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County resident nominated for first Academy Award
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By Karrie Allen
Hudson-Catskill Newspapers
EAST CHATHAM - East Chatham can now claim one of its residents an Oscar nominee. On Jan. 22, nominations for the Academy Awards were announced, including a nomination for Courtney Hunt for Original Screenplay for her film "Frozen River."
Hunt, who had been talking to media reps all day Thursday, Jan. 29 - during a week of press junkets nonetheless - found time to talk to her local paper, the Chatham Courier. Of her nomination, Hunt said that she and her husband were home watching TV as usual when the announcement was made that Thursday morning. She had no idea she was going to be nominated, so it was a pleasant surprise.
And since this is her first big nomination, she said she will be attending the Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 22. She was also planning to attend the Academy Awards nominees luncheon, which was held Monday, Feb. 2 in Los Angeles. When told how lucky she was to be attending such a star-studded event, she simply responded that though there is a little bit of luck, it's mostly hard work that got her where she is.
In addition to hard work, her passion for filmmaking and writing helped her earn this incredible nomination. Hunt, who was born in Memphis, Tenn. in 1964 and grew up there, said she "really liked movies. ... I grew up seeing a lot of movies."
Later, she received her bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and then applied to one law school randomly - and got in. Within a year, she knew law wasn't what she wanted to do, she said, but she continued and graduated from Northeastern University with a law degree. Soon after, she entered the MFA program in Film at Columbia University.
"I gained a lot of experience ... a lot of work experience" while at law school, she said. In entering film school, she said you have to have a "little bit of life experience," which so many people entering film school right away sometimes don't have.
In film school she learned "to direct by directing," she said in an interview with IndieWIRE online. The result - her thesis film "Althea Faught," a 20-minute short about a woman surviving the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, Miss. Her first short won prizes and was sold to PBS, where it aired on the PBS series "American Playhouse" in 1994. Her journey to great filmmaking had begun.
According to Hunt, she and her husband have been full-time residents of East Chatham for seven years now (with no other home anywhere, she emphasized). They had been weekending in East Chatham for seven years prior to moving, renting a home from Courier columnist Paul Veillette. In Veillette's Jan. 29 column, he made mention of Hunt being a former president of the Society of New Concord, which Hunt confirmed she was four years ago.
Hunt also currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Chatham Film Club. Film Club board member Calliope Nicholas said of Hunt's nomination, "We're really excited for Courtney and proud of the Oscar nod she's received for the film. The fact that Courtney met and presented the film idea to Melissa Leo during a FilmColumbia Festival on Main Street is thrilling. From such humble beginnings to national attention; magic created on Main Street!"
In the IndieWIRE interview, Hunt said that James Schamus, CEO of Focus Features - which is also behind the upcoming film "Taking Woodstock," filmed mostly in New Lebanon last year - presented a sneak preview of "21 Grams" (which Leo starred in) at FilmColumbia in 2003. Hunt sent Leo - who attended the film festival with Schamus - a script and she agreed to star in the film as one of the leading actresses, Ray Eddy. Hunt found her other leading actress, Misty Upham (as Lila), on a Native American Web site.
The initial short made it into the New York Film Festival, which helped Hunt develop the feature script.
Producers Chip Hourihan and Heather Rae then attached themselves to the film. Hunt said that having the actors, the producers and the short was a "calling card for the feature." She said filmmakers usually have the cast in mind when presenting the film to investors.
So with a cast, producers and help from her husband, Hunt finally found investors and the film was made for half a million dollars. With its low budget, "Frozen River" garnered six nominations for the Spirit Awards (eligibility requires a film cost less than $20 million to produce, with significant financing from independent sources outside of Hollywood studios). The Spirit Awards will be presented Feb. 21, the day before the Academy Awards.
The film is about an upstate New York mom who, after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, meets and teams up with a Mohawk woman in smuggling illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Canadian border on the frozen St. Lawrence River. Not only has the film been nominated and/or won several film awards, but more importantly it exposes to the world a very true and serious subject.
Hunt said that her husband's family lives in Malone, which isn't far from the U.S.-Canadian border, and over the years she learned about the illegal immigrant smuggling. She said her own original research led to discovering the film she wanted to make. She used what she knew and with additional research, she wrote the short.
On the film's Web site -www.frozenriverthemovie.com - Hunt stated that "The risk involved compelled me to write a story, not only about smuggling at the northern border, but also about what life circumstances would lead someone to take such chances. What I discovered was that a mother's instinct to protect her children is more powerful than any cultural, political or economic boundary line."
