American Epitaph: A Young Ruffian Production

So much awesome stuff is in the works right now.  The triumphant return of the Troy Westfield Experience rock and roll extravawowzer is mere months away, maybe less!  We have two, count em, two albums to offer all you wonderful folks, along with music videos, art, t shirts, and maybe a live show if you're lucky.... Stay tuned, damn it!  You can find out more about the band on the Troy Westfield section of my website, TheseAreDreams.com, or on our Facebook page.

But really, the main reason for this post is the debut of the teaser trailer of the Young Ruffian Productions first full length feature film, American Epitaph!  shit yeah.   Dig in:


"American Epitaph" Teaser Trailer from Ryan Holden on Vimeo.

This was an epic filming experience for myself and the entire Ruffian crew.  Filmed over a 40 plus day period during the summer of 2011 in the wilds of Vermont, American Epitaph is the story of four friends trying to live life to the fullest as an unseen war inside the United States slowly makes its way to their doorsteps.  I had a truly unique, amazing and inspiring experience making this movie with Ryan Holden, Mike Scudder, Joe Holden, Logan Howe, Andrew Mclennon, Justin Epifanio as well as my old friends Erin Lynch and Alistair Redman and all the incredible and inspiring cast and crew of the film.  It was truly a crazy good time.   I can't wait to bring you more news about this film and the TWE albums.  Soon oh so soon......

3 For Thursday

I haven't posted in quite some time, apparently since the end of last year.  Since then I've been acting up a storm: short films, TV, extra work in feature films, music video, voice work, lots of live improv, and of course, performing for elementary school kids as a giant light bulb superhero named Bulbman.  All to varying degrees of success or quality.  I've also been to NYC to record a new 5 song EP with the legendary Troy Westfield Experience!  Hopefully we'll be finishing that record this summer and maybe even making a music video for our epic pop heartbreaker Good Ache.  Can't wait to get that song out to folks.  Hooray for being a working actor!  This has definitely been the most paid I've ever been as a performer.  Its been very encouraging, and I'm finally convinced there is a future for me as an actor, more specifically, a film actor.  This summer I'll be going back to the east coast to work on a play, finish the record, and act in a lead role in a new feature film called American Epitaph.  All this and my older brother Carl gets married, so I think it will prove to be an interesting summer....

I wanted to post 3 projects I worked on since winter 2011, in order of when they were completed:

1.  Save My Favorite Show


A bizarre little piece, this short was made to enter a contest to win $100,000.00 from dockers to make a feature.  The producer was a huge fan of a cancelled sci fy channel show called the Invisible Man, and wanted to reunite the cast for an unrelated full length movie.  I appear as a protester, as one of the producer's favorite actors, as the voice over narrator, and as a silver painted singing telegram.  I don't think this piece is very successful, but it gets points for weirdness.

2.  A Rapturous Scent


I have the lead in this one.  Filmed at the beginning of 2011, this was created by a SF State student and shot on real film!  Any actor in the digital age will realize how rare it is to actually get to perform for actual film.  This was made by a smart group of filmmakers determined to use all the tools available to them to get some interesting shots.   The subject matter is a bit more cheesy than I normally enjoy, pretty much a straight up romantic story, and this version of the film is a condensed 5 minute version of what will eventually be a 10 minute film, complete with trippy dream sequence that didn't make the cut.  I think the 10 minute version will work better than this one.  My experience of the process of making this film inspired the upcoming TWE tune Good Ache, and I'll be happy to explain that progression once the song is released.  I can't help noticing how strange looking I am in this film, especially my profile.  It reinforces my feeling of being an alien in a human body....

3.  Coulda Woulda Shoulda


Legendary SF rapper Lyrics Born's brand new video.  This was a one day shoot I did for free (the other two were paid gigs).  It just seemed like a great opportunity to be in an LB vid.  This is actually my favorite of the three, even tho I barely appear in it (you can spot me dancing in a black and white poke-a-dotted shirt).  Its a cool disco tune, and I dig the little animations they added to the video.  I remember the drummer and bass player playing cover tunes during some downtime during the shoot and they were extremely sick musicians.  Hopefully I'll get more opportunities like this in the near future....

