Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Shmobots by Adam Rifkin. Adam Rifkin (born December 31, 1966), sometimes credited as Rif Coogan , is an American film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter. Contents. His career ranges from broad family comedies to dark and gritty urban dramas. Rifkin is best known in Hollywood circles for writing family- friendly comedies like MouseHunt and 2007's Underdog . Most recently Rifkin directed , a 2014 documentary about the micro-budget films of actor/director Giuseppe Andrews. He completed work on feature film Director's Cut in 2015. As of May 2016, Rifkin was in pre-production on his next feature film, Dog Years. Adam rifkin on a star is born 1976. Education. Adam Rifkin was a 1984 graduate of The Chicago Academy for the Arts. Career. As a screenwriter, Rifkin has written several family-friendly movies. He wrote Knucklehead for WWE Studios, starring WWE star Big Show, Underdog for Walt Disney Animation Studios, Zoom , starring Tim Allen and two films for DreamWorks, MouseHunt and Small Soldiers . Continuing in the family film genre, he wrote the big screen version of He-Man for John Woo and 20th Century Fox. He also wrote the unused draft of Planet of the Apes in 1988. Rifkin's film was named one of the top ten films of its year by The New York Post . He was then the director responsible for New Line Cinema's Detroit Rock City . Directing. Rifkin directed his first film Never on Tuesday in 1988. As of December 6, 2007, he has directed eleven others, including The Chase (1994), Detroit Rock City (1999) and the Night at the Golden Eagle (2002). Production. Rifkin began his production career in 1999 on the production of Touch Me in the Morning by Giuseppe Andrews. Preceding his completion of that project, Rifkin produced his own film Night at the Golden Eagle as well as Getting Hal by Tony Markes. Acting. Rifkin began his acting career in 1988 his directorial debut Never on Tuesday . Rifkin has appeared in small roles and cameos in his other films, Night at the Golden Eagle , Without Charlie , Detroit Rock City , The Dark Backward , Denial and Psycho Cop 2 . Rifkin also appeared as Croaker/Miss Spain in the 1989 film, Going Overboard , starring and . He also wrote, directed and acted in the 2007 film Homo Erectus , in which he portrays a wimpy caveman called Ishbo, the main character in the film. The film's ensemble cast includes , , Talia Shire, Gary Busey, and . Buying Nike Shoes Is Easier With TSB. Wanna Cop Nike? The Shit Bot has a 96% success rate on Nike SNKRS with 92 out of 95 hyped releases copped. Tens of thousands of winners on 50+ regions and 24/7 support to get you started. This shit’s for real! 96% Consistency. 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Another huge advantage The Shit Bot offers is the ability to cop on so many Nike SNKRS regions, further increasing your chances. We’re always adding more regions but for now, you can cop Nike with TSB from The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, Taiwan, Mexico, Spain, Norway, Austria, France, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg, Polska, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Switzerland, Argentina, New Zealand, Turkey, India, Vietnam, Thailand, UAE, KSA, Romania, Portugal, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Chile, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Indonesia, Croatia and Greece. Moist Robots and the Ego Button. Egos are dangerous things. On one hand it’s probably good to have confidence in your abilities. Confidence helps your performance in a wide range of endeavors. Studies seem to support that notion. On the other hand, if you let anyone see your big ego, you’re a giant douchebag. So there’s that. I used to think people either have big egos or they don’t. But since I adopted a moist robot view of my body, I noticed I can manipulate my ego by manipulating my body chemistry. When my testosterone is high, my ego expands with it. It’s simple biology. I know what spikes my testosterone. It happens primarily through a healthy lifestyle, including sleep, diet, winning and exercise. And you can feel the changes during the day depending on what you’re doing. At this point I’ll bet I could tell you my relative testosterone levels at any point in my day. When my levels are down, I feel weak and tired and easily defeated. When my levels are high, I think I can do pretty much anything. And I’ve seen my confidence and self-image completely transform in less than an hour when I intentionally adjust my testosterone levels via my actions. I long ago abandoned the juvenile idea that people have immutable good and bad traits. The moist robot view is that we can manipulate our traits within surprisingly wide boundaries. And our personalities are fluid during any given day. The angry Scott is nothing like the happy and creative Scott. The horny me is nothing like the satisfied me. So I reject the concept of “me” as some sort of static thing. Instead I see my moist robot container as something I can manipulate to engineer my mood to the situation. There are times when having more ego is useful. There are times when it is better to be humble. I jack my body chemistry as needed. I have an advantage over most of you because I don’t feel embarrassment like a normal human. I couldn’t do this job if I did. Today will be a case in point. What follows would be embarrassing for a typical human with normal thresholds of embarrassment. But for a moist robot, it’s just an exercise in chemistry adjustment. Have you ever heard the saying “You don’t know what you don’t know”? It’s something you sometimes hear in the American business world but it isn’t overly common. I was about to use the saying in a comic and wondered if I was the original author of it. (Ego alert!) So I Googled to see if anyone else had been given credit for it. There’s a Socrates quote on a similar theme, but quite different. And at least one other person was wondering about the source of the quote too, which led to a public question on Yahoo. No one else seemed to know the source of the quote either. So I decided to take credit for it. This