Why I Love The Cast of Geek Loves Punk

Why I Love the Cast of Geek Loves Punk

I got so lucky with the cast of Geek Loves Punk. What a great group of film actors!

I flat out love actors. While I love camera angles, lighting, locations and special effects, I believe that the best effect of all is putting good lighting on good actors and seeing them make your words come to life. I love what actors teach me about the characters I’ve written. I love hearing what they think about the themes in scripts. I love seeing their enthusiasm for the role once they’re on set.

I don’t know any famous actors. No one in my film is famous, though a few of us have some screen credits to our names, i.e., Maria Skorobogatov played a young Clarice in Silence of the Lambs. I can only talk about the working actors I know, who work in a pretty humbling occupation. The Geek Loves Punk cast is made up of simply awesome human beings. Geek Loves Punk is character driven, which means we had to get the casting right. One of my mentors told me that a good crew and cast would gather around a good script. That’s certainly what happened here.

I really appreciate the fact that all my actors were so supportive of the movie. They knew how low the budget was. So they gave it their all, knowing their lines and rehearsing for hours before shooting began.Their approach was utterly professional and their performances elevated the movie beyond its humble aims. Really, I considered my movie making cohorts and I to be a group of goofballs and amateurs trying our best to make a movie. One of the actors heard me say that and replied, “I consider this a professional project and an important opportunity.” My actors rule, right?

We held an audition through the indie filmmaking co-op, Scary Cow. Actors responded to our open call, performing a dialogue of their choice in front of a group of Scary Cow filmmakers. That audition, Orlando Mendoza walked in and did a delightful monologue about being a waiter and all the kooky people he encountered at his restaurant. I looked at him and thought, “That’s Sol!” Then, Adrienne Herr-Paul did a phenomenal monologue about being a woman who never quite fit in. She showed great vulnerability. I saw her and thought, “That’s Megan!” Then, I saw Candice Wang do a hilarious piece about Donnie Osmond having a penis, delivered in a Southern accent. It was amazing! I wrote her a part just on the strength of her monologue. Then, through a producer, I met the amazingly talented and well-mannered Maria Skorobogatov, who also delivered a stunning audition.

And of course, Celeste Martinez was perfect to play Emma. These actors are a diverse, phenomenally talented group of people. Geek Loves Punk wouldn’t be the movie it is without them. The characters in the movie feel real, and elicit visceral responses from the audience because ofit. The quality of the film hinges on the professionalism that the actors brought to the project. The characters in the movie feel real. They elicit visceral responses out of the audience because of how real they feel. On behalf of the movie makers and supporters of this film, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to the Geek Loves Punk cast!

To see these great actors give great performances. Please support our Kickstarter campaign:

More Favorite Quotes:

There are good days and there are bad days, and this is one of them.  ~Lawrence Welk

I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay.  ~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.  ~Anne Bradstreet

Trust yourself.  You know more than you think you do.  ~Benjamin Spock

Optimist:  Day-dreamer more elegantly spelled.  ~Mark Twain

For after all, the best thing one can do When it is raining; is to let it rain.  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.  ~Tom Robbins

I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety-ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed, with recurring fits of paranoia.  Turns out I'm normal.  ~Jules Feiffer

He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it.  ~Edgar A. Guest

Oh, my friend, it is not what they take away from you that counts, it's what you do with what you have left.  ~Hubert H. Humphrey

I am an optimist--it does not seem to be much use being anything else.  ~Winston Churchill

Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.  ~Alice Walker  

Make it work.  ~Tim Gunn

You can't have everything.  Where would you put it?  ~Steven Wright

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.  ~Henry Rollins

Do what you feel in your heart to be right--for you'll be criticized anyway.  You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.  ~Eleanor Roosevelt 

Life isn't fair.  It's just fairer than death, that's all.  ~William Goldman

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.  It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.  ~Vaclav Havel

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.  ~Garrison Keillor

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don't lose faith.  ~Steve Jobs

I can't go on, I'll go on.  ~Samuel Beckett

I always think that cynics are really romantics who have been crushed sometime in their lives and have put up this cynical mask to protect themselves.  ~Jeff Bridges

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.  ~Oscar Wilde

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.  ~Guillaume Apollinaire

Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals.  Nobody wants to read the small print in dreams.  ~Ann Landers

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.  ~Charlie Chaplin

Life is just one damn thing after another.  ~Elbert Hubbard

If you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.  ~Robertson Davies

We are all special cases.  ~Albert Camus

Courage is being scared to death--and saddling up anyway.  ~John Wayne

Isn't it cool when the days that are supposed to feel good, actually do?  ~Jim Carrey

It's okay is a cosmic truth.  ~Richard Bach

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.  Mignon McLaughlin

You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it.  You have to go down the chute.  ~Tina Fey

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.  ~Babe Ruth

It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.  ~Suzanne Collins

I understand the concept of optimism.  But I think with me what you get is a lack of cynicism.  ~Tom Hanks

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?  ~Ursula K. Le Guin

I like living.  I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. ~Agatha Christie

Start every day off with a smile--and get it over with.  ~W.C. Fields

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.  ~Walt Disney

Go on failing.  Go on.  Only next time, try to fail better.  ~Samuel Beckett

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.  ~Jane Austen

The truth will set you free.  But not until it is finished with you.  ~David Foster Wallace