When scouting for the film, the city of Plattsburgh, not far from Malone, was exactly what Hunt was looking for - a "part of the lake [Champlain] that would sell as the river ... a city with an infrastructure." The city would be able to accommodate the 35 people involved in the filming; they all needed places to eat and sleep, she said.
"The small town of Plattsburgh was incredibly helpful," said Hunt. The film was "bringing in money to [Plattsburgh's] economy" and the city "rewarded us very well by looking after us." And they had complete cooperation from the mayor and the police chief, she added. When asked if the film featured any locals, Hunt said the scenes in the dollar store used locals as extras.
Braving very cold weather conditions in February 2007, the film was shot with a Panasonic Vericam in 24 days. According to the film's Web site, "weather was a constant factor and the crew braved fierce cold and night shoots to get the footage" and make their days. Plattsburgh "ultimately gave Frozen River a home."
Hunt still can't fathom how much attention the 97-minute film is still getting since Sony Pictures Classics released (limited) it in August 2008. She said she's been "blindsided" by it all. The "awareness for the film ... it's exciting for people in Chatham too."
It didn't hurt that "Frozen River" won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, the film's first festival debut. Sundance juror and famous filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said of the film, it "put my heart in a vise and proceeded to twist that vise until the last frame." The award, the highest honor at Sundance, paved the way for several more nominations and awards for the film.
Hunt said the film was named one of American Film Institute's 10 Best Films in 2008 as well as being named to the top 10 list in the New York Times and L.A. Times, to name a few. Throughout 2008, the film received several more nominations and awards, including the New York Film Critics Award for Best First Film and National Board of Review, USA awards for Best Directorial Debut for Hunt and Spotlight Award for Leo.
On Dec. 18, Leo was nominated for a Screen Actor Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for the film. According to the SAG Web site, the SAG awards are considered the industry's most prized honors and are voted on by fellow SAG members.
Up next for Hunt, besides a trip to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, is more work. Though she's written another film (feature length), she's been asked to work on three different film projects, all directing, which she enjoys. "I like other people's stuff," she said. She said she'll be working on these projects first.
So come Feb. 22, while millions watch the Academy Awards and Hollywood's most famous actors, directors, etc. attend, Hunt will be sitting in that room waiting for her category - Writing (Original Screenplay) - to be announced and the award to be presented. And if her hard work (and a little bit of luck) pay off, East Chatham may be able to call one of their own an Oscar winner on Feb. 23.
EAST CHATHAM - East Chatham can now claim one of its residents an Oscar nominee. On Jan. 22, nominations for the Academy Awards were announced, including a nomination for Courtney Hunt for Original Screenplay for her film "Frozen River."
Hunt, who had been talking to media reps all day Thursday, Jan. 29 - during a week of press junkets nonetheless - found time to talk to her local paper, the Chatham Courier. Of her nomination, Hunt said that she and her husband were home watching TV as usual when the announcement was made that Thursday morning. She had no idea she was going to be nominated, so it was a pleasant surprise.
And since this is her first big nomination, she said she will be attending the Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 22. She was also planning to attend the Academy Awards nominees luncheon, which was held Monday, Feb. 2 in Los Angeles. When told how lucky she was to be attending such a star-studded event, she simply responded that though there is a little bit of luck, it's mostly hard work that got her where she is.
In addition to hard work, her passion for filmmaking and writing helped her earn this incredible nomination. Hunt, who was born in Memphis, Tenn. in 1964 and grew up there, said she "really liked movies. ... I grew up seeing a lot of movies."
Later, she received her bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and then applied to one law school randomly - and got in. Within a year, she knew law wasn't what she wanted to do, she said, but she continued and graduated from Northeastern University with a law degree. Soon after, she entered the MFA program in Film at Columbia University.
"I gained a lot of experience ... a lot of work experience" while at law school, she said. In entering film school, she said you have to have a "little bit of life experience," which so many people entering film school right away sometimes don't have.
In film school she learned "to direct by directing," she said in an interview with IndieWIRE online. The result - her thesis film "Althea Faught," a 20-minute short about a woman surviving the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, Miss. Her first short won prizes and was sold to PBS, where it aired on the PBS series "American Playhouse" in 1994. Her journey to great filmmaking had begun.
According to Hunt, she and her husband have been full-time residents of East Chatham for seven years now (with no other home anywhere, she emphasized). They had been weekending in East Chatham for seven years prior to moving, renting a home from Courier columnist Paul Veillette. In Veillette's Jan. 29 column, he made mention of Hunt being a former president of the Society of New Concord, which Hunt confirmed she was four years ago.
