NOIAFT Interviews Richard Baratta, Executive Producer of “The Irishman”

Since working on his first film, Desperately Seeking Susan, in 1984, Richard Baratta has worked on over 50 movies, first as a Location Manager, then Unit Production Manager, and for the past 15 years as a Co-Producer and Executive Producer. A small sampling of his filmography includes Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Todd Phillips’ Joker, Dr. Strange, The Wolf of Wall Street, five Spiderman movies, Too Big To Fail, Smurfs, Taking Pelham 123, Across the Universe, Donnie Brasco, Working Girl, and Big. On Monday, September 30^th 2019, NOIAFT founder, Taylor Taglianetti, spoke with Baratta about his experiences on The Irishman and thoughts on the entertainment industry.

Baratta: Did you see the movie yet?

Taglianetti: Yes! I saw the film on Friday at a 9AM press screening at Alice Tully Hall. I enjoyed the movie! I thought it was a little long, haha. But hey, I definitely thought that for three and a half hours, it was better than just any other movie at that length.

Baratta: Right, right. Now, how old are you?

Taglianetti: Twenty-one.

Baratta: So, what’s interesting is that you’re a young lady. When we were prepping this movie and making this movie, we were very curious as to know what the audience was going to be for the film. Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Romano are all from a different time – a different era. And to relate to that…there’s my generation that grew up with these people, but then the newer generation might only know Robert De Niro from Meet the Fockers or some of these other lighter movies. Joe Pesci, if they know him at all, maybe from Lethal Weapon or My Cousin Vinny. It’s just interesting to see how that was going to relate. But I guess a lot of young people are aware of who these people are and the feedback has been fairly good, yeah!

Taglianetti: I definitely was going to comment on that as well as there’s a ten-minute break, almost like an explanation, in the movie where they say, “Jimmy Hoffa… no one in this generation would know.” The movie sort of, almost like in a documentary, goes into the history of it. I think because I’m a film student and because I’m Italian, I know all the actors, filmmakers and know a bit about the history. I didn’t think I was the target audience at all, but I am curious, especially with this being a Netflix release and Netflix having a huge young-adult following, how this will all play out and be perceived.

Baratta: I’m curious, too, to see how it will be perceived. We were, I wouldn’t say nervous, but concerned. Not more than a little concerned. Just concerned, to quote the movie. That line’s in the movie.

Taglianetti: I think the movie goes beyond generation. From seeing it, it’s just a good story. From what I took away from it, at the heart of it, it’s about a guy choosing between two people who he really cared for. And that’s universal. So, it resonated with me. But let me get on to you. So, I was listening to a podcast that you did last year.

Baratta: Oh yeah, that was actually from an actor in the movie. I think he played the role of the son in the silver shop.

Taglianetti: Wow, that’s pretty cool. A few of our NOIAFT members were also in the film. My question is about you being an executive producer. When I spoke to Georgia Kacandes, [the executive producer of Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood], over the summer, something completely new that I learned is, in essence, an executive producer is a line producer. I go to NYU and it’s my last semester…it’s never brought up. Usually, it’s said that executive producers either find the money or put the money up themselves. So, isn’t that crazy?

Baratta: Yeah, it’s exactly the same thing. We would actually be better served as being described as a line producer because they lump the executive producers all into one big barrel… there’s too many of them. They may have brought some money to the project or maybe introduced someone to purchase the project or purchased it themselves, but they had nothing to do with the contracting, the building, of the movie. That’s what the line producer does.

Taglianetti: So, is this a more recent thing that they’ve been doing, using the executive producer term to describe line producers?

Baratta: I think so, maybe in the last ten years or so. Listen, we make the movie. Emma, one of the producers, is there everyday with me.

Taglianetti: So, tell me, in this film in particular, I’m sure there were some things that you had to adjust for or figure out, especially with the de-aging technology. I’m sure that presented a new challenge, especially from your viewpoint as someone who manages the money. That seems like it would be a huge expense. How do you approach that in your work?

