00:03
Kim Magnusson
The picture from 1995 by Olafur Eliasson, Iceland Series, actually has something that also belongs to me. The first time I was in Iceland was in the late '90s when I did my first short film there.

00:16
Kim Magnusson
The open sky, open air, vast horizon has underground bubbling water from the craters. It's the last standing frontier in the Western and modern world that we know of. The endless world out there. Full of storytelling, like no other place. What are the opportunities?

00:39
Kim Magnusson
A small child with closed eyes, thinking about: Where can I go next? What story can I tell next? What story can I be embraced with? Storytelling is all about that.

00:51
Kim Magnusson 
This picture, for me, stands out as a great metaphor for my life in the film industry, and how I see the connection between storytelling and the opportunity to tell what you are meant to tell.

01:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the National Gallery of Denmark and the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Kim Magnusson, a Danish producer and entertainment executive. Welcome, Kim.

01:35
Kim Magnusson
Thank you.

01:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's very nice to have you here. You recently went to the Oscar luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Actually, the hotel where my company celebrates the Golden Globes, so I know the intimate ballroom that you went to very well.

01:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
At this event, you had a picture taken with all the other Oscar nominees on stage. Everyone is called up, one after the other, and then you all smile to the camera. What is this moment like? Describe this very special group photo to us. Martin Scorsese and Carey Mulligan, for instance, are in the room.

02:11
Kim Magnusson
For the 2024 Oscars, I was not the designated nominee for our film. With that was another producer called Christian Norlyk and the director Lasse Noer, younger filmmakers from Jutland in Århus who made their first fiction film and have come all the way to the Oscars. So that is an amazing moment.

02:31
Kim Magnusson
And I can talk to that moment, because I've been on that stage seven times myself before and have an additional five other films that have been nominated that I produced. It was my 12th time at the luncheon. It is a special moment every time you go there, because I always say to people, and especially here also with my fellow filmmakers on this film, I said, you just have to enjoy this moment, and you have to enjoy it in full because the Oscar luncheon is the best event around the Oscar ceremony.

02:59
Kim Magnusson
Everybody in that room, together with fellow nominees. There's a lot of what people say in Hollywood, a lot of love in the room, because everybody is nominated together. Robert Downey, Ryan Gosling, they're all nominated along with a short filmmaker from Denmark, their first time. So they're in the same boat. They're equally nominated. And that's what that whole luncheon is really about, to embrace the filmmakers and their craft. They're all winners on that stage.

03:27
Kim Magnusson
Specifically on that picture. In the room, you have drinks, you take photos, you talk to people, and then you eat. I remember one year I was nominated. I sat with Michael Mann and Christian Bale. So everybody sits together, no matter what kind of category you're in. People clap when your name is mentioned and you go up there. And that class photo, of course, is something that you want to have on your walls for the rest of your life. Everybody's smiling and everybody's there. In that one single moment, they're all Oscar winners in a way.

03:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And the reason you were there is that your film is nominated, Knight of Fortune, or Ridder Lykke, as it's called in Danish. It's a short film that was directed by Lasse Noer. Is that the first time that you're nominated? Actually, far from it. This is your eighth nomination, right, where you are actually named.

04:18
Kim Magnusson
As I said before, this one I'm not named because there's a rule at the Academy that you can only be two designated nominees. It was Lasse and Christian who came to me with this story. Since around high school, they worked their way up and they have their company together. We made a call for short films in Jutland at the Vestdanske Filmpulje or the West Danish Film Fund, where we were selecting four pieces of work that needed to get financed.

04:45
Kim Magnusson
And I was the head of that committee, to spearhead which four films. And it was a call for short films with Oscar potential. That was the setting of the call. And this one, I very early saw that I felt could go all the way. That got selected along with three other great films. That was my job with the fund.

05:03
Kim Magnusson
But then I teamed up with Lasse and Christian to work closely all the way through and get it to where we are today. So for that, it was a full collaboration. But of course, I felt that three sentence pitch they came to me maybe four years ago, or not to me but to the committee, I said that could go all the way. So, I was right! Here we are!

05:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, you are right. And you have a special eye for this. What do you see in a film and think, ah, this could go all the way. And what is the recipe of actually getting nominated apart from all the campaigning that you do that people maybe do not know about. What is it that you see in a film that makes you think it can go all the way?

05:40
Kim Magnusson
I don't know. And a lot of people always ask me that. Oh, you're here again. How can you do this over and over? You must be doing something. And I say, listen. And I always say this, and I have to say that as a disclaimer. Because it is, that you can only go to the Oscars if you make a great film. Yes, there is campaigning and all that. And we will talk about that. But as a foundation, you have to have a good film. And then you can work with that from there on.