Hunt also currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Chatham Film Club. Film Club board member Calliope Nicholas said of Hunt's nomination, "We're really excited for Courtney and proud of the Oscar nod she's received for the film. The fact that Courtney met and presented the film idea to Melissa Leo during a FilmColumbia Festival on Main Street is thrilling. From such humble beginnings to national attention; magic created on Main Street!"
In the IndieWIRE interview, Hunt said that James Schamus, CEO of Focus Features - which is also behind the upcoming film "Taking Woodstock," filmed mostly in New Lebanon last year - presented a sneak preview of "21 Grams" (which Leo starred in) at FilmColumbia in 2003. Hunt sent Leo - who attended the film festival with Schamus - a script and she agreed to star in the film as one of the leading actresses, Ray Eddy. Hunt found her other leading actress, Misty Upham (as Lila), on a Native American Web site.
The initial short made it into the New York Film Festival, which helped Hunt develop the feature script.
Producers Chip Hourihan and Heather Rae then attached themselves to the film. Hunt said that having the actors, the producers and the short was a "calling card for the feature." She said filmmakers usually have the cast in mind when presenting the film to investors.
So with a cast, producers and help from her husband, Hunt finally found investors and the film was made for half a million dollars. With its low budget, "Frozen River" garnered six nominations for the Spirit Awards (eligibility requires a film cost less than $20 million to produce, with significant financing from independent sources outside of Hollywood studios). The Spirit Awards will be presented Feb. 21, the day before the Academy Awards.
The film is about an upstate New York mom who, after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, meets and teams up with a Mohawk woman in smuggling illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Canadian border on the frozen St. Lawrence River. Not only has the film been nominated and/or won several film awards, but more importantly it exposes to the world a very true and serious subject.
Hunt said that her husband's family lives in Malone, which isn't far from the U.S.-Canadian border, and over the years she learned about the illegal immigrant smuggling. She said her own original research led to discovering the film she wanted to make. She used what she knew and with additional research, she wrote the short.
On the film's Web site -www.frozenriverthemovie.com - Hunt stated that "The risk involved compelled me to write a story, not only about smuggling at the northern border, but also about what life circumstances would lead someone to take such chances. What I discovered was that a mother's instinct to protect her children is more powerful than any cultural, political or economic boundary line."
When scouting for the film, the city of Plattsburgh, not far from Malone, was exactly what Hunt was looking for - a "part of the lake [Champlain] that would sell as the river ... a city with an infrastructure." The city would be able to accommodate the 35 people involved in the filming; they all needed places to eat and sleep, she said.
"The small town of Plattsburgh was incredibly helpful," said Hunt. The film was "bringing in money to [Plattsburgh's] economy" and the city "rewarded us very well by looking after us." And they had complete cooperation from the mayor and the police chief, she added. When asked if the film featured any locals, Hunt said the scenes in the dollar store used locals as extras.
Braving very cold weather conditions in February 2007, the film was shot with a Panasonic Vericam in 24 days. According to the film's Web site, "weather was a constant factor and the crew braved fierce cold and night shoots to get the footage" and make their days. Plattsburgh "ultimately gave Frozen River a home."
Hunt still can't fathom how much attention the 97-minute film is still getting since Sony Pictures Classics released (limited) it in August 2008. She said she's been "blindsided" by it all. The "awareness for the film ... it's exciting for people in Chatham too."
It didn't hurt that "Frozen River" won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, the film's first festival debut. Sundance juror and famous filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said of the film, it "put my heart in a vise and proceeded to twist that vise until the last frame." The award, the highest honor at Sundance, paved the way for several more nominations and awards for the film.
Hunt said the film was named one of American Film Institute's 10 Best Films in 2008 as well as being named to the top 10 list in the New York Times and L.A. Times, to name a few. Throughout 2008, the film received several more nominations and awards, including the New York Film Critics Award for Best First Film and National Board of Review, USA awards for Best Directorial Debut for Hunt and Spotlight Award for Leo.
On Dec. 18, Leo was nominated for a Screen Actor Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for the film. According to the SAG Web site, the SAG awards are considered the industry's most prized honors and are voted on by fellow SAG members.
Up next for Hunt, besides a trip to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, is more work. Though she's written another film (feature length), she's been asked to work on three different film projects, all directing, which she enjoys. "I like other people's stuff," she said. She said she'll be working on these projects first.
So come Feb. 22, while millions watch the Academy Awards and Hollywood's most famous actors, directors, etc. attend, Hunt will be sitting in that room waiting for her category - Writing (Original Screenplay) - to be announced and the award to be presented. And if her hard work (and a little bit of luck) pay off, East Chatham may be able to call one of their own an Oscar winner on Feb. 23.
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