More videos to share as they are released, but I think we're off to a good start here.  Stay tuned!

Been Busy --- Blood Was Everywhere Teaser Trailer

Internet wizlings

Damn, I been busy.  Lots of stuff to report, not sure I'll do it all here and now, but soon.

I'm currently in a show at the Town Hall Theater in Lafayette, Ca.  Its a newish version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.   You can find out about it and get tickets here, and here's a review.   It runs through October 31.

In other newseses,  the film in which I acted this summer, Blood Was Everywhere, has released a teaser trailer, featuring the opening song from none other than Agents of Venus' album Boduvt (that song being Fall Off the Earth).  Here ya go:



Its sort of a strange teaser, as this is a slasher film, but you don't really get that sense until late in the clip.  I had a little facebook discussion with the director Jason Torrey, and he said they put it together fairly quickly to show at the wrap party (which I missed, due to being on the wrong coast), but that also he is following his tendencies to sublimate expectations about how a horror movie works by slyly slipping the killer and his actions gradually into a series of images that initially looks like a day in the life film about people in a small town.  You have to watch the trailer a few times to figure out who the killer is and what he's up to.

I've decided that he is creating a film featuring an ensemble cast where one of the ensemble happens to try and kill everyone else in the story.  What genre would we be talking about with this take on film-making?  Has he invented something new? 

Here's Blood Was Everywhere's page on the facebook.  Their website is currently under construction.

Hopefully there will be a full on trailer by the end of the year.  I'll keep you posted....

Spooky Snack

Here's a commercial I acted in when I first moved to San Francisco late last year.  I finally got a hold of a copy.  Its a little silly, but the special effects are cool.  I was performing with an actor wearing a head to toe green screen suit, so that he could be edited out in post.  Also, the Doritos spilling out of the bag when I fall off the counter and the Dorito at the end of commercial that I grab for and it disappears are totally animated.  I think it looks decent.  Nice to have been part of movie magic.

Two Totally Unrelated Things that Go Great Together

I'm posting at an exponentially faster rate. Unemployment is good for that. So while I have the time, here are two completely unrelated things that I thought might entertain you, as well as have some sort of significance in the strange and winding career that belongs to Phil Ristaino.

First, we have a video conceived and created by NTUSA members and Flackman Bros associates Ryan Bronze and Matt Kalman (aka Max Flackman). I agreed to participate in the making of this short Christmas video starring Ryan as Spiderman and Matt as Batman, surf buddies, and featuring the cheese-center-filled rock classic "Come Sail Away" by Styx, particularly significant to me because they were my favorite band (other than, say, the Beatles) when I was a youth (pronounced "yout" minus the "h"). I worked the camera for much of the shoot, in between sneezing profoundly, as the fall pollen had descended on Far Rockaway Beach on the outskirts of Queens or Brooklyn or somewhere in between and caused my nasal passages much dismay. Later in the shoot, myself and another actor Greg (last name slipping my mind right now, sorry Greg) posed as 60's style masked baddies, attacking the two heroes on amidst their holiday and being summarily dismissed by the crime fighting professionals.
Cheque eet owt:




It may be significant to note that Matt and Ryan went into cold New York autumn ocean waters fully costumed and both nearly drowned during the shooting of this video. If you look hard, you'll see one or two waves really kicking their asses, which, I admit, was pretty funny to watch in person.

The second part of this post is dedicated to me Ole Da, who hit the big 7-0 this October (happy birthday, DAD!) My older brother Carl opted to get my folks a new dish washer for Dad's b-day, and I was assigned with the task of creating the card for the gift.

Take a look:


Here's the inside:

Editor's note: Brother Carl's and his daughter Izzy's signatures and notes are missing from the card because I put all the other notes together in photoshop and express mailed the card to Carl for him to sign in time for the delivery of the dishwasher.

Just as an explanation, my parents have a house on a lake in Maine, and there is a family of bald eagles on the island, so I figured I'd put dad on the eagle a la Gandalf in the third LOTR film:

Dad's body is more or less a steal from a Jack Kirby silver surfer:


And here's me Dad:

Dad trippin balls

So there you have it. Two great things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

While I'm At It...Start Trekkin NY at NY comicon 2009

Here's a fun series of videos. Taken with a friend's phone, these two performances from the 2009 NY Comicon were only able to be filmed one minute at a time (that's how long her phone could take videos). So what you are seeing are the bits of both performances that made it to digital documentation. Some fun bits in there - I am typically over the top. Good luck adding in the rest of the story you aren't getting here...think of it as a fun project, where you can make up your own stories and transitions to fill in the blanks.

