CAA’s Rogue Sutherland reflected on her turbulent career and spoke about the changing landscape of the global film industry at this year’s Zurich Film Festival, where she won the Game Changer Award.
Sutherland took part in the Zurich Summit industry forum he has become a regular at for years and pushed back against the idea of a “game changer,” at least in the film industry, joking that “LeBron James could be a game changer.”
At CAA, Sutherland co-heads the media finance division and the international film group, where his job is focused on finding solutions for clients and ensuring films get produced despite significant obstacles. It occupies a large part.
“Our goal, our job, is that if there is a pandemic, if there are two strikes, if the studios don’t buy, if China shuts down, if Russia goes to war, what? We’ve found a way to make these movies. And that’s changing now,” Sutherland said.
The organization said it always strives to “plan films in an appropriate manner (…) that respects the needs and wishes of the film financing community, including international distributors and financiers.”
“Sometimes it’s a global deal. Most often, it’s when a foreign sales agent comes on board, sells international territory, brings in an equity investor, and sets out to make the film without distribution. “It’s fragmented to ensure that equity investors are in a fairly secure position.” he said.
Beyond that, it is also important to bridge the gap, he added. “If we feel there is a gap in the market, if there is a gap in Canada and we need help setting up a distribution company, we will do that. If there is a gap in France, if there is a gap in Germany, Or if there’s a gap in the United States, we’re always thinking about how we can make it better and easier so that the independent film market can actually thrive.”
CAA’s independent international operations didn’t really begin until about 2005, Sutherland said. Before that, everything was produced by the studio, and that division was primarily a “service division for clients who had projects they wanted to do when they weren’t working on big studio films.” After the financial crisis of 2006, the business evolved and a lot of these movies were actually able to be financed and financed by people like us. ”
Sutherland attributed some of his early successes to “sheer pure luck,” including Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.”
“When you’re that young and you don’t know how anything works, you kind of learn on the fly. You kind of trust the process and believe it’s going to work, and you don’t overcomplicate the process or overthink things. I’m overcomplicating things and overthinking things now. It’s worse now. Then I believed what (producer) Vincent Maraval told me. said, “I’m going to do ‘The Wrestler.'” And I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do ‘The Wrestler.'”
“Then I will ask him about 400 questions about how much he can pre-sell and how much he can borrow for some territory that he did not pre-sell. Where can I find him at 4 o’clock?
He also had memorable success with Aronofsky’s next film, 2010’s “Black Swan,” despite setup difficulties.
“The genius of ‘Black Swan’ is Darren Aronofsky and Natalie Portman. And if you need a little help getting people to understand and relate to what the director’s vision is. After all, we are just facilitators. Somehow, some of us may get lost in the translation between the purely creative and the purely economic. can sit between both worlds and bridge the gap, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so well.”
For “Black Swan,” part of the challenge was explaining Aronofsky’s actual vision for the film.
“People were reading this as a drama, but he wanted to direct a thriller. When I read the script, it really felt like a drama. I spoke to Darren about the film and his vision for it. , it’s obviously going to be a psychological thriller, and it’s going to be, “I’m going to be out of breath the whole time,” which is exactly what the movie conveyed, except it wasn’t on the page. People don’t automatically recognize that. ”
Sutherland then convinced producer Brian Oliver to back the film, which became a worldwide hit.
Sutherland recalled joining CAA many years ago and said it was CAA co-founder Ron Meyer, who was representing his father at the time, who encouraged his parents to work for the company. “I was sent to the mailroom, which I found a little strange because my parents didn’t particularly love agents and didn’t talk about their fondness for them from an early age. Let’s say the acting and artist community wasn’t celebrating my agent at dinner, so I thought they were sending me to jail. But it turned out to be the best experience of my life. .”
Like his father, Donald, and brother, Kiefer, he never considered a career as an actor. Especially after an unimpressive stint in musical theater in college and a brief stint as a film stand-in for the furious Marlon Brando.
“I can’t deal with rejection. In fact, I didn’t know that you have to deal with some level of rejection in everything you do in life, but in acting you deal with rejection every day. I want to do something. You’ll be lucky if you get one out of 100.
