Joby Harold & Tory Tunnell
A NEW CANAAN STORY
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREA CERASO
Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell are a Hollywood A-list writing and producing duo, who moved ‘back home’ to New Canaan from Los Angeles during the pandemic, and are now living the dream life, with their three boys - Will 13, James 10, and Jack 7 - and their Goldendoodle Bodhi - on an idyllic and secluded estate with a home that dates back to 1710.
Working out of the house, Joby and Tory run the movie and television powerhouse Safehouse Pictures, which has multi-year development deals with Amazon and Legendary, and has something like 30 projects currently in one phase of production or another. They’re presently producing Atlas, starring Jennifer Lopez - a sci-fi action movie about the relationship between humans and AI, for Netflix; Space Mountain, a Disney movie based on the famous theme park ride; and, their newest, an epic ten-part Godzilla series called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for AppleTV+, starring Kurt Russell. Joby may be most famous for having been called upon by Disney to write and produce the Obi-Wan Kenobi tv series in 2022, and then by Paramount to write the live action Transformers: Rise of the Beasts film in 2023, but he also helped write this summer’s The Flash for DC, starring Tom Cruise, the sci-fi epic Edge of Tomorrow (2014) for Warner Bros., and Netflix’s Army of the Dead (2021). He is best known in the film industry as a go-to writer when the studio has a big idea that needs a story, and a problem that needs to be solved. For her equal part, Tory, who started Safehouse five years before Joby joined her professionally in 2008, has a reputation as an effective, efficient, talented, and ethical producer, who knows what it takes to get a film made. She produced the acclaimed independent film Trumbo, starring Liam Neeson, Michael Douglas and Donald Sutherland (2007), and then Holy Rollers, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha (2009). Together, their Safehouse credits include WB’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), WGN’s acclaimed series Underground (2017), and Netflix crowd favorite Spinning Out (2020). They are, to say the very least, a prolific filmmaking team. As Joby puts it, “We complement each other well because I’m a little right-brain and Tory is…well…the entire brain. We just go together well.”
They are even more brilliant and interesting than one might imagine. They are, indeed, at the fount of modern culture. But what’s most captivating about Joby and Tory is what might be called the theme of this fairytale: Joby and Tory are genuinely humble and grateful people, who moved to New Canaan instead of anywhere else in the world so their kids could grow up here, and who will tell you that their favorite movie of all time is whichever one they watched last night snuggled-up on the couch as a family. “Last night it was The Terminator. Tomorrow it could be Splash. It’s honestly just whatever brings us all together in a huge pile of blankets and pillows with our dog on top,” Joby puts in.
“I grew up locally and New Canaan has always felt like home. Joby asked my father for my hand in marriage at Gates in 2000. My mom went to Saxe when it was still a high school. My Aunt got married on God’s acre,” Tory says about choosing New Canaan. “My family tree has roots with the Lockwoods, and with all the Lockwood history in Silvermine and New Canaan and New England - I wanted the kids to be tuned into that and give them a sense of ancestry, heritage, connection, and belonging. And we have about three dozen aunts and uncles and cousins who live in the area – and that’s our crew for Christmas around the tree. Covid really made it all possible - when so many in our industry realized we could now be effectively remote. We work harder than ever before, but it has allowed Joby and I to come ‘back home’ to New Canaan.”
Joby adds, “I grew up in London, and went to UCLA Film School when I was 18. I then moved to New York City because, in the late 90’s, it was the epicenter of independent film. Tory had moved to New York after Johns Hopkins, and was barely making ends meet working at a production company. A mutual friend introduced us and, to be honest I completely blew the first date, but a bottle of wine intervened…and we were married a year-and-a-half later. We were so poor we lived in a 600 square foot apartment in Alphabet City that we shared with another couple. The sink was the size of a cereal bowl, and we all smoked so there was a thick cloud so you could barely see, but we honestly felt like we were living at The Plaza. All that mattered was being in New York City. As our careers progressed, we needed to move to L.A., and it’s a city we still love dearly, but we wanted to offer our kids a different perspective and a new adventure.”
