Green Mountain Movie Maven

By Erik Esckilsen
Photography by Kathleen Landwehrle

Screenwriter and former Executive Director of the Vermont Film Commission (VFC) Loranne Turgeon ’86 could not have grown up much further from her dream job of making Hollywood films. But geography was only part of the problem. The Newport, Vermont, native recalls the discouragement that accompanied her moviemaking plans, beginning in childhood. After seeing Star Wars and then The Making of Star Wars in 1977, she became aware of the varied work that goes into film productions. “That was it, 10 years old,” she recalls. “From that point on, I walked around telling everybody, ‘I’m going to live in Los Angeles. I’m going to make movies.’ They all thought I was nuts.”

Act I

FADE IN:

Turgeon’s interest in a career at least approximating the creativity of the film industry influenced her decision to major in Marketing at Champlain College. While she found her studies stimulating -- and, to this day, credits Professor Jay McKee with helping her find the confidence to embark on a career in the Big Apple -- she concedes that her favorite class was an 8 a.m. course on American drama. Her appetite for stories was so insatiable that, even after landing a job as an account coordinator at the Jordan, McGrath, Case, Taylor & Manning agency in New York City, she spent her lunch hours reading novels -- novels and the showbiz magazine Variety. One day an executive at the agency, Norman Carrier, took note of her reading tastes and invited her to lunch.

THE INCITING INCIDENT

Carrier just happened to be in the process of developing a showcase of made-for-TV movies to be sponsored by a client, the Aetna insurance company. “Norm looked at me and said, ‘How would you like to read screenplays and start looking at material?’” Turgeon remembers. “I said, ‘Sure.’ He moved me over to the Aetna account. My job was to help them develop advertising around the programs but also to find the programs.”

In a New York minute, as the saying goes, Turgeon found herself sitting in a pitch meeting with maverick film director Robert Altman (Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park) and greenlighting The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. The film aired in 1988, starring Jeff Daniels and Peter Gallagher. “That was my first film,” Turgeon says. “Robert Altman. Not a bad deal. I knew what I wanted, and it found me.”

Act II

PLOT COMPLICATIONS

Although Turgeon’s collaboration with Carrier was serendipitous, she was not so naive as to expect lightning to strike twice in the same place. So, in 1988, she headed west to parlay her “Aetna Presents” experience into a bona fide film career. Again, she made the bold move despite others’ discouragement, mainly because her timing seemed way off. A recent strike by members of the Screenwriters Guild of America had ground the motion picture business to a near halt. The strike ended as Turgeon was en route to California. Two weeks later, she’d landed a job with the venerable William Morris Agency, a talent hothouse. As assistant to agent Michael Gruber, she became acquainted with the likes of comedians Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn, Chris Rock, and Ben Stiller. “They were New Yorkers who didn’t drive,” Turgeon says. “They’d fly out and would need somebody to drive them out to all the L.A. comedy clubs.”

While mingling with celebrities and hanging out on sets was providing Turgeon with an invaluable education, after three years or so with William Morris, she was ready to step closer to the fire at the heart of the industry -- feature films. For a few months, she worked for music industry titan Irving Azoff, former head of MCA Records, who also dabbled in film production (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Urban Cowboy). When producer David Valdes approached her about assisting with a Western flick about to start shooting, she saddled up.

A RISE IN ACTION

What happened next would make a fine entry in a book on Strange But True Job Interview Stories. “I’d been interviewing with David, and I’d been there for 40 minutes,” Turgeon recalls. “I have no feel for what’s going on. I feel like, ‘Why am I here?’ We’re just sort of talking. David looked at my resume, and then he put it down. There weren’t that many questions about what I’d done. It was bizarre. And then Clint Eastwood walked in, sat down, and started asking me questions.” Despite her doubts, Turgeon aced the interview and was soon at work on Unforgiven, which earned Eastwood a 1993 Academy Award for Best Director. The project would become one of many cherished movie memories for Turgeon, standing out with special vividness. “I was up in Alberta, Canada, on that one,” she says, “riding a horse to work because no cars were allowed on set. It was cool.” Turgeon’s equestrian experiences growing up in Vermont made the assignment all the more satisfying. “For me, it was like heaven,” she adds.

Working primarily as an assistant to film producers, Turgeon handled myriad tasks -- helping with crew hiring, casting, procurement, shipping, and all the related paperwork. Naturally, her interest in the creative side of films led her to plot her next move. She began working for Dreamworks, in the animation division. The job enabled her to attend story meetings in the company of animation heads Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins as well as CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Working on such projects as Antz, The Prince of Egypt, and Shrek, Turgeon says, “really taught me more than anything about story structure.”

