Original Music by Tey \\\ Fir & Owain Kelly
Write When You Get Work
trailer
A thorny love story set in New York City at a private school for girls and in the world outside its exclusive walls.
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“As in Cochran’s previous films, there is a biting if subtle wit and commentary lurking beneath the wry fun of the story itself. And not unlike Woody Allen at his classic best, WRITE WHEN YOU GET WORK is a quintessentially New York City movie, in both its visual presentation of the gorgeous city as well as its brutally honest portrayal of the city’s socioeconomic and cultural conflicts.” - Seth Rogovoy, The Rogovoy Report
“Fantastic... A love story, heist and social commentary all at the same time.” - Ashley Menzel, We Live Entertainment
“Delightful… An entertaining romp through cinematic adventures (and misadventures)” - Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Hammer to Nail
“The complex plot combined with compelling acting brings excitement and energy to the film. The excellent soundtrack is the icing on the cake.” – Shannon Wilson, Vox
“This romantic schematic comedy-drama, by the writer and director Stacy Cochran, is a tale of New York’s two cities and the extreme measures needed to connect them.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker
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My New Gun
clips from the film (4 minutes)
“Cochran’s isn’t a satirist’s world, or a cartoonist’s, or a fairy-tale teller’s; it’s more like a novelist’s. Yet the sort of liberation that MY NEW GUN proposes, and embodies, is the product of a true filmmaker’s vision.” - Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
"William Carlos Williams wrote a poem that goes like this: 'So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.' Substitute a gun for the red wheelbarrow and you begin to grasp the dramatic crux of writer-director Stacy Cochran's coolly funny, immaculately modulated first feature, MY NEW GUN." - Hal Hinson, The Washington Post
“MY NEW GUN is a delectably wry slice of suburban life, imagined by Ms. Cochran and played with perfect bewilderment by the enormously appealing Ms. Lane.” - Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“In MY NEW GUN director Stacy Cochran doesn’t fetishize sidearms. A restless signifier, the gun is passed back and forth between Debbie and Skippy like a hot potato. It’s a symbolic exchange as telling as it is funny. In MY NEW GUN, the .38 in question is both a rod and a piece, male and female, a sign of just how fluid gender roles can be.” - Manohla Dargis, The Village Voice
“Unlike so many comedies set in the suburbs, MY NEW GUN — its houses and roadside restaurants lovingly shot by Ed Lachman — is fueled by optimism and a sense of adventure.” - Stephanie Zacharek, The New York Times
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Boys
clips from the film (7 minutes)
“Essentially a screwball comedy, but one that dares to do without the familiar contrivances of farce. What holds the movie’s volatile mixture of tones and characters together is the filmmaker’s willingness to ride her own complex romantic sensibility as far as it will take her. This young filmmaker may have a more deeply subversive sensibility than any of her celebrated peers” - Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
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Richard Lester!
clips from the film (2 minutes)
"Stacy Cochran's salute to the director, jubilantly entitled RICHARD LESTER!, consists of an interview with Lester that she conducted, yes, in an open field. Whether saluting John Lennon's inspirational truth-telling or describing how 'just for fun,' he and Peter Sellers made THE RUNNING, JUMPING, STANDING STILL FILM (in an open field!), Lester conveys a freewheeling, iconoclastic intelligence. Although he defines his ultrafast working method as 'panic masquerading as exuberance,' this film testifies to Lester's blithe fearlessness." - Michael Sragow, The New Yorker
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Aye Records
Aye Records
Owain Kelly (producer/composer), James Williams (lyricist/composer) and Stacy Cochran (screenwriter/director) found each other in 2018. Nearly immediately they began working together, recognizing in one another a shared affinity for the unexpected, for following ideas beyond "can't do that" and toward the question "why not!?”
LP: in anticipation of an ending, NO CEREMONY///
EP: Symphony for her Website, Tey\\\Fir & Owain Kelly
Video: trophy lives, NO CEREMONY///
Video: The Boss, Tod Lippy
Video: Of That Reign, James Williams & Owain Kelly
from the soundtrack to "The Heartbeat of Squirrels"
photo by Ralph Lieberman
from the soundtrack to "The Heartbeat of Squirrels"
photo by Ralph Lieberman
Drop Back Ten
clips from the film (3 minutes)
“Stacy Cochran, director of the impressive MY NEW GUN and BOYS, and her new DROP BACK TEN, is a director of intelligence and originality.” - Tony Keily, Film Ireland
"Once more Cochran maintains her artistic intensity with her newest movie, DROP BACK TEN. Her directorial development was documented brilliantly at the Oldenburg Filmfestival." - Die Tageszeitung
“The tribute for the American director Stacy Cochran was a forum for cinematic discoveries. The four films of this young director were screened in Oldenburg with a huge response from the audience.” - Filmecho/Filmwoche
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Year On Ice
opening (3 minutes)
It’s 1969. Madison Square Garden is new, the world is skittish, and professional hockey is beautiful and violent.
