was coming out to LA and she was spending quite a bit of time in New York sort of driving around. She was thinking about having a kid or adopting. Anyway, she needed a car. I remember advising her to get a Camry. These are random things that are really not very interesting. But I told Wendy Wasserstein to get a Camry.

Kevin Goetz (19:07):

What was the movie at Fox you were most proud of during your entire tenure?

Susan Cartsonis (19:12):

I'm so proud of so many of them for different reasons. I'm proud of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because it spawned a billion dollar empire. And even more importantly, it connected with women and girls and told them that you may have a secret power that you don't even know you harbor.

Kevin Goetz (19:31):

Love that.

Susan Cartsonis (19:32):

And that was a really powerful idea. And also because Joss Whedon was writing in a way that nobody had ever spoken on screen before. It was like he invented a language. So I'm super proud of that else. Also, it broke genres because it was both a comedy and horror and nobody had done a comedy horror yet.

Kevin Goetz (19:50):

Good point.

Susan Cartsonis (19:51):

I am super proud of Dying Young, even though it's famously the worst title of all times.

Kevin Goetz (19:58):

Terrible title.

Susan Cartsonis (19:59):

But I loved that it honored the idea that somebody who was dying, because in the story, Julia Roberts, it comes to be the caregiver to a guy who has cancer, Campbell Scott, it's based on a novel. I love the idea that the guy who knows he's going to die wants to push her to be a better person. And that though they're not meant to be together forever, they're going to change each other's lives and elevate each other. Even though it's for a moment, her life will forever be touched by him. And I just love the idea of that. And I really like Julia Roberts. I believed in her talent. I was very excited to work with her. I'm really proud of For the Boys because it gave me an opportunity to work with Bette Midler, both her production company and with her as a star. I'm proud of that movie. I don't know if you remember.

Kevin Goetz (20:58):

Bonnie Bruckheimer.

Susan Cartsonis (20:59):

Bonnie Bruckheimer is the best and just the most wonderful person. 

Kevin Goetz (21:03):

And Nell, you love Nell.

Susan Cartsonis (21:04):

I love Nell. We had so much fun. And Jodi Foster remains.

Kevin Goetz (21:07):

Guy in wind.

Susan Cartsonis (21:09):

In Wind, Chicopee. My proudest moment is, well, I shouldn't say this, Jodi, don't be mad at me. But when Saturday Night Live did a sendup of Nell, I felt like.

Kevin Goetz (21:22):

We made it.

Susan Cartsonis (21:23):

We're part of the culture.

Kevin Goetz (21:25):

We are. We're in the zeitgeist.

Susan Cartsonis (21:26):

I feel like I've made it. Forget Academy Awards. I just was happy.

Kevin Goetz (21:31):

Oh my god.

Susan Cartsonis (21:32):

That Saturday Night Live made fun of us.

Kevin Goetz (21:34):

When we come back, we're going to talk to Susan about her producing career and beyond. We'll be back in a moment. Listeners, The Motion Picture Television Fund is a nonprofit charitable organization that supports working and retired members of the entertainment community. This wonderfully run organization offers assistance for living and aging with dignity and purpose in the areas of health and social services, including temporary financial assistance, case management, and residential living, and has been a crucial lifeline to thousands during and beyond the strikes. To learn more, visit mptf.com. Please join me in helping others in our industry during times of need. There are so many ways to offer support and get involved. Thank you. We are back with my wife, the wonderful Susan Cartsonis. Before we go on to talk about producing, I'd like you to tell one story about Barry Diller and how you stood up to him in a meeting when everyone warned you don't go against Barry.

Susan Cartsonis (22:51):

Well, I was fascinated by Barry because he was hugely powerful, but I didn't report directly to him.

Kevin Goetz (22:58):

I want to say for some of the younger folks who don't know what Barry Dillard has done, and one of them was running Paramount Pictures, but of course the other one, he was responsible for the Fox Network, the fourth network.

Susan Cartsonis (23:11):

And also for The Simpsons, which was on that network. The Tracy Ullman Show.

Kevin Goetz (23:18):

Married with Children.

Susan Cartsonis (23:19):

He created the television movie. I mean, you talk about disruptors. He was the original disruptor. So I was invited to a meeting as a peon. I was a creative executive. I don't think I even had a title. It was just Creative Executive. And I was meant to sit in this round room with all the senior executives and we were going to consider certain projects that might or might not get made. And you were meant to be seen but not heard unless you had something really important to say. I had been warned that if you spoke in front of Barry, the senior executives, you better have the goods. You better have the goods because he will…

Kevin Goetz (23:57):

Eviscerate you.

