Finding the Light: The Making of Brooklyn, Minnesota

I’ve been doing a lot of therapy, and radical honesty is the “drip” these days, or that’s what my 15-year old daughter, Sadie, tells me anyway, and I choose to believe her. So here’s me being radical:

Brooklyn, Minnesota happened because I had a brain aneurysm. I mean, I survived a brain aneurysm, without any debilitating side effects, and once I was fully cleared and some work obligations were finished, we got outta Brooklyn and headed to our friends’ place in Lake Como, Italy. No, they are not George Clooney. Our friends are Han Shan and Heather Reddick and they are awesome people who do good work in the world. As my daughter had almost lost her Dad, just after COVID, my wife, Jessica, and I decided that the three of us seeing the world together would be good medicine for a rough year.

The five of us spent bits of this long-needed vacation talking about how much we loved Minnesota (we all had some connection there), about how we should do something creative together, and (after a third sleepy helping of pasta) about our favorite movies. Little Miss Sunshine, The Decline of Western Civilization and On Golden Pond were bandied about.

After a week of breezy napping on a front porch, Han and I decided to take a hike in whatever part of the mountains juts over their bit of Lake Como. We did not run into George Clooney. What we did do was talk a lot about my daughter, growing up as teens, our favorite bands (Bikini Kill, The Replacements, Fugazi). Then we started to imagine a movie. Something simple about a family. Which really means something complicated.

Over the course of a two-and-a half-hour, occasionally treacherous hike, we worked out the architecture. A coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old named Maisie and her overprotective widowed artist father. They live in a Brooklyn bubble, safely ensconced from the dangers of the world. Daughter yearning to spread her wings, dad still mourning his lost wife. But they’re a good unit and brave the world together despite it all. Then, one day, a phone call. Turns out the grandfather Maisie thought was dead has actually died, and they have to go back to Minnesota for the funeral. The daughter is pissed at Dad for lying to her and intrigued by this “new” family she’s never met and has no baggage with.

Han summed it all up: “It’s a story of an estranged family coming back together after the death of an abusive parent … But funny.”

We got back to the house and pitched the idea. Sadie would play the daughter, Heather would play the aunt, Jess, Erik and Han would co-write. Jess and Erik would direct. We’d shoot in Minnesota and make sure the cast and crew could make a decent living. We’d worry about who could play the grandmother later.

Jess said, “Great. Lets shoot it next summer. Write it down.” I prefer housework to typing, so there was some grumbling assent and it was agreed we would all hold each other artistically accountable in accordance with our main collaborating value: It doesn’t matter whose idea it is. Or whether it is good or bad. Only whether it’s effective and true.

Skip to a year later: we had a script and a strike waiver and Amy Madigan (Field of Dreams, Weapons) doing the movie with us.

No film set is ever seamlessly perfect and no one is always perfectly content. But something about being back home for all of us, with our amazing cast of friends and a Minneapolis crew who granted us their trust (NB: this is not always easy to come by in the Midwest, despite “Minnesota Nice”) created an atmosphere of camaraderie that began on day one and just got better over the month we shot the feature together.

I could tell war stories about how we chased the light and how hard it is to film on water and fake a car being on fire. I could also indulge your suspicions that a spousal directing team directing their own kid is a recipe for utter disaster, but once we all figured out which hat we were wearing … It was simply a matter of setting up the camera and watching magic unfold. Our year of preparation made the whole feat seem effortless – in no small part because Amy Madigan is a veteran leader who works by example.

I watched her as she taught my daughter how to hit a mark, how to have fun without being unprofessional, how to learn everybody’s name and job and mostly how to approach the craft of acting without making it overly complicated.

I’d love to say we were like Ford or Spielberg or Kubrick in our approach. I’d love to say that every moment was inspired by our leadership. But after we set it all up, mostly we simply stayed out of the way. A full third of our cast had never really acted on screen before. Some of our crew had never shot a feature before. Covid still loomed. There were plenty of points when clamping down and giving an order would have made things move faster. But everything became an invitation. We stumbled upon the perfect late 1800s Wyeth-esque church.  The perfect lakeside general store. The community donated time and ice cream.

