Making Calvin Marshall

Part I

While growing up, I had two big dreams. The first was to play professional baseball and the second was to be a filmmaker. I’m still not quite sure where these ambitions came from, but they quite literally drove me. During my college baseball career, one dream gradually gave way to the other, and I soon found myself in film school.

The movie CALVIN MARSHALL was the direct result of these two dreams. And now looking back on it fifteen years later? I’m trying to discover what was true about the experience.

Michelle Lombardo as Tori and Alex Frost as Calvin in CALVIN MARSHALL

Having an accurate view of your past is difficult, because we tend to embellish the highs and exaggerate the lows. And we only have our perception — which is limited to one version of the truth.

I do know this much… making the film wasn’t easy. It took us over a decade. 😳

And mostly, it took a small team of great people making significant sacrifices. Initially it was our core team —> Annie, Mark, Mikey, Christine and Gary K. These friends are the ones who first supported me and the script I wrote — which was originally called MVP. This is ironic, because these folks were the actual MVPs. Each made the movie possible in their own way: raising money, staying positive, giving creative input, hiring crew, finding our actors, scheduling, budgeting and finishing the production.

Producers Mark Cunningham and Annie Lundgren

Getting over the final hurdles of distribution was perhaps the hardest phase of all, especially during the biggest recession since World War II. It began the month we wrapped in December 2007.

Eventually, we made our way through post-production, enjoyed a film festival run, found distribution, and saw the movie released into the marketplace in 2010.

And the biggest hurdle of all? The gradual realization that the film would not quite stand out enough or receive the financial return we believed was possible.

This was the hardest pill to swallow for our team — we weren’t going to hit the independent film lottery. And having to learn the hard lesson that year-in and year-out, hundreds of indies play the most important film festivals and leave without distribution.

Watching playback on the very first day of production in November, 2007.

These realities dominated our thoughts and emotions during those years our movie had its tiny release. At the time, it was easy to harbor feelings of failure and a growing sense of resentment after a decade of effort and sacrifice.

This is the story I’ve been quietly telling myself subconsciously. Some of it is still true — but I’m also leaving a lot out.

So today, I’d like to add to the true story of CALVIN MARSHALL.

We had attempted something very difficult. We were trying to accomplish something along the lines of franchising our restaurant or qualifying for the Olympics or getting called up to the Major Leagues.

The truth is that our movie beat so many odds. It played top ten film festivals. It found more financing to release theatrically and received glowing reviews in the New Yorker, Village Voice, the New York Post, Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

It received a distribution deal from Gravitas Ventures which led to streaming and DVD deals from Netflix — which was already on its way to becoming the 800 pound gorilla it is today.

We made foreign sales and airline sales with our International distributor.

We beat the odds by getting deals that returned real money. Not nearly enough, but money did come back.

We beat the odds by making a film we’re proud of — a film that still gets emails from fans.

So, today I’d like to thank each of my original core team who made this film possible. They did everything in their power to make the film with me and get it out into the world.

Like I said, it wasn’t easy, and I’ve never thanked them enough.

And while it was happening, we never truly celebrated the film. A few days we did…

L to R: Gary Kout (Line Producer), Mikey Matondi (Producer), Annie Lundgren (Producer),
Gary Lundgren (Director), Mark Cunningham (Executive Producer)

But the struggle eventually seemed to win out and overshadow a lot of the good things that happened.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been learning how to shift my eyes away from the struggle and back to the magic of telling stories and making movies.

The natural progression of this growth is to tell myself a new story around CALVIN MARSHALL. A story that, I hope, is closer to the truth.

And right now this morning I’m feeling so grateful we made the movie.

Perhaps if we went back in time, we’d do it all differently. Or not make it at all. But this is the way it went down. And it was good.

And it means so much to me that we didn’t give up during that decade. We overcame the obstacles and the odds and we finished what was a true labor of love.

It was an experience I’ll be cherishing a lot more now, and I’m looking forward to reflecting on it further in the coming weeks. ❤️

Alex Frost (Calvin) practicing baseball before principal photography began