It’s no secret that more than a few BigLaw denizens harbor dreams of leaving the profession to pursue other career aspirations. Most never make the leap, fearful of giving up a reliable income for something that might not work out. Dentons alum Alice Lawton is not one of those people. In 2005, Alice left the full-time practice of law to become a playwright, garnering numerous residencies and productions in the US and England. In 2015, Alice decided to pursue her dream of being a screenwriter and filmmaker, by all accounts an immensely difficult road. But a mere four years later, in no small part due to the transactional skills training she received at Dentons, her first feature film, Give Me Liberty, a comedy-drama she produced and co-wrote with director Kirill Mikhanovsky, was the critics’ favorite at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival followed by a strong showing at Cannes. The film, which chronicles a day in the life of its main character, a Russian-American driver of a medical van, as he shuttles his disabled and elderly passengers around Milwaukee, a city hit hard by deindustrialization and bedeviled by racial division but united by the bonds of neighborly kindness.

Tell us about your time at Dentons?

I joined the Chicago office out of law school. [Dentons partner and noted author] Scott Turow talked me into going. I think he was put onto my case because we both went to Harvard Law School and because it was clear from my transcript that I was also a writer. I had studied under the famed poet Seamus Heaney in the Creative Writing Program at Harvard. Scott said, “You can be a writer and a lawyer here.”

I had a quite wonderful learning curve because I inadvertently became an expert on proxy rules at a heightened time of takeovers, so I was on a lot of deals. [Corporate partner] Michael Froy was my great mentor. He taught me so much. One of his most valuable lessons: “You don’t have to be the smartest in the room and answer right away. If you give yourself time to think, sometimes you will figure things out in a better away. So never be afraid of doing that.” [Senior counsel] Linda Chaplik Harris was also a wonderful mentor. She [impressed on me] to understand the numbers; that lawyers who don’t know numbers don’t understand the deal, which became important later.

Do you still have ties to Dentons?

This film was really hard to produce and Mike Froy has been advising me throughout. He served as our lawyer when we started the company. Mike believed in what we were doing and has continued to be a great friend, advisor and source of pragmatic wisdom.

How did you know how to write a screenplay, much less produce a feature-length film?

While living in Brussels and commuting to Prague I met some actors in a pub one night. Although I previously had only written fiction, I wrote a play for them and it was produced. Later, while script-doctoring for a UK film company I wrote a script that became quite sought after—a biopic about Salvador Dali; Ben Kingsley wanted the role—but it never got made because the production company I was working with refused to agree to the producer’s not-unreasonable demand for 51 percent control. I had no say in the matter. Lesson learned. Never be just the writer.

I moved back to Chicago and became a “Chicago playwright.” I had residencies with the Royal Court, Chicago Dramatists, Goodman and Steppenwolf theaters and was commissioned by Steppenwolf and Goodman. My last big production was the critically acclaimed adaptation of Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM at the Steppenwolf. Meanwhile, I was commuting back and forth to Europe to do deal work and arbitrations as of counsel to a Brussels firm.

How did you meet Kirill?

A mutual friend who had been trying to connect us sent me a film Kirill shot in Brazil and sent Kirill something I wrote. But the DVD disc was in a format unsupported by my player and Kirill, who was in Cuba at the time, had little time or interest in reading my work. However neither of us closed the door entirely. A year earlier, I had moved to Milwaukee, where Kirill’s whole family lived. On his return home, someone brought him to a play reading I was doing there and the next day we met for coffee.

We decided it would be interesting to do something in which Milwaukee would be a character. Kirill had come to the city from Moscow in the early 90s and one of his first jobs was driving a transit express for people with disabilities. He regaled me with stories that were funny and very wonderful and full of humanity. Though the particular anecdotes didn’t get into the movie, we thought following a paratransit driver on his rounds would be a wonderful way to thread the needle in terms of getting around the city and meeting characters, as well as a great place to start a story.

What were your greatest challenges in getting this project to fruition?

This film was really difficult to produce for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that, for me, it was a complete learning curve. Our first producing partners were not the right fit. While they connected us to serious money as well as a superb production and distribution company, they were the intermediaries and very anxious to keep me far from all things legal, contractual and budget-related. I questioned why they couldn’t get the budget under the very generous amount of money that the production company was willing to put up. Our request to see the books was rebuffed, and then the investor dropped us – precisely because they didn’t have a budget, contracts, or visas for our foreign actors. This was devastating. It was 2017 and we went from the indie film everyone was talking about to being a pariah. But I was still trying to make it happen. While in New York, I went to see a Russian film at MOMA with our cinematographer. He said it’s now or never. Kirill and I agreed, and that’s when it crystalized that I’ve been looking for this producer who could magically put the film together—and the producer was me.

How did production go?

From that point on, I’d be up at night, literally reading Filmmaking for Dummies, making sure I understood things. Mike Froy was a great help, as was a close friend from law school and former COO of MGM, a straight shooter willing to deliver the cold hard truths about the entertainment business. We didn’t have money for anything when we started—which I would never do again—but were determined to make the film. We came up with $100,000 to get going, then kept raising money (for pickups, for post-production, etc.). We had 23 days of shooting initially, then 7 days of additional photography to make sure we picked up all the plot points. We submitted a pretty long, crazy cut to Sundance not expecting pickup, but they selected us and that put us into a madly accelerated post-production process.

Another challenge was working with actors with cognitive disabilities. We knew things couldn’t be perfectly scripted; that we had to be open to some chaos (some beautiful chaos).

After Sundance, we didn’t get picked up by a domestic distributor, se we had to go back to the drawing board, creating a shorter cut of the film. Then, people on our team became upset when we turned down an invitation to show at the New Directors/New Films festival at Lincoln Center because we were holding out for Cannes, a long shot because its juries prefer world premieres. But safe doesn’t get you anywhere; you have to be bold. And our gamble paid off. Ours was the fourth feature ever to go to Cannes after screening at Sundance.

What was Cannes like?

Quite amazing. It was a big Saturday night screening at Croisette Theater. Dressy, but not formal. No red carpet, which was probably fortunate as it was a very rainy night. There were about a thousand people in audience and the film received a 10-minute standing ovation.

What are some of your proudest moments.

We taped a talent show at the Eisenhower Center. We loved one guy’s performance of “Born in the USA” and wanted to include it in the film. But we had to get music rights and were told it would never happen because Bruce Springsteen had never approved it for use—and he’d been offered millions. I researched the reasons why and it was because the intent was always to politicize or commercialize the song in a way that doesn’t fit it’s message. I started a correspondence with “his people” and explained that our performer is a young man in a blue collar city where factories had closed. I talked about his thrill at being able to work and the obstacles he has overcome to do so. I described his love of the Packers, Harley Davidson and “The Boss.” Bruce watched the film and, for the first time, approved use of the song, which was a pretty amazing moment.