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The LAT's Patrick Goldstein profiles producer Avi Lerner, who's graduating from Steven Seagal/Jean-Claude Van Damme straight-to-video fodder to big-budget movies with Bruce Willis, John Travolta, and Nicolas Cage that will occupy a nicer shelf at the local Blockbuster. Lerner reveals the first rule of producing in Hollywood: Reading is overrated.

The Lerner modus operandi — creating the poster before making the movie — comes into sharper focus when you realize that despite his hands-on approach to many facets of filmmaking, he doesn't actually read scripts. "My language is Hebrew," he says, "and if you read a script in English you have to understand a lot of subtleties and different meanings. So I just don't trust myself to know if a script is really good or not."

Lerner and his new, high price-tag talent will almost certainly be a great fit. Willis, Cage, and Travolta obviously don't read their scripts either.