Whatever happens at the Oscars, Scott Rudin cannot lose. At the Academy Awards and the Baftas before them, the producer of this year’s two most critically successful movies — There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men — will stuff his pockets with acceptance speeches. The only question is which one he will deliver. He is certain to be thanked from the podium more often than anyone else, with the possible exception of God.
Rudin is a famously hard man to please. He’s not ungrateful, but he is upset about one decision that didn’t go his way. ‘Is there any outrage in England that Jonny Greenwood wasn’t nominated?” he asks. ‘Because it’s the best film score this year.” Greenwood’s fantastically ominous music for There Will Be Blood was excluded because too much of it predated the movie, so Paul Thomas Anderson’s oil epic will contest eight Oscar categories instead of nine.
No Country for Old Men has already won Rudin an award from the Producers Guild of America. It also amassed eight Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director, for the Coen brothers. ‘To have been involved with two movies at the level of No Country and There Will Be Blood is enough for any career,” says Rudin. ‘They’re both challenging, provocative movies that for years the Academy had a hard time with.”
Rudin narrowly missed out on the top prize last year, when The Departed was chosen over The Queen, so he’s rehearsed his forced smile and his gracious handshake. But he swears he’ll be satisfied as long as the talent doesn’t go home empty-handed. ‘I have a huge desire for these films to succeed for the filmmakers and the actors,” he says, ‘because I revere them.”
As the reigning champion of the phone-throwing, desk-clearing Hollywood tantrum, Rudin was reputedly the inspiration for Kevin Spacey’s character in Swimming with Sharks. Last year the media website Gawker named him New York’s Worst Boss. ‘It’s incredibly tough here,” he admits. ‘I think you have a responsibility to the people you’re making movies with and I take that very seriously. I don’t want to let up and I don’t want to let down.”
Writers and directors love his uncommon dedication.
His current projects include Revolutionary Road, an adaptation of the great Richard Yates novel, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio under the direction of Sam Mendes. Wes Anderson is making an animated version of Fantastic Mr Fox for him, with George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Bill Murray voicing the main characters. He has already started working on the next Coen brothers film, an adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.
‘If you’re going to spend two or three years of your life working on something, you’ve got to be making the kind of movie that discusses and influences the culture and is engaged in the world you’re living in,” he says. —