Already this morning, before your paper hit the doorstep or you flipped on the Mr. Coffee, teenagers slid brooms across department store floors and sleepy-eyed managers spit-shined their patent leather shoes.

Across town, someone else pulled on his grandpa's Filson mackinaw jacket, threw his Thermos in the truck next to the dog and went to see about some ducks on a pond.

Then the sun came up. In late November, the morning sun in North Dakota looks like a poached egg. It slid up the sky and slowly melted the frost from the rose hips.

That is what happens here on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It happened last year, and it will happen next year, too.

Then it will be winter and spring, and summer will bring impossibly long nights at the lake and buckets full of chokecherries. Someone will learn to ride a bike, and someone else will learn to drive a car, probably on the same flat gravel road.

And Nathan Anderson won't be here to see it.

But the North Dakota native remembers the good times well, and wants to share them with others.

Now a resident of California, Anderson has taken a Hollywood approach to showcasing the silver linings of life in a state that, if it gets any attention, is oft-maligned.

Or, at least, he's trying to.

Anderson created a company last year called NoDak Films, but has run into that very-Hollywood problem of a lack of funding. He wants to produce movies that bring the best of North Dakota to an outside audience, to people who may not have gotten an entirely accurate description by watching "Fargo."

"One thing that sticks out, in my experience, is that people have a longing for home that is hard to explain," Anderson said this week from his home in Berkeley, Calif. "I feel our films will offer a sort of explanation. That's our goal. For someone who's left North Dakota, is still in North Dakota or who's never been to North Dakota, we want to show them how great a place it is."

Anderson grew up in the farming community of Plaza, before moving to Minot for high school. He earned an English degree from the Minnesota State University-Moorhead. Anderson now lives on the West Coast, where his wife is a graduate student at UC-Berkeley.

It was in California where Anderson developed his idea for NoDak Films. He calls it the country's first "sustainable filmmaking company." The movies - he's already written one script, titled "Last Summer for Boys" - will highlight the positive aspects of North Dakota. More than that, Anderson has developed a unique financing approach that, if it works, will highlight a lot more of the state.

His goal is to get towns, businesses and individuals to donate $100 each. In return, those towns, businesses and people will make it into the movie.

"I'm not looking for 10 people to give $20,000 each," Anderson said. "I'm looking for about 1,900 individuals, businesses and towns to give $100 each. In return, they become an identifiable part of our first film. We're comprehensively and purposely using North Dakota, and all elements of North Dakota. That's what makes our fundraising so unique and interesting.

"I'm not looking to make one film and then move this to Hollywood," Anderson said. "I want to turn into the next great small business. I want this to be my career."

Anderson's creative funding mechanism was borne, in part, out of a lack of other options. North Dakota has a film commission in name only - the office doesn't have a budget - and Anderson said the Bank of North Dakota told him it basically got out of the film financing business after losing $1.66 million on "Wooly Boys."

Mark Zimmerman, who works for the state's division of tourism, said he got a call from Anderson several months ago and wasn't able to give him much help.

"It's unfortunate," Zimmerman said. "Far and away, the most calls I get are 'What does the state offer for incentives to film here?' or 'What grants are available?' There aren't any."

In the 15 months since he incorporated NoDak Films, Anderson has raised about 5 percent of what he needs to produce "Last Summer for Boys," the script he wrote that is partially based on his adolescence.

"A good part of it is based on my experiences," Anderson said. "I spent my imaginative years in a small farming town, and got to experience a real childhood. I spent my social years in Minot, and then four years in Fargo. I really experienced every level of North Dakota."

Anderson would like to move back to his home state when his wife finishes with school.

Some of his financial backers - who include former Gov. Ed Schafer, Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson and state Sen. Tim Mathern - would like that to happen.

"For me, (the $100) was an investment in a young person who is very interested in North Dakota," Mathern, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, said Wednesday. "It behooves us, as leaders of the state and people who've been around here for a long time, to start demonstrating support for our young people and what they're doing. That's why I gave this man a contribution. I don't know what the end product will be, but I know there's great value in supporting young people and their ideas."

For more information on Anderson's company, check out http://www.nodakfilms.com.

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@bismarcktribune.com.)