The Business

Maria Bamford, Al Madrigal and Paul F. Tompkins on the hard-knocks life of a professional comedian…

Comedy Central exec Elizabeth Porter on those raunchy celebrity roasts, which are meant to be outrageous and  raunchy, but most of all utterly hilarious.

Director Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty, The Nutty Professor) has made the new documentary. I Am is a spiritual journey in which he reevaluates his life while talking with great minds about big social problems. He tells Kim that some in the business think he's "nuts," but that others, like his longtime agent and lawyer, are coming around to understand him. Then I.M. Global CEO Stuart Ford gives us his take on the state of the international film market as he saw it in Berlin during the European Film Market.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith talks candidly about his admiration for Wayne Gretzky, his love of marijuana and his innovative plan to distribute his new movie, Red State, himself. We met with Smith as he embarks on a cross country tour screening the film in major venues. He discusses his rationale for bucking the traditional marketing route, reflects on his career in Hollywood, how smoking pot makes him more at ease with himself, and how some of his box office failures made him re-evaluate his ambition as a filmmaker.  

Composer-singer-songwriter Randy Newman has had 20 Oscar nominations and one win. This year he's nominated in the Best Song category for "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3. But despite his success he says he wishes he was really good. Then, David Friendly, the producer behind the Big Momma's House franchise, talks about being a white guy in the urban comedy business.

Ever since entering the business, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has been as much a savvy entrepreneur as an auteur director. Now with Black Swan receiving five Oscar nominations and reaching $100 million at the box office, he's still not sure Hollywood will embrace his next passion project. But before he finds out he'll direct his first studio tent-pole movie, The Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman.

When television writer-producer Shawn Ryan created The Shield he helped make basic cable a go-to place for sophisticated original scripted programming. With his new Fox series, The Chicago Code, Ryan hopes to bring his brand of storytelling to a broader audience.

He may not be the biggest Hollywood name behind The Social Network, but without his relationship with author Ben Mezrich Hollywood may not have made this movie. Producer Dana Brunetti, recounts how he and now-partner Kevin Spacey wooed Facebook co-founder Eduardo Severin into telling them the story. He also explains his his own fascination with Facebook.

John Sloss, one of the Sundance Film Festival's most seasoned players, gives a window into selling movies as the independent film world struggles to recover. He talks about diversifying his business last year by distributing the documentary Exit through the Giftshop, and how that was both a solid business decision and a wild ride because Banksy, the famously secretive street artist behind the film, was in charge of all the marketing yet refused to talk with him.  Then we meet Loyd Catlett, Jeff Bridges' longtime stand-in and stunt double. After some 50 odd movies together Catlett talks about being at peace in the shadow of "The Dude," getting his head shaved for Iron Man, and the security of knowing that when the next gig comes he'll be there.

During their two-month ordeal the 33 Chilean miners made a pact that they would stick together and sell the rights to their story as a group when and if they emerged. Now attorney Guillermo Carey, part of a team that's formed a corporation to sell their story, talks about setting up a fund to take care of miners' needs and strategy for selling the rights to the story for books, movies, video games and more. Plus, Mindset Media's Jim Meyer discusses how what you watch could reflect your personality and buying choices.

We air a conversation from comedian Marc Maron's WTF podcast. Maron and comedian-writer-producer Louis C.K. discuss C.K.'s career in the TV business, as well as their their relationship as fellow comics and struggles as friends. 

John Horn of the Los Angeles Times and Michael Schneider of Variety join Kim Masters to drag in the new year and muse about what 2010 trends could affect 2011...

The LA Times' John Horn, Variety's Michael Schneider and Kim Masters discuss the big show business stories for 2010. The three industry veterans break down the top stories and tell us what it all means.

The King's Speech director Tom Hooper talks about the anxiety of funding this historical buddy drama and the anxiety of learning Hollywood etiquette. He also gives a convincing argument for changing the MPAA ratings system. Plus, Franklin Leonard's 2010 Black List, the annual compilation of the most loved scripts that made the rounds in Hollywood this past year.

The Fighter is a natural awards-bait movie but producer David Hoberman says that in today's Hollywood, studios didn't want to make it. It started as a $70 million film produced by Paramount and ended up as an $18 million film made with outside money from Relativity Media. Along the way Matt Damon and Brad Pitt showed interest, as did director Darren Aronofsky, but all dropped out leaving the producers to scramble. Also, Christian Bale, whose performance in The Fighter is generating Oscar buzz, goes a few rounds with the writer of an Esquire magazine Q&A. We talk with John H. Richardson about his unconventional and utterly entertaining encounter with this reluctant celebrity. 

Director Andrew Jarecki on the making of his first narrative feature, All Good Things. The film, starring Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst and Frank Langella is inspired by the bizarre, real life story of Robert Durst — the wealthy son of a New York real estate magnate — whose wife went missing in 1982 and whose good friend is murdered years later. Not tried for either case, Durst was later was arrested in Texas after his neighbor’s dismembered body was found floating in Galveston Bay. Durst, who had been living there disguised as a mute woman, pled self defense and got three years in prison for illegal dismemberment of a body. Today he's free. Jarecki talks about the threatened lawsuit by the Durst family organization and how Robert Durst actually liked the film.

We revisit our conversation with filmmaking brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, whose movie, Cyrus, marked a turning point in their careers.  They'd made feature films but never before with studio backing, never with known actors and never with significant budgets.  As darlings of the indie world and trailblazers in the mumblecore filmmaking style they gained acclaim at festivals and on blogs, but now they're rising stars in Hollywood and are currently in post production on their next film, Jeff Who Lives at Home.

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson on seeing their story in the new Doug Liman movie, Fair Game. Plus, an audio diary of a veteran line producer, David Streit, looking to finance his first feature. A senior lecturer at AFI, after years of dreaming of shepherding his own movie from script to screen, this year at the American Film Market he bravely went for it and brought a microphone along to record his experiences.  

The special-effects gurus known as the Brothers Strause made Skyline for a thrifty $10 million. They wanted to prove themselves as directors to the studios but found out they'd rather make their own films. Plus, we go behind closed doors to where deals are made at the American Film Market. We spend a day shadowing the head of the international sales and distribution company IM Global and track their landmark deal on Walking with Dinosaurs.

The Hobbit movies have suffered a cursed road to the screen marked by studio financing problems, the loss of director Guillermo del Toro and a fire at a New Zealand studio. But nothing generated so much public anger and government attention as when the actors tried to unionize and Warner Bros threatened to move the $500 million production out of New Zealand. Jonathan Handel, contributing editor to the Hollywood Reporter, breaks down the high drama and big dollars involved. Plus, young filmmaker Lena Dunham, who wowed people with her little personal movie, Tiny Furniture, is the hottest new thing in Hollywood...