The Road Less Taken: Nick Wechsler on Producing Movies

The Road Less Taken: Nick Wechsler on Producing Movies
By Scott Macaulay

"I'm in a small minority, says Reservation Road producer Nick Wechsler. "As a producer, you are supposed to find stories that turn the mass public on. But I pick movies that turn me on and then hope that other people get turned on too." In a film world that's currently favoring teen comedies and tent-pole action pics, that declaration might seem to put this veteran producer at a disadvantage because, as he admits, "my taste is more alternative and drama-oriented."

But, thankfully for Wechsler, he has another set of allied passions that enables him to survive in this tough business. "Developing a story, and then trying to get people to put up tens of millions of dollars to finance it–that's an arduous and competitive task," he says. "But I enjoy that as much as finding the story in the first place."

Championing tough material has been Wechsler's forte in a career that has spanned 20-plus years and over 30 films. He began as a lawyer and then moved into talent management, working with musicians like The Band's Robbie Robertson. He transitioned into producing, and his credits include Steven Soderbergh's breakthrough tale of generational anxiety, sex, lies, and videotape (as executive producer); Robert Altman's sardonic Hollywood satire, The Player; Gus Van Sant's lovely and lyrical Drugstore Cowboy; Darren Aronofsky's button-pushing tale of addiction, Requiem for a Dream (as executive producer); and Niki Caro's recent story of workplace justice, North Country.

Wechsler is currently represented in theaters by two films. He produced both James Gray's crime drama We Own the Night and Reservation Road. Wechsler says that the existence of the latter is owed, in part, to his work on the former. He explains, "I had been working with [Reservation Road novelist John Burnham Schwartz's] wife, Aleksandra Crapanzano, on a screenplay adaptation of [Azar Nafisi's book] Reading Lolita in Tehran. She told me her husband was adapting his novel. I lobbied for the right to see it early, and when he sent it to me, I thought it would make a great, powerful, and emotional movie. So, I optioned the book and the script."

Continuing, he says, "I was finishing up We Own the Night with Joaquin [Phoenix]. On the last day of shooting I gave him the script for Reservation Road. He called me a couple of days later, responding favorably. I had given it to him without any clarification of what part he would play–I wanted him to make that determination. He then asked if he could give the script to [director Terry George]. I had a great meeting with Terry in New York. He has a keen interest in dramas about social, cultural and political issues. I then hooked him up with John, and that was it."

Wechsler says two elements of Reservation Road's story challenged him from the outset. "I live in L.A.," he says, "and I spend a lot of time in my car. It's easy to get distracted while driving. You look, and the next thing you know there's a woman with a baby carriage in the crosswalk. If you hit them–or if you have a son or daughter who gets hit–your life changes radically in a second. That terrifies and intrigues me at the same time."

Wechsler says he was also compelled by "the coincidence of someone who lives so close to you becoming part of your life. There's something that happens when you do an act and you change the energy level around you. When you try to hide, that negative energy draws in the people you are trying to hide from. It's like that old saying, 'you can run but you can't hide.'"

While looking for financing, Wechsler sent the script to Mark Ruffalo, who Phoenix wanted to work with. "He's one of our finest dramatic actors," says Wechsler. "Joaquin had already decided that he wanted to play the father whose son was killed, so we had to convince Mark to play a tough, complex part." Ruffalo eventually agreed, and Wechsler was ready to make the movie with independent financing. "I was going to put this together with independent money, [working with executive producers] Dean Levitt and Gina Resnick. But there wasn't time, and then Focus became interested in getting involved. They were interested in the script on its own merits, and they also recognized that [Reservation Road] fell into the Random House [library] of books." Focus was in the process of announcing a partnership with the publisher to develop literary properties into film, and Schwartz's 1998 novel was a natural fit.

While Reservation Road and We Own the Night represent Wechsler's love of "tough emotional dramas," he says he is in production at the moment on a broader range of movies, the first of which is The Time Traveler's Wife, [an adaptation of the novel by Audrey Niffenegger] directed by Robert Schwentke. "It's a poignant romance," he says, "the story of a woman who falls in love with a man who time travels." There's also Under the Skin, an adaptation of Michel Faber's literary science-fiction novel to be directed by Sexy Beast's Jonathan Glazer. But first there is another harrowing adaptation: The Proposition director John Hillcoat's take on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road, which Wechsler is making with 2929 Productions and The Weinstein Company.

"A lot of studios passed because they said it's way too dark, but it's also emotional and enlightening," he says of the picture. "It's set nine years in the future. A father and son in a post-apocalyptic America where a lot of humans have become cannibals just try to survive by getting to a warmer part of the country. We got very lucky. We hit it right with the script on the first pass and were able to pull in Viggo [Mortensen as the lead] and the financing. We just nailed it."