Ira Glass on the strange life of the producer
/When Mike Birbiglia asked This American Life‘s Ira Glass to produce his first feature, Sleepwalk with Me, premiering at Sundance, Glass thought it sounded like it might be fun. “I’d read a couple of scripts, look at a couple of rough cuts,” he remembers thinking.
Glass’s presumption was far from the truth… very far. In this short interview, shot before Sundance while Glass was in the sound studio with Birbiglia, he ponders — hilariously — the job of the producer.
This is great and applies to more than just filmmaking, the life of the producer is hard to explain and understand. When people ask me what it is that I do for a living I always say I'm a creative producer, which is immediately followed by the question "what does that mean?" I find myself trying to explain how I work with really talented people to make concerts, dance, art, branding, marketing, advertising, websites and apps happen, created often from absolutely nothing, which leads to more questions about what it is specifically that I do.