CinemAttack, the 2 man production company that takes cult movie screenings to the next level, was gracious enough to put up with me for several minutes earlier this week to answer some questions I had for them. Tyler and I had a lively email correspondence discussing both the history of Cinemattack as well as some of their upcoming events. However, not satisfied with a digital text conversation we decided to take the relationship one step further and have a phone call as well. Throughout our various conversations I found out that there is an insane level of genius that lies between the collective minds of Tyler and Quang. That with their powers combined they do not form Captain planet but they can put on a pretty awesome show! Now without further ado, here is the interview!
Mondo: So how are the wife and kids?
Tyler: They’ve been working hard on this season’s barley harvest and are nearly done. Ma has the youngin’ strapped to her back, but that’s not slowing her down. She’s a workhorse, and as soon as the man-child can walk, we’ll put him to work to thrash the fields like we did with the old babies.
Mondo: Ah yes, the barley harvest. How could I forget! So CinemAttack is just you and your best friend Quang, how did you two start this project?
Tyler: I’ve known Quang for quite a while. A long time ago, I left the country for a couple years and when I returned, my family had completely replaced me with this random Vietnamese kid. He was wearing my clothes, sleeping in my room, but he hardly even spoke English! We fought and brawled like cats and dogs over my room and after a while, until we finally just came to terms with it all. He and I actually became pretty good friends after a while. I taught him English and we shared the room for a few months until the great cricket infestation and we were forced to vacate and find our own separate apartments.
We started doing CinemAttack after I took trip to a certain exotic land where I learned of a whole new way of experiencing movies. Upon my return, I decided that we needed that same kind of magic here in Orange County. It was just natural, because it fed my movie obsessions while creating an experience for people. I shortly recruited Quang, who by this time had mastered English and grown in fame and reputation. He agreed to join me on this endeavor and we’ve been working together ever since.
Mondo:Seems like you two are the perfect team! How long has the project been going?
Tyler: The idea started almost three years ago and gestated for a while. We were planning on launching with a New Years Eve party to ring in 2013, but there are no really good New Years movies, so we had to hold off a bit. We did our first two screenings at the Art Theater in Long Beach, starting with Dance Craze (the 2-Tone ska concert film), and then the Scott Pilgrim Picture Show, which was a total blast.
Mondo: Rad! I loe that you guys have some seriously goofy footage that plays before each showing, where do you find some of that stuff?
Tyler: The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of newsreel footage, a collection second only to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. It has more media materials than any other university in the world. So to answer your question, we rip stuff off from YouTube.
Mondo: The internet, of course! How did you two come up with the idea for the Wheel of Anderson event?
Tyler: I was at Quang’s house one day and we were using his lazy suzan to spin a pizza for a promotional vine we were making for our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles screening we did back in November. The pizza was from Pizza Hut and he specifically ordered it uncut, but when it got there, it was cut, so the delivery guy had to come back with a second uncut pizza. He gave Quang a super dirty look, but you know, you gotta do it right the first time, especially when you’re Pizza Hut. Game shows were very popular in the 1980’s when I was growing up.
Mondo:Not to mention who doesn’t want to spin a wheel, let alone a Wheel of Anderson! Do you have a particular favorite you wouldn’t mind seeing over the others?
Tyler: All of Wes Anderson’s movies are amazing. My personal favorite is the one about the dysfunctional family of former child geniuses, but I’ve seen it a million times. There isn’t one I would not want to watch. I need to see the one with the dudes on the train in India again. I’ve only seen it once and it’s probably my least favorite, although it was pretty great still. The one with the talking animals is funny. Wes Anderson is pretty safe, as all of his movies are great, but wait until we do the Wheel of Shyamalan. That can go either way. There’s serious potential for fistfights and shankings… I can’t wait!
Mondo: Can’t go wrong with Anderson! Serious question, can I spin the wheel?
Tyler: I think everyone will probably have the opportunity to spin the wheel, but we’ve got a very clever way of picking the person to do THE deciding spin. But that’s probably not a responsibility you’re going to want anyway. Whoever gets that is going to have to answer to any other audience members who didn’t like the movie. We’ve heavily advertised our “No Refunds” policy for this show, but in actuality, the person who spins is going to be personally responsible for all refunds. We’re not picking the movie, so we’re not liable here. That’s just how it goes, man. I don’t make the rules. (yes I do.)
Mondo: Ah, well maybe I don’t want to spin then. On to the future! I noticed you’re doing the Scott Pilgrim Picture show again a short 4 months after the your last screening, any reason you’re showing it so soon?
Tyler: Has it been that long? Wow. People really love Scott Pilgrim. Well some people do… I know I do, anyway. But people are reacting well to the Scott Pilgrim Picture Show we do. After the last two times we did it, we get a lot of people begging for us to do it again, even in different locations. We’ve had requests from people in Oregon. Florida, and even in Australia to go do it there. And if you look other cult films, like say… The Rocky Horror Picture Show, their fans get together and do it every month all over the world, and they’ve been doing it for like 100 years or something. So yeah… four months isn’t that crazy in my mind. We’d like do it monthly and still do other movies – if we could! Maybe we will some day!
