When he was 10 years old, Brad Anderson received a Super 8 camera and a career was born. Born and raised in Connecticut, this independent filmmaker began his formal training at Bowdoin College followed by a year at London's International Film School. Anderson left the latter after completing the first year of a two-year program, deciding his tuition would be better served funding a film. He settled in the Boston area and picked up professional experience on documentaries for PBS (e.g., 1991's "Making of the Sixties") and crafting short films. With several other local moviemakers, Anderson helped create the Boston Film Collective, for which he produced and edited the short "Crosley Fever" and paid homage to Ed Wood "Frankenstein's Planet of Monsters". By 1994, he felt ready to tackle a feature. Working on a tiny budget (reportedly $50,000), Anderson co-produced, wrote, edited and directed "The Darien Gap", casting his friend, musician Lyn Vaus, in the lead and intercutting some of his own home movies into the film. The film, a meditation on a slacker's inability to cope with his parents' divorce and its impact on his relationship with his girlfriend, received attention at 1996's Sundance Film Festival and was picked up for distribution by the small firm of Northern Arts. Although the film received numerous festival screenings, its theatrical release was spotty.

Determined that his second feature would be more commercial, Anderson collaborated with Vaus on the screenplay for "Next Stop Wonderland" (1998), a quirky romantic comedy about a Boston-area nurse. The film earned positive notices and has been favorably compared with Eastern European movies of the late 1960s in its focus on the individual in scenes that uncover both the comedy of life and telling details of the character's lives. After its initial showing at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, "Next Stop Wonderland" was snapped up by Miramax for a reported $6 million. True to his credo of not resting on his laurels, Anderson was at work on several projects, including a mystery tentatively titled "Lullaby".

Credit: entertainment.lycos.com