How We Did It: Amy Robinson and Eric Steel, producers of Julie & Julia

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Producers Amy Robinson and Eric Steel at the July 30 premiere of Julie & Julia in New York.

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CASTING JULIA: Robinson, Steel, and director Nora Ephron were intent on having Meryl Streep play the role of Julia Child. "Once Meryl said yes, we could move forward with casting and a schedule. But not until Meryl said yes," says Steel.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Julie & Julia took five years to produce. Producers typically don’t receive a salary until the film enters pre-production.

Movie producers, like entrepreneurs, need a strong stomach for risk. It can take years of planning, pitching, negotiating, coaxing, hoping, and praying to go from a germ of an idea to a box-office hit. Julie & Julia, which opens in theaters today, is the 16th movie that Amy Robinson has produced. It's Eric Steel's fifth. Robinson, who has been an independent producer in New York City for more than 30 years, started out as an actress. She played Teresa in Mean Streets -- before producing films such as For Love of the Game, starring Kevin Costner, and Martin Scorsese's cult classic After Hours. Steel, on the other hand, came up through the studio system, working at Disney for producer Jeffrey Katzenberg -- now CEO of DreamWorks -- before venturing out on his own to produce a documentary. Julie & Julia is Steel's second feature film as an executive producer. Though Robinson and Steel came to the project from different starting points, they both agree that their jobs as producers are as creative as they are entrepreneurial. "Every film is like starting a new company," Robinson says. "You may work with some people who you knew in the past, but each experience brings its own set of issues and problems, triumphs and failures. Each project is its own little war."

Robinson: I'm a producer because I love to read. Even as a kid, I'd envision books I read as films in my head. That's what happened when I read Anne Beattie's book, Chilly Scenes of Winter, which I optioned for my first film. I learned that finding good material is the most important thing you do as a producer. The next important lesson I learned was, Hold on to the rights for as long as you can. When I was working on Once Around, it got pushed back for a year because Dustin Hoffman wanted to be in it, and then he wanted to take it over. [Ultimately, Hoffman was not in the film.] At the time Cinecom, an independent New York-based film company, was financing the film, but then they folded, and Universal stepped in. When a studio brings financing, they take over the rights. Which brings me to the next important lesson: Have a good lawyer.

Steel: My grandparents owned drive-in movie theaters in New Jersey, so I grew up listening to people talk about movies. My first job was as a production assistant for Stanley Jaffe's film Without a Trace. I graduated from Yale on a Sunday, moved to Los Angeles on Monday, and started work for Jeffrey Katzenberg on Tuesday. I didn't take a day off for a year and a half.

I moved to New York and met Amy when I worked at Cinecom. I was one of the people asked to read and help shape Once Around, which was a complicated movie to put together, like a Silicon Valley start-up. I then went into book publishing, as an editor, for six years before Scott Rudin [who has produced more than 80 films] offered me a job finding book properties to turn into movies. Together, we did Angela's Ashes, Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, and Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. In 2001, I decided to start my own company.

I read about Julie Powell [the inspiration for Julie & Julia] in The New York Times in 2003. She was miserable, working for a government agency in Manhattan. So she decided to start a blog called The Julie/Julia Project, in which she set out to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking over the course of one year. I thought it was a great story. I found Julie Powell in the phone book and left her a message.

Robinson: Earlier that spring, I saw an A&E biography of Julia Child and was amazed to learn that she didn't know how to cook until she was almost 40. So I started noodling around with a movie idea based on that. And then I saw the New York Times article on Julie Powell and thought, What if you combine these two stories? But, not being the good producer, I clipped the article and went on vacation. The week I got back, I saw a book editor and asked, "Any hot projects?" And she said, "There's a big bidding war over Julie Powell's blog." I made an offer and later learned that Eric won it. I hadn't seen Eric for years, but I called and said, "I've got an idea."

Steel: I learned from Scott Rudin that the best time to buy film rights for a book is before the book gets published. Julie Powell didn't even have an agent when we first spoke. She did when I made an offer, but I was not alone. You're not supposed to know who's bidding against you, but I was told it was Julia Roberts's company. Maybe the Julia-Julie-Julia thing was too much for her! All I know is that I was working out of my apartment with no studio backing but kept upping the money because I so believed in this project. So the check to Julie Powell for the rights to make her book a movie came out of my savings account.

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Liz Welch

Liz Welch is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist who has written for The New York Times, Real Simple, Glamour, and Inc., among other publications. She is the co-author with her siblings of the recent book The Kids Are All Right, a highly-regarded memoir of her childhood.

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