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12/30/2005: "Gamers “Four Horsemen, plus one” by Christopher Folino"

My brother-in-law Henry who lives in Concord, CA spent the day with my family in Southern California yesterday and we started talking about how old the twins were, and it struck me that they’re five months old. I was blown away by how much time has passed, because, the boys were born the first day of production on “Gamers” July 28th.

Five months? Christ, we shot the main bulk of the movie in six days, took like a month to edit it. And now, we are spending three month just waiting for film festivals.
However, come March, the movie begins it’s journey for distribution regardless of any festival.
Serious, I'm so over having to gamble on football to pay these fucking "Studio film festivals" an entry fee.

I’ve spent a good deal of time talking about the famous actors in our movie, however, the heart and soul of our film is Dave Hanson, Scott Allen Rinker, Kevin Kirkpatrick, Joe Nieves, and Kevin Sherwood.

I’m proud to have made my first film with each of these talented actors, and I wish each of them great success in 2006. And mostly just success with the movie "Gamers!"

I wanted to share my impressions about each of the lead actors with you. I figure I can take a day off of bashing “Strawberry Shortcake”.

In early July 2006, Kevin Kirkpatrick, Scott Allen Rinker, and Dave Hanson all auditioned on the same day for the movie “Gamers”. Kevin and Scott both audtioned for the role of “Gordon” and Dave Hanson tried out for the part of “Paul”.

Kevin Kirkpatrick’s audition was amazing, he was so good at improve that we just kept giving him more scenes just to see what he could do with the character.

While Kirkpatrick was out studying a new scene, in walks Scott Allen Rinker, half man, half naked, but fully cocked. Okay, I’m just throwing shit in to make sure you’re still reading this blog.

So, out-of-the-gate, I’m watching Scott read the lines for Gordon and I’m like “Shit, this guys is “Paul!” He's just flat out a really great actor who can pull off the darker side of the character without over-acting. Scott, is blessed with a pair of eyes that are very expressive, which the camera loves. And he has a rack on him like no other man, I’ve ever seen! Again, that’s not true, just seeing if you’re still with me.

Well, we send Scott out to read some lines for Paul and we can Kevin Kirkpatrick back in and he nails another scene. Kirkpatrick just starts doing some improve at rehearsal that ended up in the movie, that’s how good he is.
Well, we send him out to study another scene with Paul's character with the intention of teaming Kirkpatrick and Rinker up together.
In walks Dave Hanson, and he reads for Paul character.
His delivery was so dry and funny that we knew he had to be in the movie. The “Reese”
Character had already been cast, however, a week before the shoot began, Dave Hanson stepped in and made the part his “own.” Like, Kirkpatrick, Hanson can do some amazing improve and the scene in the office is almost 100 percent improvised.

So at the audition, we paired Kevin Kirkpatrick and Scott Allen Rinker together in a scene and it clicked, these guys easily passed as two life long friends.

Kevin Sherwood has suffered twenty long years with me attempting to make a real movie., We started out in 1987 with a video movie called "Lance Amater: The story of a legend” It was about the perfect high school student from Bishop Amat and it was a great learning experience. That’s basically where the friendship with Merritt Hemenway was forged; he was the principal and was fully supportive of the entire project.
Kevin and I worked again on a video movie called “The Art of Crime” and it aired a lot on KELM, CABLE 3 in El Monte. Both those movies came in under forty minutes and took years to complete. However, it was an incredible learning experience that I never got from film school.

So, 2005 was the redemption year for Kevin Sherwood, we did two 35mm projects together in a three month span. The first was a two minute live-action military short for the video game Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. Go to http://www.wackypuppy.com/robertoblasini/reel.html and click on the first video on the second row to see the trailer. We got to work with the crew from the movie “Jarhead” and we shot the whole thing in one day, 33 set-ups. It was the single greatest workday of my life.
And after that we got “Gamers” together and I just made sure Kevin Sherwood’s character had great lines and he basically took it from there by adding some amazing lyrics to the “Wake up Dick” song and doing a lot of improvisation that worked well for his character. I’ve never been prouder of the boy, he’s super funny in this movie.

Last but not least we picked Joe Nieves to play “Fernando.” He blew the rest of the people out-of-the-water who auditioned for that role. It’s just got funnier, because, when you look at Joe, he’s all jock and the guy did a fantastic job with his character. Of all the actors, it wasn’t until I was in the editing room, did I really appreciate or get the subtle changes he made to enhance the Fernando character.

So there you have it, the chosen “Five”, we wouldn’t have a movie without them. If you’re an agent reading this blog, first-off you have fine taste, second-off Dave Hanson and Kevin Sherwood need some representing! And a message to Kirkpatrick and Rinker’s agents, get off "your asses" and get those boys some work! And I think Joe's agent should get him some more film work!

So that is the story of the "Four Horsemen, plus one", soon you'll be able to own your own copy and I promise this blog will go away!

By the way thank you Henry for the visit, I’ve never met a person who could drink a tall mocha with three shots of expresso and still fall asleep, that was impressive!