Film Producers Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust
Interview with Film Producers Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust.
A great number of entertainment hopefuls want to be film producers but don’t quite understand the job. Most people have no clue of the amount of “red tape” and hoops producers have to jump through in order to get a film made. But in the case of film production partners, Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust, the picture is crystal clear.
I Am Entertainment spoke with Nicole and Blye to get a good understanding of what it takes to make movies in today’s market, through the eyes of two of Hollywood’s brightest young filmmakers.
Can you please tell us where you’re from and what inspired you to pursue a career in entertainment?
BF: Nicole grew up in Calabasas (California), but I’m originally from a small town in the state of Washington, called Monroe. I don’t think either of us actually knew we’d end up in the film business. I went to college in the San Francisco Bay Area and then came down to LA and entered law school at UCLA for Entertainment Law. I did some acting for about a year before law school, and during that time I met a lot of people in the entertainment business. A lot of them were in the film program at USC, so I got to work on various student films. Upon graduating from UCLA with my law degree, I got a job with a large LA law firm. While I loved law school, I didn’t like being an attorney; many of my friends at USC were established writers, producers, and directors and their jobs looked a lot more fun than mine (laughs).
Nicole attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and at that time she was considering the music business but hadn’t made any definitive decisions that she had to work in entertainment. After graduating college, she came back to LA and was considering law school so she took up a job at an entertainment law firm. She worked there for about 2 years because she wanted to be absolutely sure she wanted to practice law. She found that her heart wasn’t really into entertainment law, but she still wanted to be a part of the entertainment business so she got a job working at Jerry Bruckheimer’s production company. After working there for a short stint she decided to try it out on her own.
When did Rocklin/Faust form and what were the early on challenges in establishing your venture?
NR: We sold our first script to Alcon Entertainment (where we currently have our first look deal) like 4 years ago, so we have been unofficially working together for about 4 years. After doing our first project with Alcon we started putting more and more projects together. We felt that we had dated long enough, business wise, so decided to make it official in fall 2009.
BF: In terms of difficulty, there are always challenges when you’re a producer on your own. Nicole and I were young when we first started working in this business and we didn’t have a huge list of contacts, but you need the contacts and a good slate of material in order to be taken seriously. No matter how aggressive, smart, and hardworking you are, it takes a long time to build everything up.
NR: Even if you have great relationships and access to all these people and resources, it doesn’t happen overnight. Speaking from experience, as a young producer I had a lot of great relationships with Literary Agents, Directors, and the list goes on, but things didn’t happen as quickly as I thought they would. People told me early on to give it 5 years to see a movie made, and I was like, “Yeah that’s not going to happen!” (laughs)
Blye and I have ‘Type A’ personalities, so we were working our butts off, but it still takes a really long time to get movies made. Yes, it’s a glamorous business, but we don’t really go to premieres or spend our time trying to do the “Hollywood” thing; for us, it’s about the work. I think a lot of people have this perception that everyone in Hollywood is making a ton of money, but the truth is, if you want to make money don’t come to Hollywood (laughs).