Exclusive Interview: Star/Producer Paul Alessi Talks ALPHA MALES EXPERIMENT
Last week I got to interview actor/producer Paul Alessi about his new movie ALPHA MALES EXPERIMENT (formerly titled Knuckle Draggers). It’s a hilarious comedy that Rama’s SCREEN has been telling all of you to go check it tout. I reviewed it a while back and the the story is about Ethan, who gets dumped because he wasn’t able to provide his fiancée with the stable life her friends were living. Desperate to get her back, he seeks help from his older brother Kyle, a tough talking sexist who seems to have a way with the ladies. Paul and I talked about the casting, production, the characters, his upcoming projects and Comic-Con. Thanks to Wendy for making this possible. Check out the full interview after the jump..
RS: So explain how you and director Alex Ranarivelo got this project up and running? What’s the story behind the movie ALPHA MALES EXPERIMENT?
PA: Alex and I met through mutual friend of ours, this guy Andrew that I played Hockey with and I just got out of acting class basically so my acting coach is like telling me to get out there, to get out to work, so I didn’t have any acting reel or it was kinda hard to get an agent without having anything put together so Alex had the same situation, he just graduated from film school and he wanted to start his directing stuff so this guy Andrew hooked us up so we started doing short films together just as ya know, just to move forward, with that being said, our first short film we did very well, we submitted it to Project Greenlight, and made it up to a certain level and then we didn’t get in, our second one right after that, which I starred in, we won a bunch of awards for it, from there we did commercial, we got paid to do some music videos, a couple of more short films and then eventually we were talking about doing a feature together and we were talking about what’s right to sell, what we wanted to do and what we could do for a low budget and Alex started writing and he wrote KNUCKLE DRAGGERS and that’s basically how the conception of it
RS: How long did it take to come up with the concept and also the writing process?
PA:He came up with the, I’m talking on his behalf, he came up with his concept, something he was thinking about, a lot of it were realistic life experiences of himself and like Kyle was partly me and partly his brother and partly a friend of ours Chris, so we kinda combined all three of our mannerisms, a lot of time like we’d be hanging out and he’d hear something and go ‘whoa that’s great let me write that down, let me write that down!’ So a lot of it is real and so he started writing and got a first draft and he gave it to everyone to read and everyone gave our input on it and he wrote a second draft and it wasn’t that long to be honest. 3 months. Once we had a finished product, it actually flowed pretty quickly.
I’m really quick, once we’re ready to go I started calling people, I met one of my friends and I showed it to him, he’s seen the short we did and he believes in me and he’s willing to help make everything come together which was a huge help when you do an independent film. People were donating time and money. Our executive producers came on board, from there we basically tried to shoot before the SAG went on strike at the time and then it was the holidays were coming so we tried to shoot before Thanksgiving
It’s a low budget film , a lot of favors, a lot of connection, a lot of teamwork, including the whole cast and crew, they were selected for a specific reason of having the passion to do a film and not being Primadonnas of, ‘we’re running 5 minutes over, ya know SAG rule’ I’m not saying that happened but they were all team players and they actually wanted to work hard and get the possible work that they can do
RS: Tell us about the casting process, how did you and Alex got the gang together?
PA: Most of the people, we worked really hard to cast, we auditioned a lot of them and not only did they have to act but we had to read them, their chemistry, see how they were and a lot of times I sat outside in the waiting are and just see how people interacted, how cool they were. Cause they didn’t know me
I’d sit outside with those guys as they were coming in and see who were the best actors and see who were the coolest people cause I like working with cool people and people I wanna be friends with. I had meetings and so forth. Omar didn’t audition, I met with Omar beforehand and we chatted and the whole meeting with the director. So how did we get everybody? Auditions process for one and then friends of friends and like a friend of ours knew Omar’s girlfriend at the time and he’d gotten a script and he read it and really liked it. We originally was in negotiation with Jerry Ferrara from Entourage to play my brother
RS: Turtle?
