Movie Producer Gives Advice for Students
Lawrence Bender doesn’t have an average job. He’s worked on almost all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies and has done a movie showing at Camp David for President Clinton and some of his cabinet. Bender is a successful movie producer living in Los Angeles but one thing he has in common with a number of Mainers is he used to be a Black Bear.
Bender returned to the University of Maine recently to talk a little about his career and answer questions from students. Fresh from a tour that brought him to countries such as Israel and Italy he told them that Producers have to take care of a little bit of everything on set and he joked that, “good producers are good therapists.” When asked about what advice he would give someone wanting to get into the film business he said, “start making films right now there is no reason not to do it.” He told about his unlikely career path when one event took him to the next. He wasn’t planning on becoming a producer it just happened and he gave the advice often given but sometimes hard to follow, “don’t give up.” Accounting major, Taylor Smith commented on Bender’s story saying, “It is interesting seeing someone go from a Civil Engineering major to being a successful movie producer. It just goes to show that you don’t always know where you are going to end up.”
Bender attended the University of Maine is hopes of becoming an Engineer but his plans soon turned to other things. His then girlfriend was interested in dance and he ended up taking come classes on campus. From there he went on to join a dance team, which took him to New York. After a knee injury he decided he would take some acting classes where his peers consisted of Christopher Reeves and Mickey Rourke. After taking a few of the classes he moved to Los Angeles to try his hand at being an actor. This did not work out very well for him at first as he was living out of his car for a number of years and ended up getting a job as a waiter. Bender still had a love for acting so he started to seek out jobs on movie sets where he got his first chance to be a producer. Someone on the set saw him at work and suggested he meet his friend, Quentin Tarantino. After this it was set that Bender was to be a movie producer and he has worked on many blockbusters since including Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, and his latest, Inglorious Basterds.
Lawrence Bender is currently working on a documentary about nuclear proliferation and has included the view of such people as the President of Pakistan, Jimmy Carter, and Tony Blair.
article by Mattie Porter
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