06:05
Kim Magnusson
And in my mind, the pitch line for me had a lot of those elements that I feel is a good film or what I want to see as a member of the Academy. And if I was going to vote for something that, you know, feelings that I feel come close to my heart. And this is about grief and sorrow, but it's also very humorous.

06:24
Kim Magnusson
When I talk to young filmmakers and talk about short films and how to start and how to tell your story, I always say, if you can twist your story with a humorous way, then you're really far along, in my mind, because I think the short film medium, compared to feature film, is something totally different.

06:43
Kim Magnusson
You have to have a quick first act, which basically is the first scene getting into the film, so the setting is done. And then you have a long second act and then you have a third act that maybe only lasts 10 seconds, which is sometimes just a payoff. And if you can do that payoff with a kind of humor in it, it just stands with people.

07:05
Kim Magnusson
So if I look at some of the early short films we did with Anders Thomas Jensen, we had those same things, a quick start, with a long middle, and then you might have just one sentence that was the payoff. And that got people to think. And it was always humorous. His way of filmmaking has humor in it for sure. And I feel humor is really there to tell stories in a lighter way, but without dismissing the story's values or the whole complex behind the story.

07:38
Kim Magnusson
For example, here with Knight of Fortune and you talked about campaigning before. So part of getting there is get it to the festivals. A certain list of festivals around the world, if you win the main prize there, you're automatically qualified to put your film into the Oscars for consideration. Or you can do a theatrical run in the cinemas here in America, in some of the major cities, and then you can qualify that way.

08:02
Kim Magnusson
And then you're considered approximately between 175 and 200 films — during the last maybe five, six years — it's the average amount of short films considered by Academy voters, to go to first shortlist and then to nominations. And then you do campaigning and you try to get your film out there to people, and that can cost a lot of money and short films for sure don't have any money.

08:26
Kim Magnusson
As a producer, you don't make money on short films per se, so it's basically all your own investment and whoever you can get to help you pay for some of this. And that's very little out of the Danish funding bodies because they don't believe in short films anymore like they did in the old days. So you're basically on your own.

08:45
Kim Magnusson
If you get shortlisted, then you get a little grant, and if you get nominated, you get another grant. Not as much as the feature films, even though I'm trying to tell them, listen, it's the same email blast, it's the same ads in Variety, it's the same plane tickets, it's the same hotel rentals, it's the same car rentals, being a feature film or being a short film. But no, we get a third of the amount of a feature film to support.

09:09
Kim Magnusson
And I understand that they can't give money before you're shortlisted, because then, young filmmakers will come and say, Oh, I'm taking my film to the Oscars, and who should then select if that film is good enough or not? I do understand the problem about not having pre-support because that will then be on the producer's side and take that chance.

09:30
Kim Magnusson
So, coming back to your original question about what it is and what kind of themes and all that. So for me, some of those themes are, apart from humor, grief and sorrow and sickness and children and things close to my heart. So I think that when I read that synopsis, I felt warmth around my heart, and I felt something there and that was my initial thing to say, okay, this one I think can do something.

09:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And my next question is about that, because Knight of Fortune is a film about grief and how to deal with grief. The leading characters are elderly men who lost their wives, and it takes place at the morgue. Talk a little bit about why you said it appealed to you. Why did this script and this story appeal so much to you that you wanted to produce it?

10:17
Kim Magnusson
I lost my mother almost 10 years ago now, very early to cancer. And I think everybody lost out there, could be a girlfriend, a boyfriend, your mom, your dad, your loved ones, whoever. And sometimes it comes too early, sometimes it's natural, comes later, whatever. But I do feel there will be sorrow for that somehow.

10:36
Kim Magnusson
In this film, you have two lonely men that have nobody else. We see them forming a relationship, and warmth and love between them. And I hope that by the time that the film is over, you feel and hope that they are going to have a future together as some kind of friendship, and dealing with that sorrow that they both have been through.

10:58
Kim Magnusson
And I'm not going to give too much away for the audience. If they haven't seen it, they should go and see it. In Denmark, you can see it on TV2 Play. And in America, you can see it at The New Yorker's screening site. I don't know if you're allowed to say that on this podcast.

11:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes you are.

11:12
Kim Magnusson
So I feel that is great if you lose somebody that you have somebody to lean into, that you have somebody that can help you. I had that when I lost my mother, but some can be standing all alone.

11:21
Kim Magnusson
And I also think — and that's maybe a Danish thing and that had nothing to do with wanting to do this film, but as a side note, actually, last year, I saw this in the news that Denmark has a really, really high percentage of loneliness, especially between men. I think in Denmark we have 600,000 registered lonely people, which means 10% of the country.