PA: Yeah Turtle, he’s a really cool dude. We met with him, I thought he was great. We got along really well and he seemed interested but we tried to close the deal with his manager and Ross McCall who heard about the film from somebody else, I don’t recall who it was at the time and he read it and loved it, he was trying to get a meeting with us and we thought we were pretty much going with Turtle so there was a confusion and we didn’t get to meet with him, so he called like a week or a week and a half before we had to shoot and we still didn’t cast our lead.
Last minute we got him in. I didn’t know who Ross was. I knew he had good credits like Band of Brothers and Greenstreet Hooligans, I just didn’t recognize the name. So he came in to audition. And it’s me, Amy, Alex, and the casting director. It’s in this little place in this Hollywood. And Ross was just tearing it up. We wanted somebody who can do New York accent the way it was written and I was giving thumbs up to behind the paper to Amy and Alex and the second he was done I asked ‘so where are you from in New York?’ he’s like ‘let’s talk about that later’ and then finally at the end of the audition and after the small chat, he starts talking in his normal accent, apparently he’s Scottish descent and he’s raised in London so he has a British accent and I was like ‘What the!, Dude that’s great, you totally nailed the new York accent!, how the hell did you learn how do that?’ So he told me of how when he was little, he used to sneak into the theater by his place and he used to watch the movies through the crack on the floor. He watched Goodfellas, he said he’s seen Goodfellas a hundred times over and over again, he just studied the accent from The Goodfellas, that’s how he nailed the New York accent. He loved the movie and he did a great New York accent.
RS: I couldn’t tell he wasn’t a New Yorker
PA:We went to talk about it and he left and we made decision right there. We called the agent probably before he even left the building so we can secure him so we cast Ross immediately and we were shooting a week later.
RS: Not many people know Paul Alessi yet, so can you tell us a bit about where you’re from and what it was that compelled you to go into the world of acting?
PA: Since that’s a multilevel question. I’ll start with the basic I’m from Queens, New York. I’ve lived in a few places in Queens. I lived in Manhattan for a little bit. So I came out here for a vacation, my sister was visiting a friend of hers who went ot Pepperdine University. I was working in the teamster union at the time, I was driving a truck and I was ‘O you’re going to California and not even invite me’ just joking around and she said ‘if you wanna come, come I don’t care we’ll have a good time’. So I took a little vacation time that I had and I went to California with my sister to visit her friend.
And I loved it here and another buddy of mine had a sister that lived out here and they’ said ‘o look up my sister when you’re out there’ So I called her up and we hung out and she was really cool and very hospitable and she showed me around, introduced me to people, long story short, I wound up sleeping on her floor for I think about 6 months or something, I didn’t go home, my sister went home and I stayed here for a while.
I started meeting people, doing business, she knew a bunch of friends that did acting and extra work so I started going to sets to be touristy, to see how movies are made. I actually did some extra work on some of these shows and ‘dude they’re feeding these guys the lines, I can do that, this is cool!’ so anyway, as time went on , I started getting into acting, it was not easy, I started going to acting class, it was extremely hard and difficult and I learned and I studied for a long time until my basic teacher told me that I was good enough to be working and my buddy Andrew introduced me to Alex and we tried to put a reel together.
Obviously I wasn’t a producer at first but in putting these shorts together people started asking us to do other stuff, I was working on the first feature I was hired on and they didn’t know what they were doing so I started helping out they asked me if I wanted to produce it with them and so on and so forth and KNUCKLE DRAGGERS is my first film that I produced, it was my first baby.
RS: So what is it about acting that you find fascinating?
PA: The thing is, I like to be able to share different feelings with people. As myself, I like to play other characters and live in this fantasy world for a second, and see how a serial killer lives, what goes through his mind and studying that, becoming that person or see how a happy go lucky guy lives or see how that egotistical macho womanizer Kyle lives and what he deals with and how people interact with him.
