I just picked up and started reading the book What Just Happened?, the memoirs of Art Linson, the producer of such movies as Fight Club, Heat and Into the Wild.
I haven't gotten very far, but I did find one thing interesting. He left one place and went to another to start producing films. His first step was to come up with product. What I thought was odd was that instead of finding a screenplay he liked, he called David Mamet and asked him to come up with an idea, to write a screenplay from scratch (which eventually became The Edge). What immediately came to mind is no wonder Hollywood is in such a pickle. They waist time creating product rather than finding it. Why spend all that money on developing something from scratch, when one can find plenty of quality screenplays already written.
