Saturday, October 8, 2005Story of meeting Kelly LeBrockI remember Michelle the casting director got John Heard first casts for Gamers and that gave us like instant credibility with all the other agents. We were no longer, quirky film with quirky people you never heard of making it. Well, we went to real actor joins quirky film with quirky people you still never ever heard of. John was so cool, the day he took the part he called Michelle up and didn't even say hi, he just started quoting the script to her like "I'm just watching a little TV porn with your mom!" If my own mother were still alive today the pride she would have in me for this movie. She would of moved to a different country for the language alone. So, when Michelle asked us who would be our dream actress to play Angela's mom, we of course said Kelly LeBrock. Well, Kelly was a smart one, unlike John Heard who said yes right away. Kelly wanted to meet with me at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the bar there. I was like really? Why me? Oh yeah, it's my movie. I remember I showed up in a shirt that a hole in it, and I spent like 40 minutes driving around trying to get a new shirt and I said fuck it. So I walk in the hotel and I'm early. Like 40 minutes early. Now, I've never met a real actor or actresses at that point in my life. I was born in Pasadena and raised in El Monte and I didn't spend any time in Hollywood. I once was at a Springsteen concert and I said hey look its Kevin Costner as he walked by. He stopped and looked at me and then went on his way. And once at the Calabasas Coco’s I saw Potsie from Happy Days and by the way I asked the waitress and he sucks at tipping. In fact, he got his haircut at the Supercuts in Calabasas also, and the hair stylist confirmed to me that he did indeed suck at tipping. I being a man of no fame took it upon myself to over tip for Anson on both occasions. If I ever see him again, he owes me like eight bucks. So, I hung out at the bathroom at the Beverly Hills hotel, which is fucking sweet. The stalls are like suites in there and real towels. Hell, I got a thing for clean bathrooms. I got a call from Michelle our casting director and she told me Beverly was all in. She and John did their first movie together and she loves the man. Who doesn't? So finally, it's like 8 minutes until meeting time and I walk over to the restaurant/bar and look at the host. He looks at me like who is the fucking tourist and I say I have a meeting with Kelly LeBrock. God damn, if two staff people didn't come and music from the heaven started to play and they took whisked me outside to the private patio where only the stars get to hang. I saw Cheri O'Teri from SNL at a table across from me and they got this guy playing guitar and singing some James Taylor. Hell, the guy could have been James Taylor. The service was amazing, and about five minutes later in walks Kelly LeBrock. Amazing woman with very stunning eyes. I'm talking the kind of eyes that could pierce your soul and she was so positive and supportive. Because, I kept saying words like "I hope the movie does well", and she like "it's going to make you rich for your family." Hell, it's kind of a nice thing having a super model that hasn't seen your work you did with a jib at The Home Depot believe in you. Kelly took time off to raise her family and she was talking about how she got chased by a bull on the farm and all this outdoors stuff that sounded like very hard work to me. She's so funny and makes perfect eye contact. The first thing she said was that she blinked and almost missed her part in the film and then she came up with the orgasm line and said go ahead and expand her role. And my God the mouth on that woman’s, she can swear! It's so cool! We talked a lot about family and at that time my wife and I were expecting twins. It was one of the best highlights of the entire project for me. I owe that woman a great deal. I left feeling all good and like I was somebody special. And then it took me 40 minutes to find my way out of the Beverly Hills hotel and I was back to second guessing myself to do this project since I can't even fucking navigate myself out of a large pink hotel. posted @ 04:43 PM PDT [link] [Karma: 0 (+/-)] Friday, October 7, 2005Actors and Agents who turned down rolesMy favorite story of an agent who turned down a role in Gamers is Gary Coleman's agent. The guy took forever to get back to us and then said it "wasn't the right material for Gary." Mind you, I kind of screwed up, the part was for the character of the little person and being oh so creative I called the character Little person, even after we submitted the lines to Gary's agent. By the way, I didn't bother naming any characters anything special. Hell John Heard plays Gordon's dad. Beverly is Gordon's mom. And Kelly is Angela's mom. And then William Katt is Reese's boss. Isn't that creative? I blame the fact on that I was saving up all the good names for my twin boys. Tu-Pac and Biggie. That's a joke, about their names. Okay, back to Gary's agent who said it wasn't the right material. The right material? Jesus Christ! This is after the God's of Cinema blessed us with getting real actors like John Heard, Beverly D'Angelo, William Katt, and Kelly LeBrock to appear in a God Damn Ultra Low Budget Indie film! I had to throw away my boot leg VHS copy of the Kid with the 200 I.Q. after that one. Here's another story, I'm sure Michelle the casting director will love me for this. I kind of doubt she reads the blog here, so this will be a test. I was a huge fan of Jay Mohr's show called Action. Super fan of the show, it should of found a home on HBO and stayed there. Needless to say there were two people from the show Action I wanted to cast. One was for a lead