11:46
Kim Magnusson
And now the government is putting in a big effort to lower that to half. And then just think, 600,000, and they were mostly men, sitting out there and don't know what to do. Maybe they lost somebody. Maybe they just never found love. Maybe they just became lonely souls and lost their jobs or whatever. And then they just sit there.

12:06
Kim Magnusson
The film hopefully can start conversations, which a film always should. And coming back to the humor thing. Sometimes when we've been campaigning and we have been showing at events, the presenter sometimes says, this is a comedy. So you're allowed to laugh. Because okay, is this too morbid to begin to laugh? It takes place in a morgue. Then as soon as you feel the audience let loose, you really have strong reactions.

12:32
Kim Magnusson
And I remember the first time we screened it at a big international film festival in France called Clermont-Ferrand. There was somebody who came up to the director and said, "I've never both laughed and cried at the same time. Now I'm going to call my grandmother, who just lost her husband." And that's what's amazing, those kinds of reactions from audiences that really take this in, and it makes something for them to cope with and open up for something. Yeah, that's very important.

13:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sounds like a special moment. The first time you were nominated was in 1997 with Ernst & Lyset, directed by the now highly prolific writer and director, Anders Thomas Jensen. I assume this was a special moment in your career. What is the first time that you get nominated for an Oscar like?

13:22
Kim Magnusson
That was an amazing moment in both my career and also Anders Thomas's career, I think. That was actually one of those films I just talked about before, about the humor and about him. I didn't know you were going to ask about him. So that was great. It followed into that because that was it for those who remember Ernst and the Light. It was like a five-second third act when he calls his girlfriend and tells about what just happened to him. And it was just that quirky moment when you say, Oh my God, and that just tells something.

13:50
Kim Magnusson
In those days, there were no dates when it was announced. We just got an email, oh, you're gonna be nominated to the Oscars. And I was on my way to go skiing. I was young. We were 20-something and that was the whole fuss about that year and that movie. Because everybody loved our movie and everybody wanted us to win the Academy Awards. But it went to DreamWorks who had put in a TV pilot, a dropped TV pilot for ABC, with big stars in it, a huge budget and everybody.

14:17
Kim Magnusson
I was standing there on the train and I was called up. I think it was The New York Post. What are you going to do? You're going to sue the Academy? And I said, whoa, what's happening? Yeah. DreamWorks, they put in this film. I said, no, listen, I was very happy being nominated and if it was DreamWorks, I'm even more proud. But, eventually it actually changed the Academy bylaws that you cannot put in a dropped TV pilot or any other format, not intended for short filmmaking.

14:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's very typical that they think about suing right away. That's not like a Danish concept.

14:46
Kim Magnusson
Yeah.

14:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you have any special moments or anecdotes from being at the Oscars? Any sort of favorite personal Oscar moments that you want to share with us?

14:58
Kim Magnusson
As you said earlier, I've been there a couple of times. We've been nominated with 12 films. Personally, I've been nominated seven times, won twice, and we won two additional Oscars altogether. So four altogether out of the 12 so far. We never know what happens with this 12th coming March 10 in a couple of weeks.

15:17
Kim Magnusson
But of course, standing on stage with my own Oscar, those two times that happened, is very special. It was kind of surreal for the first one. We were young, and it was like, oh, great! We did these three films in a row after Ernst and the Light. Then me and Anders Thomas Jensen were nominated three years in a row, right after each other at that time, and eventually won with Election Night in '99.

15:44
Kim Magnusson
And that was of course amazing because it was after that buildup we did with Anders Thomas, and then we went straight into doing Flickering Lights in Denmark and all his feature films.

15:54
Kim Magnusson
Winning with Anders Walter in 2014 for a film called Helium, that was very special in my life because at that time, as I talked about earlier, my mom was actually in the hospital watching this, and she never came out at that point.

16:10
Kim Magnusson
And I remember that and standing and giving it to her. She had seen it, she reacted to it and we talked. But sadly she passed a couple of months later. And that film was also about death, about a small boy dying and going to Helium, which was this imaginary world for dead people and all that.

16:33
Kim Magnusson
So my mom being in the hospital and Helium and all that, it was a lot of very personal, emotional things right around that, to stand there on stage and honor her with this. And she always meant and still means everything in my life. So that was a big moment.

16:48
Kim Magnusson
And then of course, then there's the typical Oscar moments. I've been there through them all. I've been there when Benigni ran on all the chairs down to the stage. I've been there where the envelope was the wrong envelope. We were nominated that year as well.

17:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
La La Land —

17:04
Kim Magnusson
La La Land and Moonlight moment. And I was also there for the slap. So I've been there through all the big moments and we were nominated those years.

17:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are the co-founder and head of creatives at Scandinavian Film Funds and Scandinavian Film Distribution, which launched in March 2020. What do these companies do?

17:23
Kim Magnusson
Scandinavian Film Distribution is a pan-Scandinavian distribution company, just like Nordisk Film, Scanbox, and SF studios, having outlets in all three Scandinavian countries. We also did have Finland, but are now going with third partners in Finland for those films that we invested in there.

17:42
Kim Magnusson
Where we are a little different from the others is what we call ourselves producer oriented boutique distribution company, which means that we are only working with local titles. We are not buying American, French, Italian, English films to distribute.

17:58
Kim Magnusson
We are focusing on a small amount of films only in the Scandinavian language. And so far we invested in almost 40 films. And we have had a release of, I think, 18 of them, or maybe there's a lot of them coming out right now and the rest of this year, and then the rest in the following years.

18:18
Kim Magnusson
The fund itself, made out of private investors, is basically the money behind the distribution commitments that we do. What the distribution company does is buy the rights to distribute a film. You give the producer a certain amount of money for the film.

18:35
Kim Magnusson
And then you get the rights to distribute it and you take it out to the market, theatrical, streaming, video on demand, DVDs actually are still being bought, physical DVDs. And then for that you make a little profit, hopefully, if you're doing well, and if the film is selling well, and then you get paid back your money with interest. That's basically how the mechanics behind the distribution company works.

19:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you mentioned that you've produced a lot of feature films too, Anders Thomas Jensen's films, among others, and recently, Christian Lollike's The Cake Dynasty, Kagefabrikken in Danish. What are the differences between producing a short and a feature film? They're quite different beasts, I assume, because as you mentioned, there's no money in the short films.

19:24
Kim Magnusson
Thank you for asking that because it is a great question and people are like, you have no money, why do you keep on doing the shorts? I do the shorts because that's where you find new talent. And new talent needs to do shorts to prove themselves in order to get the finance for a feature film. At least 99 times out of 100 is how that should go.

19:44
Kim Magnusson
And that's also how our support scheme in Denmark and the Nordics and Northern Europe, and basically also everywhere else in the world, there's very few people who want to give somebody money if they can't see what that person has done before. So basically, yes, it's the same, in a way.

20:03
Kim Magnusson
It's just a much longer shoot on feature films, of course, but what it is for me when I talk about those things is the feature films become a commodity, becomes something that you have to sell. It becomes something that you have to make sure can sell. And that means that you will have to take actions on the film to make that happen.

20:28
Kim Magnusson
With a short, you have the freedom to express exactly what you want to express as a filmmaker because there's basically no money in it, or at least we're not doing any of the shorts to try to make money. But when you do a feature film, you have to work around — what is it out there? How can we sell this film? How is it sellable?

20:49
Kim Magnusson
Yeah, you can have an arthouse film that maybe doesn't sell a lot, which is a great film, and I've done some of those as well, of course. But then at least the mechanics around saying, okay, this film is only going to reach a certain and small amount of people, but then we have to make sure that at least that certain and small amount of people are going to see it. And then we're going to find whatever it takes to get them in there.

21:09
Kim Magnusson
That means that the creative aspects of a filmmaking process has to compromise sometimes in order to honor the economics behind feature filmmaking, because that is economics. You have producers who put up a lot of their own money, that they're risking on this person in hope that they're getting a return.

21:31
Kim Magnusson
And it's not always a return, I can tell you. And that's how it goes with a producer. It goes up and down, it's a rollercoaster ride. And that's why we're all crazy in this business, because it is a crazy business.

21:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it like producing The Cake Factory, which I just mentioned, with the director Christian Lollike, who's known for his theater production in Denmark? And it was his debut film as a director. Is it harder with a newcomer to the business? And it was a kind of provocative satire criticizing the Danes for their prejudices. What made you want to produce this?

22:06
Kim Magnusson
It was actually when we started the Scandinavian Film Distribution company, one of the other people behind it, Michael Fleischer, had found this project. It came out of Christian's own play in the theater, also named The Cake Dynasty or Kagefabrikken at the time. So he found that, but very quickly it became me who was going to produce it.

22:27
Kim Magnusson
And of course, Christian was that 1% that makes a film without making a short film. So he came straight from theater and is making a feature film. There were a couple of things the Danish Film Institute needed to see that he could interact on a film basis, not only on a theater basis. But of course, being who he was in the theater world, everybody knew that that's okay, you honor that. And then the consulting editor at the Danish Film Institute says, I want to see a film from him.

