Vincent Ventresca Co-Stars in “Break Point” and Talks “Invisible Man,” and a Dragon Con I-Man Panel This Weekend

Vincent Ventresca’s latest movie Break Point is out in theaters this weekend. Vince has a small role in it as Gary, the douchebag hair model boyfriend of Amy Smart’s character, Heather.

Hmm…I seem to remember Darien Fawkes from The Invisible Man also doing some hair modeling in his past.

Break Point stars Jeremy Sisto and David Walton.  It’s about two estranged brothers who reunite to make a run at a major tennis tournament. Here’s the trailer for the film.

In this scene, Gary meets David Walton’s character, Darren.

In this interview, Vince talks about the director, the writer, and the relationship between Gary and Heather.

Here’s some behind-the-scenes footage from the film.  Look closely and you’ll see Vince in a couple of scenes.

 

Break Point is getting a limited release this weekend in these cities.  It’s also available on VOD at iTunes and Amazon.

Rama’s Screen recently did an interview with Vincent, which you can read here.  I really love this interview.  Rama starts out revealing that he is an Invisible Man fan and that makes the whole interview even more fun, especially when he comments on the shirtless scene.  Vince gives all you VVSB’rs a shout out when he mentions the Vincent Ventresca Shirtless Brigade!

Vincent Ventresca shirtless in "Break Point"

Vincent Ventresca shirtless in “Break Point.”

But the best part of Rama’s interview was by far when he asked Vince if The Invisible Man could come back. Vince replies saying that he’s been talking about it with Matt Greenberg, the series’ creator.  He doesn’t really give us much information in the interview, but Mike McCafferty has hinted that something might be going on.

Although they are being tight lipped about it, the fact that, at the very least, discussions are taking place, makes the fan girl in me squee with delight.  As some of you may know, years ago I had an entertainment lawyer approach Universal so that we could start a dialog about the rights to The Invisible Man.  I got turned down flat.

My thoughts since have been that if The Invisible Man is to have any chance of coming back, it would most likely happen if the people involved in the making of the original series worked to make it happen.  And even for them, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome.  When it comes to the movie and TV world, getting anything made is hard.  Real hard.

But the fact that there is actually some kind of effort being put toward that goal is so freaking awesome.  How cool would it be to get the cast back in both The Invisible Man and my movie too?  To my knowledge, I don’t think anything like that has ever been done before.

In the interview, Vince mentions his hope for finding a bigger audience.  And that’s going to be vital to its success.  We already have a small loyal audience for the show, but it needs to grow.  With such a huge quantity of media clamoring for the audience’s attention nowadays, it’s hard to stand out and get noticed.  So, from a strategic point of view, getting both the show and a fan-produced movie made could be enough of a tipping point to get us known to the wider audience.

I know I’ll keep working on my end to help make that happen.

I-Man at Dragon Con

Lastly, but by no means least, in commemoration of the show’s 15th anniversary, there is fan-run Invisible Man panel happening this weekend at Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia!

The panel takes place tomorrow evening at 7:00 p.m. in the Marriott hotel, room M303-M304.

If you’re attending Dragon Con this weekend, be sure not to miss it!

“The Invisible Man” Gets its Own Chapter

A couple of years ago I was approached by author/journalist Mark Phillips who, along with his writing partner Frank Garcia, was writing the second in a series of books on science fiction TV series.  Their first book, Science Fiction Television Series, was published in 2006 and covered TV series from 1959 to 1989.  Their second book was to cover series from 1990 to 2004.  So guess which series that we all know and love fits into that date range?  Yep, The Invisible Man.

When Mark approached me asking for help on an Invisible Man chapter that he was writing for the book, I was happy to help.  Hey, I’m a fan.  How could I resist?  So I provided information about the show and helped edit the chapter, as well as arranged interviews with Vince and Paul

Now, after all this time, the book has finally been published!  Mark did a really nice job with the chapter.  There are maybe one or two errors that crept into the chapter, but for the most part, it’s pretty accurate.

Mark starts out with a quote from writer Leslie Stevens who said, “Invisibility sucks.”  Leslie wasn’t referring to the power of invisibility but, instead, was complaining about the difficulty in creating a successful series about invisibility.  Is it any wonder?  Virtually every invisible man series created before our invisible man series has performed poorly.  But when you consider that film is a visual medium and invisibility is, well, invisible, you can begin to see the difficulties that filmmakers have making invisibility work.

