Heather Rae snags big Hollywood deal
by Dana Oland

There definitely will be more red carpets in filmmaker Heather Rae's future. The Boise-based independent filmmaker landed a new kind of Hollywood deal that comes with $10 million in equity to start - and potentially more to come - for her fledgling partnership with film executive and producer Paull Cho.

This kind of deal is "nearly unprecedented" in today's film industry, Rae said.

"I see this as part of a changing world," Rae said from her Boise Bench home. "It's not working on a debt financing deal, but working on an equity deal."

The deal also means that Rae, her husband, Russell Friedenberg, a screenwriter and actor, and their family will move this summer to Los Angeles, where Prominent Pictures is based.

"I'm really sad to leave Idaho and even sadder that I can't bring work back to Idaho," Rae said.

Since moving to Rae's home state in 2003, she and Friedenberg have been on the forefront of the move to establish a film industry here by seeking state-funded tax incentives to bring film production to Idaho.

The bill passed the Legislature in 2008 but has yet to be funded. Until that happens, Rae doesn't see the possibility of coming home to make a movie, she said.

But she won't be a stranger, she said. The couple will keep their Boise home, their cabin in the mountains and their interest in The Muse Building, a multi-use creative center at 14th and Jefferson streets.

"I'm sixth-generation Idahoan. I always will have a connection to this state," she said.

She grew up in central and southern Idaho, the daughter of a Cherokee mother and a father who was a fifth-generation Idahoan. She started making films at 18 when her dad gave her a clunky video camera.

NO OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

Rae and Friedenberg moved their companies, Appaloosa Pictures and Iron Circle Films, to Boise in 2003 to finish her documentary "Trudell," about Native American poet/activist John Trudell, a film that received international acclaim.

She has shot and produced four films in Idaho: Friedenberg's "ibid" in 2006, documentaries "Out of the Blue" and "Family: The First Circle" and a feature, "Magic Valley," by Idaho screenwriter and director Jaffe Zinn in 2009. The latter are in post-production.

Her career took a major turn two years ago when she produced first-time writer and director Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River."

The film received two Academy Award nominations for Hunt and star Melissa Leo and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and two Independent Spirit Awards, including one for Rae as Producer of the Year.

In 2009, she was chosen as one of Variety's Top 10 Producers to Watch.

That put her in a new league and eventually into a meeting with Cho, arranged by William Morris, in 2009.

It was while working on "Magic Valley," which was filmed in Buhl, that they discovered they had a "great synergy," she said.

"Paull is a visionary. That's what it takes to make something like this happen," Rae said.

Cho put the deal together that will fund their filmmaking projects, she said.

Though Rae chalks this up to "crazy good luck," it is also about her hard work and creative tenacity. She has spent the past 20 years building a strong reputation for producing good stories on tight budgets. "Frozen River" was shot for less than $1 million.

Now, her budgets will get bigger, and she'll be working with A-list writers, directors and actors.

But that comes with a new creative challenge.

"The difference for me is that not only am I continuing to be a producer, but now I'm also a financier," she said. "It's wearing two different hats. You can be passionate about a project, but then you also have to look at it from the other side."

Rae and Cho have greenlighted two films: "Tallulah," a first feature by writer and director Sian Heder, which will likely film in Seattle, and Friedenberg's "A Thousand Guns," which is slated to be directed by Daniel Calparsoro and star Academy Award nominee Vera Farmiga ("Up in the Air").

Rae also plans to work with many of the Idaho artists she knows, including Boise-based screenwriter Samantha Silva, who is married to director Michael Hoffman.