Here ya go:

PhilRistaino.blogspot.com/Cafe Antarsia

New Stuff!

Well, not really. I've recently rediscovered this footage from a play I performed in called Cafe Antarsia. It was a musical of sorts, more of a play with music, complete with middle eastern musicians and score. The theme of the show was essentially the occupation of Turkey on an island in Greece near the turn of the twentieth century. (Can you believe we live in the 21st century? I never really considered that until now. Whoa....)




I play Kariogiosis (spelled something like that), the half Greek, half Turkish weasel who sort of inspires unrest and keeps the peace in sly ways, always to further his own survival. That's me with the red fez running around and yelling in the strange, poetic dialogue the playwright invented. This might be the first footage I've found that demonstrates what its really like to do physical performance art. This show was directed by fellow Skidmore alum and old pal Ian Belton, and performed at the Here Arts Center in NYC circa 2005. I believe Cafe Antarsia the band is still a going concern, and you can find out more about them here.

I also want to encourage whomever stumbles upon this blog to check out my new website of sorts, PhilRistaino.blogspot.com. This is my attempt to begin to organize and catalogue my various art forms into a more accessible clump or clumps. Funny enough, I find in some ways by assembling whatever I can from the past, I'm still only scratching the surface of past works, and really wish there was much more documentation of all the plays I performed in over the last 15 years or so. Oh well, theater has always been what I consider the most ephemeral of art forms....

The "Phil Sessions" for Bones Rodriguez' "Kirk's Guide to Women" blog

Supreme gentleman and now a member of Start Trekkin NY improv, (of which I am, alas, no longer a member), Skidmore College alum John "Bones" Rodriguez has written Captain Kirk's Guide to Women. A tome of sexy proportions, Kirk's Guide takes you step by step through the seduction of the space-lady of your affections by following in the footsteps of the master himself, Capt James Tiberius Kirk.

In promotion of the book, Bones invited myself and a couple actresses over to play dress up and shoot a little film. What resulted hath been dubbed "The Phil Sessions" over there on Bone's blog.

(Note : the sound quality is a little overdriven on these shorts, so please forgive the fuzzy dialogue.)

(Double Note: "Kirk" means "Circle." Take a moment to consider that perhaps why Kirk is so successful is because he represents the perfection, the wholeness, the self-fulfilled, and the very symbol of the divine female, the manifestation of all matter in the universe.)

(Special Triple Feature Note de El Shabbaz!: If you look carefully, you will be witness to the extra special cameo of the Sid Barrett of the 21st Century, the now mythical Dave Smits.)

Just Because

Its been a while. Months and months and many more months. Several dozens of collections of hours between then and now.

So....




I've really chocked up a ton of hours down at the Regal Beagle. Janet has been extra annoying and Chrissy is still hot, but is soon to be replaced by that dumb chick and then Terry, also hot.

So....




So there's a couple from that classic turn of the century film, "Today Will Be Yesterday Tomorrow,"  starring the Flackman Bros, Martin and Max, and yours truly as the mythical Mystical Bill. Thanks again to Max for hooking me up with the clips -- the debt shall be repaid. In spades!

Oh, and sharp eared viewers will recognize that wonderful chestnut from the Troy Westfield Experience, "For A While," playing in the background (of your mind) during the second scene face-off with a nic-fit-quitting Martin. Its track number 11 in that album just to your right. Go ahead. Check it out. For once in your life, do what's right, I tells ya!

Til Little Nixon makes a comeback....

A Sound Christmas Thrashing

Yours truly gets punched in the face (twice) in a new web commercial for weheartfighting.com.



This website is dedicated to promoting Street Fighter 4, apparently, and also features a lengthy exposition about a guy dressing up as Santa Claus in full body armor, going out to what appears to be right around Penn Station in NYC, and getting his ass kicked. Repeatedly. Has Christmas changed? It has.