To me that’s really great but the other part is to be able to touch people’s emotions and lives, and deliver message through that as a filmmaker and as an actor, to be able to move people, to perform and do some good work, put a smile on somebody’s face
RS: What would you say or how would you respond to people who’ve seen KNUCKLE DRAGGERS and they think it’s just another version of Favreau/ Vaughn’s classic Swingers
PA: Pretty much, it’s very similar. Not to sound like a copycat or anything like that but I really enjoyed Swingers. And I’m a fan of both of theirs and in doing this like if it was me and Alex, in the beginning we were brainstorming, thinking what would work, what could we do for low budget, what we wanted to do and Swingers was on the table.
Swingers was one cause it was a low budget film that did really well, we loved the characters. We did the little things in there like the video game, the buddy relationship. Very much like Swingers, I’m not going to deny it man, I think those guys did a great job and what better form of flattery there is than to do something in the same vein.
I’m not saying we copied everything or the story’s the same but yes it’s very similar to Swingers, then there’s people who’ve also said He’s Just Not That Into You, the new one that came out. That was just coincidental because we finished our film before it came out. I went to see it. I liked it, I liked all the actors in there. was it the greatest film on the planet? No, but it entertained me. But Swingers, man.. two thumbs up, man, I own it on DVD, 2 copies including the one when with the bonus features thing
RS: But you and Alex added originality to ALPHA MALES EXPERIMENT
PA: Absolutely. We set like a vibe of Swingers and Brothers McMullen also was on the table and then there was another one that was on the table. But Swingers was definitely one of my favorites and like I said before, all of the dialogue and situations weren’t made up, most of that shit was true.
Like one of our good friends were going through a break up and he was being such a sissy, not going out and whining all the time about the girl and I’m like ‘Dude just get over it already man, there’s a million chicks out there, grow a pair!’ so a lot of that stuff was true, a lot of that stuff was actually real, it was real situation, obviously some of it was fabricated a little bit or changed slightly to protect certain people’s names and stuff. But like I said earlier, we’d be hanging out and Alex would go ‘o that’s hysterical, I gotta write that down’ And then the creation of being on set, putting Ross and myself in the same room and Omar and Danielle, and Amy and Justin, and Amy and Ross, the chemistry that built and your own creativity that you bring as an actor to the table with the characters just totally changed and grew.
Also we were pretty free, we were able to have fun on the set and we weren’t stuck to the script. So if something sparked at the moment and you wanted to fly, we flew with it we’re like ‘dude that was great, let’s do that again, same dialogue, same ryhtym let’s go!’ or ‘dude you guys are kinda way off on that, let’s go back to the script and go again!’
All this shit we’re improvising and coming up with what would work and it was good. You got talented people man, look at Omar. That dude, I mean he was on the set and he could just go. He didn’t even need a script that guy and he’s funny as shit. Real professional, does a great job and I think he’s awesome. Props to all the cast but Omar specifically was really good with the whole.. everyone, they were all freakin’ just havin’ fun man. Everyone playing XBox in between every take, ‘where’s Ross?’, ‘Look for the Xbox, you’ll find Ross!’ and some are playing poker, it wasn’t work, man, it was a freakin’ fun set, everyone had a good time for the most part. We did the work but we also had a lot of fun and made some good friendship. I’m friends with all those guys now. It’s really cool. I was out with one of them yesterday.
RS: This is one of those movies telling you the rules of dating. Do you believe certain Seinfeld patterns exist, if you will? If she picks up the glass with her left hand that means she’s insecure or he keeps leaning to the left, that means he’s an A-hole..
Because your character, Kyle is the kind that thinks he can analyze people by looking at them from afar and decide which one’s datable, he thinks he’s got it all down pat.
PA: I believe in a lot of body language and the way people handle themselves and certain things people say. They’re valid, they’re true a lot of times. But there’s different levels to everything, for instance with Kyle, a lot of his stuff he says is true as far as I think but it’s like me on steroids.
He’s over the top about certain things but a lot of stuff he did was a protection mechanism because he’s a hurt guy so you gotta take that into consideration to, some of the things he pushes and he tries to be that guy that… plays the game… with Patricia and push her button and gets the rise out of it. A lot of the stuff he says honestly is over the top and he doesn’t believe that wholeheartedly because part of it he believes but ‘well, let’s cause a little static over here and mess with these people and see what kind of reaction I can get out of them’ I believe a lot of it is true but Kyle’s character pushes the envelope even more than he believes just to try to get the reaction… but if you take Kyle now and talk to him one on one, in a more serious conversation, he’s not much of a dick, he’s actually a decent guy
RS: Do you get this Kyle from your own experience or personality?
