The Business

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 fi...

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 game...

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...

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 arrest...

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 blo...

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 alo...

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 the...

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 t...

We hear from Paranormal Activity producer Jason Blum on the challenge of making a sequel to the 2009 break-out hit. This time with studio backing from Paramount, the producers had to find a way to make the follow-up true to the ethos of its micro-budget original. Plus, producer of Toy Story 3 , Darla K. Anderson -- the lone woman in Pixar's famed brain trust. She weighs in on gender dynamics at th...

Gary Calamar , music supervisor of hit TV shows (True Blood, Dexter, House and Six Feet Unde r) on choosing the right songs to convey a mood and brand a show.  Gareth Edwards on working guerrilla-style and doing his own effects to make his sci-fi thriller Monsters on the cheap.

Since 2005, Franklin Leonard , creator and keeper of The Black List, has kept Hollywood on pins and needles every December awaiting this compilation of the most loved unproduced screenplays making the rounds in town. Plus, Darlene Hunt -- creator and executive producer of Showtime's The Big C , starring Laura Linney -- started out as an actress but hit it big as a writer. 

Celebrated director Stephen Frears ( The Grifters, High Fidelity, The Queen ) talks about his new movie Tamara Drewe and his comfort level working in the independent film world. After two failed attempts at Hollywood studio movies, the indie director says he retreated to a more sensible place, away from the large budgets that had a paralyzing effect on him.  Then we meet Dan Bern and Mike Vio...

Kyle Killen created the Fox drama, Lone Star , which was recently canceled after just two airings.  While that television dream didn't exactly work out as planned, his film career is hanging in limbo. He wrote the much lauded screenplay for the movie The Beaver , which was due out this year. Killen talks about how this screenplay turned his life around and how the casting of Gibson may have a...

"Jumped the Shark" may be the most famous thing Fred Fox, Jr. has ever written and in a way he didn't even write it-- not that phrase exactly.  Fox is the Happy Days writer behind the now infamous episode that inspired the iconic catchphrase 'jumped the shark.' Fox discusses writing the episode and its aftermath, and answers the question, "Why water skiis?" Then we go to the West Coast Docume...

Premieres, parties and press junkets at the Toronto International Film Festival. Kim Masters goes insides a junket to interview Conviction director Tony Goldwyn about working a festival. Then its off to an industry party where Nigel Cole, director of Made in Dagenham , compares this year's TIFF to two years ago when he was promoting a film that was jeopardized by financial troubles. Plus, the orig...

Director Ken Kwapis's latest TV project is the new NBC series Outsourced , which premieres September 23. The show follows an American running a call center in Mumbai, and has been accused of stereotyping the Indian characters. Kwapis discusses these accusations and the nature of provocative comedies. He also talks about directing the pilot episodes of The Bernie Mac Show, The Larry Sanders Show an...

Battlefield Earth recently won the Razzie for being the "worst picture of the decade."  The two credited screenwriters on that film -- J.D. Shapiro and Corey Mandell — say, "Don't blame us!"  We find out how their careers survived writing one of the most notorious movies ever.  (This program was originally broadcast on April 19, 2010. Today's show features an all new Hollywood bante...