Movie Monday: Green and Gold

“The movie was super good. It’s a tear-jerker. Bring Kleenex.”

That’s the first movie review I received for Green and Gold through our text-line on the Civic Media App and the rest that followed were very, very similar.

I cannot wait to see this movie and the more I learn about it, the more I love it.

The Green and Gold movie is described this way by IMDB: “A struggling family farmer wagers everything on a high-stakes Championship bet, while his granddaughter’s musical ambitions could be their ticket to a new beginning.”

So right there you know this drama is going to be tugging at our heartstrings. But it was the behind the scenes stuff I learned that has made me a total mush-ball (and you know I am way more of a crime thriller, scary movie fan).

The film was made by two brothers: Anders & Davin Lindwall. They grew up in Iron River (in the upper peninsula of Michigan). They had this great idea for a movie but they didn’t have a very big budget at all.

So they scoped out some great filming locations in Wisconsin (even some spots around Eau Claire) but finally decided that the majority of the movie would be shot in Door County.

Their reasoning? It was close enough to Green Bay where some of the scenes would also be filmed and gave them easier airport access to the Austin Straubel Interational Airport right there in Green Bay for ease of the cast and crew flying in and out. They just didn’t have it in their budget to travel all over the state. They would lose too much time in travel and too much money. They had to game-plan and make that money stretch as best they could.

So they got Craig T. Nelson (Coach, as most of us know him from the TV series by the same name that ran from 1989-1997) to sign on as the character Buck. You’ll also see a familiar face playing the role of Billy. That’s Brandon Sklenar (and he just played Atlas in the movie It Ends With Us). You might even recognize some of the extras. They’re regular Wisconsin folks.

So they’re all set to start filming and about two weeks before things got rolling, the brothers were approached by a major Hollywood studio that offered to buy the movie.

Imagine, you have this movie that is near and dear to your heart but you don’t have a huge amount of money to finance it and all of a sudden a gift is dropped into your lap! Here’s a big studio with a big studio budget! It’s almost too good to be true.

But there was a catch.

Instead of filming in Wisconsin like the brothers had their hearts set on, the film would need to be made in Alabama to ensure they would get the greater tax credits that state offered.

Ugh. So what did the brothers do? Sell out to the big studio? Trade the authentic farmland of The Dairy State for Alabama?

Nope. They stuck to their roots and their visions and followed their hearts. Their movie was made in Wisconsin. And if that doesn’t bring some tears to your eyes, watching their movie surely will.

Want to contact Laura McKenna about a good movie you’ve seen or anything else that’s on your mind? Email anytime, she’d love to hear from you: [email protected]
And tune in weekdays starting at 10am to St. Croix Country & WCFW!