PA: No, I do believe a lot in what Kyle says and a lot of it is me in a sense cause Alex wrote Kyle with me in mind but I’m not really the Kyle character. I actually lean towards the Ethan character but I do believe In a lot of stuff that Kyle does and there’s a bit of Kyle in Ethan and everybody. It’s just a a matter of the day and how you feel. People have shitty day or they’d be feeling insecure or confident or whatever it may be. Some days I might lean towards the Kyle and other days I might lean towards the Ethan part of it. But am I like Kyle. Some of it I’m like Kyle. There’s a little bit of Kyle in everybody
RS: What I liked about the movie was that it was pretty honest, that’s why in my review I straight up called it as ‘an in-your-face comedy about relationship especially the part where Ethan confronted his ex girlfriend and told her that he would’ve loved her unconditionally
PA:You gave me chills on my arms just remembering that scene
RS: There was no sweet talking or sugar coating it. There was no ‘I’m just a girl standing here’ or ‘You had me at hello’ moments.
PA: You don’t have to have a gazillion dollars or live in the mansion. He loves her and would be happy to live with her in a box in Compton and he’d stil be in love with her. She didn’t have that love with him. She wanted to have all of the bonus stuff that comes with her perfect life and there’s a lot of people out there with that tacher’s salary and have this big mansion or a dream that’s unrealistic because your teachers’ salary isn’t getting you that.. so you’ve been planning since you’re younger that some man is going to provide that for you.
And it’s true.. A lot of girls aren’t even aware of it, they dream of being a teacher but want to have a mansion and stuff. Not every girl, but some of them do, we call them gold diggers or however you wanna call them and hustlers, people getting married to guys and divorcing them later on just to get half of their shit.
RS: KNUCKLE DRAGGERS premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival right?
PA: Yes
RS: What other circuit has this movie gone through, or what will the next even be?
PA: We sold out Newport beach, like standing room only, they had to bring in extra chairs and benches and people sitting on the floors in the aisles, it was packed, it was really well received. From there we went to Delray Beach film festival which we won two awards at.
We won outstanding feature by a new filmmaker/producer and we won best close-up in a feature film, it was given to Sarah for her close-up, obviously that’s the stipulation of the lighting, the make up and the overall package but it was nice Sarah won that and just recently we went to Reel HeART film festival in Toronto and I won best actor award in Toronto
RS: Congratulations!
PA: Thanks, We’ll be screening at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in L.A. in August 12th at 7: 30 PM. Anybody wants to come, please come out, see it, support it, our first L.A. screening, it’s L.A. premiere I guess you would say.
A special feature screening that’s part of the HollyShorts film festival. They liked the film and they want to honor it so it’s not a competition or anything so it’s just a screening they want to do for us, to showcase the film
RS: No screening in your hometown in Queens?
PA: Not yet, I’m working on that, I’m trying to get it to New York cause everybody keeps asking me but right now we’re looking at a release of the film for Valentine’s Day. Yeah, we were talking about October but it’s a little close and we still got some more stuff to do on the film and some more promotion to do, so we were doing the marketing aspect and Christmas time and the holidays they release the big movies so we think Valentine’s Day would be a great date movie since ALPHA MALES EXPERIMENT is like the perfect date movie, it’s guys movie, it’s girls movie, you don’t see too many of them. How many times you’ve gone to the movies with a girl and you hate it, ‘O my god, when is this going to be over!’ I saw this movie WOMEN, I couldn’t wait to.. Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candace Bergen. O my god, that’s like a guy’s nightmare
RS: I only watched it cause Eva Mendes was in there
PA: Yeah, she was great. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s an awful film but it’s not a film I’d really wanna watch. But that’s more of a chick movie… but KNUCKLE DRAGGERS is a good movie for couples to watch on Valentine’s day. Good time to release it.
