Dreams rolling for Vancouver filmmaker
‘I couldn’t be happier, if I am honest,’ Jeff Cassidy says as his career starts to take shape in Los Angeles
Vancouver filmmaker Jeff Cassidy’s life is unfolding like a feel-good movie.
You know the kind of film where the protagonist works hard, his friends are supportive and in the end he gets the big break.
Cassidy, 34, moved from Ottawa to Vancouver at age 19 and studied film. He volunteered (they call it interning these days) on various movie sets.
“I’ve worked in film in the camera department since I was 20,” said Cassidy. “I joined that particular department so I could stand next to the directors/actors/cameramen and learn every aspect of filmmaking so when I one day decided to direct I would be an expert in all things!”
Cassidy’s plan has paid off as he just signed on with William Morris a.k.a. WME, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies.
Cassidy got in the door at WME on the strength of a very good cinematic calling card.
“A year and a half ago I decided I would make this short film, Sidekick, and make it massive in scope and use it to open the door to agencies. If you want to direct or write or do any of that stuff, the biggest hurdle out of the whole thing is not having an agent,” said Cassidy, who joins a WME director roster that includes J.J. Abrams, Tim Burton, Alfonso Cuaron, Ridley Scott, Bryan Singer and Quentin Tarantino.
Cassidy is in Los Angeles taking meetings and pitching ideas.
He has two crime drama-themed scripts in development and other ideas in the pitch process.
“I couldn’t be happier, if I am honest,” said Cassidy, whose new agent Solco Schuit made the Hollywood Reporter’s top 30 under 35 list. “Now I’m taking meetings with people and companies I grew up loving as a kid.”
After watching Sidekick you can see why industry types stopped and took note of Cassidy. The film is great.
“He made it look big, he made it look epic and he made it look like a movie and he gave it the size and the scope the story demands,” said Josh Dallas (Once Upon a Time and Thor), the lead in Sidekick. “I always like working with writer/directors because they have written something and they know it so intimately and they know it inside and out and they can see it,” added Dallas, who met Cassidy in 2010. “It always gives the storytelling a more intimate connection and that comes across on the screen. Jeff had all of that.”
Cassidy could not have pulled together such a great film if it weren’t for the support of the Vancouver film community and his friends. Over 200 people helped to make Sidekick.
“This tells you what kind of person he is as he got a lot of the top people in Vancouver filming there now,” Dallas said. “He got us all to work for him for free to tell this story and tell it in such a fantastical way. He got all the right people to work on it. He got all the right actors. He got all the right cameramen and special-effects guys.”
While Sidekick plainly shows that Cassidy knows how to film a movie it also highlights his talent as a writer. Giving him a one-two filmmaking punch makes movie executives and agents very happy.
“This is what everyone says: ‘It’s clear from Sidekick that you can direct and handle actors, drama, visual effects, action. No one is going to give you one of our great scripts. One of our great scripts is going to any of our 100 top great directors before it gets to you and if it got down the list to you, you probably don’t want to do it anyway. Write your own stuff,’ ” said Cassidy, whose long resume includes camera department work on The Flash and Warcraft.
But obviously, now the focus is telling his own stories, stories his old pal Dallas hopes he can be a part of.
“He better not think twice about hiring me,” Dallas said. “He signed with my agency here in L.A. so I hope to be working with Jeff for many years to come.”