Actually, speaking of Laeta, when you were tossing around names for possible screenwriters did you ever personally consider yourself to adapt the book? And the fact that we got the ultimate director, well that’s something I’ll be stunned about until the day I go to my grave. And then Brad went and got Laeta and it was like “okay, well yeah, perfect” and then after Laeta writes the script and then its “okay, who do we go to now? Well, who’s our list?” You know, who’s on the list? And it was a very short list.

So yeah, it was just sort of, okay, this is where we want to go with this. There’s not a chain-of-command kind of vibe. you’re on the same page in terms of taste, these decisions become very fluid. Once you all agree, once you all of the same sort of. Okay, but as executive producer you had a lot of the say on the names that were being tossed around as possibilities. Was I active in picking up the phone? No, that was Brad Fischer actually. Lehane: I was active in having conferences about that, yes. So you were active in getting Scorsese on board? Cause then you let the talent come in and do their thing. Then once you get to that point where you have a locked script and you have a director, I think you’re, you know, you’re about as useful as a eunuch at a stud farm, I mean there’s just no point to stick around after that, whether you are a producer or a writer or whatever. Lehane: No, no, it was something that very early on I wanted to be active in terms of, you know right from the get-go, when I got the rights back to Shutter Island, I wanted to be extremely proactive in terms of who I sold the rights to, who was on that short list, where we went in terms of - once they became involved - in terms of who we went to, screenwriters, directors, etc.

“What do you give your secretary instead of a raise? You give her an associate producer credit.” Question: I noticed that Shutter Island is the first film that you’ve actually been listed as an Executive Producer on, and I was curious if that was an actual change in your involvement with the film or it was just something they just added as a courtesy.ĭennis Lehane: Oh, no, it wasn’t a courtesy. You can either read the transcript below or listen to the interview by clicking here.

Lehane the given day