We led from behind with rigorous trust, and it worked. We wrapped on time, under budget, with only one hour of overtime … and COVID held off till the very last day. The film was funnier than we thought, deeper than we thought, and in the groove.

And then two days before we wrapped, I had an incident. There was blood where there wasn’t supposed to be blood. A lot of it. Jess and I kept our traps shut and said “cut” for the last time without telling anyone.

When we arrived back in Brooklyn, I went to get a colonoscopy.

The doctor made my wife tell me when I woke up: I was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer.

Life wasn’t going to be about filming, and puppies and laundry anymore.

I was gonna die.

Our amazing producer Michael Cuomo said, “Well, of course we’ll take a pause to get things right with you before we continue.”

I’ve been sharp with my friend Michael twice. Once, under the influence of the chemo steroids. (Which somehow I was not warned about – or maybe forgot in the haze of diagnosis and fear. I apologize.) The other time I was sharp was this moment. “Absolutely not!” If this was going to be my last project, I was determined to make that journey the hard way. Life was going to change, yes. But I felt like learning how to pivot in this moment was what all the therapy, and meditation, and reading, and storytelling, and loving was about. I was forced on a “hero’s journey” and this was the personal disaster that happens after Campbell’s “call to action.” This was a trip into the cave. The place where I would confront my deepest fear. I always wanted to play a Jedi. This was my opportunity to actually be one.

I think we started editing the film a week after I started chemo. And in addition to being a producer, mom, teacher, and co-director, my wife became a caregiver.

When someone in a family gets cancer, everyone gets cancer – kind of. In my experience, it is not necessarily the designated patient that has the roughest time of it. There was a kind of gentle grace that settled over me after the initial tears, panic and necessary parental reassurances. With cancer, you live somewhere between self-delusion and acceptance. Humor helps.

The real battle is fought on your behalf by the people you love who and, if you are lucky, actually surround you. And, all things being semi-autobiographical, I was, in fact, estranged from about a third of my birth family and there was no way those folks were going to show up. But, man, people showed up. People from our circle of artistic friends. Dom and Joel (producer and cinematographer from Minnesota) checked in often. Joel Marsh Garland, who plays Darren in the film, came over and played cards. My pal David Basche accompanied me to chemo sessions. My writer friend Gordon Haber came over to play guitar. A talented actor-director friend, Tony Arkin, and I had a weekly movie night. Han and Heather loved us from Lake Como. I suspect George Clooney had dreams about my well-being, but I can’t really ever be sure.

And our editor Gordon Grinberg moved his rig into our downstairs office so I could roll out of my chemo stupor, be helped down the stairs by the wisest teenager I’ve ever known and wrapped in blankets for a day’s editing.

And my approach to the work changed. Last film. Edit from the heart, not the head. Find the humor in all the drama. Remember that even estranged families once had some love there. Find that on camera, even if it wasn’t always in the script. And with Jessica and Michael and Gordon and our amazing additional editor-slash-everything else Danny Ward in the room … God, we had a good time.

Yeah, I’d take breaks to get sick and I had a series of surgeries to remove part of my colon, and my gallbladder, and my liver. I was being physically edited. Well, my cancer was being edited, anyway. I was having the most beautiful talks with my daughter, I was listening to the entire Grateful Dead archive, I picked up Kurt Vonnegut and the Beatles again, after a long break from both. And in the weirdest of ways, I emerged from the isolation and fear that COVID had gifted all of us. I loved my friends and present family from the deepest part of me and let the little things go. I forgave myself for my mistakes and really practiced that mandolin that Steve Earle had given me during the play we created with him, Coal Country. In a lot of ways, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. We applied too early to Sundance. Didn’t matter. I was aching in my bones due to a drug that stimulates white blood cell growth. Didn’t matter. I navigated being half robot with a miracle device inside my body about the size of a hockey puck. It pumps high density chemo to the liver. The doctors used the word “cure” for the first time.

