Articles/News: Local filmmaker turns heads in Hollywood
Posted by Ms.J on Monday, 05 December 2005 (22:50:35) PST
Contributed by Ms.J
Tuesday, December 6, 2005 (seattlepi)
Working on a shoestring budget but armed to the teeth with vision and grit, local filmmaker turns heads in Hollywood
By KRISTIN DIZON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Like many an independent director, Sam Akina hopes his low-budget movie, "Bullets, Blood and a Fistful of Ca$h," will take him to Hollywood.
More than many, he's got a good shot.
"Bullets" is a bloody vendetta film that makes the movies of Quentin Tarantino look almost pacifistic. Shot in the area with an all-local cast and crew for about the same price as an average new car -- $25,000 -- it's also a showcase for how much can be done for so little money.
The making of the movie could have been called "Vision, sweat and a whole lot of chutzpah." Akina and two co-producers borrowed shiny Cadillacs from a dealer, made plastic Uzis look like real guns and rented camera equipment at unheard of rates.
Akina, 27, is trying to take a play from Robert Rodriguez ("Spy Kids"), whose creative, low-budget film "El Mariachi," earned theatrical release and a multipicture deal for its maker.
Anybody armed with a camera and an imagination can be a filmmaker, but few complete unknowns could pack the 750-seat Neptune Theatre for a premiere, as "Bullets" did last month.
Stretch Hummer limos pulled to the curb. People arrived in gangster outfits, snakeskin boots, a top hat and tails, as photographers and videographers captured the scene -- a far cry from most screenings of local, indie, low-budget films.
In the audience, Fred Caruso, producer of films including "Blue Velvet" and "Bonfire of the Vanities," and production manager of "The Godfather," pronounced the movie "brilliant." Caruso had flown to Seattle on his own dime after seeing a trailer of the film.
"I wouldn't have missed this for the world," Caruso said. "This is sensational."
He said Akina and two of his producing partners have "huge potential." "I want to distribute this movie and represent these guys," he said.
Akina grew up in a Navy family with ever-shifting roots in Maryland, Virginia, Texas, Ohio and Scotland. At 16, the movie-loving high school dropout left his family and moved to Iowa with friends, with whom he'd make kung fu movies for fun.
In 2000, he moved here and enrolled in Seattle Central Community College's film and video program. While there, he made a short, noir film about organ harvesting with a twist of betrayal called "Get the ****in' money," with two local actors, Roy Stanton and Jerry Lloyd.
Akina wanted to make a full-length feature using the two actors, but started with a script called "Attack of the Cocaine Disco Zombies." He decided to expand it, and, in three weeks, it morphed into "Bullets."
"Bullets" is the story of Ca$h, a square-jawed, just-released convict with a Schwarzenegger build and a monotone bass voice. Ca$h sets out to avenge the betrayal that put him in jail. In the midst of his killing spree, mishaps and power struggles unfold between four gangs in a dark underworld.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Bullets, Blood and a Fistful of Ca$h
SCREENING: 7 p.m. Thursday
TICKETS: $9 at the box office
WHERE: Egyptian Theatre, 805 E. Pine St.
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Akina wrote the role of Ca$h for Thom Doty, whom he met while bartending at a golf course in Maple Valley.
This guy is an action hero waiting to happen, Akina thought.
Akina wrote a 55-page business plan to accompany his script, which he tailored for a modest $150,000 budget. Then he spammed every production company in Hollywood.
Four companies responded, including one that offered him a $3 million budget to shoot in Romania. But they wanted a known lead actor, and Akina said no.
"I felt good that I sort of kept my integrity. But then, these folks dropped out and I didn't have any money."
With no money of his own, Akina turned to friends and acquaintances who'd said they'd invest when the time came. After nine months of hustling and pitching, he had nothing to show but a roller-coaster ride of hope followed by disappointment. "I was a week away from moving to Iowa," he said.
Stage left: Enter Vu Le.
