Johny Rock Versus the Bees

On Saturday my buddies Randy McNair, Will McAllister and I teamed up to shoot the preliminary film of our new organization, New Film Project (inspired by New Play Project). This film has been long anticipated by my friends for almost ten years, and production has been attempted several times. Now, we've finally produced the glorious action thriller, Johny Rock Versus the Bees (formerly known as Silvester Stallone Versus the Bees, which we had to change for obvious reasons).

For a long time we were stumped over where we were going to shoot it, as the entire movie took place in a pit, one that would take a very long time to dig. But the day before the shoot, Randy prayed for guidance, then drove around and found two awesome natural pits (each missing a fourth wall), which we used to fake a single pit. This was actually preferable, as it allowed us room to setup a crane and dolly, which would have been impossible in a pit as small as the film depicts.

I played Johny Rock. My inspiration was, of course, Silvester Stallone, whom I studied for several weeks, watching lots of his clips on Youtube and reading all of the articles on his website about his exercise and diet. I even got my brother to be my personal trainer, who drove around in a car and insulted me as we ran around the block, and he made me do ignomenious exercises like carry heavy jugs of orange juice as I ran through every aisle of Maceys. The day before the shoot, I did over five-hundred pushups, as I had no access to actual weights; but that's okay, because it was similar to Rocky's greatest training sequence in Rocky 4.

The shoot began early and ended late. The whole day was windy and cold, and standing around in a thin tank top, covered in vegetable oil (for the sweaty effect) and mud, I could never put on a coat and so was always miserable. I had to beat up myself pretty bad for some of the shots. We wrapped just as dusk turned to night, not a moment too soon, and the day was a huge success. I'm excited to see how the footage turns out.

Be excited for this film. With a stellar musical number, an exploding grenade and hundreds of angry bees, the will be an epic you won't want to miss.