Tybalt Be Trippen

In college at the University of Florida, I was in this club called Student Upstart Films, where we had the best intentions of making student films and sometimes actually succeeded in making them. It was a rewarding club because I made friends and collaborated creatively and blah blah blah.

Every summer the club would hold this project called Upstart Global where every participant would write a script, trade them to shoot, and then trade the footage to edit. When done correctly, it would be this great collaborative effort and we'd see how other people interpret our work. It's a great idea for a project... if everyone follows through. They did not.

I was given a script from a former Upstart member who was living in California. The catch? It was written by one of her students. And it was a modernization of Romeo & Juliet. Hoo boy. I had written a half-baked post-apocalyptic love story that read like someone watched a few too many Wong Kar-Wai films and in return I got the inane writing of the 9th grader.

I did not despair, though. Okay, I despaired a little and then realized that I should shoot the thing as straight as I could and it would be the funniest thing I've ever done. It was indeed the funniest thing I've ever done, and the most effort I ever put in one of my movies.

Eventually, I handed over to my friend Natalie Andres to cut (after the person who I was assigned to give it to backed out on the effort), and the cut was done in 24 hours with Pixies songs as music cues -- a hurried thing to prepare for the public screening. Yeah, they showed it in public. Considering the work I did for it, I had to do my own cut.

Rewatching it today, I cringe at some of my technical faux pas, but a lot of the comedy makes up for it. At least, I think so.

Now I take a some time to praise the actors:

Particularly, I'm a fan of Adam Bowers' performance as Romeo, who for some reason I decided should look like Fabio.

Valerie Jones, one of the better actresses at UF, takes it as seriously as possible, and it's even funnier for that.

Bob O'Linn plays Tybalt. He's not a regular player in our collective work, and it's a shame he never came back for anything else, because he's really good, especially because of his accent, which evolves from hood to redneck in the span of a couple of scenes. It's beautiful.

Rafael Gaitan does his best/worst Tony Montana impression to play Juliet's Dad. Poor Asia Johnson has to contend with that kind of powerhouse performance, and she's pretty successful.

We can never forget Shaun Spalding as Mario, whose hilarious sprint away from danger might be the bit of footage I rewatched the most times.

Then there's my good friend Kevin McMurtrey, who splits his acting prowess in two to play two characters because I couldn't secure an actress to play Romeo's Mom.

For some reason I had the incomparable Chris Heck in a thankless role as Romeo's Dad, which is a shame, as that kid's got star power. It's okay, though: I made an entire short about trying to kill him, so I repaid the debt. In blood.

That guy who plays the English bobby really sucks, though. So does that Narrator.

Right. So here's Tybalt Be Trippen. Enjoy, despite the poor video quality (YOU SCREWED ME AGAIN GOOGLE VIDEO):