22:56
Kim Magnusson
He was, I have to say, one of the most fantastic filmmakers I've ever worked with. He was listening, he understood, and at the same time, he stood tall on some of his things that he needed. You're also coming into a person who you need to have such respect for, for what he has been doing in the theater world. So it is, right away, a great collaboration.

23:18
Kim Magnusson
He's also a grown man. So it's not like you're talking to a 25-year old who just came out of film school and is doing a short film, and then, oh, I want to do a feature, and then they think they can walk on water. He also understands that. So, he was very humble and he took in the filmmaking process and leaned on me and the other producer, Maj, and Michael, and especially the cinematographer and some other technical crew.

23:45
Kim Magnusson
So for him, he was concentrating on the actors and of course had a vision of how it should look. So very early on when that vision was laid down with him and the production designer and cinematographer and all that, and us, then it was really one of the nicest and easiest shoots I've ever been to.

24:01
Kim Magnusson
And the provocative things, I just think that's great. I love making movies that get people to talk. I said it earlier in one of the questions, that's really something for me. If you can have somebody come out of the theater and talk about the film, then you really have done something great. So with The Cake Dynasty, it was a really great collaborative process. And I was never in doubt that he could lift that thing.

24:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I saw the title The Cake Dynasty as meaning Denmark, as referring to Denmark as a society. Is that observation right from your point of view?

24:36
Kim Magnusson
I never thought about that. Now when you say it, I think maybe it's also because you're here and maybe look at Denmark in another way. No, but I'm saying it's a clever look. A clever look, but I've never talked about it. And of course, maybe you're totally right. We talked about how Danes look at these couple of things that we deal with, the others or the strangers or på dansk, fremmede, and then also this whole body shaming and all those things.

25:01
Kim Magnusson
And of course that is, that is elements in our society right now, which are big topics. I never took it up as a cake, Denmark, but, yes, it's two major concerns in our society. So for you to look at it as a whole, I think you're totally right. We just looked at it as two elements that really are something in Denmark that we need to talk about.

25:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's go back in time. You started as a child actor in the film Kvindesind. It's from 1980. Does it have an English title?

25:35
Kim Magnusson
I don't think so.

25:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No. How would you translate it?

25:37
Kim Magnusson
Maybe it did have an English — heart of something? I can't remember.

25:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Maybe we can call it The Soul of Women?

25:46
Kim Magnusson
Yeah, something like that.

25:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Something like that. You have a few lines in this film. What made this experience spark an interest in filmmaking in you? And how did you go from there to make a career out of it? I mean, you were very young at the time.

26:02
Kim Magnusson
My father was a producer, so film has always been with me. In the film, I'm playing the son of Lotte Tapp, a Danish actress, and Peter Schrøder, and it's a triangle drama about an American man who comes to Denmark. She falls in love with him, and he falls in love with her.

26:20
Kim Magnusson
There's a conflict: should she leave the family for this other man? And of course, if there's a child, you have to think about it a little more than just leaving whoever it is for another man or woman.

26:32
Kim Magnusson
So that was my part there. I believe that people felt I looked totally like Lotte Tapp, which I did, especially because I had all light hair and my mom had all dark hair. I looked more like Lotte Tapp than I looked like my own mother, some people would say.

26:47
Kim Magnusson
So I think I got that because Nina Crone, the producer, knew me and so I was cast for that. I think I have two, three scenes in it, a couple of lines, like you just said. I remember for the money I earned, I bought my first camera, a still camera, a Nikon FM2.

27:04
Kim Magnusson
I've always been drawn to media. My father was a producer. He had been a distributor and then he went into producing. And so of course I was part of it all the time. I was at Palads and watching all the films after school and things like that. So it just came natural after school that I was coming into this industry, even though I actually tried to get out of it.

27:25
Kim Magnusson
Because the way that the industry in Denmark works, at least at that time, back in the '80s, it was a very small industry. So if you were somebody's son or daughter, it was hard to get a job. If they gave you the job, people will look at you like, why should we have the producer's son here, or the head of the studio's son here or something like that. So you're really looked at as, okay, can you please get out of here?

27:49
Kim Magnusson
I think I always talk about that. I had to work double hard. I remember in the first films when I became a production assistant, my dad always told me, "Kim, if I hear anything, the slightest bad thing about you, you're out." Because he couldn't just cover for me because I was his son.

28:07
Kim Magnusson
But it also made me work twice as hard. I never sat down. That was great for my career because then people began to respect what you were doing and not just because you were somebody's son that you would be on set, right?

