Film producer Molly Conners moved to Maine in 2020, but makes movies all over the world. She also chairs the Maine Film Commission. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

Molly Conners has made movies all over the world.

She traveled to Italy for the filming of the 2024 thriller “Turbulence” and witnessed the massive spectacle of 600 buffalo near Glacier National Park in Montana while working on the 2022 western adventure “Butcher’s Crossing,” starring Nicolas Cage. She sailed off the Florida coast as producer of the new romance “Wish You Were Here.” That film was the directorial debut of actress Julia Stiles and opened in theaters Jan. 17.

Her constant globetrotting helped convince Conners she could live anywhere she wanted, since she never knows where her work might take her. In 2020 she and her family left New York City for Maine, settling in Yarmouth.

Conners has been a producer or executive producer on more than 46 films over the past 15 years, including the Oscar-winning 2014 film “Birdman.” She founded and is CEO of Phiphen, an independent media production company. Since moving to Maine, she’s become chair of the Maine Film Commission, an advisory body that helps state government promote media production here. With her husband Christian Noe, a chef who used to cater and cook on movie sets, she helped open a Freeport restaurant called Nighthawk’s Kitchen.

“We came up here because of the pandemic and we just didn’t leave. We ended up loving it and thought it would be a great place to raise our children,” said Conners, who has two children, aged 9 and 6. “My husband said ‘It’s not like you just make movies in New York City, you make movies all over the place.”’

Film producer Molly Conners, right, with her husband Christian Noe, stand in front of a collection of framed recipes from Noe’s grandmother at their restaurant, Nighthawk’s Kitchen in Freeport. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

Conners was traveling this month to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where a film she executive produced called “Bunnylovr” was scheduled to premiere Jan. 25. The drama, directed by and starring Katarina Zhu, focuses on a young “cam girl” – a web cam model – who is dealing with toxic client relationships and trying to reconnect with her estranged father.

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COMBINING BUSINESS AND CREATIVITY

Conners, 45, said she and her company don’t focus on any one kind of film or genre, but instead just focus on good stories. She also, being on the business side of filmmaking, tries to assess what kinds of stories can get made, which requires appealing to investors and financial backers.

“Wish You Were Here” for instance, is a drama about a woman who meets a man, has a whirlwind night of romance, then discovers the man is terminally ill. It stars Isabelle Fuhrman, Mena Massoud, Jennifer Grey and Kelsey Grammer.

“It kind of was one of those books that you smile through the tears and you have a good cathartic cry,” said Conners. “And I felt when I read it I knew where and who the buyer for it would be. And that’s half the battle. When I read something and love it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what the market is buying at the time.”

Isabelle Fuhrman and Kelsey Grammer in “Wish You Were Here.” Yarmouth resident Molly Conners was the producer on the film, which hit theaters Jan. 17. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Conners says her work as a producer touches on a lot of different aspects of getting the movie, or TV show, made. She is often involved in optioning the rights to a book or a story, developing the script, casting, putting together a financial plan and figuring out where it makes the most financial sense to shoot. Some states, like New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, offer lucrative rebates and incentives to filmmakers. Maine’s financial incentives right now lag well behind those of several states, and Canada, but Conners and others on the Maine Film Commission hope that might change. Bills that would increase incentives have been proposed in the Legislature several times in the past few years, but none have passed.

Her colleagues on the Maine Film Commission say Conners’ knowledge and experience as a producer who’s worked all over is a great benefit, since she knows what it takes to make a movie and why producers pick specific locations.

Producer Molly Conners, left, and director Julia Stiles on the set of “Wish You Were Here.” Photo courtesy of Molly Conners

“Molly can help guide the commission, not based on mere hunches or theories, but based on lived experience and earned wisdom,” said Desiree Van Til, a Portland-based filmmaker and playwright who also sits on the commission.

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POLITICAL THEATER

Conners grew up in Albany, New York, where her father was a government official for many years, and in Boca Raton, Florida. Connors thought she’d work in politics and graduated from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., studying political communication before switching to psychology. She also had internships in politics, including with the Democratic National Committee.

She discovered her love for filmmaking when she worked on her father’s 2004 campaign for the New York State Senate and produced his TV ads. It involved political strategy and business details – buying air time, hiring crew – but there were also lots of creative decisions to be made.

“That was what clicked for me, that it was business meeting creative, and I really loved that,” said Conners. “I had a friend at the time who said, ‘You’re really good at this, you should do this.'”

So she did. She started working on short films and small films, to get experience. She was co-producer on the 2008 film “Frozen River,” starring Melissa Leo, about a financially strapped mother and a Mohawk woman who earn money by smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada into the United States. Leo was nominated for a best actress Oscar and the film also got a nomination for best original screenplay.

She worked on a dozen or more films over the next five or six years, before working as executive producer on the 2014 film “Birdman,” which won Oscars for best picture, best director, best screenplay and best cinematography. It starred Michael Keaton as a down-and-out Hollywood actor, best known for playing a superhero, trying to make a comeback on Broadway but who is tormented by visions and voices in his head of his past superhero fame. It also starred Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. Connors said she worked mostly on the financing side of “Birdman,” as executive producer.

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CONNECTING WITH MAINE

Conners had come to Maine a few times before she and her husband decided to move here. She had come to meet with some film investors in South Portland and she had worked on a short film in the state with Maine-based filmmaker Andrew Brotzman.

Conners also had friends in the film business already living here who sang the state’s praises. Veteran actors Xander Berkeley and Sarah Clarke had moved to Maine from Los Angeles in 2018 to raise their two children, while continuing to work in film and TV. They also bought and run the Cornish Inn.

Berkeley’s 40-plus-year career includes the films “A Few Good Men” and “Apollo 13” and appearances in many TV series, including “The Walking Dead,” “Law & Order” and “CSI.” Clarke’s many credits include the TV series “Bosch,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “24.” Berkeley is also an artist who painted murals for the interior of Nighthawk’s Kitchen.

Conners, along with Berkeley and Clarke, has also been involved with a group called Picture Maine, which is trying to promote the creation of a filmmaking industry in Maine – aimed mostly at low-to-medium budget films. That group has been pushing for the state to increase its incentives to film production companies who come to Maine, as a way to create jobs and help the economy.

Bridgton-based actor Matthew Delamater sits on the Maine Film Commission with Conners and travels to Boston, which has become a movie-making hub in recent years, often to be in films or TV shows. He had a supporting role in the 2021 Ben Affleck movie “The Tender Bar,” directed by George Clooney, and was in the recent Max TV series “Julia,” about famed TV chef Julia Child.

Delamater says he’s been impressed with Conners’ resume in filmmaking, and the fact that she has so much real-world knowledge of the business. But beyond that, he thinks she has the skills to help others see the possibilities of more filmmaking in Maine.

“She’s talented, driven and great communicator. She’s courageous, which you have to be (in the film industry), but she’s also a good listener,” said Delamater. “If the goal of the film commission is to bring in more filmmaking, than to have somebody who has actually done it, like her, is crucial.”

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