The defining moment of the most recent Project Greenlight season – which concluded last Sunday on HBO – occurred in the premiere, during a heated conversation between Matt Damon and indie film producer Effie Brown.
Brown, an African American best known for producing Dear White People, pushed for a filmmaking team comprising a woman and a Vietnamese man to be considered for the Project Greenlight prize. The winner(s) would direct a comedy script entitled Not a Pretty Woman for $3 million, with creative and commercial support from Damon, Ben Affleck, HBO and the Farrelly Brothers. Brown (and others) felt the script had some racial and gender dynamics that could turn problematic; she argued that a diverse team of filmmakers might be necessary to work through any stereotypes. Damon, however, disagreed. Firmly, he told her that “When we’re talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show” – essentially, that representation concerns shouldn’t be a focus behind the scenes. He then, in a video diary entry, turned to the classic “meritocracy” argument: that you need to go for the best choice, not the politically correct one.
And yet, if there’s one thing that this infuriating, illuminating season of Project Greenlight demonstrated, it’s that Effie Brown was right, and Matt Damon was plain wrong.
The Project Greenlight team ultimately went with Jason Mann as their director, a pale, lanky Columbia film student with enormous technical skill and an idiosyncratic sensibility. (He was chosen based on his submission of a short film.) He was also, immediately, difficult. He convinced the producers to toss Not a Pretty Woman in favor of expanding another short of his, The Leisure Class, a tone-hybrid comedy of manners. He endlessly pushed for “shooting on film,” despite his limited budget, and eventually won the battle. He even tried to fire the assigned writer, Pete Jones – and probably would have gotten his way had he not personally decided otherwise. He feuded with his crew on matters of location and effects, often blaming them in the event that his indecisiveness or stubbornness led to a shortage of funds or shooting days.
He was unlikable – the series, which purportedly functions to show the grind of making a feature-film, seemed to be trying to paint Mann as an artiste struggling to carry out his vision against budgetary and time constraints. His arguments with Brown, in particular, heated up; sympathy often went the latter’s way, but the two were so out of sync that their inability to work together caused both to act out and push harder than they needed to. Mann may not have been coming off too well, but his meticulousness and command of cinematic language indicated that he had a vision that deserved carrying out – personality be damned.
But as the show wore on, and as footage of The Leisure Class started coming together, an unfortunate reality became increasingly clear: this movie was not going to be very good. Not “ambitious,” as the show eventually tried to characterize it; not “challenging,” either. Reviews of the film, which premiered last night, are near-ghastly – it may look nice, but “there’s no there there,” as Alan Sepinwall put it. (I’ve also read “laugh-free” from The Hollywood Reporter and “as pinched and humorless as its director” from Ken Tucker.) More troubling is a flaw that many, including Brown, identified in the show, and what several critics have echoed: the total mishandling of Fiona (Bridget Regan), the film’s principal female character. She has a major character turn that Brown and others identified as the root of the film’s issues – it’s narratively unearned, emotionally unconvincing and tonally troubled.
Brown brought this up to Mann in the season finale, to which he casually dismissed her. (In fact, she brought it up way back in Greenlight’s second episode, on the basis of the short alone.) Instead, he then brought in Jones, Peter Farrelly – who quit the film because Brown was too “difficult” for him – and a few “buddies” to watch the film, and they enjoyed themselves without much concern.
Something more interesting: HBO, the film's distributor, never quite endorsed the film. As each of the people (or, more accurately, characters) in Project Greenlight screened it, we didn’t hear anything near “good” as a description for The Leisure Class. Ben Affleck called it “not to his taste,” Matt Damon said it was “ambitious,” and HBO Films President Len Amato – who clashed with Mann throughout the finale, as he tried to fix the film’s major problems – merely praised the fact that Mann managed to finish it. Indeed, the episode vindicated Brown, as Amato forced Mann to make the changes to Fiona’s character as had already been suggested. (Spoiler: the film didn’t get much better.)
Brown fought with several people in Project Greenlight. She was often in the right, from her argument with Damon to her insistence against Mann’s refusal to use digital technology. She could also be unnecessarily combative, perhaps in her interactions with Farrelly that led to his exit. Further, the mood on the set of The Leisure Class was certainly not ideal. But much of the intense behavior documented throughout the season could be attributed in-part to Greenlight’s dramatized edit, and in-part to the high-stress nature of making a low-budget indie with a finicky director. She didn’t exit a hero, exactly – just a human who happened to be right a lot of the time.
But The Leisure Class, as a product, speaks volumes about that initial conversation between Brown and Damon. Everyone but Brown on Project Greenlight bowed to Mann’s every demand – he got his script, film and extra money – on the basis of wanting to let him make his art. His refusal to compromise falsely played into notions of the brilliant and “difficult” visionary. But right to the end, when he focused on the exposure of a single camera shot over his film’s many narrative holes, Mann failed to see the bigger picture – he ultimately sacrificed his narrative and characters for visual specificity.
So, no, The Leisure Class didn’t have any people of color in its cast. That was never the issue. (Okay, maybe the black chauffeur was in bad taste.) But Mann – an island of a filmmaker, ironically in a medium that requires collaboration – was too stuck in his own head, and without the compensatory experience. Diverse perspectives don’t just make for better opportunity; they approach problems and characters and stories from different angles. That, regardless of what Matt Damon or anyone else may say, is meritocratic. That’s what makes movies better.