It’s Friday evening and there’s a celebration taking place in the New York offices of a high-powered entertainment law firm in Chelsea. The sleek, industrial-style furniture is covered with beer bottles and solo cups as producers, publicists, and directors affiliated with the firm celebrate the youngest guest in their midst.

Tzvi, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Flatbush, just wrapped up post-production on his first feature film: Killer of Men - an earlier version screened last fall at the Woodstock Film Festival. Surrounded by accomplished and well-connected industry types, Tzvi is living the dream of every film school student.

Despite the seeming ubiquity of content and the rise of global streaming media giants operated by trillion-dollar technology companies, the entertainment industry is still an extremely exclusive club. Even at its lower echelons, 99.9% of those who try to enter end up turned away. How many wannabe directors have spent their 20s – even their 30s – working as part-time baristas, bartenders, personal trainers, and thrift store employees, waiting for an opportunity that never comes?

Tzvi, who was born in an ultra-orthodox enclave of one of New York’s ultra-orthodox Jewish communities and raised to become a Talmud scholar like his grandfather, didn’t have to work in a used vinyl store or a gluten-free ice cream shop while waiting for his big break; he just wrote a script, picked up a camera, and made his movie.

Seated to Tzvi’s left is the person to whom he owes his place at the cocktail-covered conference table, the man who held open the door to this closed-off clique: Cary Woods. Woods, known for producing a slew of culturally defining films like Kids, Scream, and Swingers, immediately offered to finance the post-production of Tzvi’s micro-budgeted directorial debut after being impressed by a rough cut.

And being backed by Woods is a big deal because, in addition to producing a string of eclectic, indelible hits, Woods has an enviable track record for spotting A-List talent well before anyone else in Hollywood sees their potential. His instincts led Woods to invest in first-time directors like Harmony Korine (Kids), Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth), James Mangold (Cop Land), Doug Liman (Swingers), and M. Night Shyamalan (Wide Awake).

In the following interview, Woods – who returned to the industry after a near-fatal car accident in 2013 – reveals how he identifies a great filmmaker in the making.

What are some of the things Tzvi, Korine, Payne, and Shyamalan all have in common?

Carey Woods: One thing all of the young filmmakers I worked with have in common is vision and a confidence in that vision. If you spend any time with Tzvi, you know he has both of those qualities. He has full confidence in what he’s doing. On top of this he has an incredible work ethic, always doing extended research on his screenplays. He’ll read up on academic literature, and interview scholars and other experts to broaden his understanding of the material.

Why is vision so important?

Look at Harmony, who was the perfect person to write Kids because that was just the life he was living, and those kids in the film really were his friends. They were fellow skaters. Harmony brought an authenticity to that film that Larry [Clark, the director] couldn’t because these kids were Harmony’s age, and Larry was probably in his 50s at the time. Larry was a great director, but he wasn’t part of that skating culture, whereas Harmony was.

There’s no shortage of examples about how producers ruined a director’s vision. How do you know when to step in and when not to?

When you’re a producer who recognizes people with an innate talent, it’s important to know when to just back off, to know that their point of view is coming from a place that you can’t reach. I had a discussion with Larry on Kids; he was already a renowned photographer by that point, but he hadn't yet directed a film. We had a disagreement about casting, and I had trouble understanding one of the actors he wanted. I told Larry I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, and asked if we were going to give this guy some kind of speech lessons. Larry said ‘No, that’s what's great about him.’ I didn’t quite see it, but the confidence with which Larry said it made me go with it, and his call was the right call.

Tzvi never went to film school. Don’t you think that’s a setback?

Not really. He’d talk to me about a shot that he was putting together and he’d say, ‘It’s like the shot Tarkovsky did in…’ His references blew me away specifically because I knew he hadn’t gone to film school, or regular school for that matter. He was as accomplished in his knowledge of film history as any film school grad I have ever met. Probably more accomplished.

Does that make film school obsolete?

Harmony once said to me that film school – he dropped out of NYU about a month into the program – that it’s basically like trade school. They teach you how to operate a camera, but you learn very little of film history, of the art of filmmaking. Alexander Payne [who majored in Spanish and history before pursuing filmmaking] was the same in many ways. He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of film and an incredibly voracious appetite for cinema.

What was it about the rough cut of Killer of Men that first caught your eye?

After our initial meeting, Tzvi sent me 20 minutes of footage and told me he’d made the entire film with a budget of less than $10,000. When you look at the actual film, at the reassurance of the shots, it looks like it had been made for much, much more money. And it definitely didn’t look like the work of someone who just got behind the camera for the first time.

How does a filmmaker do that?

Creativity, mostly. Tzvi had unimaginable limitations, in terms of budget and casting, but he made do with them. He intentionally wrote most of the script based on the props and locations he knew he’d be able to get his hands on. For example, he knew of a laundromat and a coffee shop that would allow him to shoot inside. He also filmed a large portion of Killer of Men on the New York Subway. Don’t ask about any permits.

Based on your past experiences with people like Harmony and Payne, do you think that talent is inborn or acquired?

For one thing, I don’t know if you can cultivate intelligence. If you put aside the directors I’ve worked with and talk about some of the all-time great filmmakers, Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese or Francis Coppola, did they really learn any of their skills? Did Steven Spielberg really learn how to be Steven Spielberg? Similarly, I don’t think you could teach Harmony Korine anything that Harmony Korine does not already know.

So, talent is inborn?

I don’t know. Maybe? I think it’s the same with any artist in any medium, whether you’re a filmmaker or a painter or a musician. I once shared a video of this great guitarist riffing with a friend of mine, and he said, ‘I could watch that a million times and never be able to recreate that.’ There is a God-given talent that that guy has in his fingers that you just can’t learn or teach. One of my protégés – Ernest Lupinacci – loves to quote James Baldwin who was famous for saying “You don’t decide to become a writer, you discover you are one.”

Even if you have talent like that, breaking through in entertainment is tough. How do you not lose faith?

You have to assume that when people say no to you, it doesn’t mean anything except that they’re wrong. People said no to Steve Jobs. The Beatles were turned down, and studios passed on the script for Back to the Future when it was first going around. There’s always going to be disagreement about what’s good and what’s not, but you’ve got to maintain confidence in your projects and yourself.

You’ve made some big bets in the past. Does that ever cause conflict with the other producers you work with?

The hardest part of producing these films is to persuade others to finance them. It’s definitely become easier now that I’ve had a bit of success in my career. I can say: ‘Look, I know this. You know I’ve done it before.’ The movies I’m the most proud of are the ones that were the hardest to make. Nobody wanted to make Kids. Nobody wanted to make Citizen Ruth, nobody wanted to make Gummo. But they were the films that gave me the most satisfaction when they did get made.

Volume 28, Issue 7 / July 2024 Interviews   cary woods   harmony korine   independent cinema   tzvi