Susan Cartsonis (23:58):

Eviscerate you. He will kill you. But I was fascinated by him.

Kevin Goetz (24:03):

Most powerful folks, female, male, whatever, will do that and should do that because if you have an opinion, you better have it backed up in something. And I've learned that early on. It's a great piece of advice.

Susan Cartsonis (24:17):

So on that day, I was, as we say in theater, in the moment, I was just enjoying being in the room. I was very present when all your synapses are firing as they do when you're in your twenties. Exactly. Well, and you've had a lot of coffee. And Sara Colleton was there. She was my great mentor and supporter, and I had my lipstick on. So I was feeling confident because I'd followed her advice and they started talking about a couple of projects. The first project they brought up was Sleeping with the Enemy. And the producer on that movie was Leonard Goldberg, who had been Barry Diller's boss when they were in the television world. And Barry was kind of like, is the script really good enough? And I remembered being the reader. I was the original reader of the book, and there was a lot of discussion and I could tell that this project was going to go south and I really didn't think it should. I didn't know what the politics were. I just knew it could be a hit. I knew that it wasn't Woman in Peril story. It was the story of a woman transforming herself and fighting back. That transformation was essential.

Kevin Goetz (25:26):

It was the empowerment that you saw in it. Yeah.

Susan Cartsonis (25:28):

Absolutely.

Kevin Goetz (25:30):

Taking agency of her life.

Susan Cartsonis (25:33):

So basically Barry was ready to axe it and I said, I think audiences will come see it. And it was an out of body experience. Did somebody just say something? Oh my God, that was me. And then I went into basically my commentary and the coverage, which is this is a story of transformation. This is as old as time because it's, and it's Hitchcockian, the transformation of the woman. The way that she hides, the way she fights back is empowering. Women are going to love it, men are going to love it. It's a fantastic story. It's a classic, we should do it. And he goes, the decision was made to do it. So now I'm feeling like I'm feeling my oats. I'm feeling a little empowered. Right?

Kevin Goetz (26:15):

Oh, bravo. Because it came from the deepest part of your soul. You knew. You believed in it.

Susan Cartsonis (26:21):

And I had thought about it.

Kevin Goetz (26:22):

And when you believe in something, let's just say for anyone listening and you believe in something, fight for it. I mean, stand up for it.

Susan Cartsonis (26:30):

Don't stop believing in it. I believed in it when I read it as a book. I recommended it. I didn't recommend things lightly. The whole meeting was like the Susan Cartsonis show. I don't know what happened. I was really determined to just be a fly on the wall. And I ended up shooting off my mouth because the next thing that they brought up was Miller's Crossing.

Kevin Goetz (26:49):

Marcia Gay Harden.

Susan Cartsonis (26:51):

Yes. Marcia Gay Harden was in it. More importantly to me, the Cohen Brothers. It was a creation of Joel and Ethan Cohen and Fox had just released Raising Arizona. Raising Arizona was very, very important to me because I'm from Arizona and they somehow these boys from Minnesota captured the absurdity of Arizona.

Kevin Goetz (27:17):

Like Ang Lee who understood Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee, who understood Ice Storm, like from his culture to what he captured so brilliantly.

Susan Cartsonis (27:24):

This was as distant a culture and somehow they got inside it.

Kevin Goetz (27:29):

That sometimes works really in favor of somebody not necessarily knowing it or taking it for granted, but really having to look at what's aspirational about something or what is the underbelly of something. They have to maybe work a little harder.

Susan Cartsonis (27:43):

Work a little harder. But in their case, this was incredibly original. I mean, they're brilliant filmmakers. And Barry said, this is a very particular movie. It might not make any money. And then that out of body voice, I heard it again, it was apparently coming from me and said, making money is not the only reason to make a movie. And I thought to myself, how am I going to get out of this one? What have you said, Susan? What are you thinking? And he turned to me and now he looked like a shark. Oh, really? And I went, okay, so now I'm going to be eviscerated. I'll probably lose my job. Oh, well, might as well just go for breath.

Kevin Goetz (28:29):

Double down.

Susan Cartsonis (28:29):

Yeah. So I said, yeah, Barry, when we make a movie for the second time with signature filmmakers like the Cohen Brothers, we send out a signal to all the signature filmmakers in Hollywood that Fox can be a home for them and that will bring us more profits, more goodwill, more relationships than we could ever possibly lose on Miller's Crossing. And because these are such exceptional filmmakers, why not put ourselves behind it? It's not that much money.

