Little Miss Sunshine will be on HBO Saturday July 21st at 8pm CT. Michael Beugg, a friend of mine, who attended The Kellogg School of Management while I was an undergraduate in the music school at Northwestern, is one of the movies Executive producer’s.
Little Miss Sunshine is about a dysfunctional family’s road trip to enter their child in a beauty pageant. The movie was released in August of 2006 and won 2 Oscars.
But the more interesting story is about Michael Beugg.
As a highly intellectual nerdy business school student, Mike was part of a larger group of people from the business and engineering school I hung around to learn more about business. As the only” creative” one in this group, it was fascinating to watch Mike’s development. Instead of going after a high paying consulting job, like most of the people I knew from this group, Mike started taking acting lessons. It was at first comical because while he was very interested in film he was not someone you could imagine acting or doing it well.
But Mike continued to pursue acting, for his love of film, and started to work behind the scenes; eventually acting and directing in several seasons of America’s Most Wanted. As time has past, with his keen sense and abilities in finance, Mike has worked his way into the role of executive producer.
It is rare to find someone from the business world looking towards the creative field as true opportunity. Most who do stumble into it; but don’t seek it out like Mike did. It’s as rare to find someone in the creative world who can blend it with business to find true opportunity.
But, from my experience, it is far easier for a creative person to become a successful business person than the other way around. Why? Because you and I already have what I watched Michael Beugg work so hard to try and obtain: creativity.
1 Comment
Lisa,
I hope you don’t consider this comment rude. I am a screenwriter who wrote a script which I have been actively working on in the past years. Right now, I have a co-producer attached who has produced “Far From Heaven” and the upcoming “Adventureland” amongst others.
He is not an executive producer so I have been searching for the perfect candidate to join our team. My script is constantly compared by industry professionals to “Thank You For Smoking” and “Little Miss Sunshine” due to its quirky and human tone. When researching tonight, I realized Michael Beugg had executive produced both films and therefore gravitates to material similar to mine.
I can’t find contact information for him or a list of a production company that he works at. If you are still in contact with him, would you be willing to send my message along? If you have lost touch, do you have any leads on how he can be reached?
Thank you so much and, on a side note, I really liked your website.
— Mark O