Producer Teddy Zee:
Hollywood Veteran
PAGE 4 OF 5

Teddy Zee

GS: Your assistant would be fielding a lot of calls from agents?
TZ: Yes.

GS: What's the difference between now and when you were working at Columbia, Paramount or at Davis?
TZ: When you work at a studio your days are not dictated by you; they're dictated by your bosses. At the studio you are probably spending a good 10-15 hours a week attending staff meetings, group meetings, and you are responsible not only for your own projects but for reading and discussing the projects of everyone else. Plus you're doing a lot of reading on the weekends. I get to think a lot more during my day. I don't have to service 16,000 people. I get to think about the projects I'm working on and be creative and brainstorm and sit with writers and talk with them on the phone and spend a lot more time with them in a hands on way to make sure the script gets to a place we need it to get to.

GS: When you get to where you're pretty happy with it, do you take it to the studio?
TZ: There's two ways to go. Most of the time we get the studio involved early and the studio pays for the work that's being done and then I disappear with the writer and then deliver [the screenplay] to a studio that's already bought it. Then there are other circumstances where I work with a writer and try and improve it to the point where we will then be able to sell it.

GS: Do you ever find a book or something you like or an idea and start from there?
TZ: Oh, absolutely.

GS: What degree of approval would you have to get from James or Will before you approach a studio with it?
TZ: There is no approval process. It's about levels of passion. There could be something I'm absolutely wild about and all it takes is one person's passion to get something through. Not everybody has the same tastes and that's the great thing.

GS: So you can go ahead and devote a lot of energy and resources to getting a project started without anyone looking over your shoulders?
TZ: It's entrepreneurial in that regard. And I just want to make sure that the quality of the project and the subject matter fits into the scope of who Overbrook is and the identity that we've established.

GS: Are you guys interested in any particular genre?
TZ: No, no, no. Not at all.

GS: How about you personally?
TZ: No.

GS: Life of Something Like It got a lot of attention from the critics. What role did you play in making it?
TZ: I had zero to do with the making of the movie because I had left [Davis Entertainment] at the time. That was a script that had come in to me through Ken Atchity and Chi-Li Wong. They wanted help in getting it done, getting it made. So I brought it in and sold it to New Regency.
     I worked with the writer on multiple drafts, got it to the point where it might have been good enough to get it made. Then directors came on board. It's funny because at the time we had Renee Zellweger who was interested in playing the part. She had just finished Bridget Jones's Diary. And there were people who felt they needed someone who was a bigger star. Angelina Jolie is terrific and a big star in her own right, but I always thought it was not an Angelina Jolie movie. By the time it ended up getting it made, I was over here at Overbrook.

GS: Then there's God of Cookery which was going to be a remake of the Stephen Chiau movie. What was your role in that?
TZ: Thomas Leong who is the manager of Stephen brought it to me and I ended up getting it sold. I took it to Fox and I also got Jim Carrey to look at it and Jim and I had worked on a movie before and I knew Jim from the days of In Living Color when he used to hang out there. I loved the movie and got it sold and we got a writer and worked on the script and had a director at the time. The studio never felt like the script was in shape to go forward.

GS: So it was shelved?
TZ: They're still working on it.

GS: Are you still involved in it?
TZ: Yeah, we're involved but I can't spend much time on it. I've got a day job here.

GS: It seems a lot of Ivy leaguers are entering Hollywood. Have you noticed that trend?
TZ: It's not a new trend. It's been there for a long time. It's a visible industry. It's no different than a lot of ivy leaguers in investment banking or Washington politics. Whenever you get industries of great influence or great potential wealth, you're going to attract a lot of ambitious people and ambitious people are ivy leaguers.

GS: Are there certain backgrounds that are disproportionately represented.
TZ: I'm so far removed from that now. The single common denominator of people who enter the business or have jobs like I do is that they're all passionate about movies.
     So a person's background doesn't help get someone's attention. But it's sorta like, are SATs great predictors of how well you'll do in life? I don't necessarily think so. It's really about people doing what they love and not worrying about the paycheck but worrying about the passion and love for the process. And those are the people who I think are gonna succeed in the long run.

GS: What's the next step for someone like you?
TZ: I honestly don't even think like that because if you are so looking down the road about the next step you miss the step that you're on. I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I love coming to work every day. I started in this business not for anything but for the love of what I do. I had to take a huge pay cut when I started in the business and so that was never an issue. In terms of ambition, I feel like I have a great life. I just started at this company two years ago and now everything is starting to blossom. It's the perfect time. The [movie] business is in a state of contraction, less deals, less movies, less everything. Right now I have an opportunity to get a lot of things accomplished, so I don't want to move. I want to stay and I want to have everything come to life. Over the next nine months there are possibilities of five movies coming out of Overbrook. That would be the result of two years of hard work.

GS: Five movies being released?
TZ: No, going into production. PAGE 5

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5




Lynn Chen is another co-star in Overbrook's Saving Face. Chen has a recurring role in All My Children.

“I get to think a lot more during my day. I don't have to service 16,000 people.”