Kevin Goetz (29:03):

Oh my God, I love you. That is conviction.

Susan Cartsonis (29:06):

The looks on the faces. I went.

Kevin Goetz (29:08):

And he said, what?

Susan Cartsonis (29:09):

And he looks at me and he goes, well said.

Kevin Goetz (29:14):

I'm going to cry.

Susan Cartsonis (29:16):

I thought I was going to cry, going to cry. No, I may not have lost my new job.

Kevin Goetz (29:19):

I'm like, I'm verklempt listening to that story. Okay, I have to ask you about Home Alone.

Susan Cartsonis (29:25):

So Home Alone was another one of those round table. It was a little round room at Fox.

Kevin Goetz (29:31):

Who was in the room?

Susan Cartsonis (29:32):

Set the stage. It was Tom Sherak, it was Bruce Snyder, the heads of marketing and distribution. I think it was the Roger Burnbaum era. It was all the senior executives. And I don't remember if Barry was at that meeting. He may have been, but I know Tom Sherak was presiding and Home Alone had gone into turnaround at Warner Brothers and Fox was considering it to pick it up and make the movie and the talk went around the table. It's a preposterous idea. Nobody would ever.

Kevin Goetz (30:08):

No parent would ever forget their child at home.

Susan Cartsonis (30:09):

This could never happen. This could never happen.

Kevin Goetz (30:13):

Which is not untrue, by the way.

Susan Cartsonis (30:15):

Well, you just wait, I'm from a family of five on a trip across Canada.

Kevin Goetz (30:22):

Hold on. I'm calling Child Protective Services against your parents. Now, posthumously.

Susan Cartsonis (30:27):

On a trip across Canada. We left my little brother Michael behind. I was in the back of the station wagon handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to my other brothers and sisters. And when I got to Michael, who was the youngest, there was no Michael there. My father screeched across the median. We drove 20 minutes back, we found Michael standing next to a Mounty with an ice cream cone going, you guys. And it's marked him for life, I'm telling you. So I told that story in the room and we made Home Alone.

Kevin Goetz (30:58):

Genius.

Susan Cartsonis (31:00):

I said, it can happen. It happened in my family, in a car, in a station wagon.

Kevin Goetz (31:05):

Well, how many times have we also heard stories where we're like, well, if that were a movie, it would never fly, but things fly man, mean fly.

Susan Cartsonis (31:13):

They fly. Weird things happen.

Kevin Goetz (31:17):

Okay, we have to segue to your producing. You make a little movie called What Women Want.

Susan Cartsonis (31:23):

It was just a little movie.

Kevin Goetz (31:24):

How'd you get involved?

Susan Cartsonis (31:25):

Well, I worked for a production company. I had a VP working for me named Melissa Goddard who brought me a pitch with Gina Matthews who managed the two writers Yesven Goldsmith. It was a one line pitch and it was essentially what if a guy who's a scoundrel, a bad guy, a guy who never does right by women, doesn't sort of do the right thing.

Kevin Goetz (31:55):

Played by Mel Gibson.

Susan Cartsonis (31:57):

Wishes that he could hear what women think and discovers that hell is getting what he thought he wanted. And I thought, you know what? That is a kind of universal question. What women want. They have the title from the get go. That's a really good idea for a movie.

Kevin Goetz (32:19):

Is that your definition of high concept?

Susan Cartsonis (32:21):

So high concept, but also a concept that connects deeply with what people want to know are natural curiosity and the truth about human beings. Now, I take exception to the idea of What Men Want as a sequel because I think it's not a good idea for a movie because I think everybody knows what men want.

Kevin Goetz (32:44):

It didn't work, did it?

Susan Cartsonis (32:44):

It doesn't because you know what men want.

Kevin Goetz (32:46):

It's really interesting. If we had conducted what I call and capability testing early on the concept testing, I don't think it really would've resonated. And it also would've felt, I think like a cash play to audiences. Like they're trying to just cash in on something.

Susan Cartsonis (33:03):

It's cynical. It's a cynical choice. Anyway, everybody works really hard on any movie.

Kevin Goetz (33:09):

Of course.

Susan Cartsonis (33:09):

Even if the movie doesn't work. So I don't want to trash the efforts of somebody who tried to make a sequel, but What Women Want was a good idea.

Kevin Goetz (33:16):

But it's not always a good idea to make a sequel if you're trying to inorganically.

