CAST/CREW Info     

Character(s) Played or Crew Position(s): “The Expert,” Producer, Director, Writer, Camera.

Southern Undead Comment:
From its inception during a film showing of our earlier work, we all talked about creating a funny jab at zombie movies, as well as challenge ourselves with more action-packed, complicated script. Southern Undead has already changed in many ways and its evolution continues as we shoot what we can, when we can.
Experimenting with committee filmmaking, “Southern Undead” is a collaborative effort from myself, Mary Janca, Cullen Jones, Dakota Marcoplos and Chandler Vatavuk. We all sketched out the story; I have been producing, writing, directing and creating the make-up. Mary Janca has written some sections of the script, she is acting, applying make-up and producing. Cullen has been our shooter, cinematographer and producer. Dakota has created his Cooter character as well as been infinitely helpful behind the scenes. Chandler brought us the first seed of the idea, has provided shooting locations, a couple bags of crackers, and the creation of his nerdy character, “Ramy.”
With this production I have had the pleasure of meeting new and talented people who I hope will continue to work with us as we move on to other projects. Some that should be mentioned: Rob McGowan, Ned Phillips, Kevin Darbo, Chris Houldsworth, old school friend Glenn Spoon, D-Wells of The Peoples Channel television series “As It Should Be,” the Times-News Staff, especially Isaac Groves and Sam Cooke as well as the owners of The West Clay Street Tavern, Jeff and Laurie.

Date / place of Birth:
In Chapel Hill, I was born on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at 11:11pm. My name in numerology equals 1 which, in the Kabbalah, is a martyr symbol. I am martyred on the cross of space and time (as are we all). The vertical bar symbols space, straight down buried deep in the ground, we may not move from it. The horizontal bar symbolizes time, its length measuring out our section of life in this particular space. My name is for the resurrection we all experience many times in our life or INRI, “From Fire, Reborn.”

Height: Larger than Life, Smaller than a Pismire.

Spouse.
Not married, but MARYed. I am in love with a machete-wielding, zombie-killing waitress. RAWR!!!

Filmography:

“The Reeve’s Tale” 1993 Writer, Director, Actor.
First attempt at filmmaking in High School. Based on the Chaucer story from “The Canterbury Tales” Got on A+ in my junior English class for it.

“The Four Corners: Sketches” 1993-95 Writer, Director, Actor, Creator.
A collection of sketches my comedy troupe performed over a period of a couple of years. Including such classics as, “The Slow Bullet,” “Camera Goes Clubbing,” and “The Retarded Movie-Goer,” For good or for bad, I have the only remaining copy of this film. Starring the third inception of the “Four Corners:” Mouse, Eric Ayers, Andrew Dabbs and myself. Spackle (actors who filled in the Corners) were Christal Perkins, Kenny, Tonya, Brandi and others.

“Teen to Teen: Stages” 1997 (Unfinished and lost), Director, Co-Writer, Actor
A filmed collection of sketches performed by Teen to Teen Theatre. The stories were soap opera-like, with characters moving in and out of many circumstances in a very eventful afternoon. I had a cast of almost 50, all past members of the improvisational acting troupe and it was crewed by PCC film students. All footage was lost in Florida when my car was stolen.

“1 Friday Night” 2000 (Unfinished), Writer, Director, Actor
Made by employees of “Discovery Cove” in Orlando, FL. The story was a tale of two friends hanging out and dreaming of more interesting times. They go from friend’s house to friend’s house smoking weed and engaging in silly dialogue. Only during their last stop, at the house of a friend they make fun of, do things take an unusual turn – with the discovery of a tied up woman stuck in the crawl space. Shot on SVHS, the only footage that survives is on bad quality VHS.

“F.A.P. News” 2002-03 Writer, Director, Camera, “Phil Adder, Rogue Journalist,” “Mortimer Bartaskew,”
Broadcast on The Peoples Channel in Chapel Hill, F.A.P. News was a series of 7 episodes, some live episodes, some shot in studio, but most shot in the kitchen of my apartment in Mebane. F.A.P. was short for Functioning Addicts for Peace, the news team a bunch of drug-addled reporter wanna-be’s who try to report the news from a standpoint of peace. Sometimes they succeed, most of the time they could barely keep themselves together. I played investigative reporter “Phil Adder,” a cross between Geraldo and Adam Walsh as well as “Mortimer Bartaskew,” conservative media mogul and multi-googlinaire who was always trying to take F.A.P. off the air due its ultra-liberal leanings.

