Tyringham — Ethics, “with a capital E,” have kept Nan Bernstein grounded over the course of a 38-year career in film and television production—so, too, has her home base in the Berkshires. After more than three decades on the road—producing television hits like the Emmy Award-winning “Friday Night Lights” (which aired on NBC for five seasons from 2006-2011) and “The Leftovers,” (which aired on HBO Max for three seasons, from 2014-2017)—Bernstein is “taking five” in the 413, using the pause to focus on teaching the practical side of the film business to film students via dynamic private mentoring and seminars. On June 28, Bernstein will join Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative for an online workshop called, “A Producer’s Perspective: Career Pathways and Responsibilities.”
“It’s like being a general contractor—you’re making sure the electric and plumbing go in before the walls go up,” said Bernstein of a job many associate with glamour; from her perspective, it’s more of a roll-up-your sleeves, nitty gritty kind of job, filled with budgets, schedules, and endless reports—all of which are important, if not integral, to projects (and producers) reaching the level of acclaim Bernstein has achieved.
Bernstein began her education in a six-room schoolhouse (her father had a small Mennonite sewing factory in rural Pennsylvania) and was ultimately told she was not college material. “Go be a teacher, that’s a good job for a girl,” she was told. Instead, she applied to seven colleges (was admitted to all) and enrolled at Boston University. She went on to attend the Orson Welles Film School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her passion for film production was sparked, before moving to New York City to begin a career in the entertainment industry. After pursuing a position at United Artists, where she was hired as a publicist (and joined the Publicists Guild), Bernstein ultimately turned to production as her creative vehicle of choice.
“A lot of marriages are lost in this industry,” Bernstein told The Edge, citing long days on set (and longer spates of time away from home) where “everyone’s in a similar kind of box and definitions get blurred.” Among her myriad professional accolades, Bernstein counts 41 years of marriage to her “city husband” as top of the proverbial list. They made their way to the Berkshires in 1982, with a shared goal of, “find[ing] something off the grid.” New York City was not her speed, and so the couple looked at 60 houses in the region before landing on one in Tyringham. Bernstein effectively manifested what she put into the universe some time prior, while at a friend’s farm in Hillsdale for a weekend away from BU where she was studying to be a social worker: “Something’s speaking to me about this place; I’ve got to move here one day.” And so she did.
There were two mentors along the way, J. Boyce Harmon and Bruce Pustin, “[both] working in completely different parts of the world.” Pustin did “huge movies” (“Goodfellas,” “Age of Innocence,” and “Jerry Maguire”) while Harmon did “little movies,” like ABC After School Specials and movies of the week while based in Massachusetts. “They were both important to learn from,” says Bernstein, pointing to one who was all heart and kindness, the other a tough S.O.B. “I mean, if you misspelled a word on a purchase order, it sat on his desk,” she said, hardly scratching the tip of the iceberg insofar as lessons learned are concerned. Her goal? “I always thought I’d follow in one of their footsteps,” Bernstein said of her late mentors; when that didn’t happen (both of them died at age 60), she “merged the hard ass with the firm…and had to start over, kind of rebuild [and] make [new] connections.”
In addition to an Emmy nomination for “Friday Night Lights” (which received seventy-two award nominations and ultimately won fourteen), Bernstein has been awarded an International Cine Award for the feature length documentary “The Making of Tootsie”; a Christopher Award, a Peabody Award, two DGA Awards, and an AFI Award. Additionally, after sitting on the Eastern AD/UPM Council for 16 years, Bernstein was nominated to be a delegate to the National Board meeting in Los Angeles several times.
“All shows end,” Bernstein told The Edge, “so knowing [Tyringham] was my touchstone… we [returned] here,” she said. She points to her years spent in Austin, Texas—filming “Friday Night Lights”—as her most gratifying professional experience. “I wouldn’t want to live [in Austin],” she said, but the cast and crew, most of whom were young, made the experience worthwhile. “They were malleable,” she says, stopping to underscore her choice of words: “They weren’t spoiled yet, they weren’t jaded; they were open and thrilled to be there—and it just made for a wonderful experience.”
As for making a career in the industry? Bernstein has always been about following her passion, not getting famous. Which, for someone who began as a production secretary—“way, way back” in 1979, on the film “Something Short of Paradise” starring Susan Sarandon and David Steinberg—came about through patience, hard work and learning to jump in head first. When things fell apart on location, Bernstein was asked to step in and coordinate—and, while she did not know what that meant, she learned.
“There’s no harm in asking questions; you can always find out how to do something,” Bernstein says, passing along priceless advice she was given more than four decades ago. Advice she still follows. As for her parting wisdom?
“Follow what your own compass is,” Bernstein says, citing her own as “very straight…perhaps to some deficit” albeit with a silver lining: “I can put my head down at night.”