Susan Cartsonis (33:23):

Just piggyback on the success rather than on the idea. The idea has to organically work.

Kevin Goetz (33:29):

And by the way, a lot of sequels do work as a result of that.

Susan Cartsonis (33:32):

They do. If the concept can carry subsequent stories or the writers are brilliant enough to expand and to evolve the characters so that they take you on a journey.

Kevin Goetz (33:42):

You got in sort of this pattern of really wanting to support women, women, filmmakers, women's stories, as I said in the introduction, movies about women for women by women. Why do you feel so passionately about that?

Susan Cartsonis (33:59):

Well, when I was a kid, every year I'd watch The Wizard of Oz and that movie had a female protagonist who went on an adventure, who made friends who forged her way, who fought flying monkeys and who prevailed and who achieved some dreams. And I couldn't find any more movies like that. I mean, I guess I got inspired by Jillian Armstrong when she made My Brilliant Career. I loved Lena Vert Mueller's work, but I couldn't find a lot of work from a female perspective or movies that had female protagonists. There were some, but often they didn't feel true. And then at the studio.

Kevin Goetz (34:43):

What about all those Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis movies?

Susan Cartsonis (34:45):

Yeah, what happened to them?

Kevin Goetz (34:46):

No, but I'm saying.

Susan Cartsonis (34:47):

They were influential.

Kevin Goetz (34:48):

But then they weren't making them anymore is your point.

Susan Cartsonis (34:50):

Right. In the forties, women were allowed to be strong. And then we went into.

Kevin Goetz (34:55):

And by the way, some of the greatest screenwriters in the twenties and thirties were women.

Susan Cartsonis (35:01):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (35:02):

That dissipated.

Susan Cartsonis (35:03):

Prior to that.

Kevin Goetz (35:04):

Disappeared.

Susan Cartsonis (35:05):

Some of the greatest directors were women, and then when it became a moneymaking business, women were pushed out and it's really sad. So the female perspective in storytelling suffered.

Kevin Goetz (35:17):

As the growth was through the male eyes often.

Susan Cartsonis (35:19):

And we have been often shut out. So you can see by my body of work that many of the stories that I've told come from a female perspective.

Kevin Goetz (35:27):

Oh yes.

Susan Cartsonis (35:27):

I've really made an effort to hire female filmmakers, but even when I haven't, I've wanted to work with men who are sensitive to kind of embodying the spirit of what that female experience would be because there's no reason that men can't bring fresh perspectives to female storytelling too. I'm very open to both, but I felt like we weren't making enough movies for women. We were expecting women to just sort of meld their tastes into the four quadrant movie idea. And when I talked to people like the late Tom Sherak, who was so wonderful and who was head of distribution and marketing at Fox, he would say making movies for women is a great idea. They're over half of the audience and they influenced more than that when it comes to buying tickets.

Kevin Goetz (36:16):

He was 100 percent correct.

Susan Cartsonis (36:17):

You should stick to your guns, make those movies. We want to see them. So as an executive that empowered me even though I really had to fight hard to get those movies made.

Kevin Goetz (36:27):

It’s funny, Elizabeth Gabler, who is also one of your close friends.

Susan Cartsonis (36:30):

I love Elizabeth so much.

Kevin Goetz (36:31):

Much. Yeah, I do too. I love her. Has made a lot of movies empowering women.

Susan Cartsonis (36:36):

She has.

Kevin Goetz (36:37):

And almost carved her own sort of mini studio.

Susan Cartsonis (36:41):

Well, she has. She's been amazingly successful. It's not so amazing because she's so brilliantly talented. It seems completely normal to me.

Kevin Goetz (36:49):

She's also a passionate advocate like you are. She'll fight for what she believes in.

Susan Cartsonis (36:54):

She will.

Kevin Goetz (36:54):

But for the fact that it was for her, and I know this is not necessarily a women's perspective story, but Life of Pi was a perfect example of Elizabeth at her best. If it was not for Elizabeth,

Susan Cartsonis (37:04):

And…

Kevin Goetz (37:04):

Tom Rothman said this to me in an interview that I just did from my new book. Elizabeth made him say yes to that movie.

Susan Cartsonis (37:13):

She is a beautiful, delicate person who is a force of nature, and she also brilliantly adapts books that seem like they're impossible to adapt. She finds a way.

Kevin Goetz (37:27):

Where the Crawdads Sing.

Susan Cartsonis (37:28):

She finds a way to marry.