RS: The movie has everything for everybody
PA:Exactly, Somebody will identify with one of the characters. Everybody would take something out of it, for the most part everybody enjoys it, I’m sure some might not but I haven’t come across them yet, thank luckily, fortunately, so we’re hitting a pretty wide audience which is pretty good
RS: How about KNUCKLE DRAGGERS 2? Would that be a terrible idea?
PA: No it’s not. It’s nothing that’s finished yet but we’re batting around some ideas. I personally would like to do a Knuckle Draggers 2 or may be not call it that way but I wanna do the same thing but instead of using the main 2 dudes, I wanna do it with 2 girls. I want the 2 girls to be the main characters
RS: A Spin off then?
PA: Yeah, kinda like a spin-off.. but same type of thing really but if we can pull it off with the girls being the lead, it’ll be a bit difficult to get the guys in there but it’s something I’d like to see done, to put that together, but there are a few projects we have right now, just waiting to see which one.. there’s a thriller called REAL FRIENDS about 2 best friends and the tagline goes “A friend helps you move, a real friend helps you move a bodyâ€
That’s the tagline on it. So it’s about 2 best friends, one of their wives gets killed and it’s the whole big.. small town whodunit kind of film.. hopefully if everything goes as planned, we should be going off on that in the next couple of months.
RS: By we.. you meant you and Alex?
PA: Nothing has been fully completed with all that stuff yet. The finance part, I’m putting all that together and we have to deal with the distribution people and who’s gonna come on board.
Me and Alex have a couple of other projects as well but as a producer I think I have 8 project right now that I’m trying to unite and Alex is involved in a bunch of them but some of them would have to.. they’re not my projects in a sense so it’ s not like a partners in crime thing, I come in as a producer for other people. The directors haven’t been attached.The thriller is not my original thing and I have a few really cool scripts that I’m involved with right now. Alex is writing a Western and also trying to develop another spin-off of ALPHA MALES EXPERIMENT, so those two are specifically partners in crime film from start to finish. And the other ones, I’m just collaborating with other people
RS: You are an actor and a producer, was it difficult to wear more than one hat? The producing side of it?
PA: I’m stil trying to figure that out actually, a tough move for me. Cause I have financial obligation and creative obligation. Creatively there’s certain things I wanna do, and then certain things as a business person that I wanna see next but in this realistic Hollywood land, you need to get someone to pay for this stuff, you need to move forward so a lot of times you can’t really do what you wanna do in a sense, unless you just hold out.
I’m offered to do other things and some of them I just wasn’t fond of and I didn’t wanna do it, ‘I’m sorry man, it’s not something I’m into’. So you wanna kick yourself because it’s a payday and it’s another movie but in a same thing, I’m trying to hold some integrity and not do the stuff I don’t wanna do. Would that being said, I already passed on a few projects but ya know, it would be nice to have done them because money, and I could employ a lot of my friends and ya know, hook up a lot of people.
I’m trying to figure out how to stick to my creative and integrity and what I wanna do without being jaded from the business part of it which is tough, a lot of people can’t do it, so I’m doing pretty good. Hopefully I can continue to just do what I want
RS: Since KNUCKLE DRAGGERS is somewhat of a dating movie, a relationship movie for couples, do you Paul Alessi have rules of dating that you live by?
PA: I’m real specific about honesty and trust. I always think I’m a pretty easy going guy but it’s something like if we were in a relationship, as long as you’re honest, I’m pretty cool in dealing with a lot of shit but if you’re fucking sneaking around and being a dick and doing shit behind my back. I don’t have a tolerance for that. You fucked me over once and I’m done with you. So honesty and trust to me is really big.
I’m not the Kyle character who picks up a chick in a bar and bang her. It’s not my forte. I’ve picked up chicks in a bar and become friends or end up dating her for a while but I wouldn’t be the Kyle character, going to the bar, taking her home and screwing her brains out. I’m more of the relationship guy
RS: Do you believe opposites attract or you gotta have so many things in common
PA: A little bit of both. I do believe opposites attract, something I’ve learned when I was younger. I always wound up dating the wrong girl, the ones with all the drama. Everyone says opposites attract and I believe that but if you can sink a little deeper than that, a lot of similarities aren’t bad but there has to be some stuff that’s opposite to keep it real and keep each other in check. If 2 people cant’ decide where to eat, you’re never gonna go out and eat anywhere and they’ll get into fight all the time.