Through a mutual friend, Akina met the Vietnamese refugee with a passion for filmmaking. A fan of the gangster genre, Le was blown away when he saw Akina's short. A fast-talking, one-man hype machine who doesn't like no for an answer, Le told people, "This is Tarantino when Tarantino was nobody."
After pitches for money to his own contacts failed, Le offered Akina his life savings: $25,000 he'd earned working 16-hour days in juvenile corrections at the Snohomish County Court. He deferred his dream of going to film school to help Akina.
And, action.
Last fall, cameras rolled for eight weeks at 32 locations, including warehouses, bars, a bank and a convenience store in Seattle, Everett, Marysville and Roslyn. The film includes recognizable snippets of Interstate 5, the Space Needle and the International District.
The movie's 90 actors all worked on the hope of deferred payment, as did the crew of 30 or so, almost all of whom are film students in their 20s.
Producer Joy Saez, who met Akina as a fellow film student, wore many hats, including set design and logistics. She got Christien Tinsley, a childhood friend from Auburn, and one of the main makeup artists on "The Passion of the Christ," to send an intern. She made sure everyone on the set was fed, sometimes with spaghetti she cooked.
There was plenty of guerrilla filmmaking. When one woman turned them down to use her mansion for a scene, they shot exteriors of her house from the street. They borrowed friends' apartments for scenes, got loaner clothes and props from Value Village, and used a wheelchair for an intricate camera sequence.
Through trial and error and a few dud batches, they made their own squibs -- the effects that look like a bullet tearing through flesh -- using condoms, fake blood and gunpowder with an igniter.
"We made action scenes for $350 when they're often made for a minimum of $100,000," Akina said.
Akina, Le and Saez worked on four to five hours of sleep a night for several months, crashing at Akina Films headquarters, a low-rent studio apartment with a beat-up couch for a bed, and empty cans of Coke and cigarette butts everywhere.
Akina made mistakes along the way. So the film's lead, Doty, gave him another $25,000 to reshoot and finish it. Akina's mom chipped in $6,000.
When another actor balked at reshooting, he met with Akina. "He said, 'The apartment doesn't smell good and you don't look like you've bathed and there's garbage everywhere,' " Akina recounted. But the mess persuaded him of Akina's dedication and he came back.
Akina edited the movie on an Apple computer and laid down all of the sound effects, which he was working on until just 45 minutes before the premiere.
Targeted at 18- to 34-year-old men, the final product isn't for everyone. People get blown away constantly (60 characters die in the film) -- most by guns -- but there is also death by head-butting, knife throwing, hammering, beheading, cocaine and more.
Sometimes the gore is absurd. Akina says that's intentional. "To me, the actual killing is pretty cheesy," he said. It's meant to be "cartoonish and over the top."
"To me, it's not just a gangster movie. It's as much a comedy as it is an action story, and a graphic novel," Akina said.
"It's a scenario that could never happen in real life," he added. "Everybody in this world is bad, and everyone dies."
Akina doesn't see himself as an action director, and said he's not fascinated by guns. "I hate guns. I don't want to shoot guns. I don't want to touch guns," he said. "It's different -- it's movie guns. I don't want to blow someone's head off."
He'd like to do a movie with the Ca$h character on a big budget, but he also wants to make a sci-fi fantasy that he's written.
Akina, Le and Saez have no idea what their future holds, but they want to create an entertainment company together.
They've signed a deal with Caruso to represent "Bullets," and hope the movie skips the straight-to-video route and gets a distribution deal that could include an opening in 2,000 theaters, 500 more than Rodriguez got.
"If it wasn't my project, and I didn't know anybody who worked on it, I would want to know who did it, especially on 50 grand," Akina says.
Right now, he waits to see if Hollywood will want to know that, too.
"Bullets, Blood and a Fistful of Ca$h" screens Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre, 805 E. Pine St. Tickets are $9 at the box office.
P-I reporter Kristin Dizon can be reached at 206-448-8118 or kristindizon@seattlepi.com.
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