Baratta: Right, so managing the money is only one aspect of line producing. The unit production manager and the accountant also manages the money. All three of us really manage the money. We’re watching what’s being spent on a daily basis and monitoring it as it goes along. Every movie that we do is somewhat unique. This movie was particularly different, like when I did a musical, Across the Universe. I did another show that had all dancers and Broadway singers. That’s a whole different thing. You have to figure out the contracts for Broadway and dancers, it’s a different aspect…almost a different medium. So, for this particular movie, the thing that was most challenging was the visual effects aspect of it because it really had never been done before and to this degree. We were all somewhat concerned about how that was going to work out, besides from the expense. If the de-aging didn’t work and people didn’t buy it, then the movie was going to flop. There’s no doubt about that. That presented a different set of issues. But the fact that you’re working on a Marty Scorsese movie and you’re shooting 108 days and dealing with the precision, the attention that he pays to detail, you’re always on your toes. It was the same on The Wolf of Wall Street.

Taglianetti: Something interesting about The Wolf of Wall Street…I’ve always been interested in how CGI is used. Especially with a filmmaker like Martin Scorsese. He is someone who you think is so interested in filming on film, or keeping the art form very pure, but I saw this video of The Wolf of Wall Street that showed all these extras just computer generated. I think it’s so fascinating to see that. Do you think there will be a point in time when the technology becomes so good that it can replace actors, or even revive actors? I’ve seen an Audrey Hepburn Godiva commercial and it looked terrific…it looked just like her. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that aspect?

Baratta: This is the first time I’m really thinking about it. I don’t know what technology is going to bring. I wouldn’t be surprised about anything with technology. But I think there’s a certain purity to the acting – you can duplicate somebody and create alternate realities. But it’s probably coming down the road…there’s probably going to be manipulations that are offensive to some people, I guess. But crowd enhancement has been around for a long time. If you need a big crowd, you’re going to enhance it digitally, probably, because it’s too expensive to hire that many extras to come. I think we had 5,000 extras throughout the course of this movie. That’s not necessarily a high number considering the length of the film.

Taglianetti: I don’t know if you ever worked with a streaming platform before, but I think the fact that Netflix is backing this project makes people doubly interested in the film, not just the content. What was different about working with a streaming service, a company disrupting the entire industry, than something you’ve done in any other project? Were you working directly with Netflix during this production?

Baratta: I never worked with Netflix before this. I worked on Too Big To Fail for HBO. We knew that was going to be on HBO and that it was not going anywhere else. It was made for TV. That’s the only TV I’ve ever done. I’m not making a value judgement…there’s a lot of good stuff on TV. When we went with Netflix, the thing that made it different, Marty needed to, and you know, demanded to have, a theatrical release. But at that time, Roma hadn’t come out yet and that was one of the first Netflix films to have a theatrical release. And this was being debated and negotiated how that was going to be handled. It was going to have a run at the theater for some period of time, but that was all being negotiated when we were making the movie. It was only different in that respect. It wasn’t different in the making of the movie or the communication with the studio or the use of assets like lawyers or product placement and business affairs. Netflix was another studio as far as we were concerned.

Taglianetti: Something that I’ve been wondering, because it’s not very clear, is that how do you judge success on a film like this because it’s being released by Netflix? To a degree, you’re going to know what the box office is. That will be clear for the theatrical. But is success just money from that end? Is it from the Oscar nominations? Is it from the number of people viewing on Netflix? That won’t be available to the public because they don’t necessarily release that information. How do you gauge whether or not the film is successful in the end? It’s very different.

Baratta: Obviously, you thought about the question because you kind of answered it yourself. I don’t know obviously that the film will be a success. I think it will be and I hope it will be. Let’s define success. If we define success by money, that’s one thing. If we are defining success by critical reviews and the popularity of the film, those are different things. There are a lot of wealthy people that are successful, but their lives are a mess. Are they successful? I don’t know. Based on the measuring stick for success, when the movie has it’s theatrical release, even though it will be in a limited number of theaters, I think you just have to see how it does for that three week period of time. If it does well, numbers wise per screen, that’s one way to gauge how successful it is. If it does well with reviews, that would be another way. The awards are another way to measure success. Finally, how Netflix does on viewership. Only they know that. There’s no way to gauge that. They might tell you if you believe what they tell. Then that’s how you find out. But I think success is a combination of many things.

Taglianetti: When thinking about Netflix, for them, I think success is just the popularity of the movie in that it would sign up more people for subscriptions. For Amazon, they’ve been on the record saying, more or less, they don’t care about the content they produce, they care about selling toilet paper. They’re hoping you’ll make purchases on Amazon and get a Prime subscription.

Baratta: Right. That’s how they judge it. But I do believe that maybe their stockholders only care about success as it relates to the bottom line. But I think there are a lot of people at Netflix, especially on the creative side, who are equally interested in the quality of what they produce. I think that’s important to them, I mean, I would hope. So I think they’re going to judge it on how it’s critically acclaimed as well. And if it doesn’t make any money, their decision the next time would be, as much as we’d like to make a movie with Francis Ford Coppola now, for example, we’re not going to invest that kind of money because there’s no way for us to get it back. Or not. That’s up to them. They have to decide what’s important to them.

Taglianetti: Have you heard about what Steven Spielberg said about how it’s not fair that Netflix gets to compete in the Oscars? I’m a little bit cynical about what he said as he went to go work with Apple on a film. Do you think he has any credibility behind that?

Baratta: Well, everybody’s got an opinion. There’s a lot of people out there who think Donald Trump can do no wrong. You might scratch your head at that. You might say, are you serious? What are you looking at? But everybody’s got an opinion. I don’t mean to liken Steven Spielberg to Donald Trump. He has nothing to do with him. He’s probably the polar opposite. I don’t know. It’s like, when I was younger, Elvis Presley came on the Ed Sullivan Show. And my parents and people of that generation didn’t think he should be allowed on TV with all his gyrations, even though he was fully clothed. It was like: really? Now look at what’s on TV today. So, you can fight technology and you can fight progress, but you’re going to lose. When digital came out, people fought for film and said films couldn’t be digital; it had to be on film otherwise it’s not pure. Now it’s digital. Now it swings back to film a little bit. It’s like that saying…if you can’t beat them, join them.

Taglianetti: What do you think the future of the movie-going experience looks like? I mean, you’ve worked on a lot of big-budget films meant to be event movies.

Baratta: Well, I know this. If I’d watched The Irishman on TV in my home, I probably would have stopped, I would’ve gotten something to eat, some people would have wanted to watch the rest of it tomorrow. No, I think most movies should be seen in a theater. I think it’s a great experience. I think it’s special. And I think when you go in there and you watch it with a group, there are certain things that happen in a group setting that don’t happen when you watch it by yourself. I think it’s important to experience it with others, too. It’s a gregarious medium. I’m all for movie theaters, and they’ve made the theaters so comfortable these days. My god. So I hope we never lose that. Watching a movie on a phone? Please.

Taglianetti: And to your point, when I went to go see the movie in that huge theater, and being surrounded by so many people and bouncing off other’s reactions, when you think about the film, although it’s quite funny, it’s pretty melancholy. So I wonder what my experience would’ve been watching it by myself on my TV because it’s slow, even if that’s the intention of it. Maybe the other people’s reactions had an effect on me.

Baratta: Exactly! It’s a communal experience.

Taglianetti: Some people have even likened the film to a miniseries and that it could’ve worked well as a miniseries. I agree with that. I don’t know where each episode would end, but I definitely could see it being a miniseries.

Baratta: Well, when we were making the movie, we thought about that. We thought maybe Netflix would show it as a four-episode thing. We thought that, I mean this never came from Marty. But people were wondering how it would be presented. So that’s an idea that many people had.

Taglianetti: Yeah. Even Quentin Tarantino, I think he released The Hateful Eight on Netflix as a four-part miniseries with added material. I thought that was pretty interesting. But let me ask you a question about the historical accuracy of the film. There are a lot of films that have been coming out that have been bashed for not sticking to the exact storyline. Say, for instance, Bohemian Rhapsody. Is this something you’re making a conscious decision about or does that not apply to you?

Baratta: Well, when I’m watching a movie, you correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I saw on the screen that the movie was based on a true account of Frank Sheeran.

Taglianetti: You’re right. Because it’s unsolved. But did it say that it was based on the book?

Baratta: There was never a reference made to the book either. All I saw was the text, “I Heard You Paint Houses.” Right on the screen. I know Marty was really giving it a lot of thought to call it “I Heard You Paint Houses.” I think he wanted to do it. Netflix wanted to call it The Irishman. There was never a reference made to that book. It never said it was based on true events, which is interesting because I always thought Marty was going to add that. But he didn’t. So how do I feel about that? Well, I think if you have a movie and it’s based on a true story, you should try to stay as close to it as you can. I don’t think you should make things up when you’re doing a movie that’s based on a true story. Except, you have to take some artistic liberty. I think it’s a slippery slope. If you’re doing a movie on Martin Luther King or doing one on Michael Jackson and it’s based on a book or a true story, and you fabricate that Michael Jackson slept with all of these kids. You don’t know if he did. That was a problem, right? Because people didn’t necessarily agree with that, that they took that liberty. It’s tricky.

Taglianetti: I guess in a sense of this movie, I don’t want to call it at all a fantasy, but it’s one person’s account that a lot of people completely dismiss.

Baratta: Yeah, dispute. They don’t completely dispute everything because he did kill people. He did have the ring. We saw the ring. That was the actual ring. We talked to his daughter. Shit went down. But, did he kill Jimmy Hoffa? I don’t know. Who the hell knows?

Taglianetti: Right and the Joe Gallo thing…Joe Gallo’s wife has said there’s no way it was actually him in the restaurant. Even in the way that it was filmed, I just would have imagined someone would have caught a glance of him since he didn’t have a mask on. I was just interested in how this film grapples with historical accuracy, because you can toy with it as much as you want in this movie because it’s one person’s point of view.

Baratta: It was one person’s autobiography. He was a killer. Who knows if you can believe him or not?

Taglianetti: So I want to ask some questions about Joker because I know you’re a part of that, and you worked on almost all of the Spider-Man movies. What do you think about how all of the superhero movies are affecting the movie business? You can’t live with them or live without them. They’ve really changed the industry.

Baratta: I haven’t really given it that much thought other than I don’t usually go to see them. They don’t interest me. I like human-interest stories. Although some of them are okay. I think they’re escapism, a way to get away from the realities of the world and the harshness of what’s going on in the world. I get it. It’s also been a complete boom and revival for the studios because one big superhero film can provide the money needed to make more lesser budget movies, or more topical and creative films. So, I think they serve a purpose. I think they’re too many of them – it’s ridiculous. But maybe it really benefits the whole film industry.

Taglianetti: I mean, some movies like Joker for instance, they’re superhero movies, but they can also be dramas in some ways. Blurring the lines.

Baratta: Well I wouldn’t even call Joker a superhero movie because, first of all, he’s not a hero, and second of all, he’s not super.

Taglianetti: Right, well a comic book movie, I mean.

Baratta: Yeah. This is a story about a disenfranchised man. He’s not right in the head. He needs help and society’s not helping him. All this talk about the violence and how it will inspire copycats… well, first of all, there are more killings in The Irishman than there are in Joker. There are a lot of movies that are a lot more violent. Tarantino movies are a lot more violent. I don’t get it. If you’re going to copy the Joker, then you’re sick to begin with. That’s my thoughts on it.

Taglianetti: I just wonder if all this controversy is coming from Universal cancelling the film, The Hunt. I believe it was about killing members of a certain political party.

Baratta: That stuff is a little dangerous. Those things exist. They really exist. You have to draw the line somewhere. I don’t think Joker is that one.

