Nick Gordon AB '95 started his career in entertainment as a theater kid, taking every available drama class at Harvard and even studying screenwriting under Spike Lee. Though acting and writing were his initial ambitions, life took an unexpected turn after graduation. When his father passed away, Nick chose to stay on the East Coast rather than move to Los Angeles to pursue Hollywood. Instead, he landed in New York and found himself in the tech industry, working as a headhunter and eventually becoming one of the founding employees at HotJobs, a pioneering job board that was later sold to Yahoo for $350 million. “It was a nice windfall for folks,” he reminisces. But despite his success, Nick still felt the pull of creativity.

By 1999, Nick made the leap to Los Angeles, with an initial focus on screenwriting. He had several scripts optioned and two produced, while also working on documentary projects, including writing a four-part documentary miniseries on the Screen Actors Guild. But his career took a real turn in 2010 when he met Trevor Matthews, a filmmaker who was looking to expand his production company, Brookstreet Pictures. 

“He hired me to write a couple of movies for him,” Nick explains. “But I could see that he was missing someone on the development side, helping him build his slate.” With experience absorbed from his wife, Alison Haskovec '01, a well-respected development executive, Nick saw an opportunity. He pitched himself as Brookstreet’s new head of development, and Trevor agreed. The two started with low-budget horror films before realizing their true passion lay in prestige dramas. “We both aspired to make important, character-driven films,” Nick says. That vision led to a shift in Brookstreet’s focus—one that would eventually position the company as a powerhouse in independent cinema, evidenced by their role in producing this season’s critically acclaimed THE BRUTALIST.

When asked what it takes to make a Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated movie, Nick is quick to brush off the notion that there’s a formula. “It takes a lot of guts, a lot of conviction. You have to trust your own taste.” With THE BRUTALIST, that trust paid off. While many in Hollywood doubted that such a film could be made in today’s indie landscape, Nick and his team saw its potential. “Most people in town were wary of it. They said, ‘You can’t make a movie like this without losing all your money.’ We felt otherwise.” For Nick, the combination of Writer/Director Brady Corbet’s vision and an all-star cast, including Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, and Joe Alwyn, made it clear they had something special. “When that level of talent is coming out to play, you owe it to them to do this properly,” he says. “You're peeling back the layers all the time, examining everything a hundred times over to make sure that you can really pull this off at that budget level… The execution that we managed to achieve is very faithful to Brady's vision.”

Gordon first read the script in the spring of 2020 and knew right away that it was unlike anything else in the indie space. “It was a fully formed, superbly-written screenplay,” Nick says. “Normally, when you come on as a producer, you’re looking to trim the fat, find things that might not work or might not be necessary, especially in the indie space where budget constraints come into play. You might say, ‘Well, we just can’t afford four car chases. Can we do one?’ But this was an impeccably developed character-driven drama, and there was virtually nothing to change.” 

The biggest challenge, he explains, was figuring out how to portray the film’s titular Brutalist building, a crucial architectural element, in a believable way. Beyond that, the team had to determine the right location to bring Corbet’s 1950s-set vision to life. “Unfortunately, shooting indies at this level in America has become really tough,” Nick says. “I wish there were better soft money incentives in the States. Yes, certain places have tax credits, and those are helpful, but on balance, it’s more expensive to make indies here.” The production ultimately landed in Hungary, where a mix of experienced crew members, a strong cinephile culture, and financial incentives made it the ideal location. “There are a lot of big studio projects shooting in Hungary, but also a lot of indies, so the crews are really experienced,” Nick explains. “They know the difference between what you have to do on a smaller film versus a bigger film. And they also have their own rich history of homegrown Eastern European cinema, so they have great taste and a real respect for the medium.”

Once they were set with Hungary, the next big question was how to create the monumental edifice that main character László Tóth (played by Adrien Brody) is working on. Nick lets us in on the secret. “Judy Becker, our production designer. She's a genius,” Nick smiles. “She has a long love and passion for architecture, and really went above and beyond to study for the task before her… She did a masterful job with that. Quite a bit of that is VFX, of course, but we would also build the bare minimum practical things on set. You can achieve a lot with scaffolding and with tarps, shovels, and piles of dirt and pieces of cement.” That’s movie magic, folks!

One of the most gratifying aspects of THE BRUTALIST’s success, Nick says, was seeing audiences embrace “real cinema.” He recalls how many people thanked Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold, the producers, and the actors for "fighting for real cinema," a sentiment that underscored how starved audiences are for films like this. “It is crazy that the studios don’t do more of this,” Nick says, hoping they take a lesson from its reception. He emphasizes that making space for artistic, intellectually and emotionally engaging films doesn’t mean abandoning blockbusters: “You don’t have to stop seeing Marvel movies or stop making them. Just create a bit more room for stories like this.” The film’s intermission became a key part of that experience, turning screenings into communal events. “People would come out halfway through, talk about it, get excited for the second half, and then count down together as the film resumed. It was all because of a $10 million indie, not a $200 million studio film.”

Moving forward, Nick plans to continue doing exactly what he has been doing: supporting low-budget indie films and filmmakers with a vision and welcoming big names looking to take on challenging, meaningful stories.“Tell all your movie star friends that if they’ve got a passion project or an indie they want to make, they should come to Brookstreet,” Nick says with a grin. The company has a packed slate ahead, including a secretive short film with an A-lister and John Michael McDonagh’s next project, a 1970s-inspired Australian horror film set to shoot in June and July. And Brookstreet’s next film, MR. BURTON, a coming-of-age biopic about the young Richard Burton, starring Toby Jones, Lesley Manville, and rising star Harry Lawtey, will be released later this year. 

When asked what he had to say to those looking to follow in his producer footsteps, he acknowledged, "This is an impossibly difficult industry, and it does attract some challenging people." However, "If this is your passion, if this is your dream, if you have to do it,  be a good person first and foremost. Have a strong moral compass, be respectful, and treat people well." He emphasizes the importance of patience and humility, cautioning against coming in thinking you know everything: "Being intelligent and having an abstract or theoretical grasp of something is not the same as understanding how things work in this business. You have to find good mentors, work hard, and pay your dues." He adds, "You're constantly paying it forward and trusting the process."