Kevin Goetz (37:30):

Devil Wears Prada.

Susan Cartsonis (37:31):

She finds a way to marry the material with the right writer, and she nurtures those projects just brilliantly. She's hugely talented and a lovely human being. I love her.

Kevin Goetz (37:44):

I also read that you had a real reverence and respect for Tyler Perry.

Susan Cartsonis (37:49):

Oh, I do.

Kevin Goetz (37:49):

Have you met Tyler? I have not met him.

Susan Cartsonis (37:52):

I've never met Tyler Perry.

Kevin Goetz (37:54):

And I just said that to Devon Franklin, a guest a few weeks back and he's like, he loves Tyler and they're in business together now. They're doing some stuff at Netflix together and he's doing an intro, so I'm thinking, you should come along. Why do we love him so much?

Susan Cartsonis (38:10):

I love Tyler Perry because he understood that there was an underserved audience that was longing for stories that reflected their experiences and their lives, and he created with what he had, which was himself. He created these plays and then.

Kevin Goetz (38:29):

His own Marvel Universe.

Susan Cartsonis (38:31):

He created these plays and then he created his own distribution network, which was basically the circuit of churches and black theaters through the south, and then he started to make movies and he found a partner in Lionsgate and Lionsgate was deft and nimble and figured out how to follow his lead and create a distribution network that would take advantage and be able to bring those movies to the audience that this underserved black audience that had been ignored by Hollywood and I'm just.

Kevin Goetz (39:06):

Especially older black women.

Susan Cartsonis (39:07):

Oh, I'm so moved and inspired by the fact that he saw a need. He felt he knew how to speak to that audience. The audience that he found was grateful and needed and wanted entertainment. Entertainment elevates us. It inspires us. It makes us feel that everything's possible and women in the world need that as well. Our movies go where we have no diplomatic relations internationally. They speak to cultures, they change people's DNA. It's really, really important and it's important to have it to uplift the people who it's about and also to educate, but not educate in a didactic way, in a way that just sort of infiltrates people's souls and changes the way that they think about things and think about people.

Kevin Goetz (39:57):

Well said. You've been on record saying that movies that are inclusive and diverse in their look and feel culturally are far more successful. Is that based empirically or is that your own anecdotal kind of assessment?

Susan Cartsonis (40:15):

It's my experience and I'm going to be snotty on behalf of women and say were women lead, often more inclusion follows because we are very collaborative and inclusive by nature. So I think that there needs to be more and more female leadership in Hollywood because I think…

Kevin Goetz (40:31):

In Hollywood, how about the world?

Susan Cartsonis (40:34):

I think there needs to be more female leadership in the world everywhere on the boards of companies, in government. I think we'd have a lot less war and we'd have better movies. We'd have more movies that are more inclusive.

Kevin Goetz (40:46):

I love it. Less fewer wars.

Susan Cartsonis (40:48):

And better movies because aren't those the two things.

Kevin Goetz (40:51):

Exactly. Oh, it's so true and it's so crazy. My recent guest, Cheryl Boone Isaacs talks about how people of color have been so marginalized on the sidelines for so long, and then the Oscar So White movement really kind of forced people to take a look in the mirror and say, wow, we really have a disparity here. We got to change that.

Susan Cartsonis (41:18):

Yes.

Kevin Goetz (41:19):

So you made a lot of movies since then. I'm thinking of, well, Where the Heart Is.

Susan Cartsonis (41:24):

Sitting in Bars with Cake

Kevin Goetz (41:26):

Aquamarine. I'm thinking of even Beastly, which was a love story, but you've done a lot of these.

Susan Cartsonis (41:33):

I try to put my money where my mouth is.

Kevin Goetz (41:35):

True Spirit.

Susan Cartsonis (41:35):

I have a lot of fun and I have fun both behind the scenes and watching the finished product.

Kevin Goetz (41:42):

You're also known, by the way, as having great EQ and being a kind and generous person. I don't think I've ever heard a negative thing said about you in the entire time we've known each other. You fight for the right things, but you also set a tone, and so I know your philosophy on set to be kind and elegant to people so that you inspire them to do their best work.

Susan Cartsonis (42:08):

I also believe in firing people early because on a set, you don't have a lot of time to fix it.

Kevin Goetz (42:15):

I didn't say don't confuse kindness…

Susan Cartsonis (42:17):

Tough and nice.

Kevin Goetz (42:18):

Yeah.

Susan Cartsonis (42:20):

That was another Sarah thing. She said, don't think that tough and nice can't live together. They're not mutually exclusive.

