Legal Skills Put 'Frozen River' on Screen at Sundance
Earning degrees at Northeastern University School of Law might have been expected to put Donald Hartwood and Courtney Hunt on a fast track to successful legal careers. It did, at least for Hartwood, but it also led to a marriage between the two and now, some 25 years after their graduation, a collaboration as film producers.
Both are about to see their names in lights in Boston, where the critically acclaimed Frozen River is to premiere later this month. Hunt, who capped her law degree with a graduate film degree from Columbia University, was the writer-director and Hartwood was the producer. The independent movie, which was made at a cost of less than $1 million, earned a Grand Jury Prize for best picture at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, reports Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
Fellow law alumni helped finance the movie, which tells the story of two struggling single mothers who smuggle immigrants into Canada from upstate New York, via the frozen St. Lawrence river.
Hartwood’s legal skills were critical to the filmmaking process, making it possible for him to file a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission describing investor involvement and draft contracts for the actors and crew who made the movie. Asked about his fee, however, he says: “A lot of it was for the film—and for Courtney.”
