Per Saari literally stumbled upon what was to be his life’s work two decades ago when he happened upon the set of ‘A River Runs Through It’ here in Bozeman while Robert Redford was filming the 1990’s adaptation of Norman Maclean’s novel.

“I knew that I needed to be involved with whatever that process was” remembers Saari of one of his early observations into film making.
It wasn’t the first film Per had came across while growing up in Bozeman. Late one night in the mid 1980’s, while walking down Willson Avenue, ten year old Per and some friends discovered the movie set of ‘Amazing Grace and Chuck’. The set, in all its glory of lights, generators and craft service, was intriguing to Per, and he knew instinctively that someday, he wanted be a part of the process and excitement of film making.

When Redford came back to Montana several years later to film ‘The Horse Whisperer’, Saari, now in his senior year in college, knew he had to be involved with the film and sent his “meager” resume in to Mr. Redford for consideration. He was hired and worked for a time in the production office, eventually being moved to the set to be Redford’s production assistant. The shoot took two years, which is considered unusually long for the filming of a Hollywood movie. After all that time, and gaining much experience, Saari moved on to getting a job working at Redford’s development company in Los Angeles and helping out the Director as the set assistant on the ‘Legend of Bagger Vance’. He then went on to be promoted to Production and Development Executive at Wildwood Enterprises, Redford’s production company.

After leaving Wildwood, Saari struck out on his own to make a documentary film, ‘Why He Skied’ about his brother, Hans Saari. Hans, an extreme skier, was killed in 2001 while he was skiing on Mount Blanc in the Alps. The film wasn’t widely distributed, but was received extremely well at Film Festivals.

“It was a highly personal thing for me to make that movie and the design was never to sell it,” says Saari, “it was my way of understanding (what happened) through story and logic and the structure of film, so I was sort of able to put together what my thoughts were about what my brother was doing as an extreme skier through the documentary. Showing it at Film Festivals was a very satisfying way to share it with other people and tell my brother’s story. It was sort of the end of a process with me and allowed me to reconcile my own thoughts about risk taking and personal thoughts about why my brother loved what he did.”

Concluding the documentary, Saari then went back to Los Angeles and met up with Nicole Kidman. The pair soon formed Blossom Films together.
“It was sort of an organic transition from Wildwood to the creation of Blossom films” expresses Saari. “The reason Nicole wanted to start Blossom Films was to protect film makers and to help their vision come to the screen because it is really brutal out there. Right now it is more so than ever because there is so little money to make movies. The incentive to make creative movies is less now than ever as well, so it is important to have a company that strives to make those types of films. I wish to nurture and protect film makers’ visions just as Nicole does, so for us to join together and start Blossom really was a perfect fit. ”

The first film Per and Nicole optioned in 2006 was a screenplay entitled, ‘Rabbit Hole’ by David Lindsay-Abaire. It is the story of the grief process faced by parents of a four year old child who was tragically killed, and how they maintain their commitment to each other while simultaneously falling apart emotionally. It was performing on Broadway at the time and Nicole read a glowing review on it in the New York Times. She urged Per to go to New York and check out the play as a potential film for Blossom. It starred John Slattery, Tyne Daly, and Cynthia Nixon. After seeing the performance, Per was blown away.

“It was stunning.” Per recalls, “It was probably the most accurate, sensitive, and surprising view of the experience of grief that I’d ever seen. Having been through my own forms of grief in life I connected to it in a very visceral way.”

Production of ‘Rabbit Hole’ unfortunately fell apart soon after they got the rights to proceed with the film, due to the “perfect storm” for movies in Hollywood. The writer’s strike, along with the recession, hurt the entire industry, and while waiting for the variables to work themselves out, the original director of ‘Rabbit Hole’, Sam Raimi, decided to direct the new Spiderman sequel, which took him away from the production for a long time. Luckily, neither the film makers, nor the film could be shelved for long, and a year later (with a new director) the production once again resumed. ‘Rabbit Hole’ the movie, made its premiere in 2010 starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest. It opened to highly favorable reviews. Surprisingly, even after all the stumbling blocks, the film ended up being made for about a fourth of the studio budget that it originally had.

Since then, Blossom Films has developed, and continues to develop, more films including one entitled ‘Monte Carlo’ which is due out in July starring Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester, and Cory Monteith. Another project in the works is ‘Danish Girl’ in which Nicole Kidman stars as a transsexual in 1930’s Denmark. Saari
admits it is “a very daunting production, but a beautiful love story.”

With several movies under his belt and several more to come, Per Saari fits the quintessential local boy does good, but it goes deeper than hard work and some lucky breaks. The intuition he brings to his films showcase the passion and skill that he has for the art. “A goal of mine is to bring a project back here (to Montana) like the one that I stumbled on when I was a kid, and hopefully some other kid can wander on to the set with wide eyes and realize that this is what he wants to do.”
Per Saari’s resume certainly is not “meager” any longer. Congratulations Per on all your success.

Stacey Faldetta is a political activist turned freelance writer living in Belgrade. She is currently working on her poetry book ‘A Thousand Little Sparks’ and loves to spend time with her 4 children in the outdoors of big beautiful Montana. She can be reached at mtcinnamon73@gmail.com.