Veteran Producer Stacey Sher Defends Chris Pine’s Maligned ‘Poolman,’ Gushes Over ‘Staggeringly Good’ Hugh Grant in ‘Heretic’ and Zoë Kravitz’s ‘Bold and Ballsy’ Directorial Debut

Veteran producer Stacey Sher still has love for critically-maligned “Poolman” directed by Chris Pine.

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“It’s a gorgeous film. Chris made the movie he set out to make. He believed in it and I believed in Chris. I still do. He’s a really gifted filmmaker.”

Following its Toronto premiere, Pine’s film became one of the worst-reviewed titles last year, with Variety ’s Owen Gleiberman calling it “not only the worst film I saw during the fall festival season but would likely be one of the worst films in any year it came out.”

But Sher believes you have to always support your director.

“Yes – if you believe in that person. Quentin Tarantino may have said that to me a long time ago: ‘The reviews of your movies aren’t written the weekend they come out. They are written 10, 20, 30 years after they come out. It’s all about how they endure. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ got horrible reviews when it came out and there are tons of examples like that. No one was that interested in ‘Contagion’ as they were when we already had a global pandemic.”

Talking to Variety at Locarno before receiving the Raimondo Rezzonico Award , Sher reflects on the career that spawned “Pulp Fiction,” “Django Unchained,” “Erin Brockovich” or Zach Braff’s “Garden State.”

“Trust is really important. Shared values, shared sensibility, shared aesthetic. You already know what’s important to these people,” she says, commenting collabs with Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh, and Miloš Forman on Jim Carrey starrer “Man on the Moon.”

“That movie was the most magical experience of my life. I didn’t have nearly as much empathy as I should have had for Miloš until I saw the documentary [“Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” which detailed the tumultuous making of the film.]”

“Jim made the decision he was never going to break character, and Danny DeVito and I just loved it. It was maddening and unlike anything I will ever go through, but it was fun.”

Still, you won’t catch Sher revelling in the past anytime soon.

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“It was hard to make movies like these back then, too. If Julia Roberts didn’t say yes to ‘Erin,’ if Jim Carrey didn’t say yes to ‘Man on the Moon,’ they wouldn’t get made,” she notes.

“Listen – there are people who used to view the films I’ve made as ‘not independent’ enough. Some filmmakers are interested in reaching a broader audience and some aren’t, and that’s O.K.. Personally, I haven’t been driven to make films I don’t believe large numbers of people are going to see. Growing up watching 1970s films, I saw that you can do both. You can make an artistic, transformative film that’s also entertaining.”

In the meantime, U.S. filmmakers might have to turn to other countries for inspiration.

“‘The Worst Person in the World’ is one of my favorite films of the last 10 years. Staggering work of originality and heart. Or look at British television. Subsidies – to use a sports metaphor – create farm teams, where people get trained. Cinema is this holy American industry and yet we don’t have it set up in that ‘research-development’ way. We were able to function like that in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that has now gone away, but things are cyclical,” she stresses.

“The system is still all about finding new voices, and that’s what keeps us going. Oz Perkins has done great work in television and now has a huge hit movie for Neon. A24 has become a brand that really means something. There is always renewal. I am forever hopeful.”

Also because there’s a lot of “incredibly exciting” cinema around, starting with A24’s upcoming psychological horror “Heretic” with Hugh Grant, produced by Sher and heading to Toronto in September.“He is staggeringly good in the film and a delight to work with,” she says.

Or Zoë Kravitz’s “Blink Twice.”

“I am always looking for passion, for a new way of looking at the world. Show me something I haven’t seen before! ‘Blink Twice’ is such a bold, ballsy and well-done directorial debut. She really knows where to put the camera. It’s terrific,” she enthuses.

“I’ve always said: ‘How exciting is it going to be when all the kids who grew up on ‘Peak TV’ are going to demand more from their movies?’ And they are.”

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