Founded by Heather Lyn MacDonald, Toots Crackin Productions is a film and video production company based in New York City.

Heather MacDonald (pictured left) produced and directed the new feature documentary Been Rich All My Life, as well as the award-winning classic Ballot Measure 9.  (Both of these documentary features are featured in detail on this website, and are available on DVD with extensive bonus features.)

A chilling portrait of the politics of intolerance, Ballot Measure 9 received jury prizes and audience awards internationally — from the Sundance Film Festival to the Berlin International Film Festival, from Los Angeles to Edinburgh. It was often named one of the best films of the year, and continues to be distributed in the educational and home video markets. Click here for additional information Ballot Measure 9.

Other award-winning documentaries which Heather produced, directed and edited include Kiev Blue and Kitchen Talk USSR, both intimate programs about families in the Soviet Union just prior to its collapse. Each was broadcast by PBS and distributed by Filmakers Library. Kiev Blue was used extensively by gays and lesbians seeking asylum in the USA.  I Am, a short film about personal values, was distributed in the educational market and had the honor of being chosen to tour the Soviet Union during its period of “perestroika” with the “Showcase of American Documentary in the USSR.”  Nuclear Navyport, New York City, about nuclear-armed battleships ported in the New York City Harbor, aired on PBS in New York and was distributed as a tool for environmental advocacy groups.

Heather recently wrote the screenplay for In Troubled Waters based on the novel by Beverly Coyle. Previous screenplays are Apparition, commissioned and produced by Canadian Telefilm, and Those Women, optioned by Mark-Jett Productions. As a photographer, Heather’s black & white portraits have been in numerous exhibitions in New York City. She was for many years an actor and is a long-standing member of Actor’s Equity, SAG and AFTRA.

Heather is a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in  video.  She has received grants and awards from The New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Harburg Foundation, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.