Turgeon’s own plot was about to twist again when, in 1997, Vermont screenwriter John Fusco was hired to pen Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. Working with Fusco, Turgeon learned of an opening at a new state-funded entity called the Vermont Film Commission. Turgeon had been enjoying success on the West Coast, but her father’s recent heart attack had stirred thoughts of home -- and family time she’d missed out on. She applied for the position of VFC executive director, she says, “on a whim.”

Act III

SOME BACKSTORY

E. William Stetson, founding president of the VFC board of directors, had been hounding then Governor Howard Dean since 1992 or thereabouts to fund a film commission that would entice film productions to shoot in the state and also to nurture an indigenous film culture. By the mid-’90s, Stetson notes, Vermont was still the only state without such a commission. When the VFC finally got up and running in 1998, he wanted to make sure the first executive director would be effective. Turgeon was a dream come true -- as she would prove the following year.

Vermont’s photogenic landscape was, by 1999, a resource highly regarded by filmmakers and commercial directors. But in a state where one major film shoot a year was big news, landing three productions was something approaching historic.

THE CLIMAX

In a string of negotiating triumphs yet to be matched, in 1999 Turgeon convinced the production teams -- and major star power -- of Academy Award–winner The Cider House Rules, the Harrison Ford–Michelle Pfeiffer thriller What Lies Beneath, and the Jim Carrey comedy Me, Myself & Irene to film in Vermont. As Stetson recalls, her sharp professionalism and utter lack of pretension sealed the deals. “Loranne was the catalyst to bring those three productions in,” he says. Stetson accompanied Turgeon when she negotiated the Cider House Rules project. “I watched her make the case,” he says. “She was amazing, just so convincing. She said, ‘Look, we’re going to give you locations and farms and an apple orchard like you’ve never seen’ ... Loranne was really passionate in selling Vermont as the only place they could do it.”

Turgeon’s effectiveness is all the more impressive when considering, as Stetson notes, how few financial incentives Vermont can offer film productions in the form of tax discounts and enticements available in other states, Canada, and abroad. What Turgeon can’t offer producers on the money side, Stetson says, she makes up for in an assurance that the project will run smoothly. “She’s absolutely trustworthy,” Stetson says. “She has this rock-ribbed Vermont honesty in her voice. They know that what she’s telling them is the way it is. In an industry of nonsense and bravado, she’s rock solid.”

In the more modest Vermont film industry, Turgeon commands no less respect. Says VFC Board President and filmmaker John O’Brien (Vermont Is for Lovers, Man with a Plan, Nosey Parker, The Green Movie) “What made her such a good film commissioner to begin with” he says, “was that she had Hollywood roots or connections and experience but Vermont roots, too. ... Even though the commission was set up in this traditional [economic development] model, Loranne is so personable and charismatic that she got to know all of the Vermont filmmakers.”

FALLING ACTION

Alas for the state, those qualities that endeared Turgeon to filmmakers also won over an antiques dealer in Gray, Maine, named Jim Cyr. When Cyr and Turgeon married in June 2004, Turgeon decided to step down as VFC executive director and relocate to Maine. There she began writing original screenplays with West Coast–based writing partner Ann Pashak. In early spring 2007, however, she received a call from the VFC board requesting that she return to her native state to serve a temporary stint as interim executive director.

Working out of a Montpelier office into this autumn, Turgeon helped the VFC search for a new executive director while also promoting Vermont as a film-friendly state. This past summer, she scored another film coup when she helped Springfield, Vermont, land the July 21 premiere of The Simpsons Movie (see “Turgeon’s Home Run” below). The story has quickly become the stuff of Vermont legend and may even rank up there with Turgeon’s many anecdotes from the golden summer of 1999.

DENOUEMENT

With Joseph Bookchin, another local who trained as a filmmaker in New York City and L.A., now the VFC executive director, Turgeon has, for the second time, traded 80-hour workweeks for the pastoral pace of Maine living. But if she considers her last go-round as Vermont’s ranking movie mogul the sequel to end all sequels, others want her to stay in the picture. “We’re hoping that she’ll actually join the board so that we can take advantage of her many skills and connections and not lose her to the Pine Tree State,” O’Brien says. Stetson adds, “We’re going to insist on it.”

For her own part, Turgeon is happy to be unlocking the secrets to great screenplays in the 19-room Victorian home where she and Cyr live. Although she is now, geographically speaking, even further from Hollywood than when she first began dreaming of a life in the movies, in other ways she feels closer to landing her perfect role. “It was time I really took a breath,” she says, “and realized that I had stories I wanted to write.”