Voices from the Cove: Debbie Brubaker

Debbie Brubaker is a queen of creative problem solving. She has a long career working in video and, up until the early 90s, did nearly everything on set—from assistant directing to producing.

“Then I gave birth to my son and I got clear on what I really love to do, which is line producing and being a unit production manager,” she said.

She’s had many amazing experiences in her career, but when it comes to fixing things when s*** hits the fan, there are few people better at it. We sat down with Debbie for a little chat about some of her top ‘s***-hitting’ memories.

What are some of the craziest things that have happened on a shoot and how did you handle them?

(Laughs) Oh, wow. I have so many, but I’ll give you two examples. I remember when I was working as a line producer on an indie feature South of Market in San Francisco and the crew was being harassed by an unhoused person that wasn’t right in their mind. Finding solutions to problems is what I do; producers look to me to fix things.

We needed this person to get away from set, so I offered to buy them a cup of coffee and talk with them about their next steps if they wanted to enter the film industry. I ended up turning them away and talking with them for the next two hours so the crew could get their job done. By the time I was finished talking with them, we were wrapping.

The other example was in October 1989 when I was with a crew at an airport in Idaho. We flew to Salt Lake City and when we got off the plane, there were people gathered in front of televisions at the airport. It was the Giants World Series game and I asked people what was going on because the image on the TV was of the Bay Bridge. People told me an earthquake had just happened and that the bridge had collapsed.

I ran back to my crew and told them what happened, but they didn’t believe me because I can be a prankster. Once they finally did believe me, we all got on a plane to Reno. But, importantly, we deliberately lost our luggage. We knew that with 11 cases of video gear and all Bay Area airports shut down, we were never going to get there. Thankfully, everything was labeled and insured—we got it later on.

When we got to Reno, we got in line for rental cars and there were signs everywhere saying we couldn’t drive cars to the Bay Area—they wouldn’t rent for people going out of state. So, I pretended to be a tourist, rented the car, and drove everyone home.

How did you get so great at creative problem solving?

I’ve always loved puzzles. I like putting things together in different ways and thinking of solutions. As a line producer, you can’t always be linear; you have to think in three dimensions. I joke that making a movie is like putting together a 3D jigsaw puzzle of a bust of Elvis. You can’t always figure out where things are supposed to go.

What advice can you offer other aspiring line producers?

Get to know what each person does on set. Know their jobs. I’ve done every job on a crew from makeup to wardrobe, art department stuff. I’ve even done camera and lighting and transportation and craft services.

Realize that no job is ever too big or small. Don’t ask anyone to do what you wouldn’t do yourself, especially if you have the skill to do it.