28:20
Kim Magnusson
But I actually did try to get out of it with a couple of stints first. I always wanted to be a pilot all the way back, not just like a fireman, a policeman when you were two years old, but I actually did go all the way to the test and everything, but didn't come all the way through. They said I was colorblind, but I wasn't.

28:35
Kim Magnusson
So that ended my career in the military there. But I was ready to go to the military, become a fighter pilot for 10 years and then go and sit and run SAS commercial airlines. That was my dream. Looking back now, I'm probably happy that I didn't do that, but I would actually love to be a pilot.

28:53
Kim Magnusson
And then I had one time I wanted to be a chiropractor, but that was more maybe I wanted to get out of Denmark and go and do education in a foreign country. I went straight from school, gymnasium, military, I got drafted, so into the military and then straight into films like the weekend after the military. I never had that get out of here and just try and see the world as a young person. So that happened later. I eventually went and studied in the States.

29:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What motivates you in terms of filmmaking? What drives you and how much, as a producer, are you in the creative process? Some, very much, some, less so?

29:32
Kim Magnusson
I feel as a producer, I tend to be very involved and be as creative as I can. And I do believe that's the whole thing about producing, is that you find your working relationship with, especially a director. But also a writer. And that's of course the norm, the triangle of happiness in the filmmaking process — producer, director, writer.

29:53
Kim Magnusson
And sometimes that can go well. Sometimes it doesn't go well. Sometimes you become more like a financial producer if it's a project that has to find a way to get produced, then you can involve yourself like that. I've never really done that. Maybe when I was CEO of Nordisk productions at one point.

30:11
Kim Magnusson
There, of course, you would have a little more arm's length to the project. There was not a project that we greenlit that I wasn't behind. But of course, I was not physically and emotionally in it like I would be on my films at M&M, my production company, as a producer, because there you're both hands-on and you're owning the companies, all your money, which is at stake and all that.

30:36
Kim Magnusson
Of course, you also dealt with that at Nordisk because if it didn't go well, I would get fired. But still you had producers who had a relationship with the directors and you would support the producers. And you'll be the second in line for the creative process there.

30:51
Kim Magnusson
I always tend to go in very much in editing. I feel that's a stronghold for me. On my own films, I'm there all the time from the beginning, I'm on set. I love being on set. A lot of producers don't like that. I love being there because I started out working on sets. So I know every aspect of the set. I always joke I could go and replace everybody on the crew and whatever they're doing. Except for maybe focus pulling on the camera.

31:17
Kim Magnusson
I also feel people respect that I have that knowledge. So I do know what's going on. A lot of people are afraid of sets. Because the people who are producers who are getting educated now, many of them have never been on sets. Producers these days are more coming from film school. They're coming from the university film school apart from being hands-on producers like me.

31:39
Kim Magnusson
I started on sets and worked my way up and then I took an education in the States as a producer, but that was for me more like a built-on. I wanted to have a paper on what I was doing. At that time I had already done it, but it was for me to get proof that I've done it and learn more about film history and all those kinds of things. But a lot of producers now coming from film school have never really been on set.

32:03
Kim Magnusson
And that's why I love the set because I know what's going on. It's not that I'm standing by the camera all the time, but then if we're on location, I put myself up in a little office, I have my walkie talkie so I can hear what's going on and feel the flow. Because I feel as a producer, especially a creative producer, if you're out there and you feel what's going on, then you can also be part of the process if something went wrong.

32:25
Kim Magnusson
So you're much more aware of what material has come in. When you go into the editing phase, you also remember that, oh, didn't we do this? Didn't we have a shot? Let's try to pull that in or something like that. Of course you can see that if you're sitting in the office as an office producer and watching dailies and all that. But I just feel like for me being on set and being part of that whole process is very important.

32:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And right now, we're sitting in a house very close to the Dolby Theater. We are in Hollywood. You used to live in Los Angeles and you have a special relationship to the city, I believe. Can you talk a little bit about that, your years here in this fantastic film community city?

33:06
Kim Magnusson
Yeah. I lived in Los Angeles over a couple of periods in my life. There was one when I was young, and I was here just a year, back and forth, tourist, being here. And then that was three years when I went to school at the AFI, where I took my producing degree and there I was more settled with a house and a dog and wife, now my ex wife, and we had a great time here. We were young and we got to learn the city.

33:35
Kim Magnusson
And then I've been here later in my life, also for three years in a row with my current wife, Rebecca, and our two kids after I left Nordisk, because that was at a time where the Danish film industry, the Nordic film industry, a lot of the European young filmmakers moved to America to try their next wave.