“After 9, It Gets a Little Blue” 2003-2006, Writer, Director, Host, and various characters.
Also broadcast on The Peoples Channel, “After 9” is a 6 episode series that was full of my sketch comedy, local Chapel Hill stand-up comedians and musical talent. I created and developed many characters through this show, including “Ampersand, the Reluctant Democrat,” Avant-garde filmmaker “Third World Children Works In Factory for a Penny a Year,” “Phil Adder,” “Murderann: The Band Set to Sell Out,” and “Marinad Porkshoulder,” a legendary, 87-year-old black Southern blues man who was thought dead but instead has been sitting on his front porch drinking corn liquor for the past twenty years. Most of us met and worked on After 9, before moving on to create “27seconds.” See the last episode on Youtube.com, search for “after 9 sinker.”

“The Barista Artiste” 2005, Writer, Director, “Phil Adder”
Shot as a short film but broadcast on the last (for now) episode of “After 9, It Gets a Little Blue,” “The Barista Artiste” tells the story of a man who creates beautiful images in the froth of customer’s cappuccinos. Hosted by Rogue Journalist Phil Adder, and starring Matthew Anscher, Dakota Marcoplos, Mary Janca and Drew Graff, as the titled Barista, this can also be seen on Youtube.com -- search for “after 9 sinker -- it is in part one.

“27seconds” 2006 Writer, Director, “The Director with no name”
A huge Hollywood studio has spent billions of dollars and over a decade to film “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” not long after giving the millions of feet of footage to the editor, the film heads meet to see the finished product. The Editor, however, has had other plans, cutting the four hour epic to a trim 27 seconds. This film takes place in the Editor’s suite as the filmmakers try to make sense of the hatchet job done by the drunk, smoking, belligerent Editor. Starring Southern Undead Actors, Mary Janca, Matthew Anscher, Chandler Vatavuk (in his first role with us), and old childhood friend Kevin Cook as the Editor, he also appears as host “Clefton Burgess” in F.A.P. News and in “After 9, it Gets a Little Blue”

“British Accent” 2007 Director, Co-writer, “The Director with no name”
The Director from 27seconds meets with a once well-known British actor in order to talk about a new project. It doesn’t take long to see that the director does not have anything together, not even his own mind. The first appearance of Dakota Marcoplos in his “Cooter, the pig wrestler” character, you can see it on MetaCafe.com. This was an improvisational film created and shot in a single six-hour period and edited in two weeks. Shot at the West Clay Street Tavern in Mebane, NC and premiering at Phoenix’s Photo Show at the Tate St. Coffee house in Greensboro, NC in March of 2007.

            The above was purely my creative, narrative films; I have also worked in industrial films as an actor, editor, shooter and grip since 1996. Credits includes, “The Gardener’s Diary,” “Pork Paradise,” “The Mr. Baer Show,” and “Collateral Damage.”
Here the link to my channel:

http://www.metacafe.com/f/channels/exphoenix

Trivia:
I am a lifelong film buff who has always wanted to write and direct comedy. My comedic heroes are Charlie Chaplin, John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Kids in the Hall, The Coen Brothers, Phil Hartmann, Matt Groening and Wes Anderson. I started writing sketches in fourth grade with political humor, I performed as Ronald Reagon, writing, acting and casting the skits myself, one sketch had a sixth grader named Glenn Spoon acting in it.
No matter what happens, success or not, I will continue to make my own odd little (or large) films until the great Director in the sky cuts me from the Epic of Life. I want to make more comedies as well as work in the Horror, Fantasy, and Post-Modern genres.
Future projects I am working on include, “DocuStalker,” a Phil Adder news magazine special about stalking a stalker while he stalks his victim, and “Be’AzulBub’s Thinkin’ Patch,” a modern Southern folk tale about a Job-esque farmer who finds out the reason his crops are failing and animals are dying may be due to the tendril of black, rotted soil leading to a demonic stranger pacing in the deep leaves of the forest.

Favorite Zombie Movie(s) : The original Romero Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, also Shaun of the Dead, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Ed and his Dead Mother, Planet Terror, Fido, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. Honestly, I wish Joel and Ethan Coen would make a zombie film.

Day Job: Student at UNCG as an English Major with a Psychology Minor, I make a little money working at UNCG’s movie library, Substitute Teacher for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School system, Instructor and freelancer at The Peoples Channel, Freelance Videographer, and Whore with a pretty mouth.