Mondo: I see. Well what else do you have planned for the rest of the year that you can tease?
Tyler: We have a lot of tweaked messed up ideas that might be too weird to do just yet. The Wheel of Anderson is going to be a good barometer to show us how far we can push the envelope and still have people show up. Do the masses want something weird and different? Or do they want to just watch 80’s nostalgia screenings of The Goonies or Back to the Future? I think people need to get to know CinemAttack as a friend first a bit more before we take our relationship to the next level, and hopefully we’ll get there this year. We like to run “future” trailers before our screenings to show the audience where we’re coming from. It’s basically a barrage of movie clips that we think are rad and/or would be super fun to do. We’re not outright promising that we’ll do any of them per se, but we want to give the audience an idea of our sensibilities. So maybe you can find some hints in there…
Mondo: I gotcha. Well is there anything I missed?
Tyler: I think it might be worth mentioning that we create custom merchandise for each screening we do. We usually always have custom button packs available and we also create limited edition art prints. With a new one at every show, we also make available prints from our archive of past events. I design most of the art, but we’re starting to bring in cool artists to feature like Kirk Demarais who did a beautiful portrait of Edward and his girlfriend Kim for our Edward Scissorhands Winter Formal or Hydro 74 who did an incredible print series and patches for our Teenage Mutant Pizza Party. We’re planning on eventually creating an online store to make some of these awesome goods more available, but in the meantime, you gotta come to the show!
Mondo:How could I forget the merch! Speaking of merch and cool art set ups I saw on the internets that you’re working on something extra special for this show.
Tyler: Yeah. Todd from Toddland and Amber of band of banshees are helping us out with decorations. She’s the lady who won the hair contest at our Edward Scissorhands screening.
Mondo: Ooh
Tyler: They threw an awesome party a couple of years ago on a boat in Newport {Beach}. It was all Wes Anderson themed, everyone was dressed up, there was tons of rad signage, and it was amazing. It was incredible; they put a lot of work into it. We’re using a lot of decorations from that as well as a lot of new stuff. It’s mostly just decorations; we aren’t working with them on any type of merch right now.
Mondo: Yeah but that sounds epic.
Tyler: Definitely. Todd is an old friend of ours and we go way back. I’m stoked that we’re partnering with them. I hope it continues I would love to work with them in the future. It’s nice having help. Between Quang and myself we have a few people helping us out; my wife checks people in and all that but it’s a lot of work doing everything. I do all the social media, videos, design, and editing. It’s a hobby, right? (laughs)
Mondo: Which I assume is very time consuming especially given that you already have a full time job.
Tyler: Exactly. Quang does all the physical stuff; getting merch done, getting flyers made, and handles all the business because I am terrible at that.
Mondo: Which is good, each of you doing what you do best. So with all this going on do you ever sleep?
Tyler: No, not really. I need a vacation (laughs)
Mondo: Don’t we all? Ok, so awhile I saw on instagram that you guys were getting ready for 2015 and that you were planning out your year, well what do you have planned so far that you can share?
Tyler: We don’t have anything locked in until March but we have a lot of really solid ideas that are floating and we are kind of just putting them into place. We have some special guest curators that we want to bring in, big famous people that I don’t want to name because it’s not confirmed yet. A couple of things like that. We have some nutty ideas and Wheel of Anderson is kind of a test to see if people will respond to weirder stuff.
Mondo: Yeah
Tyler: Which we want to do anyway. We are starting out with things that play to a broader audience so people will know what we do and think “anything CinemaAttack is rad”. Eventually we want to get to the point where we don’t even have to announce the movie we’re doing. People will know that it’s a CinemAttack show and it’s going to be rad. For more traditional screenings if you watch the futures trailer we show before our screenings that lets you know the movies we want to do.
Mondo: So my last question is how did you guys link up with the Frida? That place is such a rad spot so I would love to know how you came together.
Tyler: My friend Ralph has a vine account called “it came from the vcr” and he shows really rad and weird stuff from old video tapes. He also has a youtube channel you should check out. Well he started doing stuff with The Frida and they said . We had done a couple of shows with the Long Beach Art Theatre, then we took some time off because I moved and had another baby; it was a hectic time. When we were getting back into it there had been personnel changes at the Art Theatre and we didn’t really know anyone there. It felt weird. Well Ralph was like “Oh yeah, you should talk to the Frida!” so we just walked in and started talking to Logan there. So Ralph is a good friend of ours and I definitely want to give him a shout out. He did Star Crash back in August and recently did UHF. His screenings are kind of straight forward; you just go in and see the movie. He’s taken the smarter route and not overworking himself. He’s also involved here and helps CinemAttack whenever he can. He’s awesome.
Mondo: Well that’s rad. I think that about covers it for me. It was a pleasure sir. Take care and I’ll see you next week!
CinemAttack’s next event is “The Wheel of Anderson” taking place Friday the 16th at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, California. The event starts at 10PM and tickets are still currently available. Click here for more details.