Rachael Horovitz is one of the savviest young producers in film today. After a brief post-graduate stint working for New York City mayor Ed Koch, she became a publicist for the legendary Hollywood producer, Dino de Laurentiis. After that two-year apprenticeship, Rachael went on to produce several films independently in New York, including No Telling and Next Stop, Wonderland. In 1996, Rachael joined Fine Line Features, where she worked with directors David Mamet, Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Last month, Rachael joined Revolution Studios in New York, where she will be developing projects for both film and television.


index: What do you see as the freshest thing on the horizon these days?
RACHAEL: This is anathema, probably the wrong answer for me to be giving, but I think television is really exciting right now. It has, without anyone noticing, become completely abstract and cutting-edge — it’s so the medium to pay attention to. It occurs to me, in the midst of what feels like an impending recession, that during the last depression, it was the movie industry that thrived. This time, my gut feeling is that it’s going to be television.

index: Not the internet?
RACHAEL: Well, the internet isn’t anywhere near as entertaining as TV. And right now, when everyone seems to be spending so much time alone with their PCs, event television somehow feels unifying. I mean, the moment The Sopranos started its new season, that Sunday night there was a palpable pause in our culture. It’s been a long time since a movie caused something like that. Of course, there are event movies that open over the course of a weekend, but in terms of a unifying moment when the entire country stops at the exact same time and pays attention to one thing, it’s always TV.

index: Do you watch The Sopranos?
RACHAEL: I do, but I prefer Sex and the City. My world stops for that show! But in reality, I don’t watch a lot of TV at all.

index: So what does this television revival mean to you as a producer?
RACHAEL: Well, one of the interesting things about this moment is that filmmakers are reconsidering the medium, taking television seriously. Directors feel they can go back and forth between TV and film, they can get the same writers and actors, and that’s very exciting for a producer. I mean, say you’re the producer of a specialty film, like a John Sayles movie. Are you going to reach more people in theaters or on HBO?

index: Obviously, HBO.
RACHAEL: Right. It’s not an accident that John Sayles’ next film is being made by the Independent Film
Channel.

index: Is New Line involved with TV?
RACHAEL: We have a growing TV division, and I think there’s going to be a lot more synergy and productivity coming out of that department very soon. The TV division is sort of a stand-alone company within New Line — it does projects with lots of different networks and television producers. I have a feeling it’s going to become a lot more active.

index: Can you tell me a little bit about your job?
RACHAEL: I develop movies and oversee their production. I also spend a small portion of my time looking at films that are independently financed, to see if the company should pick them up and distribute them — that’s Acquisitions.
index: This year Dancer in the Dark, which Fine Line co-produced, and Before Night Falls, which Fine Line acquired, were represented at the Academy Awards. What upcoming movies are you especially looking forward to?

RACHAEL: One film that I’m incredibly excited about is Human Nature, which Spike Jonze produced with Good Machine. Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich, is the screenwriter, and it’s directed by Michel Gondry, the French director who did some of Björk’s videos. The person who initially told me about it was Jeanine Garofalo, years ago.

index: This was before Being John Malkovich?
RACHAEL: Way before. In a way, you needed to see John Malkovich to know where you could take Charlie’s scripts. [laughs] Human Nature stars Tim Robbins, Rhys Ifans, and Patricia Arquette. It plays on all sorts of issues of gender and sexuality and relationships and identity.

index: How’d you end up acquiring it for Fine Line?
RACHAEL: I was at Cannes last year, and there was absolutely nothing that we wanted to buy — it was really slow. So I called Ted Hope from Good Machine. They’d just started shooting, and I asked if there was any way we could see some footage from the first couple of days. I’d been tracking the project for years, but something was always going wrong with it. So Good Machine flew it over to Cannes, we looked at it, and we bid on it while they were still in production.
index: It sounds so exciting!
RACHAEL: It was a very peculiar way to get involved in a movie. We basically gambled on it before it was made.

index: Do you have secret sources?
RACHAEL: Well, I can’t do my job without reading The New York Post. I base all of my work, my entire list of things to do and think about, on what I read in “Page Six” and “Business Briefs” every morning! When I travel, all of the Posts are saved for me.

index: I’ve always liked the horoscopes too. They’re real.
RACHAEL: I know. I’m worried. Today’s Post told me not to buy anything, and I was planning to buy a car.