Native Pictures has added directors Rob Cohen and Gary McKendry to its roster and partner/exec producer Chris Messiter to its management team. Messiter will head Native’s newly opened NY office, making the company bicoastal.
Cohen joins Native on the heels of shooting his latest epic action-adventure commercial for Mountain Dew, and is currently in pre-production for a European car spot. McKendry has just completed his first project for Native and Match.com’s delightful.com, a funny and relatable campaign for the new dating site featuring Steve Harvey.
Cohen’s body of work spans features, TV and commercials. He earned a DGA Award nomination in 1999 for the TV movie The Rat Pack (HBO). His feature film The Boy Next Door is currently in theaters. Cohen has helmed 30-plus films and over the past year has shot in six different countries directing spots for Mercedes-Benz, Coca-Cola, Kohl’s and Verizon FIOS.
McKendry, a former advertising art director, has directed award-winning spots for such brands as IKEA, Porsche and Heineken, and an Academy Award-nominated short film, Everything in This Country Must.
Messiter will work directly with Native’s founding partner/EP Tomer DeVito and partner/EP Susan Rued Anderson. A veteran sales exec and producer, Messiter has had a hand in building various top production companies and directors. He had a hand in helping to develop shops such as MJZ, Tool and Hungry Man. Cohen, McKendry and Messiter were most recently with Assembly Films.
Native’s pair of director signings and hiring of Messiter follow January’s announcement of Anderson joining as partner/EP based in L.A., and the launch last fall of Native’s film division COTA, led by veteran feature film producer Michael Costigan (Brokeback Mountain, Prometheus, Out of the Furnace).
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