and the other was anything. One of the guy's agent was such a prick that he told us "His actor wasn't interested in a project where the camera rental house was going to get paid more than the talent. Ha,Ha! We got the gear for free buddy! The other actor's agent put us off for a month, and the day after we casted the part, the guy calls and says "We'll do it." And we said no. If we get into a film festival, one that isn't like The El Monte Film Festival, my home town which I would hope would let me win. I swear I may drunk call all these frickin actors and go hey buddy, how was the part on that Disney Dog movie that's been re-done every seven years? And don't even get me started on the wonderful folks at The Wizards of the Coast. I got a tattoo of a phoenix on my arm back in 1997. It was from the Fiend Folio. I changed the face a bit to make it look less gay. I used an Eagles face. I felt a connection with D&D and Gary Gygax, even though my true reason for getting the tat, was because I was working for Home Depot Television and I got the tat to promise myself that someday I would do a movie. I was a little tired of getting my ass chewed out at HDTV for being the only guy using a jib to get nice footage from the stores. So, hell I was all about fate and destiny. Shit, watching Empire Strikes Back will do that to you. I thought I was a lock for getting permission to use the Dungeons and Dragons name. We were so close, however, they pulled it. They got a partnership with somebody big to a do movie about a group of guys who play D&D in a hobby shop. I still have no idea what or who is part of that film, but, christ if that didn't happen the same week our script got out to the web for rehearsals. Strange timing. So that's why we had to call the game Demon, Nymphs and Dragons. And we tried like hell to get Gary's blessings and came real close. So we ended up dressing ROBERTO BLASINI up as the Dungeon Lord. I was close to calling it A.D.D. However, Joe Nieves the actor who plays Fernando brought up a good point about the name Demons, Nymphs, and Dragons. So I hope this blog didn't suck. Thanks for reading it. posted @ 11:10 PM PDT [link] [Karma: 3 (+/-)] Update to fans for Cast, Friends, and Crew Party The big cast, friends, and crew party is coming up on October 15th in Calabasas Hills, CA. Starts at 6PM with the film being shown for the first only time before it gets into a film festival. We now have only 10 seats left to fill, and are expecting over 300 people to attend. Email us on the sight if you would like to attend. So far only 11 people have seen the movie. I'll be tweaking it a little bit more before next Saturday, changing some music and adding all the scenes we cut out to show during the credits. The goal is to get some nice buzz, get into a festival and then find the right distributor and hopefully get to do this again real soon. So thank you again for checking out the web site and the blog! My next article I'll tell the story of how Gary Coleman turned down a role in the movie. posted @ 09:44 PM PDT [link] [Karma: -2 (+/-)] Thursday, October 6, 2005Gamers and the film festivalsWe have submitted the film to Sundance and we will of course enter Slamdance, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, L.A. Independent, Seattle, TriBeCa, Montreal, Venice, Toronto, Aspen, and without a doubt the Newbury Park CA film festival where we just got to win! You watch if we start up a Newbury Park Film festival some high-school kid doing a documentary on how the city has the quietist McDonalds will win. If you haven't been to Newbury Park, CA due to a city ordinance no loud speaker are used. So you have to drive up to the window and whisper your order "A Big Mac with no Cheese". We have no connections over at any of the film festivals, and the closes we have ever been to Sundance is watching the TV show Entourage on HBO this year. When I worked for HDTV, that's right Home Depot Television I got to go Utah once to tape some Olympic athletes at a store helping to prevent Shrink! Yeah! And then the poor bastards all around the company on the west coast had to watch the show at a 5AM store meeting on a Sunday or better yet, the show would loop in the break room. During their breaks. God bless corporate America. posted @ 06:12 PM PDT [link] [Karma: 0 (+/-)] Thank you www.warcry.com and Shannon P. Drake First off, thank you for visiting the web site and man do we owe the folks at www.warcry.com a huge ovation. They placed us on their front page with a really nice review of the trailer. Thank you Shannon P. Drake and everyone at www.warcry.com Shannon, If we get into Cannes I will only wear a shirt with www.warcry.com on it. posted @ 05:51 PM PDT [link] [Karma: -1 (+/-)] Tuesday, October 4, 2005The ScreenplayThe Screenplay The script for Gamers came together fast. While were getting the telecine done for the Full Spectrum Warrior 10 Hammers trailer, I fell in love with film. My whole life has been video. Christ, I used to work in Public access and then for Home Depot Corporate video. I video taped merchants talking about wood, and did my best to make it look cool. I shot with the best camera operators in corporate America. Robin Krystal, the boy had gels, panty-hose, everything to junk video up to make it look like film. Nothing ever worked. Video sucks compared to film. I have video taped Kevin Sherwood in various videos over the last 20 years and he's a good looking guy. However, on 35mm he suddenly became a film star. Hell, I thought for sure that after E3 and this trailer, everybody would be asking us to do TV spots. After E3 it was lonely. No film projects ever came. The prospects were bad. However, the confidence level was really high! That was the time my wife was like, "you should