The Joker Chronicles - First Blood - redux

The first time Richard handled a motion picture camera was the last year of high school. As he climbed onto the roof of an apartment building looking for a vantage point (for a city panning shot) he failed to notice that the stairwell door had shut and locked behind him. It was 6 pm, he was 21 stories up and no one knew he was there. After 10 minutes of feebly trying to find a way down, he leaned over the edge and peeked onto a balcony where he calmly asked an elderly man sun bathing if he could help him out. 10 minutes later sirens approached. An Ambulance, police cruisers and a fire truck pulled up to the front of the building. Apparently thinking that he was a “jumper” he had cost the borough of Scarborough $5000.00 that day.
In 1984 he applied to the YORK UNIVERSITY film program. As part of his entrance portfolio he set out to make an ambitious 20 min. 16mm film. It turned into a major disaster filled weekend and the 20 min. epic ended up being a 1 min. trailer. Afterwards he convinced a few friends to help him take some dramatic photographs for his portfolio. Sunday 12:30 am. They gathered in a downtown Toronto alley and began setting up a classic “drug-deal-gone –wrong” scenario. This consisted of one man lying dead on the ground, another on his knees with a gun to his head with a third (Ken) holding the weapon, all silhouetted against the high beam headlights of a vehicle. As he directed his friends, an elderly couple passed by the alley entrance. Richard happily waved to them and flashed his 35mm Nikon. “Just taking pictures”. A few minutes later they were quickly surrounded by 12 officers with weapons drawn and 3 ambulances in tow. All would have been easily explained except Ken was rather intoxicated and refused to comply with the officer’s request to drop the weapon and instead was waving it around stating it was only plastic. This verbal fencing continued for a full minute until Richard had to join in and loudly requested that he comply. The Police untimely took pity on them and let them off with a warning. Ken later relayed this story to his brother, also a Police constable, and was swiftly told that if that incident had happened in his area, he would have been shot within seconds of not complying.
A year later Richard entertained the idea of enrolling into the AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE but unfortunately the astronomical cost of tuition/living expenses was above and beyond his means. From that he decided to educate himself by watching films repeatedly, reading textbooks and taking film classes. Richard begun production on a bare-bones 30 minute B&W road film entitled “TARMAC”, $13,000.00 of his own money and 20 months of his life shooting/editing on weekends. It was an exhausting endeavour but it was a great learning experience. At this same time he began to write original screenplays.
On the strength of the finished “TARMAC” Richard obtained a $20,000 Government grant to film a 2nd short.
In 1993 he was commissioned to write a feature length screenplay, “THE FINAL GOAL”, which was independently produced and has done well in South America where soccer is a sacred religion. Richard pumped out the 1st draft in a crazy 14 day period.
In 1994 he set out to produce a recent spec screenplay “DARK UNDERCURRENTS “ and with the help of friends he spent 3 days shooting 2 scenes from the script as a demo reel.
In July 1998 Richard quit his job and enrolled into the INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN to learn digital video editing on the Avid system and worked in a small company editing corporate videos for 4 years.
Richard then spent 17 months shooting a short film entitled “THE ACE” virtually by himself and ended up winning a platinum award at the 2002 HOUSTON FILM FESTIVAL. A re-cut version of that film with newly replaced B&W stock footage with CG effects.
That same year he flew to London to meet with the author of a bestselling book entitled “NAZI GOLD – THE GREAT REICHSBANK ROBBERY” which he had turned into a 120 page documentary script which is still in the funding stages.
In the last few years Richard has written a half dozen screenplays and is currently developing a low budget feature black comedy, SMALL TOWN…Whatever! set to film late 2016. THE CUBAN SHUFFLE is scheduled to follow that completed project.