Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, Bonnie Arnold was a product of the Watergate generation of journalists, fired up by the state of current political affairs. She sought her undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia and soon took off to grad school at Boston University, where some dabbling in broadcasting was enough to light a fire of passion for the film business.
“I got an internship at WGBH and started to get a little taste of what was going on and what other jobs might be available,” she says over lunch on the DreamWorks campus (as they call the Google-esque environment, with its health initiatives, yoga classes and mind-settling landscaping) in Glendale, California. That job led her back to a job in Atlanta with a television station and producer David Picker, who was working on the first season of “American Playhouse.” As soon as she set foot on location, Arnold knew this business was for her.
“The minute I saw what went on behind the scenes of a film production, any menial job on that set was exciting to me,” she says. “Now it seems there are film commissions in every city in every state in the country. At that time there just weren’t. But Atlanta being a major airport, and Burt Reynolds bringing a lot of work there, Georgia’s a big state with mountains and the beach, there were a lot of advantages. I felt like I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.”
If you haven’t heard by now, Paramount Pictures is launching full speed into a Best Picture campaign for the animated hit