02/03.2020
How appropriate that our Exposure subject for this Awards Season issue has won nearly as many awards as the many different awards shows he has overseen as a producer/director. At last count, Don Mischer has won fifteen Emmy Awards, 10 Directors Guild of America Awards (including a DGA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019), two NAACP Image Awards, a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, the 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television from the Producers Guild of America, the Governors Award from the National Association of Choreographers, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and, just this month, Mischer was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from ICG Publicists at their annual luncheon the Friday before the Oscars. The San Antonio, Texas native has produced and/or directed live events ranging from The Kennedy Center Honors and the 100th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall to numerous Super Bowl Halftime Shows, and the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. When it comes to industry awards shows – Emmys, Tonys, Billboard, Oscars, etc. – Mischer is in an elite class, having earned Emmy nominations almost across the board. He’s also had a front-row seat to history, as in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games prior to that event’s disruption, producing and directing the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, or (for the last 18 consecutive years) directing the 9/11 Memorial Commemoration at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. ICG Executive Editor David Geffner spoke with Mischer to learn why a life in a genre with “no retakes” continues to hold so much allure. ICG: This issue coincides with ICG publicists presenting you with a Lifetime Achievement Award. How key are publicists to live-event production? DM: The popularity of television, particularly in the live-event world, is inextricably linked with talent. And as a producer, whether it’s the Oscars or the Super Bowl Halftime Show, you’re never in a position to offer
the talent what they deserve to receive for performing. [Laughs.] We’re basically on our knees every time begging publicists to book their clients for little or no pay and asking for things that are tough for the publicist to deliver, in terms of their clients’ best interests. Put more succinctly: we could not do these shows without publicists. Period.
We didn’t cover air transportation, hair/ makeup, and it was two nights in a standard hotel room for everyone.
Your craft has provided you with a front seat to some major historical events, including the Opening Ceremonies for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, which were disrupted by a domestic Do you have any stories to illustrate that terrorist attack. What’s been the most point? Too many to recount – every Super memorable? The Salt Lake City Winter Bowl Halftime Show – Michael Jackson, Paul Olympics, in 2002, were five months after McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom 9/11, and it was the first gathering of the Petty, Bruce Springsteen – those artists world’s nations in one location since that were never paid to appear on the show. The terrible event. What would normally be Kennedy Center Honors, which I did for 24 predictable and, basically, protocol, like years with George Stevens Jr., was always the Olympic flag coming in, the Olympic challenging as we were asking performers Hymn, the torch coming in, the singing to travel to Washington D.C., to be paid of our National Anthem, resonated much scale – a few hundred dollars at that time more deeply. I remember thinking at the – and it was the publicists who saved us time: “I’ve never seen a stadium of 80,000 every time. Part of our job was to create a people respond this way.” Stadiums are program where the artists and publicists basically irreverent environments – people would see value beyond just the monetary are talking, eating hot dogs, having a beer, aspect. To answer your question in another watching sports – rarely are they quiet. But way, every now and then an event comes when we had members of the NYPD, the along, like the Obama Inaugural Concert at NYFD, and other first responders from 9/11 the Lincoln Memorial, where it’s not a big carry in the flag that was atop the North sell on our side. That was two days before Tower of the World Trade Center, that entire the inauguration, and everyone wanted to place went silent. I still get goosebumps be involved. I remember Bono was going to recalling that moment. [Pause.] You know, come solo, and after he heard our pitch he the Olympic Charter says there has to be a said, “I’m going to bring my boys, as well.” symbolic release of doves after the athletes’
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