We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jesse Thomas Cook a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jesse Thomas, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

From a young age I was drawn to movies, and more specifically horror cinema. There were several independent movie rental shops in my hometown in the late 1980’s, and I spent hours combing over the VHS artwork in the horror section. My dad compiled VHS tapes of random horror films at home, so I was exposed to films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead, House, Friday the 13th etc. My aunt for a time had a small video rental store in an adjacent town where I was introduced to more obscure classics like The Video Dead, Shriek of the Mutilated, and ZOMBI. When I was a teen, in 1996, Renny Harlin and his film crew arrived to my small town to shoot scenes for A Long Kiss Goodnight, starring Geena Davis and Renny Harlin. They needed 1000 extras for a big action scene set during a Christmas Parade. I was at an impressionable age, and became enthralled with the craft of making movies. My friends and I signed up to be in the movie, and it was truly a coming-of-age experience, as we had just started staying out late, smoking pot, doing LSD and out-running the grumpy assistant directors who would prowl through the downtown arcades forcing people onto the streets for the parade scenes. I ended up making the final cut of the movie, jostling Geena Davis as she works her way through a mob of Christmas Parade on-lookers. It wouldn’t be long after that before we started making short films in high school, and eventually, directing my first feature film in 2007.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Jesse Thomas Cook, filmmaker, storyteller, husband, and father of four. My wife and I own and operate Collingwood Film Company, and specialize in crafting independent genre cinema. Our 2022 film CULT HERO premiered at Fantasia in Montreal and received 6 nominations at the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards. Our latest film, THE HYPERBOREAN, is currently on the festival circuit and has been picked up for distribution in Canada and the United States. We take pride in creating original, cutting edge, and often bizarre works of cinema, and have established a core team of cast and crew in the southern Georgian Bay region. Making films in general is often challenging, if not miraculous, let alone making them in Canada. We make a niche product of horror/sci fi/comedy and work with our sales and distribution partners, along with the leading genre film festivals of the world to get our films recognized and released globally.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That someone other than myself was going to save me, lift me up, jumpstart or validate my career as a young filmmaker. For years starting out as a filmmaker in Toronto, my partners and I came up with several plans where we’d drive to Hollywood with elaborate pitch packages, sneak into studios, take meetings with producers, wait by the phone for agents, pester more established filmmakers, blindly send unsolicited scripts. All of that changed with the realization that to a make a movie, you have to make it yourself. Use your resources, start locally, inspire a rag-tag team. Once I started investing in myself, things started to happen. The good news was I had someone all along who kept me inspired and believed in me.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Storytelling has the ability to redeem humankind. Being a creative person just feels natural to me, an intuition or synchronicity with the universe. When I’ve tried to suppress that innate, creative spirit within me, I feel dis-regulated and out of sync. So being a filmmaker, coming up with ideas and coaxing them into a moving picture is just a way of life for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.collingwoodfilmco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collingwoodfilmco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/collingwoodfilmco/

Image Credits
Group Shot: James Mercier Duo Shot: John Fearnall