Filmmaker and two-time Academy Award winner Brian Currie said he misses autumn on the North Shore “so bad it’s crazy” and plans to soon split his time between Hollywood and Lynn and Peabody, where he grew up.
Currie is part of the team who received Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture for the film “Green Book” in 2018. Currie co-wrote the film, a dramatic comedy about a world-class Black pianist who embarks on a concert tour in the American deep south in 1962. Currie’s latest film, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever,” stars Zac Efron and Russell Crowe. It follows the true story of a young veteran who sneaks into the Vietnam War to deliver beer to his friends.
Currie was born in Lynn, attended St. John’s the Baptist School in Peabody, and is a graduate of St. John’s Prep in Danvers. He left the area in 1989 to pursue his Hollywood career. After experiencing significant success, he said he is looking forward to returning home.
“In the very near future, I’m going to start splitting my time because that is still my home,” Currie said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that I will make a movie in the North Shore soon and then all my friends can be extras.”
Currie said his interest in film started at his aunt’s house in Lynn. He said she would show him movies while on babysitting duty, and that he remembers those screenings as the times he first fell in love with film.
After graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont and taking a summer’s worth of acting classes at Emerson College in Boston, Currie headed to California to try to make it in the movie business. He worked odd jobs and took small acting gigs before fully realizing his passion for screenwriting.
Currie said he made the trip across the country by car in an ‘84 brown Jetta, only to arrive in Hollywood where he knew no one.
“By the time I got to California, it had no brakes, the stereo had been ‘borrowed,’ and someone had put a note on my window saying if you don’t get new tires, we will report you,” Currie said. “Driving through the country, I told myself, ‘one day I will win an Academy Award.’”
Now having won two, he looks back fondly on his career. While trying to make it in Hollywood, Currie drove limos, worked as a bouncer at celebrity-owned nightclubs, and took acting classes.
He remembers being excited to be cast as an extra in Rocky 5 because it was the first time he was on an official set. Now, he is excited when invited to blockbuster film premiers.
“There’s still nothing like popcorn and sitting there in the middle of a movie theater and experiencing it,” Currie said.
Today, Currie always carries a notebook in case inspiration strikes. He hinted that while still in California, he is writing a screenplay in the style of a Fast & Furious movie, as well as a separate screenplay about a man taking care of his family.
“I still smell the flowers out here and feel the nice warm sunshine,” Currie said. “I never get tired of this business.”
