Hollywood Ending

Even though nothing ever did come of that meeting, Brent “rented” The Good Stuff script to an independent producer in 1998 and got $5,000 for it—big money isn’t involved unless a script is made into a movie, and this one wasn’t; most aren’t. Buoyed by the interest, he quit his day job to spend more time writing. During the next couple of years, he banged out several scripts and story treatments, but nothing sold. Yet he wouldn’t go back to the bookstore and lose precious writing time. Instead, when he was desperate to swing rent, he read scripts for James Cameron’s Lightstorm Productions, getting $50 a pop to give a first-look “yay” or “nay” to unsolicited screenplays. “This was right after Titanic, so I was reading a lot of scripts with water in them,” Brent says.

In 2000, he got close again, selling a script to Paramount called Love Simple, about a guy who gets dumber the deeper in love he falls. But again, the movie wasn’t made. He found himself at age thirty-one with a stalled career and a jar of change for a 401(k). Doubts crept in. He knew he had the talent to make it, but wondered if his ambitions came at too high a cost. “I was living this monastic lifestyle in a fifteen-by-twenty-five-foot room where I both lived and worked,” he says. “It was getting to me.”

Then 9-11 happened. Alone and half a country away from the people he loved, it was all he could do to keep himself from heading to LAX and returning home. But that time of intense reflection provided the seeds of inspiration. “I thought if I was going to be away from my family and friends, I should at least write something that means something to me,” he says. He began noodling around with an idea that had been living in his mind for years.

Brent created the characters for Aurora Borealis in 1993, drawing on his memories of watching his grandfather succumb to Alzheimer’s. He knew he could write a good script based on that relationship, but thought the tone would be too Eugene O’Neill for Hollywood. And he didn’t exactly have a reputation in town for dramatic work. “I had sold Love Simple and what happens after you sell a big, dumb comedy is every meeting you go to is about a big, dumb comedy,” he says. “I didn’t think I’d be able to sell a bittersweet family story.”

Still, he needed to try. He spent the first part of 2002 writing and revising the script and, by summer, it was ready to be submitted to studios. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. “What I got caught up in [previously] was trying to give execs something they wanted,” he says. “The thing that led to any sort of success was when I wrote something personal. Every aspect of it is me—the story, the characters, the dialogue. That’s what made the difference.”

Entitled Entertainment, makers of critical favorites Levity and 13 Conversations About One Thing, made the best offer, and the deal closed in a few months. Brent was in Toronto a year later.

Which is where I met up with him. After our corned beef feast, we visit the set for the shooting of one of the most emotional scenes of the movie in which Jackson is implored by his brother to quit wasting his life and do something to honor the memory of their deceased father. As the camera rolls, I glance at Brent. His mouth tightens and his eyes moisten. Then the director yells cut. Brent smiles, nods at me, and takes a seat in his chair. On the back it reads, Aurora Borealis – Screenwriter – Brent Boyd. 

Adam Wahlberg is the executive editor of Minnesota Law & Politics.