I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse.  I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.  ~J.D. Salinger

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  ~Helen Keller

Favorite Quotes

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

Only those who dare, truly live. ~Ruth P. Freedman

Courage is a quality which grows with use. ~J.C. Penney

Trust in your own untried capacity. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve. ~J.K. Rowling

There is a giant asleep within every person. When the giant awakes, miracles happen.  ~Frederick Faust

What a new face courage puts on everything. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome problems and eat them for breakfast.  ~Alfred A. Montapert

Life is about becoming more than we are.  ~Oprah Winfrey

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.  ~Max Lerner

We cannot wait for the storm to blow over; we must learn to work in the rain.  ~Jennifer Granholm

Behind the cloud the sun is still shining. ~Abraham Lincoln

What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.  ~John W. Gardner

Some have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.  ~Willis R. Whitney

The bravest sight in all this world is someone fighting against the odds.  ~Franklin Lane

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.  ~Pierre-Augste Renoir

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

Orville Wright didn't have a pilot's license.  ~Richard Tate

Every winner has scars.  ~Herbert N. Casson

Who dares wins.  ~Motto of the British Special Air Service

We choose only once.  We choose either to be warriors or to be ordinary.  A second choice does no exist.  Not on this earth.  ~Carlos Castaneda

Life is between the trapeze bars.  ~Helen Keller

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.  ~Babe Ruth

Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds meaning.  ~Viktor Frankl

Do a little more than you think you possibly can.  ~Lowell Thomas

No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step forward solution.  Do something.  ~George Nordenholt

Things are only impossible until they're not.  ~Jean-Luc Picard

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.  ~Alice Walker

Out of difficulties we grow miracles.  ~Jean De La Bruyere

What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do.  ~Unkown

Leap, and the net will appear.  ~Julia Cameron

Temporary setbacks are simply part of the equation.  ~Bob Moawad

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible and those who do the improbable.  ~Oscar Wilde

As you battle for strength and courage and healing, remember: there are people all around you cheering you on and waiting to lend a hand.  ~Kathryn T. Shaw

If you hear a voice within you say, "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.  ~Vincent Van Gogh

There is a power now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.  ~Yehuda Amichai

Life has no romance without risk.  ~Sarah Doherty

Come, my friends.  'Tis not too late to make a newer world.  ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Definitions of Geeks and Punks

I got dumped. It was extremely painful. I loved her or I thought I did. We held each other. We cried. I cried more than her because that’s how I roll. Then, she’d kiss me gently and say, “Don’t lose your sensitivity. Just don’t ever lose your sensitivity.” I just cried and kept saying, “I love you so much.” I meant it….a lot. She’d say it. I think she meant it when she said it. She was confusing. It was about four days later she was kissing someone else. She told me that was how she got over people. I have my own ways of getting over people. I make films. Thus, began, Geek Loves Punk.

Geeks. I’m an expert on geeks. I identify as a geek. Geek is a relative word but this is my definition of geek and of myself. I feel everything intensely. That’s why I have to write and make films. So, that I can get all this stuff that I’m feeling out of my system. What I like about film and screenwriting in particular is that I can express a million different feelings through five or six different characters. I honestly relate to all the characters in the film. Geeks tend to be more sensitive. They tend to move slower through life. Socially, we definitely develop slower. Everyone’s dating before us. Everyone’s just moving so much faster in everything than us. Little known fact though, we do have things in common with punks.

Punks. The biggest underlying thing that I saw with the punks that I met was how much music meant to them. That might have been the one thing I identified with the punks; the punks being all my ex-girlfriend’s friends. They were annoying, rude, and I hated most of them. The ones I liked were the women. I just didn’t understand why the women dated such losers. Most of the guys were losers. I’m sure it’s just the tiny little group that I encountered. That’s not all punks. The music, though, the music is when the punks would become extremely reverent. Music was their religion. They lived and breathed it. It was awesome. All the fake bravado of not giving a shit about who they had sex or when or where, all their “fuck this! And, fuck that!” mentality was lost when they spoke of music. All their irreverence for anything at all faded away into passion when music came up. Most of the bands, I had never heard of. I did recognize a Radiohead tattoo here and there. People who would never show themselves to be vulnerable (including my ex-girlfriend); people who would never step foot in a counselor’s office, never step foot in any kind of church, synagogue or temple would truly bare their souls in music. Music truly was their religion. I thought that was cool. It was through music that I saw honesty from them with no pretense.

Geeks and punks both feel alienated by life. They both feel like they don’t fit into the mainstream. They just express their alienation in different ways. Geeks internalize. Geeks withdraw into their own worlds through comic books, science fiction, computers, and anime and the made-up worlds that we go to in our minds. Punks take their alienation and they express it on the top of their lungs through loud clothes, loud music and loud mouths. Geeks and punks are on the opposite side of the same coin.

Which is the concept and idea of the film. The two romantic characters are both just so lonely for different reasons. They find a place to fit in with each other. The geek learns that she can be sexually appealing…in a nerdy way. The punk learns that she can be emotionally and intellectually appealing…in a punk kind of way.

Eh, at least I hope that comes across. We’ll see. The point is that essentially I think people or at least what I wanted from my ex was acceptance. I didn’t get it from her. But, I get it from my friends, family, God and San Francisco constantly and all the time. Works for me.