This commercial was produced by old school chum Yehuda Duenyas, (he's the guy with the pointy beard in the commercial who looks like one of the three musketeers), and also features many former Skidmore college classmates and friends; Ryan Bronze (the guy at the table saw), Ahna Tessler (woman annoyed at being followed and eventually punched), Steve Donnely (1/2 of a couple who are punched by a pirate), and Matt Kalman (the pirate).

Yehuda, Matt, and Ryan are all members of an absurdist avante garde theatre company called the National Theatre of the United States of America. They paint the stage with historical/hysterical monologues, big dance numbers, and lots of moving platforms, slamming doors, and a myriad of death-defying surprises. NY theater not to be missed.

Start Trekkin NY: Ten Minutes Left of Money

Start Trekkin NY performed at the Big Apple ComicCon a few weeks ago (Mid November, 2008). For some reason, they will only book us to do a 15 minute episode. Not sure why, I think we could at least do a half hour without breaking a sweat or screwing up their schedule. At any rate, we've developed a cliff-hanger-type technique for little gigs like this, which hopefully brings in new fans and briefly entertains convention-goers. Someone was kind enough to film the sequence and put it online (thank you, stranger). Since you're here, you might as well check it out:

Nomadic Jazz document of mom and dad's aniversary/Izzy's b-day

Roger Fritz, rebel filmmaker and psychedelic video mage just hooked me up with a video he made of a party we had for my mom and dad's wedding aniversary, as well as my niece Isabella's birthday and her grandmother's birthday. It was a fun but fairly mundane event, except for watching Izzy eat an entire birthday cake, which was rather insane to watch, as she devoured it like a shark in a pool of blood soup. This video treat stars yours truly, the beautiful Laurelle, my sister Christine, brothers Andy and Mark, a Casilio, and the mad fool Roger himself, who seems to be wearing my hat. Go here to see more of Roger's work on the U tube. Don't forget to lose your ever lovin mind, man!



Perhaps this will be of interest to you,perhaps not,but Roger has provided me with two (yes, 2) other versions of this bizarreness, one with audible voices, but still heavy on the visual and audio effects, and one that presents, for the most part, the untouched original footage. I find it a fascinating study in the progression of his process blah blah blah just watch it, okay?

This is the one "with vocals"



And here is the "raw/uncut/savage" footage

As Seen On TV

Hey. I know I promised a blog about the orbs in my last mural post, (for those 2 or 3 of you who've been reading these blog posts) but I wanted to post this TV pilot I hosted for my good friend Phil Armand (please check out his website). This show was created summer 2008.

Phil created this idea to enter into the New York TV pilot festival, and got some good responses from those who saw it, but unfortunately it didn't get anywhere. This hopefully will be the closest I'll get to selling my soul, in terms of content--the show is about me testing products advertised on television. I think Phil did a nice job putting the show together, it looks pretty good, moves smoothly, and there are some funny things in there. One thing of potential interest: aside from the voice-over narration, everything you see here is completely improvised. Enjoy:




Also for your perusal, I found the Net 10 commercial I made with Phil this past winter 2008:

Me and Ghandi are So Word

Okay, so I filmed this piece with Phil Armand for a commercial competition this winter 2008. It was for Net 10, a cell phone company who's slogan is "No Evil," which I can get behind. We shot me walking around with a poker picking up trash in Brooklyn and looking very serious. I was rocking a sweet beard and I seem to be having a good hair day.

But dammit, I can't figure out this whole RSS feed thing. It just doesn't make no sense to me. So you'll have to go here and scroll down to find my short among the many. When last I looked it was film number 6 and its titled "cleaning our streets."

Hope you can find it and that you'll derive a modicum of enjoyment from it or perhaps be so swept away by the selflessness of the whole theme that your identification with separation and the ego is dashed against the rocks of pretension and you realize your god-self and maybe hang with Dr Manhattan on Mars or something. (I just saw a Watchmen movie blog this evening and it made me happy).

There is no spoon. And no evil. That said, we didn't win the competition.

the Lost Episode of Mediocre New York

This was the first episode of Mediocre New York I hosted. I actually look like I bathed before the shoot, and if you check out the other episodes I host, you'll see how I eventually look like a homeless man who stole a broken microphone from a low budget TV show. Never to be out-mediocred....

