because anything we constructed would have cost a lot more--and it
looked great in the movie. That's ultimately what it's about. I have two jobs:
the budget and the art. My job is about art meeting commerce."
Between working on hired jobs, Blomquist works on projects he has
created, optioned, or read about. Those include shooting a "Blue Collar
Comedy Tour," similar to The Original Kings of Comedy, but with redneck
comics such as Jeff Foxworthy. "Mostly I'm a gun for hire. Other people
sell their ideas and hire me to realize them."
Professional Profile:
Duncan Henderson,
Executive Producer
"I grew up in the shadow
of MGM," says Duncan
Henderson, "but I never
considered working in the
motion picture business."
Instead, he pursued finance,
earning a bachelor's degree in
economics from UCLA and a
master's in finance from USC,
and then became a successful
stockbroker. At age 29, he
decided he did not want to
spend the rest of his life
working in the financial world
and determined to make a
career change. Having always
loved movies, he began inves-
tigating filmmaking. Discover-
ing the assistant director's
training program offered
through the DGA, he applied.
"You come in as a trainee.
For me that was a huge cut in
salary--I think I worked for
$120 a week--if I hadn't been
able to save up money in my
previous occupation, it would
have been impossible . . . I
looked at it as they were giving
me a stipend to be educated."
What do you like
least about your job?
"It's all consuming.
There is no amount of
time that you can put
into it that if you could
put another hour in, it
wouldn't be incrementally better. You can
truly work twenty-four hours a day."
--Duncan Henderson
What do you love most
about your job?
"What I definitely love most is the fact that
it's different all the time. The two things
that I love about it is every time you take on
a project, it's different. There are new things
to find out. Secondly, I find it fun to work
with the new people you come in contact
with. Like on this picture [Master and
Commander], it's about the British Navy,
circa 1805, so we have technical advisers,
people who are shipwrights and cannon
experts. To live in that world for a year and
a half is a really interesting thing for me.
I'm sort of eclectic in my interests, so the
motion picture business fits that perfectly
because one year you're doing Harry Potter
and the next year you're doing a naval story,
and the next year you're doing something set
in the future."--Duncan Henderson
VOICES OF
EXPERIENCE
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