<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Frozen River premiered at Sundance last year, winning the Grand Jury Prize, and is now up for two Academy Awards: Best Actress (Melissa Leo) and Best Original Screenplay (Courtney Hunt, also the director). Hunt talked to us about the film, which follows the story of a financially strapped trailer mom in upstate New York who takes to smuggling illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Canada border. Where did the idea for Frozen River come from?  My husband is from upstate New York near the border, and we always heard stories about smuggling across the St. Lawrence River. And I was really intrigued by this, so I started researching who does it and what they were smuggling.  What about the story did you find particularly compelling?  How often the people involved were women and why they would take such a risk, to drive across a mile-wide stretch of frozen river in the middle of winter in a car with contraband in the trunk. It just seemed very bold.  What convinced you to cast Melissa Leo as Ray?  I cast her after seeing 21 Grams, in which she plays a very desperate wife. She&amp;#039;s really a ball of fire. You see it in that performance, and I thought that she could really carry a movie like this. Why do you think the movie resonates with people?  There&amp;#039;s a lot of suspense, and even though the suspense isn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;Will Ray Eddy save the world?&amp;quot;\u2014it&amp;#039;s more like &amp;quot;Will Ray Eddy save her family?&amp;quot; \u2014I think people are drawn into the story. There&amp;#039;s a very short amount of time she has to make things right. And although a lot of people wouldn&amp;#039;t care to take such a risk for a double-wide trailer home, you kind of understand in light of where she does live that it&amp;#039;s a step up for her. Even though that&amp;#039;s not what most people dream of, they can kind of relate to her dream. What are the biggest challenges for female directors these days?  I don&amp;#039;t think it has to do with my being female so much as the subject matter that I&amp;#039;m choosing to focus on. If I were doing a film about a dude who wanted to go on a lot of dates and he was not that good-looking but he wanted to date some really good-looking women, that might be a story that would appeal more easily to mainstream funding sources. But if you&amp;#039;re choosing to tell stories about more marginal characters and use unknown actors, you&amp;#039;re going to hit walls, and they don&amp;#039;t have to do with gender, they have to do with money.  You went to law school. How did that impact your film career?  Law school teaches you that you have to get things done in a certain amount of time, and no one cares what your sad little excuses are. Judges don&amp;#039;t care, partners in law firms don&amp;#039;t care, and there are deadlines that the court makes. In film, you want to resist actually completing anything\u2014there&amp;#039;s a natural tendency to overthink things\u2014but in law school that&amp;#039;s not an option.  What was it like to win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize?  I was pretty shocked. I don&amp;#039;t really ever go into these awards ceremonies thinking, Gee, maybe me. I tend to think, Isn&amp;#039;t it nice that they had this lovely party and I was invited. Quentin Tarantino gave this long opening and he described the film before announcing the winner. At first we were trying to figure out what film he was talking about, and about two thirds of the way though, it started to sound familiar. I still didn&amp;#039;t believe it until he said it\u2014and then I didn&amp;#039;t even know it was the Grand Jury Prize. This is going to sound really ridiculous, but I didn&amp;#039;t study what the prizes were, because I knew they had a certain amount of discretion. Aftert the end when I won, I got up and said my thing, and I went to sit back down and they were like &amp;quot;No, it&amp;#039;s over.&amp;quot; I was thrilled when it hit me.  What future projects are you working on?  I&amp;#039;m going to do an episode of In Treatment\u2014I love that series. Then I have a feature that I&amp;#039;ve signed on to do\u2014I haven&amp;#039;t signed the contract yet, so I better not say, but it&amp;#039;s it&amp;#039;s a big movie that I&amp;#039;m doing a rewrite of and will direct. I signed on to adapt a beautiful book called Northline, by Willy Vlautin. And I wrote a script called Elfie Neary, which takes place on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1904. It&amp;#039;s about a love story about a tenement girl&amp;#039;s love story. It&amp;#039;s also about the wave of immigrants coming in at that time and block-to-block tensions among the Irish and the Germans and the Italians and the Eastern-European Jews in that community.  What other films have struck a chord with you lately?  The Visitor, Milk. I thought Rachel Getting Married was beautiful. I loved Happy-Go-Lucky. A year or so ago, all I could talk about was There Will Be Blood, to the point where my husband was like, &amp;quot;Stop imitating Daniel Day-Lewis. It&amp;#039;s really not that funny for the rest of us anymore.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/interviews/a9699/oscar-watch-courtney-hunt-293208/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>