Laydeez and Gentlemens, I give you... the New York Inn:


Also, here's a link to my "about the host" page on the MNY website. I thought it was kind of funny.
YOU DECIDE
if I was right, or just plain dumb.

My first foray into animation

My buddy Marc Lesser approached me about creating a short animation piece for a website. We made this sample, which I think they liked, but they had already gone in another direction by the time we had finished it. Too bad for us. Anyway, I think its kind of funny, and its my first attempt at animation, so not bad, all things considered.

In case you missed the link the first time, click here to see our nifty cartoon.

NYComicCon

I had a crazy weekend. Start Trekkin performed at the New York Comic Con at the Javits Center--it was a huge convention! I'll write more soon, but I just wanted to put up this interview for posterity. I am a total nerd in this interview, I was standing next to the Geek Squad host so he asked me all the questions and I think my brain dropped into my appendix or something, cause most of my answers are fairly lame. But it was an amazing weekend, for reasons I will explain soon...

check it out...

Mediocre New York

Phil Armand and Rob Albrecht are hard working guys. They are always digging into a new project. I've been lucky to work on a few of them over the past few years. Did you see Battle of the Band earlier in this blawg? Its one of theirs. Well folks, here's another one.

Mediocre New York is a crackpot idea about making an interview show where the hosts hunt New York City for the average, the mundane, and the crappy, and make a big deal about it. I look at it as shedding light on the cobwebs and toilet bowls of the unknown, the mysterious, and the cheap. I was brought in as one of the hosts. My job was to wrangle the funny out of the guy that let you play World of Warcraft on his dirty computers. I was the guy who would ask a tenant why he so prominently featured his SuperMario Bros soundtrack tape collection. I was the guy who kicked rust off your car. I was the guy that made fun of your toilet. Ahhh, dreams.

Check it out:
This one is a review of a mediocre coffee shop


this is an interview with a mediocre apartment renter


a mediocre spotlight on that NYC fixture, the New York Inn


and here's a interview with a mediocre car owner

This last video is featured on cashtomato.com. If you go there and give it 5 tomatoes, the filmmakers and I might actually win some dough. Clams. Uh, money.

Shaking the Magic Screwball

My good friends the brothers Martin and Max Flackman (aka Marc Lesser and Matt Kalman) are kickass filmmakers and have been kind enough to throw me into their projects from time to time. One idea that has reared its psychedelic head on the web is the dreaded Magic Screwball. Shake him up and ask him the answers to your most crucial or guarded secrets, if you dare, suckers! Appearing on their Joke Project site, created with the guidance of the divine Nicole Stagg, the Screwball dares to rend the very fabric of time and space asunder with a flippant "Uh, I dunno" or "Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh Baby! Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh!"

The Screwball on a smoke break.

Consequently, you can go here and here to see me as a joke telling zombie.

Speaking of the Flackman's and film projects, I've also had the opportunity to design a couple movie posters for these dudes. Check-ch-check-check-ch-czech it out:

Here's the poster for "Today Will Be Yesterday Tomorrow," the Flackman's first full length film. A dream, a day-job, and Billie Dee Williams in Lando duds. Solid stuff.

I played Mystical Bill, who lived inside Max' cigarette case, preparation for the Screwball, for sure.

Then there's the award winning short "Cuando La Luna Esta Llena," directed by Marc Lesser.

A tragic love story wrapped in aluminum foil. Marc asked me to mimic a Dali collage from the great artist's time in NYC. A truly deeply satisfying experience. Truly and deeply.

Start Trekkin NY

Yo Yo Yo

So, like, I'm part of an improv group called Start Trekkin NY

We do improvised hour long episodes of Star Trek in the style of the original series. We don't play any of the original characters, we make up entirely new characters and situations. Is this clear? Its fun stuff, lots of shoulder grabbing and fake fighting. Anyway, check out the website, and if you're in New York, please come see the show. You can go to the Manhattan Comedy Collective's website for dates and times of shows. We also have a myspace page here.





Here's a poster and postcard I designed for the group:



Here's a couple clips from a show in NYC at the Tank:





more pics, more to come: