AUSTRALIANS IN THE U.S.A: REBECCA YELDHAM...PRODUCER. 

Rebecca Yeldham is an Australian film producer living in Los Angeles, California. Previously she worked for the Sundance Film Festival and the U.S. division of Channel Four Films, until partnering recently with Bill Horberg to form Wonderland Films. AUSUS Magazine spoke to Rebecca about her career so far, future projects and looking back at seventy five.

Q: How long have you been producing?

 I've had a really interesting career because, although I've been in the industry thirteen years, I haven't been producing all that time. When I first started out I was working in acquisitions in New York. I was working for a company buying international movies for video release. It was the very early days of the American independent scene. We'd work with companies, mainly in New York, that would put films out for a limited theatrical release and then we'd buy the TV and video rights. That introduced me to the festival circuit and then within a couple of years I was going to Cannes and Toronto, the places to go to when you're buying foreign films. It was a time when Hal Hartley was starting out, Todd Haynes had made his first film. We were working with filmmaker's like that. Then I came out here and dabbled in production a little bit. I made a film with my brother in Venezuela called 'Frailejon', then a documentary.

 Q: Then Sundance?

Yes. I met up with Geoff Gilmore who runs the festival. He was looking for a senior programmer to come in and oversee programming in the international division. We hit it off and he offered me the job and I stayed there for five years. So I was programming the festival and then as part of his team was also one of the key programmers of the 'American Independent' section. Between festivals I also got involved with developing countries, setting up initiatives to support their emerging filmmakers. We were organizing screen writing workshops, producers labs, film showcases. A lot in South America. Argentina, Brazil. Also Mexico, China. As well as this I helped to organize the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker's Award. We put together money that represented a Japanese pre buy, Spanish pre buy, of each project that had won an award for it's territory. We had four awards...one for each of the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia. The recipients of these then received a chunk of seed money to be able to start the financing process for their next film. They'd get close to three hundred thousand dollars so it was a great chunk of money to be able to get those projects off the ground. At some point, however, I started to get itchy about about wanting to be involved in making movies and not just championing finished projects. As much as I loved working there, it just seemed a logical next step to delve into a different aspect of the process.

Q: At about that point you got approached by Film Four?

 Paul Webster asked me to join him. He was about to set up an American division and had entered into a first look deal with Warner Brothers. He wanted someone to build an office and a staff and a slate of American and international projects. I took the job and was only there a year and a half when the parent company decided this was a business they no longer wanted to be in. That was last year. But we had this beautiful slate of projects with filmmakers like Todd Haynes and Terry Gilliam that had really started to blossom. Channel Four put almost the entire slate into turnaround. Fortunately for me they'd green lit the project I had in pre production before they dismantled the company. This movie was Walter Salle's 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. We'd worked together before and were actually good friends, so when this all happened he asked me to come along and become a producer on the project. Given that I didn't have to run an office anymore it was a real opportunity to go down to South America and be part of the production. We shot from September to February in Argentina, Chile and Peru, following the odyssey that Che Guevara undertook in Fifty Two. In the midst of all that I continued working on a couple of the projects that I'd had at Film Four, where the film makers had asked me to stay involved as a producer, such as the Elmore Leonard novel 'Tishomingo Blues' that we had optioned and adapted. Don Cheadle is going to make his directorial debut on this project.

 Q: How did you come to work with Bill Horberg?

 Firstly I knew about him by reputation. Everybody loves Bill. He called me in January when I was back on hiatus from the movie and asked me to meet him. I thought how rare it was to meet someone in Hollywood that's so well regarded, so intelligent, so passionate, and wants to make movies that are meaningful. So I loved him and when he asked me to join him I thought what a great experience to work someone like that, someone with that much experience, to start a company ground up.

 Q: Why did you decide to form a new company?

Bill had left Mirage, whose relationship with Intermedia was coming to an end. Sydney Pollack and Antony Minghella weren't inclined to shop around for another big overhead deal. Bill loved working with those guys, but the structure was no longer in place so he saw it as an opportunity to go out on his own. Once together we went to Dreamworks where we now have a First Look deal. We have several projects on the slate and we'd love a number of them to be with Dreamworks. We've set up a couple of things there already. In the event that they pass on projects we'd then approach other studios and financier's.

 Q: What projects do you have in the works?

 Bill brought over a couple of projects from Mirage that he's remained involved with along with Sydney and Anthony. One of them is a project called 'American Gothic', about the Booth brother's. The assassination of Lincoln. Todd Field wants to direct this. We set this up with Dreamworks. He also has an epic turn of the century western which was called 'The Pinkerton's'. Neil Jordan wants to direct. We also just optioned, with Dreamworks, this amazing book called 'The Kite Runner'. It's just been published. It takes as it's backdrop the tragic history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years. The story is told through the eyes of a little boy who then grows up to be a man in exile in America. The book is now starting to make it's way up bestseller lists. It'll be an international event movie which should be made with great integrity and perhaps even with an Afghan cast. We're also working with Gregor Jordan on his next movie, a book that he loves and wants to adapt.

 Q: What types of films do you look for?

 I'm not just looking for films that are polemic. I pick projects that I can embrace idealogically and are not offensive. It's not that I want to make socially meaningful movies. I want to make smart movies, funny movies, tender movies. Movies that I can be proud of and put my name on. I'm not just into making product. I want to make artful, emotional films. To Bill and I the script is everything and we're both very film maker driven. You need to have a great script and pair it with a film maker who will brand it as their own. We like to develop with film makers. But we also have confidence in our ability to help a writer to get a script to a point where we can bring in a great director.

 Q: How do you spend your day?

 Because we're new we spend a lot of time running around meeting people. Writers, film makers, agents, studio people. We're reading like crazy. Bill's done a lot of book adaptations and, to a lesser extent, so have I. We actually read, not just do 'coverage'. We're getting sent a lot of books which is exciting because there's all sorts of opportunities that one can source. Book agents send us all their new books. There may also be books we've read a long time ago that have gotten under our skin. As we start to meet with writer's and filmmaker's we like and get a sense of what kind of stories appeal to them, then we'll investigate what's available that we could match them up with. We also get spec scripts from the agents. So a lot of the day is spent just handling that volume of submissions and reacting to them in a timely fashion, and then being pro active about picking out material for writer's and director's that we want to be in business with. We read voluminous amounts of material. But it's a better quality of reading than I did at say Film Four, for example, where as a buyer I got submitted so many bad scripts that were seeking financing. The scripts we read here are often writer's samples for open assignments that we have. But the balance is definitely tipped towards books and short story collections.

 Q: Do you have any plans to collaborate with Australia?

 There's nothing on the horizon right now that could really be staged there. There were a couple of projects that we had at Film Four that could potentially been shot there. What we would love to do is establish relationships and continue to work with Australian film makers. For example, we're constantly talking to Phillip Noyce about future projects. Andrew Dominik's another one. Of course we'd dream of working with Peter Weir. We almost optioned 'The True History of the Kelly Gang' by Peter Carey. That was a heartache. Missing that one.

 Q: Look back on your career at age seventy five.