Robert Latham Brown (born June 20, 1947) is a film producer, line producer, production manager, author, and University of Southern California film and television adjunct professor. In his more than 30-year film career Brown has worked with George Lucas, Paul Verhoeven, Steven Spielberg, and others. His expertise in budgeting and line producing inspired Mel Brooks, his multi-feature boss at the time, to nickname Brown "Mr. On-Budget".

Career

Robert Latham Brown has worked in production capacity on more than 40 feature films, including the very small (the Ray Liotta/Ron Perlman film Local Color, along with drama The Anarchist Cookbook) and also the very large (Blues Brothers, Starship Troopers, and the Kevin Bacon film Hollow Man). Robert Latham Brown spent most of his early career at Universal Studios. After his work with John Carpenter on The Thing, the invitation of Lucasfilm producer/vice president Howard Kazanjian sent Brown to begin work on Return of the Jedi. Afterward Brown's career took a freelance aspect that allowed him to work on an eclectic list of films with some of the top individuals in the business, including Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Author and teacher

Robert Latham Brown authored the long acclaimed book Planning the Low-Budget Film, and has been an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts since 1996. Additionally, Brown is a former contributing writer to Indie Slate Magazine, writing a series of reviews on film production software.

Writing awards

Brown's book, Planning the Low-Budget Film was a finalist for the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Awards, and that same year was a first-place winner in the Hollywood Book Festival. In 2002, his screenplay Keats was named a semi-finalist in the 9th Annual Writer's Network Screenplay and Fiction Competition. In 2020, his screenplay Xena & Jonny was named a finalist in the ScreenCraft Family Screenplay Competition.

Partial filmography