Negotiating and Producing

An Interview with President of Detour Entertainment, Producer Chris Green

Chris Green, President, DetourEntertainment

After reading Getting to yes, I realized that compromising wasn’t the only way to go, and that people can actually come to mutual agreements through joint brainstorming (another term used in Beyond Reason.) I have been finding real life examples through media and the Internet but I got a one on one talk with a local producer who reassured me of some of the key points in both books I mentioned. Chris Green is a local producer who is the founder of the Entertainment group, Detour Entertainment.

In Getting to Yes, there are five main points to better negotiating. One of them is inventing options for mutual gain. When I first spoke with Chris I asked him about talent and how he negotiated with talent for contracts, which usually means getting them to work for little or no money. His first response was “you have to figure out what they can benefit.” He talks about trying to get an actor who has been type casted to play a comedic actor to play a drama roll. He tells the talent that he wants to give them an opportunity to expand as an artist and not be stuck in just the comedic rolls. This is providing the actor with something else they want as well, adaptability. When you can be the star in a comedy then dominate in a drama by your performance, Critics will have a lot of good things to say about your skill as an actor. Telling this to an actor shows that you have faith in them as an actor and think they can make it. This is a great way to inspire talent and get them to work for you because you are both benefiting, now you don’t have to pay as much and the talent is on their way to stardom. Chris seems like a great negotiator and understands what to look for when recruiting talent, you can check him out at his website detour entertainment.