We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anders Lindwall. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anders below.
Alright, Anders thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
For a lot of us, we have dreams or fantasies of doing or achieving something radical or unconventional, but feel just out of reach, or impossible for a variety of reasons and responsibilities. For me, it was to make a movie – a movie of moral and social significance, and release it theatrically nationwide. But I had a young family, a mortgage, a house half-under construction that I was DIYing, and a volatile day-job. The timing wasn’t right and I was always hoping you meet the right agent, the right financier, the right partner to scale it from just an idea. Then I heard a lecture by the Duplass brothers who used the language, “The “calvary isn’t coming”. There is no rescue team who will come to make your dreams happen. There is no perfect time and no perfect place to start. No magical “Step 1” other than start swinging. Fight your way out of the corner. Over and over in the filmmaking process those words “the calvary isn’t coming” rang true in financing through production through distribution. But my motive, I feel, was pure and true to my own life and vocational desire. The irony of it all is that while I operated in this mindset of a dog backed up against a wall, I found myself amongst an abundance of gracious “calvary members”, people who caught the vision and brought their amazing skillsets, and made the project scale in a way that was larger and more meaningful than I could have ever imagined. In risk taking, there is no clear definition of what is a success and what is a failure. It is all a mixed-bag. But when you lead with joy (not happiness or easy), that joy is contagious and something I now cannot live without.
Anders, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was raised in the woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – worlds away from the film industry. I grew up always wanting “spectacle” – skiing, rollerblades, tiger suits, even in spiritually I wanted to see the miraculous. The spectacle desire is still there but mostly shifted towards finding stories that sit in the crosshairs of undiscovered saints and the natural world. My hope for his work is to temporarily draw people out of the universal ache of human suffering and inspire them with child-like goodness and beauty.
I’ve collaborated alongside Oscar-Nominated Director, M. Night Shyamalan, and short-listed for a Young Director’s Award at Cannes Lions. I’ve directed a unique mixture of talent from Will Smith to Craig T. Nelson, Bad Bunny to Tim Tebow. I’ve filmed commercially for major brands like Nike, Google, Levi’s, Arc’teryx, while just completing production on his first feature film, Green and Gold which released theatrically in 1000 screens nationwide and partnered with the Green Bay Packers.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think the entire entrepreneurial life AND creative life is developing one of resilience – through rhythms and disciplines to combat the emotional and fiscal rollercoasters. When our film was completed, the entire writers and actors guilds went on strike. Our rep (who was a best case scenario) dropped us after exposing our film to most of the major distributors. It was heroic enough to just fundraise and produce the film but now our dream project was out of luck, with a completed movie and no buyers. We licked our wounds for a few hours and then thought, “the calvary isn’t coming”. Got to fight our way out of this. So we just pretended like we were our own studio. We brokered two large corporate partnerships, drew up a marketing plan, partnered with a nation-wide theater chain company and launched in 1000 screens nationwide, bringing in double our production budget. The beauty of the entire experience is that we ended up being more in the weeds than we ever hoped (or desired). This was the good we got vs. the good we thought we wanted and are much better set up for the next film moving forward.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My hope is to use storytelling to temporarily draw people out of the universal ache of human suffering and mundanity and inspire them with child-like goodness and beauty.
Contact Info:
- Website: childe.com greenandgoldmovie.com
- Instagram: @greenandgoldmovie @childestudios
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreenAndGoldMovie/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIYZ5rWQNtg&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD
Image Credits
@childe