is the sort of thing you do not do when you have socially acceptable levels of humility and the capacity for embarrassment. But moist robots like me are not burdened by such things. To me it was just a button I could push to boost my testosterone. So I did. You can see my claim- grabbing ways here. I am fully aware that some of you just labelled me an egomaniacal douchebag for claiming authorship of the quote. But doing so jacked up my testosterone. I’m okay with that tradeoff. This moist robot is feeling good and ready to take on the day. Shmobots by Adam Rifkin. -by Larry Smathers. Director and writer Adam Rifkin may be best known for his whimsical late ’90s flick Detroit Rock City , or for that strange homage to side show freaks and bad stand-up comics, The Dark Backward , but don’t think of Rifkin as just a guy with quirky flicks under his belt, he’s also done script work on family fare like Underdog and Mousehunt . Rifkin’s most recent film, LOOK (out on DVD May 5th), is different from anything he’s done. LOOK is a frightening and funny take on the camera obsessed society we’ve become. Shot entirely by security cameras, the movie asks some serious questions about privacy and if we’re comfortable constantly living life on tape. I posed some serious (and not so serious) questions to the director about his latest project and some of his past ones. LARRY SMATHERS: Give us the story about how you came to do a movie completely captured on security cameras? ADAM RIFKIN: It started when I got a ticket from a red light camera. Though to this day I’d still swear the light was yellow, apparently I ran a red light in Beverly Hills and when the police department sent me the ticket they also included the picture of me running the light. It was a horrible shot, it captured me from my worst angle, not to mention the fact that I must’ve been singing to the radio because I was making a humiliating expression. Something about being able to be photographed without my knowledge and then the picture arriving at my home address unnerved me. I started to think about how many other cameras were on me on a given day without my knowledge. I did a little research and found the conservative numbers were that we’re all captured about 200 times a day. The more I started looking for the cameras the more I found them, cameras are absolutely everywhere. Then the filmmaker inside of me started to scheme about how cool it could be to shoot a movie exclusively through those countless cameras that are on us all day every day. That’s pretty much how it all started. SMATHERS: Did making LOOK make you more paranoid about who is watching you? RIFKIN: I started getting more paranoid as soon as I came up with the idea. Once I decided I wanted to explore the notion of shooting a movie from surveillance cameras I started noticing cameras everywhere. I genuinely had no idea that the cameras were so ubiquitous. In banks and bars and restaurants and stores, absolutely everywhere! We even learned that it’s legal in 37 states to have hidden cameras in Bathrooms and dressing rooms. Damn straight making LOOK made me more paranoid! SMATHERS: Were you surprised the reaction the film got when it hit the festival circuit? Who were some of the people who supported it? RIFKIN: I’m always surprised if anybody ever likes a film I made. It’s just the way I am I guess. But the reaction to LOOK was truly shocking. The first indication came from the CineVegas Film Festival where to all of our surprise we actually won the Grand Jury Prize. After that the film just seemed to snowball, we picked up support and champions from a very eclectic group; Newsweek , Wired , USA Today , The Wall Street Journal , Vanity Fair , Maxim , NY Daily News to name a few. We also garnered some real fans from the world of politics, Hunter Biden, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, told me that he and his father watched and loved the film. The Creative Coalition, a bipartisan political group were avid supporters of the film and organized some very successful panels and screenings as part of an ongoing series of discussions about privacy laws. And Sharon Waxman, the famous New York Times columnist was extremely generous about the film, so much so in fact that she invited me to be her guest on NPR’s Politics Of Culture when she was guest hosting. To say that I’ve been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for the film would be a dramatic understatement. SMATHERS: I heard a TV show based on the film in the works. RIFKIN: Yes. For a major cable network. I’m not at liberty to say which network at the moment, but we were given 8 episodes. We’re prepping and casting right now. The series, like the movie, will also be shot entirely with surveillance cameras. Several of the characters from the movie will continue on through the series (Miles Dougal and Giuseppe Andrews, the kids in the mini-mart), but mostly the show will explore a whole host of new characters. The series will also focus on even more ways we all find our every movement captured on camera. Cell phone cams, camcorders and practically every personal computer has a webcam attached to it these days. Did you know that with the right software anybody can tap into your webcam and spy on you right in your own home? Think about that next time you’re watching porn! SMATHERS: I don’t watch porn on my computer; I’m more a fan 8mm stag films from Tijuana. Speaking of great cinema, who are some of the filmmakers that have influenced your work? RIFKIN: There are so many films and filmmakers that have, and continue to inspire me. Obviously the gurus like Coppola, Scorsese, Woody, Kubrick, Ashby, Wilder, etc, etc, etc… As far as the current crop, I love Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne, Tarantino, The Coens. Why? Because they make great movies. Movies that challenge me, entertain me, movies that make me feel something. There are lots of very competent filmmakers, but many of their expertly proficient films leave me cold. I want movies to move me in some way. That’s not to say I only like dramas or heavy movies. Hell no! I loved Jackass 2 for example, that movie was hilarious! It