International Disruptors: How Phil Hunt’s Punk Roots Have Steered Head Gear Into A Prolific Film Financier & Why It’s Important To “Make Assets Out Of Problems”
deadline.comWelcome to another edition of Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key execs and companies outside of the U.S.
shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week we’re talking with British indie film veteran Phil Hunt, who is the founder of a raft of companies including production outfit and film financier Head Gear, international sales business Bankside and, more recently, New Zealand and Australian distribution genre label (Yet) Another Monster Company. Phil Hunt is not a conformist.
From the moment he burst onto the British independent scene more than two decades ago with his microbudget productions Fast Food and Chunky Monkey – the former starring a young Gerard Butler and the latter an off-beat black comedy about a loner with a penchant for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Julie Andrews – it was clear that this was a guy who was not going to be a part of the status quo. “Punk taught me to make assets out of problems,” says Hunt, a former advertising and music photographer who mingled with the likes of The Clash, Sex Pistols, Chiefs of Relief and Big Audio Dynamite during the first chapter of his career. “I remember when I first saw The Clash in Edinburgh at the age of 12.
It was just something that I had never seen before – the energy and disruption in a venue and the political nature of them was a wakeup call at that age and then, from that moment on, the kind of DIY ethics of punk kind of came calling.” And it’s working well for him.
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