Kevin Goetz (42:28):

How do you actually know when to fire someone? You said you fire them early on. What do you mean by that and how do you know it's the right thing to do?

Susan Cartsonis (42:37):

On a movie set, you only have a finite amount of time. It's between six and 16 weeks. I don't know. It depends on how long the shoot is, but it's a finite amount of time. It's not enough time to change a person's way of working, and as a producer, you're responsible for everything that goes on on that set, including safety, and you have to make sure everybody's a great collaborator. If somebody's not functioning well in the job that's been given to them.

Kevin Goetz (43:09):

They could be the most talented person in the world.

Susan Cartsonis (43:10):

They could be exceptionally talented, but not right for the job that they've been put into. It is your responsibility to find the right person to be in that job and to fire the person early. Also, I will say as a woman who is known for being nice, it's important that people know that I'm tough as well as nice, and that I have boundaries and they shouldn't mess around.

Kevin Goetz (43:36):

By the way, that's a common motif that we've heard. I'm going to say from several guests, producers, who've said that is almost a given that they fire someone early on to set the stage. Did anyone ever give you that advice?

Susan Cartsonis (43:50):

No. I just realized, and I'm not looking for somebody to fire. I would never in a million years do that. You want everybody who you hire to be successful in their jobs, but if you know somebody's not working out, you cut bait and everybody finds out and they do. Everybody sits up a little straighter and they go, okay.

Kevin Goetz (44:08):

Marvelous.

Susan Cartsonis (44:08):

Don't mess with her. She's tough. She's fair, but she's tough.

Kevin Goetz (44:12):

I think a great conversation to have always is one about operating always in kindness, but you could be candid and kind and I think that is one of my superpowers actually, is I have to go in room after room.

Susan Cartsonis (44:25):

You really have to. People are tender when they're exposing their work to you for the first time. I've had a front row seat to that at least 40 times, maybe more.

Kevin Goetz (44:36):

And there’s no help to go out and deliver a report card. I have to go out and I have to know that these people have spent upwards of 10 years on a movie.

Susan Cartsonis (44:45):

Do you feel the pain when somebody gets bad news from the audience?

Kevin Goetz (44:50):

You know I'm an empath. Of course I do.

Susan Cartsonis (44:52):

This must be so hard for you.

Kevin Goetz (44:53):

It is, but I'm going to tell you the truth, and I'm hoping to either do a TED Talk on this subject or a place where I can express myself about how to deliver bad news to really talented folks, because there are so many talented folks that go off either the rails or their project doesn't work, but I'm going to tell you something. There is always something to find. As an actor, we were always trained, you have to love your character. Even if you're playing Adolf Hitler, even if you're playing Idi Amin.

Susan Cartsonis (45:25):

You can't say, I'm playing a terrible person. You have to.

Kevin Goetz (45:28):

No, you have to find the thing and you also have to find those redeeming qualities. Every movie has something that works, and I always start with that.

Susan Cartsonis (45:39):

Well, that is the classic perfect way to give critique, isn't it?

Kevin Goetz (45:43):

Sherry Lansing was a genius at doing that. 

Susan Cartsonis (45:45):

She was the best.

Kevin Goetz (45:46):

No one said no like Sherry. I want to say something else about no, no is an answer. People would rather get a kind no…

Susan Cartsonis (45:55):

Than a…

Kevin Goetz (45:57):

A non-response, a non-returned phone call, a non-returned email.

Susan Cartsonis (46:01):

You're making me laugh because when I was at Fox, and even to this day when I say no, I am very specific about why I am saying no, and I tell the person whether it's a writer or an agent or a manager, what it was that didn't connect with me, and I sometimes give prescriptive comments and half of the time they really don't want to hear it, but I feel that it's a responsibility to be specific about it rather than just a no. I want them to know where my no comes from.

Kevin Goetz (46:36):

One, I sometimes have to deliver what my equivalent of a no is, which is audience results, negative results. I find ripping the Band-Aid off fast, but in a sensitive way because I'm going to tell you, I will rarely say this is irreparable. I will rarely say the DNA is so flawed that there is no way forward. I've done it occasionally because the audience is absolutely rejecting something at its core. I don't think I've ever worked with anything you've been involved with that has that because of your sheer talent. Now, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. I'm telling you the truth. You wouldn't allow it to be there, but you've gone sideways on things because you thought it was the best thing, but then you got them back on based on audience feedback. I'd like to ask you about your relationship with art versus science. Let's change the phrase. In fact, that's the title of one of the chapters of my new book, which is called How to Score in Hollywood, and it's not about sleeping your way to the top.

