Piper Productions has named Thomas Robbins as its president, a new position at the bicoastal shop. He comes over from Foote, Cone & Belding on the West Coast where he served as senior VP, director of communications. Robbins will work out of Piper’s Santa Monica office, while managing director Sarah Jenks, who founded the company in 1996, remains based in New York…. Director Kevin Bourland and bicoastal Great Guns have amicably parted ways…..Heidi Gottlieb has been named executive producer at New York-based production company Zero 2 Sixty. She spent the past seven years as president/partner at now defunct rep firm Single Bid….Kevin Batten, formerly a staff producer at Deutsch LA, has taken the executive producer reins at Brand New School, a design/graphics/live-action shop that’s just gone bicoastal with the opening of a New York office. Batten replaces Matthew Marquis, who had been executive producer since the end of February (SHOOT, 2/23, p. 1). Marquis, who continues to maintain spot shop Milk Bar, has taken a temporary leave of absence from that company due to family reasons. In the interim, former freelancer Erin Tauscher is handling executive producer responsibilities at Milk Bar, which has relocated to Marina del Rey, Calif., and which continues to represent directors Jarl Olsen, Lara Shapiro and Brumby Boylston. Seth Epstein, who had been repped by Milk Bar, has left to pursue opportunities outside of directing….Northern Lights Post, New York, has added editor Patrick Burns, Jr. and producer Arthur Tremeau to its staff….
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More