“I remember we had the boys with us shooting a film in the winter in Budapest,” Tory recounts, “and we were walking down the street in the snow with James who was five at the time, and he suddenly just stopped in his tracks. He looked panicked, and as we asked him what was wrong, he said his whole body hurt all over…and we realized this was a kid who had just literally never been cold before! We had to explain to him that this is what happens when you don’t live year-round in sunny California! There are other seasons! We knew right then we had to get the kids out of L.A.!”
“Here we have a pond for fishing in the summer and ice skating in the winter, there’s a hill for sledding, we go apple picking in the fall, we work together on the yard in the spring,” Joby finishes the thought. “And while the kids used to listen to a sleep app of nature sounds to drown-out the clamor of L.A. - now they can just sleep with the windows open, and hear those sounds for real. And truthfully, the best part is we also work from home, so they get to experience all that, and also see us working hard all day to earn it. I love that the soundtrack of their home is hearing their Mom on the phone talking to an agent or running a TV show. It connects the hard work to the outcome. It feels like we’ve finally found the right balance between work and life.”
When coaxed to talk about their careers, they are more philosophical than braggadocious – and everything is filtered through their family. “We try to teach the boys that providence comes with commitment,” Joby commits. “Otherwise it’s a hobby. And if we’ve had any good fortune in our careers it’s because we believe in hard work beyond anything else.” Tory adds, “...Along with a mix of risk and pragmatism. My mother used to say ‘luck is when opportunity meets preparation’. Joby has dozens of stories burning in his chest but, as the expression goes, ‘if it don’t get made, you don’t get paid’ so, while we’re as passionate about the tent poles we work on as the personal projects, we have to be pragmatic and find the right balance.”
A bit more open and sanguine about the film industry, Joby allows, “We are fortunate to be doing what we do in the middle of the ‘Golden Age of TV,’ and at a time when there are many ways and places to get a movie financed and seen. But really what it always comes down to is character. Certain characters belong on the small screen, and others are better suited to the big one. Like everyone else, we loved Succession, and those are characters we looked forward to seeing in our homes every week. Whereas you look at the success of Barbie or Maverick, and those are characters that belong thirty feet high.” To which Tory responds, “I think the artform is bending, and that tv and film are both starting to inform each other. My hope is that we’re actually just at the dawn of a new era of great cinema. And hopefully the reaction to the proliferation of tent poles and superhero movies in theaters is a new wave of cinema. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to be in the Spiderverse and a galaxy far, far away, I’m just also looking forward to a time when I can hop over to the screen next door and see this generation’s Taxi Driver, or The Graduate, or Easy Rider.”
Cajoled into talking best and favorite movies - and only under the pretext of asking the method and order which Joby and Tory are employing in educating the kids on the history of cinema - Tory comments, “Well one of the things assumed about the younger generation is a much shorter attention span, and that can be true, but what we’ve found really makes the difference when choosing a movie for them to watch is the director. Our kids can watch some of the newer superhero movies and honestly get bored. Yet they will watch Richard Donner’s Superman, which is a slow movie, and they will be enthralled. And the difference is the director.” Tory adds, “Our favorite movies tend to be theirs too. Jaws. Star Wars obviously. The Magnificent Seven. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was a big one. Romancing The Stone. Working Girl. My favorite of all time is 8 ½, and obviously they’re not quite ready for that yet, but it’s been interesting to see that they always love a classic.”
“One thing we do with the kids that’s a bit different and that does relate to our passion - or what some might call obsession,” Tory allows, “is to show them movies and then take them to the real-life location where the movie was made. We watched Far And Away and then visited the Tenement Museum. An Affair To Remember and we went to the top of the Empire State Building. Men In Black and we visited the site of the 1964 World’s Fair. The kids have taken to doing it, and hopefully it brings what Mom and Dad do for a living a little more to life.”
