Born and raised in the southern farmlands of Alabama, Maggie Brown was drawn to film and television at a pretty young age. The oldest of four kids, she would enlist her siblings as actors in her home films. She also threw a haunted house and filmed a haunted documentary with her friends about a hotel where they grew up. Initially believing she wanted to be an actor, she began her journey by doing theater, eventually getting an agent when she was in high school. “When I was sixteen, and a baby to all of this, my initial goals were to pursue acting. After I met more agents, I changed my mind and thought maybe I wanted to get into casting. Then in college, I realized, ‘No, I really just want to be the one to make the movie.’ I just wanted to be the one to put it all together.”
Maggie is a producer or, as she likes to describe it, an event planner for television and film. She says that relating it to the event planning industry is helpful when explaining it to other folks that are from where she’s from. “People in other parts of the country besides the production hubs* don’t usually know most film positions besides actors and directors. They aren’t even convinced that film can be a real career or that there’s real money in it. So I compare it to being an event planner: I find the script, find the crew, find the director — who is like the bride that makes all the final decisions. Anything that needs to be done or taken care of, I will make it happen because that’s my responsibility as a producer.”
When I met Maggie, she had just moved to Los Angeles and was living with some people she went to the University of Alabama with, including our mutual friend Patrick. “I was either going to go to law school, or I was going to go to LA. When I decided to move to the west coast, everyone was freaking out, ‘Maggie, you’re moving to LA instead of going to law school?!’ I was like, ‘Yes!’” She knew the move was risky, but that she always believed she would make it work. She attributes a lot of her early success to her industry friends and mentors, including Dr. Rachel Raimist — filmmaker, director and associate professor at the University of Alabama — who took her to Sundance. Some of her first industry jobs after the move were on the TV shows Colony, Modern Family and This Is Us as a production assistant. “Everyone sort of thought I would succeed because I was just so optimistic that I would. I had connections out there already and a job lined up with my friend Summer. I just had to put my faith in myself and these relationships I had fostered.”
Like many of us, the pandemic put a pause on our goals and plans we had for ourselves. For Maggie, the pandemic forced her to go inward and begin to set boundaries in her life where she hadn’t before. “I had moved to Denver before the pandemic because I was looking for a better balance between work and my personal life. But when the pandemic hit, a vortex sucked me right back to the South, and I ended up in Atlanta. I was forced to face everything I had ever run away from.” Coming from a big family and being born in the South, Maggie always felt like she had to be perfect — a mindset that is not typically very sustainable. “I’ve just always been this good girl. I always had to get good grades, couldn’t dye my hair, couldn’t get tattoos. Our achievements were really important. There’s also this systemic way of thinking in the South that revolves around a woman getting married and having a family. So when I had all that Covid time to sit there and reflect on my life, it kind of broke me. I just decided I needed to live how I wanted to live and do what I wanted to do.”
What she needed to do was create a world that supported her long term goals, and that’s exactly what she did. Maggie and her friend Lauren Musgrove — an eight-time Emmy award-winning director — decided they wanted to create a space where they could produce and showcase the work they created together and individually. “We wanted to build something different — something magical and colorful and honest. To tell stories that are magical and colorful and honest, even if they’re hard to tell. That was the big thing for us. We wanted to create something that’s not Hollywood but also isn’t indie — something in between. Something that is kind and supportive. Something that is just good to people, and something that is healthy.” Their vision turned into a production company called Purple Magnet Productions, which is a place where they can showcase their projects as well as support other up and coming new artists, specifically female artists. Their goal is to share authentic stories about women that are told by women and that are for women.
The name Purple Magnet has an important meaning for both Maggie and Lauren. In 2018, Maggie came to Burning Man with me, and while she was there, she received her playa name — a nickname given to you while you’re on the playa (because the area that the event takes place at used to be a prehistoric lake and still floods during winter months) that encapsulates someone’s persona while they’re at Burning Man. “I was hanging out with one of my good friends, and one of the things he does as his gift is he gives psych evaluations to people, and then he gives you a name based on his evaluation. He would tell you what you needed to do to fix your trauma, giving prescriptions of more holistic things, and it was always really funny. He ended up giving me the name Magnetic because he said I attracted all the right people; people would drive by the camp on their bikes and see us, and they would come talk to me and not know why they felt like they had to, almost as if it was magnetic.” Purple is Lauren’s favorite color, and it is also the color of enlightenment. Combined, the name perfectly represents what they want their company to be: a place where there is purpose, gratitude and understanding; a place people trust to tell their stories; and an environment where people are magnetically drawn to working with them.
So far, they’ve been very successful, especially when looking at Purple Magnet’s extensive credit list. They’ve produced many music videos, including “Same Ship, Different Day” by Erica Sunshine Lee, which won the Trop Rock Video of the Year in 2022, and “Hold On Savannah” by Charlie Argo, a blues singer — and a friend of Maggie’s — from Alabama. Most of the stories Maggie and Purple Magnet try to tell have deep meaning behind them. They worked with directors Alex Kiker and Andrew Laningham to produce a music video for a song called “Guppy” by Phantom Limb that used jello to represent being surrounded by anxiety. They paired with Planet Froth to make a short film called Yellow Wallpaper which displays postpartum depression through spanish dance. Their work has also been recognized by several film festivals. A horror film they produced — The Third Saturday in October, written and directed by Jay Burleson — made it to several film festivals as official selection, receiving an honorable mention at Sidewalk Film Festival and winning Spirit of Skyline at the Skyline Indie Film Festival. In addition to all the videos, documentaries and films, Purple Magnet also publishes children’s books — because all stories deserve to be told, not just the ones you watch in films.
