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Crooked Cynics join Cultivate.Media
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The duo known in the UK for the series Community Patrol gets laughs by playing it straight, and will be bringing a unique brand of comedy to America.
Crooked Cynics, the duo comprising directors Tom Middleton and Jack Scott, has signed for exclusive US spot representation with bicoastal Cultivate.Media, the award-winning commercial and content production company overseen by Managing Director/Executive Producer Mark Thomas and Executive Producer Stuart Wilson.
The directors hail from the middle of England, but have been raised on an all-American diet of World Wrestling Entertainment, MTV and The Mighty Ducks. The result is an oeuvre that includes the popular UK mockumentary series Community Patrol, and spots for Angi, Visit Florida, MeUndies, and a project for Arsenal starring the legendary footballer Ray Parlour in his new role...as a fashion designer. This is the first spot roost for the duo.
“Our style is rooted in the delusions of everyday people,” said the directors. “We let the self-deception play itself out without nods or winks to the audience.”
It was Ray Parlour: Fashion Designer for Arsenal that caught Wilson’s eye initially. He and Thomas were bidding on a sports comedy project at the time. “The spot succeeds or fails based on how straight Ray and Arsenal the team members play it,” he said. “It succeeds brilliantly, because the audience expects something completely different from these footballers.” The directors hopped on a call with Cultivate, and while the project went away, the relationship clicked.
“Mark and Stu immediately grasped our sense of humor and what we’re trying to do,” Middleton recalled. “We appreciated what Cultivate is about in terms of developing and working with new talent to draw out the potential they see.” Scott added, “They’ve been great in helping us look at our work differently as well.”
“We see our role as nurturing and investing in directorial talent, growing them into filmmakers who can artfully bring stories to life,” Wilson said. “Emerging commercial directors like Crooked Cynics should be bidding on and winning some of the best creative opportunities in the industry, and we’re excited to introduce them to the US market.”
Of the Crooked Cynics moniker, Scott said, “We showed my Dad a list of our favourite names to call ourselves. He said you'll never get a day's work being called Crooked Cynics. That made us laugh. It was perfect.” Middleton affirmed that, “Me and Jack naturally take the piss out of ourselves, so comedy is really the only option.”
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Scott and Middleton share a love for professional wrestling, and for the MTV shows they grew up on, like Jackass. “We’re also too weak to get in the ring, and too scared to be like Johnny Knoxville,” they said. “But we excelled at watching it on TV.” When they met through a mutual friend, Scott was working full-time as a commercial editor, cutting branded work for Adidas and the Olympics. Middleton was a band videographer, gaining lots of experience documenting reality in the UK, US, and more.
“We started directing music videos together, where ideas often got all too serious,” Scott recalled. As music video directors, the guys found themselves succeeding in a medium where bizarre ideas were routinely treated with tremendous gravity. “It’s the things people have no sense of humour about that can be truly funny,” Scott said.
Clearly, Crooked Cynics are truly funny, having been featured in British Comedy Guide, popular comedy aggregator Mr Box, and having screened at a number of film festivals where they picked up the Top Short Festival award for 'Best Comedy'. Together, they have worked with a wealth of award-winning music artists and BAFTA-winning comedy performers, but deep down all they really want is to be the WWE duo, Dudley Boyz.
“Crooked Cynics could very well become the winningest tag-team in sports-entertainment,” Thomas deadpanned. “And that’s a story they would tell with a very straight face.”
