So, I interned briefly at the beginning of the year at a small production company, called Axial Entertainment, working under the casting director and the show we were working on has finally premiered. It’s called “Into Character” and it’s airing on AMC (American Movie Classics) on Wednesdays at 10pm. for those of you with cable, check it out.
It’s a 30-minute, episodic, reality-based (Don’t judge me!) series. The premise of the show is to take everyday people and make their movie dreams come true by making them over to become the lead character in their favorite movie. They spend two weeks learning whatever they need to and then they re-create a climactic scene from the movie as closely as possible and shoot it on 35mm.
This last Wednesday a guy was made over to become Richie Valens in La Bamba. He was engaged to a Mexican girl and didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. He wanted to impress her family by performing “La Bamba for them as Richie Valens. He met with a music instructor and voice teacher to learn how to play guitar and sing the song and he also was sent to Mexico to absorb some Mexican culture. Then the last segment is the 35mm performance. The premise is kinda cheesy, but it’s only 30-minutes. Check it out if you’re bored. After every episode premieres, AMC plays the actual movie (i.e. last week they played La Bamba immediately after the show.)
Next week is Blues Brothers (look for me in the end credits. I should be listed as an intern, but I don’t know if they got me in before the final cut had to go to the network to be signed off on.). I was also at a couple of the shoots so I’ll probably be in some of the background shots since they always threw the interns in because we were always short extras. At any rate, it’s cheesy fun.
Some of the upcoming episodes are:
Blues Brothers
Ice Castles
Karate Kid
Coal Miner’s Daughter
Dirty Dancing
Xanadu
Blue Crush
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
Winchester 73
My little sisters have a huge, inexplicable fondness for "Ice Castles", even naming a car after one of the characters. So, I would totally watch the "Ice Castles" edition of this show with Molly and Kelly, at the very least.
Posted by: sean on June 25, 2004 02:42 PM
am i like the ONLY person who has never seen Ice Castles? everyone loves that movie and i somehow missed the boat.
i'm all about the dirty dancing one but if the man playing Johnny is not as sexy as Patrick Swayze then I am calling Katie at Axial to complain.
Posted by: Adrienne on June 25, 2004 03:02 PMI personally want to see the Dirty Dancing one as that is the movie I would do
Posted by: nuala on June 25, 2004 03:02 PMEven I saw Ice Castles...How did you miss that? I think maybe a friend showed it to me....
Posted by: nuala on June 25, 2004 03:06 PM
i don't know!!! maybe i just don't remember it, something do with ice skating right?
Ice Castles came out in '79 and it is not merely about ice skating but about blind ice skating. I will DVR it when the episode airs since they're playing the movie right afterwards and then we can laugh at the hilarity of it all. That's the episode where Rebecca plays one of the skating judges in the 35mm sequence.
And the Coal Miner's Daughter episode is the one that both Rebecca and I are in.
Posted by: Clint on June 25, 2004 04:00 PMi never saw ice castles, ady. don't you fret. i saw the 'wild horses can't be broken' about blind trick riding though.
Posted by: michele on June 25, 2004 05:08 PMGabrielle Anwar, who was the blind horse-rider was in The Guilty (2000) with Gary Chalk who was in Trapped (2002) with Kevin Bacon. ;-)
Posted by: Clint on June 25, 2004 05:14 PMNo, sadly, they do not. It would have been fun to watch though.
Posted by: Clint on June 25, 2004 11:37 PMSo the Blues Brothers episode aired last night and I was so excited because my name flashed by on the end credits a Casting Intern. It doesn't seem like much but it was cool to watch my first television credit crawl up the screen, even if the show is kinda cheesy and really low budget. It was a proud moment.
Posted by: Clint on July 1, 2004 05:17 PM