Former Weather Anchor Making Movie About TV News
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Christine Clayburg was the Weather Anchor at Fox owned KMSP in Minneapolis.
Now, she's trying to make the jump from the small screen to the big screen with a movie called 'Minneapolis'.
City Pages writes that Clayburg is the lead screenwriter of the story, which is set in its eponymous city. It revolves around a pair of ill-matched news anchors, desperate for ratings, who get roped into mentoring a young girl. The project, which is in the development stage, seeks to crowdfund $8,000 on Seed and Spark to pay for the filming of a scene to send to investors. So far they have raised $5,000.
Clayburg came to filmmaking like many of her previous careers: unexpectedly. The geology major and theater lover made her on-camera debut as a weekend weather reporter in Missoula, Montana. One successful gig led to another in cities like Spokane, Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. Roles on television shows like Desperate Housewives, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and The Mindy Project followed.
Then the sexist reality of Hollywood intervened. “I slowly learned that there’s an expectation that you will sleep with somebody for a job and I was like, ‘I’m just not comfortable with that. I don’t want it that bad,’” she says.
As for the movie, she formed her story around two news anchors. Clayburg compressed 15 years of hilarious incidents from newsrooms into the script. She recalls, for example, when WCCO brought in consultants from Texas who told everyone to remove the liners from their winter coats. “We’re all looking at each other like, ‘Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how cold it gets here?’” she says.
From the outside, egos may seem to be a major part of a newsroom, but Clayburg didn’t focus on that. “It takes a tremendous amount of commitment to your personal brand to succeed in this field. I didn’t go after egos, I went more after what an idiot you look like trying to jump through all these hoops that are thrown at you,” she says. “It’s not mean-spirited. It’s fun all the way through. We also worked really hard to grab your heart.”
Sounds like a movie many TV newsies will want to watch.
