Silver Linings and Silver Screens: Producing in a Pandemic

When I was a student at Princeton, I don’t think I ever imagined that I would be the producer of a feature film, let alone one that would be released in the high days of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, as I so vividly remember Professor Sarah Anderson quoting Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in my sophomore spring: “Our endings rarely square with our beginnings.”

I signed on as a producer to the factory drama Working Man in January 2018 at the invitation of my mentor, former boss, and soon-to-be fellow producer Clark Peterson (husband to another brilliant Princetonian, TV showrunner Stacy Rukeyser ’91). Within two months I was on set in Chicago watching our tremendous writer/director Robert Jury collaborate with the incredible cast led by veteran character actors Peter Gerety, Billy Brown, and two-time Oscar nominee Talia Shire. Though I was of course well-acquainted with the script by this point, it was a joy to watch unfold our story of an elderly factory worker who continues going to work at his plastic plant despite its closure, somehow transforming into the leader he never thought he would be. As spring thawed in the Midwest, we navigated all the usual challenges of a very modestly-budgeted independent feature film, from unforeseen snow days to three-hour drives chasing the perfect shot on the perfect bridge in the perfect small Illinois river town (all while a thunderstorm pulsed in the background, no less). The film was subsequently completed in time for a festival run throughout much of 2019, with an eye toward a domestic theatrical release in March of 2020... Insert those first few chords from Jaws here.

Working Man was scheduled to open in two theaters, one in Los Angeles and one in Chicago, on March 27, 2020. Believe it or not, we were still fighting for that to happen up until March 18. Now, at first glance, this could have been the death knell for our little movie, but our project had already proven a somewhat dogged insistence that it wanted to be out in the world. Indeed, at every challenge we had faced from pre-production through the festival circuit, we always seemed to inexplicably land in a better situation than we had originally intended. Somehow, miraculously, the pandemic was no exception – in ways that we never could have planned even if we had tried.

For those who might not know, a film critic will traditionally only review a film if it is playing in a physical theater in the town with which their publication is affiliated. Essentially, if you want a Boston Globe review, book a theater for 7 days in Boston. Not surprisingly, these costs – theater rentals, regional publicists, ad purchases – add up. Plus, none of these costs are standardized (much like the perfect apartment, a movie screen in Manhattan will not cost you the same as one in Albuquerque), and every indie producer inevitably has to make some tough, strategic choices about where they want their movie to play, if the film’s distributor gives them a choice at all… As such, we had only been expecting critical reviews from Los Angeles and Chicago in our original press plans for the film. However, when we released the film on VOD on May 5, 2020, a true miracle occurred – certainly one for an indie with a limited publicity budget.

Without theaters open to fulfill most newspapers’ screening requirements, suddenly every film critic nationwide was eligible to review our film, and nothing could have prepared us for the generosity and excitement that would follow. To put it bluntly: the New York Times, Washington Post, and dozens of other outlets were never supposed to review Working Man. Yet here they were – connecting with our little movie. And suddenly our unexpectedly timely story about unemployment and unlikely friendships was whisked away into national conversations we could only have dreamed of when we were all huddled together filming in that 70 year-old plastics manufacturing plant in Norridge, Illinois two years prior. Now, six months after the release of the film, Working Man was just named to Variety’s Best Under-The-Radar Movies of 2020, and critic Pete Hammond of Deadline noted that the film “defined what smart independent moviemaking is all about.”

Were we beyond lucky? Yes. Could this have gone so many less successful ways? Of course. Did spearheading the film’s unanticipated and large press push consume countless hours, if not weeks and months? No question. However, there is no doubt in my mind that we never would have gotten this film to the audiences who needed to see it without the platform that the pandemic provided us. As gut-wrenching as it has been to watch this national nightmare unfold both on a personal and professional level, I fervently believe that there are genuine lessons that this year can afford the entertainment industry and which I hope we can internalize as we all move forward.

I pray that critics and audiences remain as open and receptive to discovering tiny films like Working Man in the years to come, even when our nation’s invaluable movie theaters come roaring back to life. Having produced two previous features of similar budget levels, I know it can be a superhuman act to get the attention of the press, precisely because of rules like the theatrical requirement – and because of how much money it can cost to meet those standards. In the process, how many daring and undiscovered gems go unpromoted and ignored, because all the money is on the screen and none was left for marketing? How many exceptional talents both in front of and behind the camera have abandoned their fields because they couldn’t cut through the noise due to limited resources? I know I personally have had countless days over the last eight years since I “officially” entered the industry where I have seriously considered quitting this profession because I felt I just couldn’t get people to take note of the work I was doing. I genuinely don’t know any truly successful, talented person in the business who hasn’t had the same crisis of conscience. In fact, in January of 2020, I said to myself, “If there has not been a serious change in my career within the next year, then I need to dramatically reevaluate what I’m doing with my life.” In the months that followed, change has come in ways I never could have predicted, and as I look now into 2021 I think the entertainment community has an unprecedented opportunity to affirm some of the exciting democratization that has enlivened how our industry conducts business over the last few months, from digital film festivals to Zoom auditions – and obviously the waiving of theatrical requirements for both reviews and awards eligibility.

I remain endlessly grateful that Working Man beat the odds and got its foot in the door, especially in this impossible year, though it certainly isn’t lost on me that there is so much work left to do to guarantee that a little movie like ours isn’t the lucky exception to an intractable rule. This year, for all its miseries, has somehow proven that it is in fact possible for a little film to find itself mentioned in the same breath as an awards contender as films from major studios and distributors, and that possibility can’t evaporate by reverting to business as usual. The barrier to entry can’t be returned to where it was, not when the pandemic is currently causing it to be more expensive to make a movie than ever before. After all, wouldn’t it be something if every movie with talented people and an important message, no matter its budget, actually received the ending that squared with its beginning? Now that’s a story I’d like to see.

Lovell Holder graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and then received his MFA from Brown University. He has produced the feature films Working Man, Some Freaks, and the upcoming The End of Us, in addition to co-writing and directing the feature film Loserville. Alongside his film work, he also currently co-hosts the podcast Sister Roger's Gayborhood with Roger Q. Mason.