Taglianetti: Like you said, you have to have that in you. It’s not like you’re going to see Joker and suddenly become a serial killer.

Baratta: But then you don’t need to set people off either. Some people just need a little spark to get them going.

Taglianetti: Let me ask you, since you’re a part of the Spiderman franchise, about the conflict between Marvel and Sony over Spiderman. I think it was in the last couple of days, it was released that there might be a plan to resolve their issues to put Spiderman back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I have a feeling it might have been a big publicity thing and they were always going to keep Spiderman.

Baratta: I know very little about it. I know that the one before the one I did and I did the New York portion, Sony and Marvel got together and worked out a finance deal because Sony didn’t want to put up all the money, it was too risky. Marvel came in and was willing to put up more of the money. Who owns it, where it’s going to go. I really don’t have a clue. All I know is that Marvel, right now, is going through the roof with the money they are making so they’re in a better position to make these movies because Sony doesn’t have the money that Marvel does.

Taglianetti: A lot of people have been firing their agents. What do you think about that? Actresses like Jennifer Lawrence left CAA and is working on her own. Do you think that’s going to be a consistent thing?

Baratta: I’m not aware of it. You’re telling me for the first time. Is that a new thing?

Taglianetti: Yeah. I’m curious about it because it makes sense. Why would Jennifer Lawrence pay ten percent to her agent, or however much.

Baratta: Oh, I see what you’re saying. I don’t know why she would pay ten percent to her agent. That’s a business question. Some people don’t need an agent anymore. Robert De Niro doesn’t need an agent or manager to get him work, or whoever else is hot right now. Do you need that? Not necessarily. But those people handle a lot of paperwork or negotiations. Whatever percent it is, I don’t know. I’ll tell you think truth. I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to that. Because the last ten months, all I’ve been doing is playing music. That’s all I want to do right now. I’m not even interested in doing any film.

Taglianetti: Oh, wow. So performing music is your plan for the long term?

Baratta: Well, I did 35 years of film. I used to be a jazz musician. I got back into it three years ago. Now, I’m playing music. That’s what I’m doing. Performing. Recording. I don’t know if I’ll ever do another film again.

Taglianetti: I saw that you had a couple performances with Joe Pesci and played with him once you started talking jazz with him on the set. Have you ever considered scoring a film?

Baratta: No. I’m not really a composer. I’m more of a performer.

Taglianetti: Where do you perform? In New York?

Baratta: Yeah, New York, New Jersey, and I’m playing at a blues club in Washington D.C. I’m kind of starting all over again after being away from music for 35 years. The movie industry is a lot easier than the music industry.

Taglianetti: You think so?

Baratta: Oh, I know so.

Taglianetti: I don’t know. My brother is a musician.

Baratta: How is he doing?

Taglianetti: Ah, I mean, it’s really tough. I’ve been trying to figure out how to help him with his stuff. But I just figured, if you’re a musician, it’s so much easier shopping around a three-minute song than a screenplay. You know what I mean? He was in a rock band and he performed at all of these different venues (Starland Ballroom, The Stone Pony, The Whisky A Go Go). He just kind of did everything. He figured it out as he went along. It was just so tough. There’s not really a direct path. Same with selling a screenplay. In the same way, you said in the other podcast, it’s just perseverance. There’s not really a Step A, then a Step B.

Baratta: There’s not really a music business anymore. You don’t make records. It’s tough and there’s a lot of clubs and big venues and big concerts, but you can get your music online. People can’t make money making records anymore, but they’re making movies all the time. There’s 65 or 75 projects going on in New York at the same time. There’s an avenue and an industry for people to make money. There’s a lot more people in the film industry than in the music industry, to get paid a livable wage.

Taglanetti: Makes sense. I never really looked at it that way. I guess I’m one up on him then, haha.

Baratta: You are. Absolutely.

Taglianetti: Well, duly noted. I really appreciate you taking the time out to speak with me today and I really look forward to sharing your insight. Thanks so much again. I hope to catch one of your shows!

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.