Cowboy Films, London–which has maintained a 15-year reciprocal sales relationship with Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago–will become Crossroads Films U.K. effective April 1. Triggering the move was the decision by Cowboy managing director Lisa Bryer to retire from the company next month to become a full-time mom to her eight-year-old twins. Crossroads partners/execs Cami Taylor and Dan Lindau then finalized a deal to round up Cowboy and become its co-owners.
Cowboy mainstay Carly Stone will continue as executive producer in charge of production for Crossroads Films U.K. Plans call for Taylor to shuttle back and forth as needed between Crossroads’ stateside and U.K. operations. Crossroads’ U.S. directorial roster will for the most part be repped in the U.K. via Crossroads, London. Conversely the Crossroads U.K. directors will be available to American agencies.
Tanya Cohen, Crossroads’ West Coast rep, has been tabbed to additionally serve as exec producer in charge of sales for Crossroads U.K. She too will go back and forth between the U.S. and U.K. At press time, Cohen was seeking a London-based sales associate.
In addition to commercialmaking, Crossroads will have footholds on both sides of the Atlantic for music videos. U.S. music video house merge@crossroads will now have a counterpart shop in London, under the merge@crossroads U.K. banner. As SHOOT went to press, merge executive producer Joseph Uliano was slated to pay a visit to London to help facilitate the merge@crossroads operation there.
Cowboy (soon to be Crossroads U.K.) helmers such as Nick Lewin, Julia Jason, Mike Leigh, Tim Pope and TV director Jon Sen are available to the stateside spot market via Crossroads in the U.S. Pope, a lauded music video director who founded Cowboy with Bryer, will remain active in clips in the U.S. and U.K. Crossroads’ directors pretty much across the board will have the opportunity to cross over between commercials and music videos.
Crossroads’ U.S. directorial roster will have a conduit to European business and production via Crossroads U.K. Those helmers include Kieran Walsh, Salvatore Totino, Kevin Samuels, Paul Schneider, Lloyd Stein, Gillean Proctor, Jesse Peretz, Mark Pellington, Wayne Isham, Bruce Hurwit, Steve Eshelman, Russell Bates, Marcus McCollum, Mike Nelesen and Terri Timely.
Furthermore, Crossroads’ stateside representation of international directors via its reciprocal sales agreement with Velocity Film, Johannesburg and Cape Town–reflected in the U.S. label Velocity@Crossroads–will also extend to the U.K. This means that Crossroads U.K. will rep such Velocity directors as Keith Rose, Greg Gray, Lourens van Rensburg, Sergio, Mark Lawrie and Mickey Madoda Dube.
Still to be determined is what directors, if any, from Avion Films, Toronto–which also has a longstanding reciprocal representation agreement with Crossroads in the U.S.–might be repped in the U.K. via Crossroads.
And there are directors on the Crossroads roster–such as Wilfrid Brimo and Sebastien Grousset–who will continue to only be handled in the American ad market by the company.
While Crossroads grows its global footprint, Cowboy’s Bryer is going out on a high note, not only wrapping a successful tenure at Cowboy but also producing director Kevin Macdonald’s upcoming feature for Cowboy and Slate Films: The Last King of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker. (Macdonald directs spots via Rogue Films, London.)
Review: Director/Co-Writer Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ “My Dead Friend Zoe”
Even for a film titled "My Dead Friend Zoe," the opening scenes of Kyle Hausmann-Stokes' movie have a startling rhythm. First, two female American soldiers are riding in a Humvee in Afghanistan 2016 blasting Rihanna's "Umbrella." They are clearly friends, and more concerned with the music coming through loudly than enemy fire. Zoe (Natalie Morales) tells Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) tells that if they ever set foot in "some dopy group therapy," to please kill her. Cut to years later, they're sitting in a counseling meeting for veterans and Morales' character has a sour look at her face. She turns to her friend: "Did we survive the dumbest war of all time just to sit here all broken and kumbaya and ouchie-my-feelings?" But after this rush of cavalier soldiering and bitter sarcasm comes a sobering moment. Merit blinks her eyes and is instead staring at an empty chair. Zoe isn't there at all. "My Dead Friend Zoe," co-starring Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, confronts a dark reality of post-combat struggle with as much humor and playfulness as it does trauma and sorrow. It comes from a real place, and you can tell. Hausmann-Stoke is himself a veteran and "My Dead Friend Zoe" is dedicated to a pair of his platoon mates who killed themselves. The opening titles note the film was "inspired by a true story." Audience disinterest has characterized many, though not all, of the films about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the output has pretty much dried up over the years. "My Dead Friend Zoe" feels like it was made with an awareness of that trend and as a rebuke to it. This is an often breezy and funny movie for what, on paper, is a difficult and dark story. But the comic tone of "My Dead Friend Zoe" is, itself, a spirited rejection to not just the heaviness... Read More