It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and persistence to create and run your own production company. Maggie’s entire life — both personally and professionally — has given her many opportunities to build the skills and confidence needed to be successful. One of the jobs that helped prepare her as a producer was an ambitious documentary called A Day in the Life of America for PBS, directed by Jared Leto, that sought to capture the raw adversity of Trump’s America in 2017. “We shot on July 4th in all fifty states in one single day. That was a huge lesson for me. I had to coordinate fifteen film crews in fifteen different states, joining Facebook groups for drone operators and other production crew members. That documentary went to Tribeca.” It was an incredible accomplishment. For Maggie, the harder you work, the more opportunities you will get. She also believes in manifestation, which is how she says she makes all these things happen. “If you’re coming from a place of abundance, and believe everything will be fine, then it will be. When I shoot in places I haven’t been to or don’t know, like Boston, and I reach out for what I need, like a crew member or a shooting location, it rises out of the woodwork.”
The company is growing faster and more steadily than Maggie could have predicted, which comes with a list of both pros and cons. The main goal for Purple Magnet is to continue finding investors for the many projects they currently have on their roster, as well as getting films sold that they’ve already finished shooting. “We have the skeleton and bones here for something really great, but we have to find funding. Film is a huge gamble because if you can sell the film, the return on profit is crazy. If you make a micro budget film* and sell it even at the starting sell rate of $100k, you can make back four times what you made the film for. So right now we’re figuring out investors and financing, and just funding in general, and what we can do to continue to grow at the pace of the work coming our way.” It can feel daunting to have so many projects to manage at once, but Maggie knows it’s important to stay focused and not get overwhelmed, to see everything as a chance to do something great. “One of my best friends, Maya, is working as an associate producer on this current project we’re doing in Boston. We’ve been discussing how much we’ve got on our plate right now, and she said ‘It’s funny because we cast so many blessings, but then those blessings can at times feel like obstacles.’ It’s true, so the main thing to remember is to keep going and to keep growing. Everything will have a next step, but you have to still be grateful for what you’ve been given while working toward the next step.”
When Maggie left Los Angeles for Denver, she was chasing the work/life balance that everyone struggling with a capitalist society dreams of. “I was coming from Hollywood where everyone was a cog in the machine. I mean, I love LA and the environment there, but it was a constant struggle. You work hard and party harder, plus you’re always networking. You’re always on, and I am just a better person that puts out better work and better art when I’m not always on.” But having a production company can make that dream even harder, because it can feel like you’re still constantly hustling. When you start a business of any kind, you are usually doing multiple jobs in order to keep things moving while keeping costs low. “It’s a balance between being more choosy and doing what I need to do to survive. I have to occasionally jump on other productions in order to make money to put back into Purple Magnet, and occasionally I have to do more than just produce some of our projects, like doing art or sound. In the beginning, Lauren and I were definitely doing more of the one-man-band thing, where we did everything at the company. Now we’re trying to shift more to more situations where Lauren is directing and I’m producing. We can’t do everything, and I have to stop assuming I can because I really do want a less stressful life.”
The goal is to build something different, with a greater respect toward everyone involved in their projects. Having a work/life balance is crucial to staying mentally healthy, and, aside from funding and the importance of getting investors, Maggie believes that should always be the number one focus. “I like to send a little ‘respect and gratitude’ thing with our call sheets* now, where there’s a section for anyone that has felt disrespected on our sets, if someone sees something disrespectful on set, or if someone wants to give gratitude for something positive that’s happened. It’s important because our feelings matter, and if there’s negative shit happening, it should be dealt with. If there’s someone going above and beyond to make you feel comfortable and taken care of, they should be acknowledged. A lot of the stories we tell are about mental health and feelings, and we want to support the mental health of our employees, too. That’s another thing I want to bring to the next generation of this industry.”
It can be a challenge to break into the entertainment world, but sometimes it’s an even bigger challenge to find the motivation to keep going in such a cut-throat environment. That’s why Maggie’s number one advice is to protect yourself on set because she knows it can be extremely hectic and people aren’t always putting out their best selves. She used the metaphor “be like a duck” — really calm on top but pedaling really fast beneath the water. “There are moments where you’re going to feel like things are too hard, but you just have to respect yourself. You have to protect your energy. Don’t let other peoples’ negativity or the negative thoughts that people say on set get to you — because we’re on set for long hours day after day. And also, always follow your dreams. If you break the ceiling — and please do — just remember you have to be able to sustain that momentum because it isn’t going to get easier once you do. That’s another reason why it’s so important to protect your energy.”
The entertainment industry is fast and fun, at times chaotic, but for most of us, we live for that thrill. It can also be toxic, exhausting, and unsustainable. Many of us feel like we’re working too hard for too little, putting out content that makes networks a lot of money while we see little profit. To see Maggie pursuing her goals and making her own dreams come true, while also helping other artists create and share their own art, is incredibly inspiring. It’s important for all of us to continue to lift each other up in our fight for creative freedom. Wanting to tell our stories to the world is why most of us do what we do, and it’s important that we keep telling them.
To know more about Maggie or connect with her on instagram, you can follow her here. You can also find out more about Purple Magnet Productions and their projects at their website or on instagram.
The Lady AC
Industry Terms Explained:
Production hubs: the two main hubs are Los Angeles and New York, but cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle, Denver and Miami are also big cities for the entertainment industry.
indie: art that is not affiliated with a major record or film company
Micro budget film: film is that is made on an extremely low budget, sometimes as little as a few thousand dollars (example: Bruce Lee’s low-budget film The Way of the Dragon from 1972 was made for $130,000 but grossed $85 million worldwide, which is a 65,000% return on investment)
Call sheet: a document that outlines the shooting schedule for a production, usually including locations and crew members, that is sent to each member of the production before the shoot.
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