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From Law School to Oscar: Courtney Hunt Talks Frozen River
Nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards and both Best Director and Screenplay nods at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards, first time writer-director Courtney Hunt is just getting warmed up. Her sensational debut, Frozen River
starring Melissa Leo and Misty Upham, tells the story of two women, both mothers, along the U.S.-Canadian border, who get caught up in the world of illegal immigrant smuggling. Through necessity and desperation, they travel back and forth across the frozen St. Lawrence River, putting their lives and those close to them in jeopardy.
It’s a film that brings out the humanity and morality of the underclass in a way that is both poetic and beautiful. Living in trailers, struggling to put food on the table, these single mothers continue to have hopes and dreams. “I hope that [audiences] walk away feeling that regular, everyday heroism,” says Courtney, “being open to accepting your own biases but moving beyond them, appreciating the fact that the people who live in trailers are not necessarily who you think they are.”
Next up for the Memphis, Tennessee native will be an adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s novel Northline
Mark Sells (MM): First of all, congratulations on all of the accolades. What does all the recognition mean to you?
Courtney Hunt (CH): It means that people will watch the movie. More people will get to see the movie. And I might get to work with some actors who are kind of famous and probably get to make my second film!
MM: From lawyer to moviemaker. When or how did you make the transition?
CH: Well, I didn’t spend too much time in the world of law—I went straight from law school to film school. But what I did do in law was work with my husband, who does appellate/criminal defense, among other things. And I would read these massive transcripts of trials. All first-degree murders. Murder appeals. And I worked with him in summarizing huge amounts of facts, which are basically written in script form: Transcripts or scripts. And I learned a lot. It was very valuable in script writing and in learning character. That was the main thing that related the two different fields.
But I wasn’t really serious about law. It’s not that I wasn’t serious, I just knew I wouldn’t end up doing it because I really wanted to make movies.
So I completed law school because I had already started law school, and I like to finish things. I didn’t want to drop out. Although, if I had been a little more bold, I probably would have. But I was meeting all kinds of interesting people: Federal judges, big firm lawyers, criminals, welfare moms. All kinds of people. It was like a window into the world.
MM: Was there a particular movie that inspired your interest in moviemaking?
CH: I was just thinking about that this morning! The early to mid-1970s movies, where I was just old enough to go and see. I was very much a child, but my mother would take me to everything. One of them was Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
. I remember it because that was what we were doing—me and my mom—and it reflected our lives in a beautiful way and made me feel like cinema could mirror the lives of regular people and what they’re dealing with. So that one is a huge one.
Paper Moon
It was such a great story. And I believed it. It was a father-daughter story and I have a great dad and a great relationship with him. So I appreciated that. Again, reflecting my own world, my own life. Those were formative for me. I saw them when I was really young. And then, of course, The 400 Blows, a Truffaut movie. There you have another childhood story. And all of that great art house stuff.
MM: Was there a particular story about female smugglers in New York and Canada that inspired Frozen River? How did the story come about?
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