I had done a brief acting stint on The Walking Dead, playing a doctor. My showrunner and friend Scott Gimple put it out there that I was in some trouble, and all these amazing people I’d never spoken to rallied to support my wife and family. I saw the love this country offers. A flood of help came in from a GoFundMe. (I suspect that Amy and her husband Ed may have been part of that effort. They are really good people and I want to be like them when I grow up.) While I was still sick, another showrunner friend, Hank Steinberg, got me a fun TV acting gig with enough money to get my SAG insurance for the year. Somewhere in there, I convinced Manhattan Theater Club to put me in a play, so I could work while we finished the last of it off.

And my (chosen) “sister” Rachel animated the opening to Brooklyn. Minnesota film to the Replacements’ “Skyway.”

My life was more full and complete than it had ever been. I was at this cosmic dinner table with all these funny people, telling stories about things I’d done when we met, and how ridiculous I looked in that sweater … and just showing up, like you do. And my wife loved me the hardest you can love someone. Imagine the hardest you’ve ever loved, double that and strap an engine to it. That’s how hard she loved me. She’s the real hero in this story.  I’m number 8 on the call sheet.

And I was doing a play when the film world premiered at the 2024 Woodstock Film Festival.

The call came in late in the evening.

We had won two awards: The NYWFT Award for Excellence in Directing (Narrative) and the Gray Schwartz Ultra Indie Award.

And the tests came in.

I was cured of cancer.

The movie took on a life of its own at that point, due in no small part to the hard work of Michael Cuomo, Jess, Lillian LaSalle, Han Shan, Danny Ward and a whole host of producers and partners who put their resources and shoulders to the wheel as Brooklyn, Minnesota criss-crossed the country. Word of mouth spread and we were invited to more festivals and surprisingly (to me, anyway) received more accolades like the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Hawaii Film Awards, and from the SoHo International Film Film here in New York City, where we played the Regal Union Square, the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Watching people relate to the film was kind of mind blowing. Lots of knowing laughter. Ripples of recognition. Sometimes even tears. You never know when a film is going to impact people until you emerge from your creative bubble. But somehow people were connecting and also saying things like, “Your daughter is amazing!” which I always knew, but now other people were onto it too and the whole thing just felt right.

And we did the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. Man, I cannot tell you the number of details I made sure to get right in terms of the family in the film being from Minnesota. But all those tiny details stacked up. Rather than Midwestern stoicism, the screenings were filled with actual Midwestern enthusiasm, which we’re not supposed to talk about but have loads of anyway. My mom came. First time I’d seen her since I was declared healthy. (She was the toast of the parties – only half the stories she told about me are the way I remember them. I’m just putting that out there.) I had a guy pass by me in the lobby after one screening who grabbed my hand. All he could spit out was, “That was really close to home. I get it,” and he walked away. Another guy at a talkback (a fisherman), testing me, asked if I preferred catching Northerns or Walleyes. The answer was “C’mon …Walleyes!” and garnered some applause and a couple hisses.

We won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature and they gave us another screening after three sold-out showings. The fourth one sold out too.

I’d gotten the Midwestern seal of approval and things seemed to be full circle. The “hero’s journey” always involves some kind of return home (à la Lord of the Rings) and I was done. In the end realizing that “home” was my family and my friends, no matter where I lived.

So there’s the “drip.” My daughter is aghast that I’ve used the term (probably wrongly), but it’s OK.

Our gentle little movie seems to be a reminder for some, in these times where we are so divided, that, at the end of the day, all that matters is love and forgiveness. And that the moment to love people is now. Because time is on fire, but we don’t have to be.

Thanks to Jessica Blank, Sadie Jensen-Blank, Michael Cuomo and the entire Brooklyn, Minnesota team for seeing me through.

Featured image shows Erik Jensen at Lake Como with Sadie Jensen-Blank, Jessica Blank, Heather Reddick and Han Shan; all images courtesy Erik Jensen.