33:57
Kim Magnusson
There's been these waves from Nordic cinema, if you can say so, and the influence into the US. After Dogma came out, you had the first wave, where international films were being financed from the independent financing scheme of the US — Good Machine, October Films, all the early independents.

34:18
Kim Magnusson
Pre-Miramax and all that. Miramax was also involved in some of the films, back in the tv days. But there, the filmmakers stayed home in Europe and Denmark, and made their films there. That was that generation. They said, we don't want to go to America. They can give us their money and we'll make our films back home.

34:35
Kim Magnusson
But then the next generation, I think the generation that we're looking in now, the one that's forming our industry per se and forming the creative people out there, that is what the Americans want to work with. They all came in the early tens, '10, '11, '12, a lot of them came here. And I was part of that.

34:56
Kim Magnusson
Because that was my people that I grew up with. It was some of the talent that I had worked with both at M&M, but also especially at Nordisk. And at that time, I needed to reinvent myself and become a producer again. And I had that view on saying, okay, I want to be more internationally-based than being in Denmark.

35:14
Kim Magnusson
So I invested in being here those three years, Rebecca and I, we had those two small kids. And we went back and forth. We couldn't afford to be here for three full years, but we came most of the winters and most of the year, to be here with those filmmakers and to shop around, as it's called, projects with those filmmakers, and taking the Nordic scene into the US.

35:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what are the challenges of doing that?

35:37
Kim Magnusson
The challenge is that you knock on every door and you get a no, like everybody else. But what I love about LA or Hollywood, and now I'm not talking about the part of LA called Hollywood, I'm talking about Hollywood as a business, there's always another door. Denmark and the Scandinavian financing community is really closed if you get a no from the film institutes. There will be films made without the Film Institute, but it's very few. And it's very demanding.

36:05
Kim Magnusson
Here in America, there's a new door. You can keep on going at it. That is probably also the American dream, right? I also feel, in Hollywood, knocking on doors, trying to get your film made or your project seen, having meetings and meetings and the no's, of course, always there. And a few times it's a yes. But that's also the great thing about here.

36:26
Kim Magnusson
It's like somebody will say no to you, but they will say, but why don't you go into those companies? Because in Hollywood or in the US, the film industry is very much aligned, very much somebody wants to do that kind of film.

36:39
Kim Magnusson
Whereas in the Nordic, we are more flying all over because the way that the film institutes are set up with a consulting editor, which taste you have to find in order to get financing, right? And those consulting editors are being exchanged once in a while. So suddenly, maybe you went from consulting editors who only want to see dramas, then there's somebody who only wants to see comedies, or somebody who doesn't want you to have a gun in their films, and other ones who want to have a lot of violence in their films.

37:05
Kim Magnusson
So suddenly you have to shift and be ready to have those projects that would be in demand. Here it is a little the other way around. You can have your project, you can have your thriller and then you can knock on doors and then there'll be companies who don't want to do thrillers, but they'll say, oh, why don't you go to this? They're looking for this kind of material. So I think that's also that openness that is to the business about sharing and it's something great.

37:29
Kim Magnusson
And then of course, after those three years, Anders Thomas had to do his fourth feature after a 10 years absence from directing chair, he was doing Men & Chicken. So I was doing that back in Europe and then we won the Oscar for Helium. And then, on the back of that, because I've just done those three years of trying to work the industry here and things like that, that helped that we could right away as Walter and I go in and become something here.

37:53
Kim Magnusson
So we would take meetings and eventually that led to that we did an American movie called I Killed Giants, where of course I spent a lot of time here. It ended up shooting in Ireland and Belgium for financing purposes. And we did the post production in Denmark and all that. So it became a more European based film, but it was still an American film with big American producers on it, production companies behind it.

38:16
Kim Magnusson
Then kids were older, school happened. And the thing about staying here — a lot of the creative talents also went home. They did it, they made everything, but also found out that they could be at home and still be a part of the industry, even though they were based back home.

38:33
Kim Magnusson
And that happened for me, and then I signed a two year deal with Netflix in '18, that led into '20, when I started Scandinavian Film Distribution. That has been my quick route in my life. But I do love Los Angeles, and it has a special meaning to my heart.

38:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How important is Danish filmmaking? And let's include TV series too, in terms of representing Danish culture abroad, especially in the US, since we are here?

39:00
Kim Magnusson
That whole movement that came 10, 12 years ago, is the filmmakers that we are seeing today. They are the ones who are representing Denmark on the international film and TV scene. And that's huge. And of course, many more have come true since then, because after Netflix, then later the rest of the streamers opened up offices in the Nordics or all of Europe.