go do a film now." I told Robert Blasini, the great Director of Photography, that I wanted to do it again. At first, I thought we should do a short and work our way up to a feature. I had a short story that I wanted to film since 1986. However, with my wife being pregnant with twin boys and my daughter now at the age of four and a half; I was like "shit, ain't never going to get another shot for a long time." My ass is going to be watching Blues Clues with lame Joe instead of cool Steve, and then the Wiggles. Then I'll be going to the Wiggle concerts and more Wiggle concerts. Maybe followed up by years of Power Rangers. So, I said, "what the hell? Why not make a featured film in like six days!" The script for gamers had to be done a rather quickly. My twins were due October 7th and our DP Roberto Blasini was scheduled to leave for most of August. In May, we decided to do the movie. We set a date of July 29th, 2005 as the start date. I had written a screen play back in 2000 about a group of friends playing D&D. The farthest I got was a table read with some friends and the hope to shoot it on Beta SP video. When I found out in 2000 that my wife was pregnant with my daughter, I put the script away. It wasn't the right time to change jobs, raise a daughter and take that risk to make a movie on beta sp. Well, in May 2005 I went back to look at the script and, wow it sucked. I liked the idea of four guys still playing an RPG game in their mid-thirties. However, the draft from 2000 kind of sucked. There were some good scenes, however, not a great story. So, being five years older I re-wrote nintey percent of the script and changed most of the characters. I sat in my living room from 9PM at night until 8AM in the morning for, like, a month and a half. I knew the characters, I based all of them on myself a little and the guys I use to play with. I used every damn thing I could of think of. Yes, I played Dungeons and Dragons and I loved it. I used to play (In El Monte, CA. My home town) with Barry Kunz, Peter Shane, Wolfgang Shane, Albert Sarabia and sometimes with a couple guys named Joe and Robert Velasco. I remember it was two guys always getting drunk and one guy, kind of a Nazi, as our DM. We had another guy who always sucked really bad. We would talk about spells, talk about girls, listen to bad heavy metal music, and end up peeing on the front lawn at 2:30am. All the time while a police helicopter made background noise in search of criminals. I kind of stopped in my late twenties. Okay, by the age of thirty. The game is great! I never was much of a drinker so D&D was my fun. However, I have never seen anyone do it justice. Even Freaks and Geeks kind of made it look lame. I never considered myself or the guys I played with Geeks. I was going to make sure that in my movie, the game was never made fun of, only the characters playing it. The re-write came fast. The thought of not making the deadline and having to look my children in the face when they got older and telling them to go for their dreams, without ever trying myself, really kicked in. The main problem with the old draft was that it tried too hard and we never saw the crap jobs that drove them to play DND for 50 hours a week. I also am a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Family Guy and I love the pacing, so more jokes and stuff having to tie together had to be in this draft. I started talking with Kevin and Fernando about what would be the worst jobs the characters could have that make it seem realisitc that they kept playing 23 years. And the more I talked with Fernando the more I decided it would be fun to have one character based loosely on him. Fernando always told me the story about how bad he sucked at soccer and it just struck a cord. posted @ 05:20 PM PDT [link] Monday, October 3, 2005How it all beganAPRIL 2005. Gamers the movie would not have been done or started if it wasn't for one glorious day in April. Gamers the movie, really started on the set of the shoot of Full Spectrum Warrior Ten Hammers. A one day 35mm film shoot for a video game trailer. The shoot date was April 18th, 2005. It was the first time Writer/Director Christopher Folino got to shoot on film. Robert Blasini was the Director of Photography. Kevin Sherwood was the lead. The entire THQ video department of Melissa Rivas and freelancers Kris Buccieri, Fernando Velloso, David Colacioppo, Paul Pieper, and Jennifer Stechman were involved in the entire production. It was an amazing experience, we did 33 set-ups in one day and blew stuff up. We were very proud of the production, and at that same time we were also producing over 50 videos that had to be done in a month and half for E3. Most of the videos included heavy animation. The cost of the production looks like a million dollars plus, however, we did it for a remarkable price. We were blessed to have part of the production team from Jarhead on our one day production. Special effects studs like Mario Vanillo, Doug, Lee, Steve Marmiker; weapons coordinator Robert "Rock" Galotti; Stunt Coordinator Jeff Habberstad; Sergeant Major James D. Dever; Vehicle guru David Wang; and Prop Specialist Drew Petrotta. Not only did the guys from Jarhead do a killer job, but, they gave us so many great ideas for camera angles, action, etc. I swear to God that it is still my favorite day of production ever. After E3 and shooting Full Spectrum (finally after 23 years) on film, a big old demon came off our shoulders and we said "Let's go make a movie of our own." Check out the Full Spectrum Warrior trailer here. Hell, It's like a child, I'm so proud of this work http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=1769 posted @ 12:06 PM PDT [link] |
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