Street Talk
Director Andrews Jenkins, formerly of Food Chain Films, Portland, Ore., has joined bicoastal Go Film. In early 2003, Robert Wherry and Jonathan Weinstein, partners/executive producers in Go Film, became partners in Food Chain along with its executive producer David Cress. (Gary Rose has since joined Go as a partner/executive producer.) Per the partnership, Go Film handled the Food Chain roster of directors nationally. Now Wherry, Weinstein and Cress have disbanded their partnership. Cress will maintain Food Chain with directors Marc Greenfield and Vance Malone. The company will continue to pursue commercial projects, as well as diversify more meaningfully into the direct market….RSA and Blackdog Films–both bicoastal and in London–have signed noted Swedish directors Jonas Akerlund and Johan Renck for spot and music clip representation in the U.S. and the U.K. RSA will handle commercials while its sister shop Blackdog takes on music video assignments for the directors who work individually but are business partners at Renck Akerlund Films (RAF), Stockholm. Previously, RAF was repped stateside via bicoastal HSI Productions and in the U.K. through Exposure Films, London….Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago–via its ongoing reciprocal relationship with Cowboy Films, London–has secured stateside spot representation for director Roger Michell, whose feature helming credits include Enduring Love, Notting Hill and Changing Lanes. Cowboy handles U.K. representation for Michell….DNA, Hollywood, has secured music video and commercial representation for directors Thom Oliphant and Steven Goldmann. Oliphant and Goldmann recently shuttered their production company, The Collective, LLC, to focus on directing, with DNA handling production and repping….Actor/director John Leguizamo, who’s currently starring in Assault on Precinct 13, is again available to helm commercials through CFM International, New York….After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More