39:26
Kim Magnusson
It has become maybe a countryless world of filmmaking. Because everything is produced locally or if it's not produced locally, it doesn't matter. Then it's produced somewhere else in the world.

39:38
Kim Magnusson
But the film studios, you can say, in America, that used to be the seven film studios we know of, have turned into five studios, where the biggest of course is Netflix. So if you do a Netflix movie in Denmark, it's like doing a Netflix movie in America. It is different of course, it's one in Danish, one is in English.

39:58
Kim Magnusson
But it means that the film community in the Nordics really has a very good reputation. People still love to work with us. You have, of course, a handful of filmmakers who can do whatever they want around the world. Susanne Bier, Tobias Lindholm. Some of those can do that. They're doing it already.

40:21
Kim Magnusson
For them, the home turf is wherever the project takes them, right? But it also goes into, do they want to be there or not? Somebody came here, somebody did good, somebody failed, went back, reinventing themselves now with great films, and then they'll still be looked at.

40:39
Kim Magnusson
Coming back to the Oscars again to make the whole circle there. Denmark, on the international feature scene, in that category, is the most awarded nation in the last 20 years. We literally have, I think, what? 11 shortlists or something in that category in the last 20 years or something. And we have, what, seven nominations and two wins or something in the last 20 years in that category.

41:04
Kim Magnusson
It's crazy numbers. The last time France was nominated was for 1999. It's crazy. And people don't realize what an effect that is. When you come to the Oscar race in that category, Denmark is 30%–40% out of the gate ahead of everybody else. And then of course Sweden have come there, stepped out a little, come in again. And then of course Norway has been very strong lately. And also Iceland and Finland.

41:30
Kim Magnusson
Look at just the last two or three years, there's been nominations from every single country, or at least shortlist, not nomination, but shortlist from every single country, right? It's crazy that such a little region of the world. But it comes back to the fact that we are great storytellers in the North.

41:45
Kim Magnusson
We have that darkness in our head because of the dark skies at night in the wintertime and all that, that has made all these great creative people to sit and tell stories, and that's what it's all about with storytelling. And then on top of that, we all speak fluent English, or at least some kind of fluent English.

42:04
Kim Magnusson
That means that we're very accessible for the studios and for the agents and the financiers, because you can have meetings. I remember when I was doing some of those rounds back then, people loved us. Because that was right after the first Korean wave of filmmakers and they were talking to agents.

42:21
Kim Magnusson
They would say, Oh, this is so nice. We can talk to you. Because normally they were at meetings with South Koreans with an interpreter. They could see that the filmmakers had passion and could do something and they wanted to work with them, but it still had to be translated all the time.

42:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And the South Koreans make fantastic movies.

42:38
Kim Magnusson
And now there's a whole new thing. And now the South Koreans can speak English, but the first wave was they couldn't do it.

42:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My final question for you is, what is the recipe for your success, making it in Denmark, making it in Scandinavia, making it around the world and in the US? What would you tell young people who want to know, how do you succeed?

43:02
Kim Magnusson
Hard work, if you have to say it in a small sentence. And I know that's a very ordinary answer in every single field of work, I think, but I do believe that if you're a hard worker, you will be successful. And then, what is success, right? Yes, I've been very fortunate in our industry. Success can be so many things. And for me and for young filmmakers, the first success you need is to get your first film out there.

43:30
Kim Magnusson
So I think if you work hard for that and it succeeds and you want to work more. And I've just been that person that cannot say no. I always tell people that on my tombstone, it will say the guy who couldn't say no. And that's probably led to some of these successes because I've been very open and getting all these young filmmakers because of the track history that we began to make.

43:51
Kim Magnusson
When we early on started M&M production, it became called the alternative film school. People did come to us and we opened our doors, and I would do films with people that I'm not going to work with again for sure. But at the time I said, Oh, maybe that can work. And, Oh, let's just try it. And, Oh, let's just do and see.

44:09
Kim Magnusson
And then you try to go through life and hopefully you take some of the right choices with some filmmakers or whatever it is in your life of choices you make, right? Both personally and business wise. And then that leads to hopefully some kind of success.

44:26
Kim Magnusson
People say I've had success. But I also had years where I didn't know how to pay my rent and pay my food on the table and things like that because it is a struggle and being a producer is not just glory, it is really hard work. And I think that's coming back, the answer is just hard work.

44:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you for saying that, too, that it's not just easy, because, you know, we're sitting here with an Oscar nominee. Well, thank you so much for your time, Kim, we appreciate it, and we're very happy to be here in the Hollywood Hills.

44:56
Kim Magnusson
Thank you for having me.

45:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Kim Magnusson chose Olafur Eliasson's Iceland Series from 1995 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.