Susan Cartsonis (47:39):

That's a good title.

Kevin Goetz (47:40):

But it is about the pitfalls, the experiences of getting to a green light, why some movies make it, why some don't, and one of the chapters is art versus science, and my co-writer said to me, why don't we think about art versus the audience because science is such a dramatic place that almost has a negative connotation and it's not meant to. How do you reconcile that as both an executive and as a producer, supporting the artist's dream, supporting the artist's vision, being an advocate for the artist and story as I mentioned earlier, but then knowing that there's an audience out there?

Susan Cartsonis (48:21):

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is sort of length of movies. When a filmmaker is an artist and is either given final cut of the movie or has managed to emotionally negotiate it with the studio so that the studio is letting them put out the version of the movie that they want. Often the movies run long and often it ruins the experience. It takes away from the humor and the funny, indulgent. They're indulgent. There are parts that are left in that don't move the story, that bog it down. 

Kevin Goetz (48:58):

They're repetitive in their emotional beats.

Susan Cartsonis (49:00):

Yeah, and it's to their detriment, and we're not putting a play on in a park that everybody's volunteering to be in. We're spending millions of dollars on a business that is a finite business. If a movie doesn't cost that much, you can take chances. You can make a Dogma film and light it with candles and natural light.

Kevin Goetz (49:24):

Oh, I love that you just said that because guess what? Another chapter is called in the book. Every movie if made and marketed for the right price should make money.

Susan Cartsonis (49:31):

You need to know who you're making the movie for.

Kevin Goetz (49:35):

Make a movie for everybody. Make a movie for somebody, but don't make a movie for nobody.

Susan Cartsonis (49:38):

For no one. Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (49:40):

A hundred percent. Demographically, there's psychographics when you talk about attitudes and behaviors, but you better make that for a price.

Susan Cartsonis (49:47):

But.

Kevin Goetz (49:47):

Let's go back to your philosophy about art versus audience. You've had this in your career because I've witnessed it. You've had directors who are, well, let's say artist, auteurs, or at least have that mentality and who don't necessarily want to listen to the audience. How do you grapple with that? What do you say to them?

Susan Cartsonis (50:04):

You ask them to indulge you and to test a version of the movie that makes the changes that you believe will have great impact. I actually have bigger concerns about directors who are too eager to please and just want to change everything and have no conviction at all because I think you lose complete perspective. That alarms me probably.

Kevin Goetz (50:30):

Have you worked with directors like that?

Susan Cartsonis (50:31):

Well, I've worked with a couple of directors that have been willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater and have maybe missed…

Kevin Goetz (50:39):

And you had to be the conscience.

Susan Cartsonis (50:40):

And I said, put that back in. Absolutely. That was a beautiful, delicate moment. It might've been quiet. It might not have seemingly progressed the story, but it establishes a relationship. 

Kevin Goetz (50:48):

Right. You just took the sleepwalk scene out of Macbeth. What are you kidding me? It's the greatest scene, but that's not what the audience was really saying. Sometimes I will gain respect in my interpretation of the data. When I say, I think you cut too deeply, I think you need to bring this character back, need to let things need to look at different takes of closeups because they're not feeling, maybe you're in too many medium shots or two shots and you need to get closer.

Susan Cartsonis (51:13):

Yeah, I completely agree. You have to let things breathe sometimes.

Kevin Goetz (51:17):

What is your relationship with the audience?

Susan Cartsonis (51:19):

I love being in a theater and feeling the energy and the movie that I remember the best is actually not a movie that's about women at all. It was called Rookie of the Year, and I think you were there.

Kevin Goetz (51:29):

Of course, I was there.

Susan Cartsonis (51:30):

And I remember Barry Diller actually came to this one screening and he sat at the front and I went, I'm going…

Kevin Goetz (51:36):

Didn’t Bob Harper produced it or something?

Susan Cartsonis (51:38):

Yeah, he did. That's right. Bob Harper produced it, and I remember it's about a little boy who breaks his arm. Suddenly he can throw a baseball over a hundred miles an hour and he brings the Chicago Cubs back to life. They'd lost all hope of ever winning, and we shot it at Wrigley Field. It's so cute. It's so much fun, and it really worked with the audience. The screening that I'm remembering was practically all little boys and their moms, and I remember following Barry's lead because he would go down to the front of the theater and look back at the audience, which could freak people out if you're sitting too close to somebody who's looking at them.

