Cutters has added producer Heather Richardson to its staff in Chicago. For the past nine years Richardson was a producer for Cosmo Street Editorial, most recently in its NY office where she worked on high-profile commercials for the company’s editors and many leading directors, including Joachim Back, Adam Berg, Bryan Buckley, Harold Einstein, Randy Krallman, Hank Perlman, The Perlorian Brothers, Steve Miller and David Shane. Some of her most recent projects were for AT&T, DirecTV, ESPN, Geico, GoDaddy, Land Rover, MasterCard, Mercedes, Samsung and Verizon.
Richardson began with Cosmo Street in Los Angeles before moving to New York in 2008, and prior to that, she was a producer at L.A. visual effects studio a52. A graduate of the University of Colorado in Boulder, she grew up just north of Chicago, so landing at Cutters brings her home.
“I was drawn to Cutters because of the culture that has been cultivated and the family-feel that exists here,” she said, also citing the diverse and talented editors on the Cutters roster.”
Cutters has studios in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City and Tokyo. Cutters Studios’ family of companies also includes Another Country, Dictionary Films, Flavor and Picnic Media.
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