In 1990 he and Mr. Stone were producers on the crime drama “Blue Steel,” a film by another relative newcomer, Ms. Bigelow; 30 years later she became the first woman to win the directing Oscar, for “The Hurt Locker.” Mr. Pressman also took a chance on David Byrne, the lead singer of Talking Heads, producing Mr. Byrne’s feature debut as a director, the offbeat comedy “True Stories” (1986).
Whatever project he was involved in, Mr. Pressman generally avoided the hands-on approach some other producers favor.
“The hardest thing I’ve learned over the years is that I’m getting paid a lot of money to produce a movie, but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing,” he told The New York Times in 1992, when he was making “Hoffa.” “I don’t need to impose myself.”
Nonetheless, he knew he played a vital role.
“It’s the creative urge that makes me work,” he told American Film magazine for a 1988 article. “The pleasure is, to some extent, vicarious, but it’s no less creative for that. It is creating a world by bringing together creative financing with creative filmmakers. In a sense, producing can be compared to conceptual art.”
Although Mr. Pressman and his company, Pressman Film, worked with major studios, he was partial, especially early in his career, to independent films — movies that were “the expression of a single vision,” as he put it in a 1989 interview with SBS of Australia, like “Badlands,” which was both directed and written by Mr. Malick.
Other times, he viewed his job as bringing together the right director, writer and actor, as with “Hoffa” — he persuaded David Mamet to write a screenplay, recruited Mr. Nicholson to star and, after a few other candidates proved not to be a good fit, made an unconventional choice for director: the comic actor Danny DeVito.
