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Nebraskan lives his cinema dream: Darren Brandl produces “The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez” starring Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine
Another Nebraskan making good in the film biz came to my attention recently, and the resulting short story that follows is what I hope will be the start of a string of stories covering his career. Darren Brandl is the young man’s name, and he’s the producer of a recently wrapped indie feature, The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez, starring Ernest Borgnine. For a 26-year-old to pull this off is impressive. The writer-director friend of Brandl’s behind the film, Elia Petridis, isn’t much older and is another name to watch.
Nebraskan lives his cinema dream: Darren Brandl produces “The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez” Ssarring Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine
©by Leo Adam Biga
As published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
A small town Nebraska son who cut his teeth on the movies is living his cinema dream producing an independent feature starring Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine in the title role of The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez.
The film, whose L.A, shoot wrapped the end of July, is produced by Madison, Neb. native Darren Brandl, 26. Elia Petridis, is the writer-director. Although their first feature, both are industry veterans.
Brandl grew up in the movie video store his parents operated. At 8 he began making short films with friends. He studied film at Cal-State Northridge.
“I kind of fell in love with the medium and the storytelling side of things,” he says.
He worked the acquisitions side of the industry, first for the Hirsch Company and then for producer Lance Hool. In between he backpacked around the world, All the while he bided his time to produce. Then Petridis showed him the script for The Man. The pseudo-Western is set in a nursing home, where Borgnine’s character, Rex Page, is a disenchanted resident alienated from the Latino staff until they discover he once shook the hand of Mexican actor-singer idol Vicente Fernandez.
Vicente Fernandez
“I read hundreds of scripts a year and less than one percent are interesting to me, and this is that one percent,” says Brandl. “It was clear this is exactly the sort of movie I was looking for. It’s a human story that has a lot of heart to it.
“It really has it’s own voice, it’s own tone, it’s own pace and it’s by a really good friend of mine who I trusted as a director and wanted to go on this journey with.”
Getting Borgnine was “the golden egg,” says Brandl. “The instinct was always to find a star. and he responded strongly to the material. After seeing a first cut I would say there was nobody else who could have done a better job than Ernie. It really is his movie and he really holds it the way a movie star should…”
Brandl admires the 94-year-old actor.
“He’s got quite a lust and zest for life. He doesn’t need to be working but he does it because he loves it. On set he refused a stand-in. He set a tone for the work ethnic on the production. He’s quite a guy.”
Brandl’s confident the project will be well-received.
“Especially as a first time producer you want to make something that really is going to speak for the rest of your career.”
Related articles
- Ernest Borgnine Honored with 2010 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award (prweb.com)
- 2 reviews of Dirty Dozen, The (1967) (rateitall.com)
The Film Dude, Nik Fackler, goes his own way again, this time to Nepal and Gabon
The Film Dude, Nik Fackler, goes his own way again, this time to Nepal and Gabon to shoot psychotropic documentaries about a young buddha and the Bwiti Culture’s Iboga initiation
©by Leo Adam Biga
As published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Fresh off the warm reception to his debut feature, Lovely, Still, Omaha‘s Film Dude, Nik Fackler, is unexpectedly making his next two film projects documentaries.
Following the path of cinema adventurer Werner Herzog, Fackler’s tramping off to shoot one film in Nepal and the other in Gabon, Africa, drawn to each exotic locale by his magnificent obsession with indigenous cultures and ways.
Fackler, Lovely producer Dana Altman and two other crew left August 11 for Gabon in west central Africa. They plan living weeks with the shamanistic Mitsogo, whose practice of Bwiti involves ingesting the hallucinogenic iboga root. The mind-altering initiation ritual is about healing.
“Part of it is you’ve got to prove yourself to the tribe,” says Fackler. “They don’t just give it to anybody, especially Westerners.”
The extreme project is based in a fascination with and use of ancient, underground medicines and practices.
“I have a great interest in dreams and a great interest in psychedelic experience. I’ve had a lot of healing I’ve gone through using silicide mushrooms,” says Fackler.
A heroin addict friend is along for this exploration.
A quest for spiritual enlightenment brought Fackler and Lovely DP Sean Kirby to Nepal in May to film the end of a six-year fasting and meditative regimen by Dharma Sangha. The filmmakers followed Boy Buddha’s exodus, with tens of thousands of followers gathered, and plan returning in the fall.
Fackler is tackling the unlikely projects while awaiting financing for his next two narrative features: an untitled puppet film with illustrator Tony Millionaire; and a phantasmagorical mythology pic called We the Living.
The docs square nicely with Fackler’s eclectic interests in alternative therapies and philosophies.
Dharma Sangha
“I’m always searching. There’s so many beautiful cultures out there. I have to explore and learn as much as I possibly can. I have to go out there to discover them, document them, before they disappear into the weird one-world culture we’re heading towards.”
Mere days before leaving for Africa he still wasn’t sure the Bwiti cultists were on board, but put his faith in miracles.
“I suppose I’m in the mindset of looking at everything in a magical way rather than an intellectual way. That’s sort of where I need to be to make a film like this.”
Related articles
- Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (wornjournal.com)
- Gabon leader wants Obama to spotlight Africa (sfgate.com)
- New search for missing US trekker in Nepal (sfgate.com)
- Omowale Akintunde’s In-Your-Face Race Film for the New Millennium, ‘Wigger,’ Introduces America to a New Cinema Voice (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
- African Shamanism (raymondjclements.wordpress.com)
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