Kevin Goetz (52:18):

Oh, Tom Rothman has done it for years.

Susan Cartsonis (52:19):

But I decided to.

Kevin Goetz (52:21):

And others, Jeffrey Katzenberg. I remember by the way, Jeffrey and Joe Roth would always ask me early, early on, what was the recruit ratio? How many invitations did it take to get one person into a seat?

Susan Cartsonis (52:32):

That's interesting,

Kevin Goetz (52:33):

Isn't that interesting? Because that is very profound. One of the best correlations is a recruit ratio to how well the movie's going to do. It also speaks to early testing, pre green light and saying, what's the interest, the innate interest in this idea?

Susan Cartsonis (52:47):

What are people hungry for that they haven't seen in a long time? Exactly. Why does that seem like fun? But this was an audience of little boys and they were so engaged. They were laughing their heads off. They were so happy. It's magic. It was magic. That was a really rewarding screening. I knew the movie was going to work from that.

Kevin Goetz (53:04):

What did you do with the movie? You were the executive?

Susan Cartsonis (53:06):

I was the executive, yeah. I developed it.

Kevin Goetz (53:08):

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Susan Cartsonis (53:09):

From a pitch with Sam Harper.

Kevin Goetz (53:11):

Do you like teaching?

Susan Cartsonis (53:13):

I liked teaching. I've always wanted to be a teacher because teachers were so influential on me, but I've always wanted to have great war stories to tell.

Kevin Goetz (53:22):

And who's your favorite, favorite guest artist?

Susan Cartsonis (53:26):

Oh, my favorite guest artist would have to be Kevin Goetz. I mean, come on.

Kevin Goetz (53:31):

Oh, please.

Susan Cartsonis (53:33):

No, you're such a live wire. Always fun.

Kevin Goetz (53:35):

Can't be. What's so funny that when you say you tell the kids this is research and they're probably like research and it's almost always their favorite.

Susan Cartsonis (53:44):

You make it very, very lively market. Well, because it's about getting the note beneath the note. That's always a really important thing to learn as a student, that an audience may tell you something. They may say that they hate a scene, but really without that hated scene, the movie doesn't work at all, and their hatred is because the character is incredibly scary and unlikeable, and the note beneath the note is it's fierce and the thing that's not working might be something else. But the note beneath the note is really important. It's both important when you're getting notes from executives who want to help shape the movie in a certain direction because sometimes they will be very specific and prescriptive and the prescriptive note may not be the best way to fix the thing they want. So it's really important to know what the note beneath the note is, and that's something, by the way, Kevin, you've been very, very helpful with in testing. You have a really good radar for hearing what the audience is saying beneath what they're saying. They're saying one thing, and yet they mean another. That often happens. 

Kevin Goetz (55:06):

Often. And you have to almost hear what they're not saying sometimes

Susan Cartsonis (55:10):

Yes, because sometimes it's uncomfortable to speak what they have discomfort with, but you see the evidence of it. I don't always, but you have guided me.

Kevin Goetz (55:20):

In my world, that's the art and the science.

Susan Cartsonis (55:22):

Well, that is the art of your science because that's the thing that makes you absolutely invaluable and makes the process of testing with you so exceptional. It's not just the numbers. The numbers are great to know. They're great to look at, but it's the way those numbers are interpreted and it's not the positive spin you put on it, but it's the intelligence spin you put on it, the investigative, the ruminating that you do after the screening, the thoughtfulness about what the audience is trying to tell you.

Kevin Goetz (55:56):

Well, now that I'm beet red, God bless you my dear. Keep doing what you're doing because you do it so well and we need you.

Susan Cartsonis (56:03):

The feeling's mutual.

Kevin Goetz (56:06):

To our listeners, I hope you enjoyed our interview and have no doubt that you'll enjoy many of Susan's films that we discuss today. For more filmmaking and audience testing stories, I invite you to check out my book Audienceology at Amazon or through my website at KevinGoetz360.com. You can also always follow me on my social media. Next time on Don't Kill the Messenger, I'll welcome longtime producer and film editor George Folsey Jr. Until then, I'm Kevin Goetz, and to you our listeners, I appreciate you being part of the movie making process. Your opinions matter.

Host: Kevin Goetz
Guest: Susan Cartsonis
Producer: Kari Campano
Writers: Kevin Goetz, Darlene Hayman, and Kari Campano
Audio Engineer: Gary Forbes (DG Entertainment)