"I've been in love with movies since I was six, when I scared myself witless
watching "Jason and the Argonauts". Since that moment, all I wanted to do was make movies.
I was lucky enough to grow up without television. My father was a
career Army Officer, and we were stationed in Europe with no American TV. But the Army showed about 5 movies a week,
and I even snuck into the R-rated ones.
When I was sixteen, I "borrowed" my father's Super-8 film camera, dressed
up my buddies in home-made costumes, and made my first "feature", a slapstick kung-fu movie that predated Jackie Chan by several
years. We showed it during lunch, charged fifty cents, and turned a profit.
In college, I chose to save the world through broadcast news
journalism, and instead spent almost 20 years producing television commercials, corporate videos, and documentaries.
In the mid-90s I saw Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez get into Hollywood with their low-budget 16mm comedies, and I decided
to take the plunge.
Armed with some inherited money and the dumbest title I could think of__"Cheerleader
Ninjas"__ I set out to make my film. It was one of the most humbling, humiliating, horrifying experience of my life
since puberty. After the brutality of the shoot, it took me five years of editing, re-shooting and re-editing before
I was finally able to get a sales rep who could make the deal. And it was a good one: Lion's Gate for American audiences,
and Vivamorem for International distribution.
It has only taken 27 years after my first film to finally get my foot in
the door of the Hollywood machine. The best part is: the people on the inside are just as dorky as I am.
I shouldn't have waited so long."