So honesty, trust, definitely communication, good sex. Or at least sex. I know a lot of my friends don’t even have sex. You gotta have sex. I’m not even joking. You need to have sex and if you’re not having sex and if you the lady are not taking care of man or the man not taking care of the lady or man not taking care of the man whatever the hell it is.. you’re tempted by something else. A lot of times, you get that instinctual thing that’s in your body, the hunter in you, the one that wants to have sex, the hormone builds up, people wind up cheating on their significant together because they’re not fucking getting it at home. So you wanna keep your relationship strong, sex, trust, honesty, communication
RS: What about financial stability?
PA: If you have all those elements , you can get through the financial part because money isn’t everything dude. I know some wealthy dudes and chicks that are freakin’ miserable, they don’t have all of the other elements. They have the money, great! But money ain’t everything man, I know some miserable people that are rich. They’re just like empty, and I know some people who are freakin’ poor, busted ass poor can’t pay their rent but they’re some of the happiest coolest people you’ll ever know but they can’t pay rent they’re living on people’s couches. Money definitely is an issue but don’t get me wrong dude I’m not saying money ain’t great but it’s not the element that’s gonna give you that happiness especially in a relationship. You can’t buy it.
RS: What are some of your favorite movies?
PA: You gotta love the Godfather, I’m a big fan of Scorsese too. And then there’s Taxi Driver, The Bronx Tale, Shawshank Redemption is really good, Good Will Hunting too. And I’m an Adam Sandler fan, I know it sounds weird but I think that dude is a good actor an d he makes my ass laugh and I don’t give a shit what anybody says, I’d go to Adam Sandler film anytime.
I broke up with a girl because we went to see Billy Madison when it came out and she thought it was the stupidest filim ever and I went ‘Obviously we’re not getting along in this relationship so I’ll see you later’ so seriously, we actually broke up after watching Billy Madison.
RS: I interviewed Clifton Collins Jr. not too long ago and later on I found out that he tried out for a part in THOR which he didn’t get but more and more actors these days are knocking on Marvel or DC/WB’s doors wanting to get roles in the next superhero movies, how come you’re not out there chasing after this like the others?
PA:Cliff is a different level than I am. I make my own my films. I get parts from friend of friends. I don’t really have representation at the moment so it’s a little more difficult to get out there in front of people. Cliff is a little more well known and if he wants to go out for THOR, he’s gonna go out for THOR,
If I wanna go out for THOR, I’m gonna have to kidnap somebody and hold him at gun point to get an audition. I’m going about things with a different approach, I’m trying to build a career as a producer and putting myself and my films, make a name for myself so I can get the right representation
Dude don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing Cliff at all, I’d love to be at his level. He’s a talented guy. He’s getting into directing now, he’s a freakin’ extremely talented guy, I hope and plan to work with him in the very near future, I have a bunch of stuff on my plate right now that I have Cliff in mind to direct, I’m just waiting for things to get moving but I’d love to work with that guy , it’s just that I’m not in his ball park to be honest, I’m not even going to pretend we’re in the same playing field.
I’d love to play a superhero. Every kid wants to be a superhero. I just watched WATCHMEN the other day
RS: Are you going to be at Comic-Con?
PA: I’m gonna be there for the first time ever actually, I have a script actually, it’s a very big budget film and it’s something I wanna do but it’s gonna have to wait until I get a couple of other things under my belt, my buddy wrote it, it’s like the next Star Wars, an epic freakin’ picture but I don’t wanna mess it up and do it prematurely but it’s something I definitely am planning on doing
RS: So you’re at Comic-Con to network?
PA: For a lot of reasons actually… to have fun, enjoy a good time, a buddy of mind is going to have a booth up there, a bit of networking, all of the above.
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