moved me to laugh my ass off. For a movie to move me it just needs to make an emotional impact, whatever that particular emotion might be. That said, I take inspirations from many sources though, not just films. For example, Dr. Seuss is a big influence, so are the old Warner Bros. cartoons. I get a lot of inspiration from books and music and art and just living life and having experiences, there’s inspiration for film all around, not just in other movies. SMATHERS: I see a bit of Woody in the work you recently did for National Lampoon, Stoned Age . It’s kind of like a movie mash-up of Love and Death and Ringo Starr’s Caveman . RIFKIN: Well Woody Allen is one of my favorite filmmakers so undoubtedly there’s gonna be influences of his in my work. Just like there are influences of Bergman in his work. If you trace the various influences of any artist you’ll see their influences in what they produce. That said, there are times when I just blatantly rip Woody Allen off! Every once in a while I just can’t help myself. SMATHERS: I hope the Woodman has Stoned Age on his Netflix queue. What’s the oddest thing that’s ever happened on a film set? RIFKIN: On the set of LOOK there was one particular night that had me convinced we were either going to jail or about to get shot! The scene we were shooting involved Rhys Coiro (Billy Walsh on Entourage ) getting pulled over by a cop on a dark desolate road. In the scene he’s supposed to overpower the cop, beat him up, steal his gun and shoot him in the head. We had to do it all in one take because Rhys pushes the cop car in a ditch at the end of the take. As luck would have it, while we were shooting, an actual police helicopter happened to be flying overhead and saw the cop getting beaten up. The helicopter then shined its cop light directly down on us while Rhys was executing our actor cop at point blank range. Keep in mind that because the whole movie was shot with surveillance cameras our only camera was inside the cop car affixed to the dash board. Me and a couple of other crew people were crouched in the cop car, and that’s it. There were no visible signs that a movie was being shot. I thought we were all done for. I frantically was calling 911 from inside the cop car while the actors kept going with the scene. Luckily I got in touch with the police and we managed to convince them that the cop killing they just witnessed was fake. We later had to digitally remove the helicopter’s spotlight. That was pretty damn odd. SMATHERS: Gene Simmons is a self proclaimed a-hole; did you find him to be one on the set of Detroit Rock City ? RIFKIN: No. Gene was a fantastic producer to work for. He loves movies and is very respectful of the process. Whenever we found ourselves at a creative crossroads with each other he would always defer to me because I was the director. He also fought on my behalf against the studio if there ever was a creative disagreement. Gene’s great. SMATHERS: That film has such playful spirit to it, what did you want to do on Detroit Rock City and did you achieve it? RIFKIN: I wanted to make a 70’s style teen comedy that would cataclysmically fail in its initial run at the theatrical box office but then steadily grow in popularity on DVD and cable and eventually become a seminal cult classic enjoyed by legions of teens and young adults alike for generations to come, so yeah, I guess I achieved it. Seriously though, I just wanted to make a movie about teen angst and adolescent rebellion. When you’re a teen, an event like a concert or a favorite band or a really cool movie can have an enormous impact on who you are. In those key years everything is heightened, things that grown-ups don’t see the inherent value of have enormous meaning to you. We’re all learning how to define ourselves by what we like and don’t like, therefore these seemingly trivial choices have disproportionately enormous meaning to us. Willing to go through Hell and back just to get into a KISS concert makes perfect sense at that age. The concert is symbolic of anything that’s important to a teen at that exact time in his or her life. That’s why I think the film continues to have a life, because you don’t have to be a KISS fan to get it. I also wanted it to be about growing up a little, coming of age and realizing that at some point there is gonna have to come a time when we all need to “put away childish things”. Did I achieve what I was going for? I’m probably not qualified to answer that part of the question, I see my own films very differently than others see them. Am I proud of how successful the film has ultimately become and am I beyond grateful that Detroit Rock City continues to build a loyal fan base beyond our wildest dreams while we were all making it? Hell yeah! SMATHERS: Who do you hate in Hollywood? RIFKIN: I’m a lover not a hater. Although, you’re starting to get on my nerves a little bit… SMATHERS: I’m only as God made me, sir. What film project is up next? RIFKIN: I’ve got a few balls in the air at the moment. My graphic novel, Shmobots , a comedy about slacker robots, I’m currently developing into a live action series for a major cable network, I wrote a movie for Fox Atomic called Sucker Punch , and I’m currently writing a super secret movie for an unnamed studio that I’m not at liberty to discuss. As far as what film I’m going to direct next… all I can tell you at this point is that it’s a bio pic. My first. It’s a bio pic about an extremely controversial figure who made headlines around the world in the late 70’s. Once we make a formal announcement it’ll make perfect sense. It’s gonna be a mind blower! Funnybot/Script. ["Germany is a country of proud people. We will not take this insult sitting down! The Comedy Award voters have brought shame upon themselves. The Comedy Award voters are wrong! I want to assure the world that we Germans are very very very funny. We do the joking in our work places and in our homes. I will now tell you a German joke. "A sausage maker buys a box of cereal." I will now tell another joke. [begins to roleplay] Knock knock. Who's there? A cannibal. What?! You are about to die and be eaten. Asshole! I will murder you first!"]