This makes me appreciate the brilliance of Matt Greenberg even more.  Not only did he not skimp on the invisibility aspects, but he created a way to do invisibility that we hadn’t seen before, what with the gland and Quicksilver.  However, he wisely didn’t put the focus on the invisibility.  Instead, he created fun, flawed, and fascinating characters that we could fall in love with and care about.  In fact, it was the “show’s emphasis on characterization” that attracted Vince to the part of Darien.

Mark writes about several of the episodes such as the pilot (good choice), “Catevari,” and “Legends.”  In hindsight, I probably should have suggested that he include something about a few of the stronger episodes.  I would have liked to have seen something in the chapter about “Flowers for Hobbes,” “Brother’s Keeper,” or “The Other Invisible Man.”

sftv-book-cover-1990-2004-209x300

Subjects Mark writes about in the chapter include the casting process, the chemistry between Vince and Paul, the visual effects, the addition of agent Alex Monroe, and the cancellation.  There’s some interesting stuff there that you may or may not know about.

The book is definitely a must have for I-Man fans, as well as lovers of science fiction TV shows.  You can purchase a copy for yourself by clicking on the link below.  That will take you to a website filled with all kinds of information about both books as well as ordering info.  (I bought my copy from Amazon.) 

Note:  I’m not making any money plugging this book.  My only rewards have been being able to help with promoting I-Man to more people and getting a very nice acknowledgment in the Acknowledgments section of the book.

 Science Fiction Television Series

1408

I said that I’d play catch up on the news when I got back from the con, so here’s an item that is about three weeks overdue.  Yikes! 

1408,a horror film written by Matt Greenberg, as well as Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, has been out at theatres for a few weeks now.  I believe it’s still playing in some theatres.  So if you want to see this film, there may still be time, but do check your local listings to be sure. 

Official 1408 Website

A picture of Matt Greenberg attending the world premiere of 1408 can be found here.

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In related news, the following article, partially quoted from the Los Angeles Times, gives a interesting tale about the writing and rewriting process for this film as well as some insight about screenwriting protocol in Hollywood.

It was somewhere around the time that he was in his backyard grilling ribs for Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (“Man on the Moon”) and their families that Matt Greenberg (“Reign of Fire”) realized he had a unique screenwriting circumstance on his hands. Given that Alexander and Karaszewski had replaced him as the writers of the horror film “1408,” a friendly barbecue would have seemed unlikely.

As with most screenwriters, all three had been hired for development rewrites before and been rewritten themselves, but none could remember ever becoming so friendly with their ostensible collaborator — at least not during the active rewrite process. But here they were communing over Stephen King and some baby backs.

It’s actually supposed to be part of the screenwriters code — tacitly encouraged by the Writers Guild — that when a writer is hired to rewrite someone’s screenplay, he should throw a courtesy call to the previous writer (that is, when it’s not a pile-on with 22 writers, like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” or “Stuart Little,” in which case most of the involved parties would be happy that you forgot to call them).

Then there are the true horror stories of when writers are set up to make the call that inadvertently informs the previous writer that he or she is in fact the previous writer.

Greenberg worked on the screenplay, an adaptation of a 20-page King short story about a man terrorized in a spooky hotel room, for a year at Dimension. But after the project lay quiet for a while, the producers told him they were bringing on Alexander and Karaszewski.

The writers dutifully called Greenberg to get his blessing, and although both parties admit to a natural tension, Greenberg, who counts Alexander and Karaszewski’s “Ed Wood” as one of his favorite movies, ultimately felt reassured by their ideas and subsequent drafts. (It also made a difference that this was not an original screenplay.)

“These guys really were doing the heavy lifting during production,” says Greenberg, who met with them fairly regularly. “I tried to keep my own ego in check and just recognize that, ‘Look, at this point I’m an informal consultant.’ ” They all eventually agreed over a handshake to a shared screenplay credit, which allowed them to bypass a dreaded guild arbitration hearing. In this rare case, their civility won out over a system designed to provoke competition.

“It was really nice that a good relationship came out of it,” Alexander says. “We were all on the same page.” “1408’s” due June 22.

Okay, more about the writing of 1408.  What can I say?  I find the whole screenwriting process absolutely fascinating.  So here’s a podcast by Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith of Creative Screenwriting Magazine.  In it he interviews co-writer Matt Greenberg and the co-writing team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.  Warning:  This podcast is almost an hour long and it contains spoilers for the movie.

Listen to Podcast