Biography
From the humblest of beginnings, Bailey Kobe never planned for a career in entertainment. His mischievous writings would often have him sent to the principal's office, but at the same time cemented him as a political force as a high school speech writer, cartoonist and editor of the school paper.
Bailey varied his undergraduate study at The University of Southern California, across science, business, television, and finally into narrative and creative writing, gaining a unique skill in story/ novel adaptation for the screen due to studying story across many mediums.
One of those favored mediums was comic books. As a senior he directed a single-camera documentary called Comics Conquer Cinema, starring, comic book icon, Stan Lee, and many of the early wave of comic book-to-screen creatives including Bryan Singer, Gary Foster, Ang Lee, and Kevin Feige.
With his insight into adaptation, story development, and screen writing, Bailey was able to work for such greats as legendary studio head Gareth Wigan (Star Wars, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) at Sony Pictures, his eventual mentor, and super-agent, Robert Newman, then literary head at ICM, and then WME.
Seeing promise in his writing and filmmaking, key industry executives, referred Bailey to USC's elite Peter Stark Program, where he excelled in filmmaking and development, earning coveted production TA-ships, the National Association of Theater Owners Scholarship, and the Peter Stark Special Project Grant for directing.
To supplement a lack of COMEDY development, Bailey went through the writing program at the Upright Citizens Brigade, learning to incorporate collaboration into unique scene work, that he took into the dramatic and action spaces - Creating a hit viral video for Castrol that was a CAR ACTION piece unlike any other at the time. Earning 100M+ views across all social platforms.
Forming a company, Double Entente Films, with Stark classmate Frederic Imbert, in a short time, they have created commercials and music videos, mainly for France and the UK, for Louis Vuitton, Dior, Kenzo, Marc Jacobs, Saint Laurent (YSL), Moët & Chandon, L'Oreal, Lancôme, BMW, Mercedes, Lincoln, Mini Cooper, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and many more.
On a string of ADAPTING NOVELS and plays for studio projects of Madame Tussaud, Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus, a hit French play, and several others, he is currently adapting an Oprah's Top Booklist novel for the screen after placing a pilot screenplay as a finalist at Sundance.
His unique blend of ACTION, infused with EMOTION and COMEDY, has earned him several Best Director awards at highly competitive film festivals. and has been featured in a 12-page spread in Sound and Picture magazine (between Dr. Strange and Manchester by the Sea), for his visual flair, as well as Splash Magazine, LA Parent. LA-ist, Geek Rebellion, The Boston Globe, Vimeo Staff Picks, Nowness, Funny or Die front page, VUDU Indie Top Pick, HULU most-popular, and an iTUNES front-page feature film.
He has collaborated with an eclectic group of celebrities such as: Oscar winners Isabella Rossellini and Lupita Nyong'o, comedian Aubrey Plaza, leading man Orlando Bloom, fine artist Mona Kuhn, indie rock's Father John Misty, Victoria's Secret Angel Taylor Hill, TV's Ben Savage, French icons Johnny Hallyday and Marc Lavoine, Asian mega-star Kris Wu, Grammy nominated Big Sean, rap superstar Travis Scott, and controversial figures Marilyn Manson and Kanye West.
With a literature grounding and a UCB improv background there is a levity and naturalness, a focus on performers and collaboration, in Action sequences, that are as equally poignant as any dramatic scene, and vice versa. And his multi-cultural background allows his point of view to effortlessly include voices not yet heard in cinema.