Inspired by New York Times reporter Gerald Eskenazi’s book of the same name, documenting the NHL season of 1969-70, YEAR ON ICE has Eskenazi’s authenticity as its foundation, a fictional overlay of menace, and adventurous filmmaking on the fly.
Due to the constraints of the covid pandemic, the movie was filmed in two weeks, outdoors and under a tent, with only one actor in frame at a time.
Along with producing partner Todd Thaler, we're now developing a TV series based on Jerry's book, including the real events of the season, and four subsequent seasons leading up to the Rangers' first Stanley Cup victory (1994) in over 50 years.
Click below for more about the series; a pitch deck, a 5-season breakdown, and pilot script.
The Heartbeat of Squirrels
full movie (8 minutes)
"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,
it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat,
and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
- George Eliot, MIDDLEMARCH, 1871-1872
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THE HEARTBEAT OF SQUIRRELS is a short rumination and sleight of hand, a live action melody. It was prompted by an academic book of ideas about the role of strangers in late 19th century novels.
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Nominated
Best Short Film
Pick-Up Pop-Up Bookshop
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Short Assortment
The Boss / Tod Lippy
trophy lives / NO CEREMONY///
Night Out On Route 2 / NO CEREMONY///
100 Frames
On Olivier Assayas' Cold Water
Prostitutes
Scenario Magazine
Illustration by Scott Menchin
New York Ultimate
I'm A Tiger
I'm A Tiger
Script in development
Stacy Cochran
reel (15 minutes)
Stacy Cochran
is a screenwriter, director and producer based in NY.
Her first film was MY NEW GUN starring Diane Lane, James LeGros and Tess Harper, shot by Ed Lachman, ASC. It premiered in Director's Fortnight at Cannes, and earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature.
Her second film as writer/director was BOYS , starring Winona Ryder, Lukas Haas and Chris Cooper, produced by Interscope and released by Touchstone.
She then made the half-hour film RICHARD LESTER! about the director, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
Boys and Richard Lester! were both shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, ASC.
Her next film, DROP BACK TEN, premiered in Dramatic Competition at Sundance.
She then wrote, directed and produced WRITE WHEN YOU GET WORK starring Finn Wittrock and Emily Mortimer. It was shot by Robert Elswit as well, and premiered in Narrative Competition at SXSW.
She is currently developing A YEAR ON ICE, a series about the New York Rangers and the business of sports and sportswriting from 1969 until the Rangers' Stanley Cup victory in 1994, their first since 1940. The project is based on veteran New York Times sports reporter Gerald Eskenazi's book of the same name.
She has also written THE MYSTERY OF THE FOURTEEN, about Jean-Honoré Fragonard, a project she is creating with Yuriko Jackall, head of European Art and curator of European Paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
She is also developing another series for television, this one a bloody adventure of the uncanny called WRITER SLASH DIRECTOR, and another feature called I'M A TIGER, set in New Jersey in 1999.
As the Arthur Levitt Artist-in-Residence, Stacy has taught screenwriting and directing at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She has a B.A. in Political Science from Williams and an MFA in Film from Columbia. She lives in lower Manhattan
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Movies
I've decided to post the movies I've made. Some of them are available elsewhere; most are not. One of them was shot under a wedding tent in a backyard during the covid pandemic with only one actor in frame at a time, thanks to the contagion. Each of the films include something I wanted to do or say, or anyway I did and I said. And all of them include work by extraordinarily talented and bountiful collaborators.
There are five features, one of which was mangled by studio producers but blessed by James Salter, four of which premiered at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, SXSW, even if they never found much distribution. All but one were shot on film, three on 35mm, one on Super16. There is one half-hour portrait of Richard Lester whom I adore, one short film shot in a day and a second short, a student film which premiered at Lincoln Center in the NYFF of 1991, a wildly-important first outing for me, as you might imagine.
After that screening, as we all stood on the sidewalk at Broadway and 65th Street, one of my film school advisors, Ralph Rosenblum, glorious film editor, said to me, "You shoulda' kept cutting." He was right and never do I stop cutting projects to this day without running them through the Ralph assessment-meter that I carry inside me always.
My New Gun
Boys
Richard Lester!
Drop Back Ten
Write When You Get Work
Year On Ice
Another Damaging Day
Student Film
Split Screen
Interview with John Pierson