The Cavalry Productions, headed by exec producers Ross Grogan and Chris Wedding, has signed internet sensation Woodhead for both commercial and digital production work. Filmmaking ensemble Woodhead is probably best known for its comedic video short titled,Favre: Rise which parodied a Nike ad and thus far has garnered over 4 million views on YouTube.
Woodhead consists of director/writer Tony Yacenda, writer/comedian/actor Dan Perrault and comedian/actor/producer Sean Carrigan. The trio started two years ago when Perrault called Yacenda, telling him he just saw a hilarious comic that looked like NFL quarterback Brett Favre. "We got together and decided we want to make some really funny content, and Woodhead was born," said Yacenda.
The aforementioned Favre spoof is not Woodhead's only short garnering huge numbers. Their video to promote the Matthew Hussey book "Get The Guy" (titled "Kids Talk Dating Problems") has garnered over 2 million views, was featured on the Today Show and helped place the book on the New York Times bestseller list. Woodhead's movie parody titled, Average Party has so far received over 1.2 million views on YouTube, plus was featured on the Huffington Post, CollegeHumor and dozens of other news blogs. Other original shorts from Woodhead include Shark Pool, Extremely Dark Knight, Last Words and Vote For Tom Corrigan.
Key to Woodhead's social media following is the ability to apply offbeat humor with professional production values. The result is original branded media that gets noticed. "We find the absurdity in a situation, then use great writing and acting to focus on it," said Yacenda.
Carrigan added, "The laughs shouldn't come from all over the place. We describe our approach as intelligently juvenile, with an academic approach and cinematic attention to detail."
Even though Woodhead hails from the East (Yacenda and Perrault are graduates of Emerson College in Boston while Carrigan also comes from the East Coast), they have no problem tapping into L.A.'s pool of acting and production talent, leveraging dynamics such as comic Carrigan's connections to people in the entertainment business. Case in point is Woodhead's homage to filmmakers titled, The Search for The Shadoweyes Bandit starring Owen Teague, Cuba Gooding Jr (Jerry Maguire) and Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead).
Daniel Craig Embraced Openness For Role In Director Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer”
Daniel Craig is sitting in the restaurant of the Carlyle Hotel talking about how easy it can be to close yourself off to new experiences.
"We get older and maybe out of fear, we want to control the way we are in our lives. And I think it's sort of the enemy of art," Craig says. "You have to push against it. Whether you have success or not is irrelevant, but you have to try to push against it."
Craig, relaxed and unshaven, has the look of someone who has freed himself of a too snug tuxedo. Part of the abiding tension of his tenure as James Bond was this evident wrestling with the constraints that came along with it. Any such strains, though, would seem now to be completely out the window.
Since exiting that role, Craig, 56, has seemed eager to push himself in new directions. He performed "Macbeth" on Broadway. His drawling detective Benoit Blanc ("Halle Berry!") stole the show in "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." And now, Craig gives arguably his most transformative performance as the William S. Burroughs avatar Lee in Luca Guadagnino's tender tale of love and longing in postwar Mexico City, "Queer."
Since the movie's Venice Film Festival premiere, it's been one of the fall's most talked about performances — for its explicit sex scenes, for its vulnerability and for its extremely un-007-ness.
"The role, they say, must have been a challenge or 'You're so brave to do this,'" Craig said in a recent interview alongside Guadagnino. "I kind of go, 'Eh, not really.' It's why I get up in the morning."
In "Queer," which A24 releases Wednesday in theaters, Craig again plays a well-traveled, sharply dressed, cocktail-drinking man. But the similarities with his most famous role stop there. Lee is an American expat living in 1950s... Read More