Shape Films LLC Presents
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Shape Films LLC Presents A Film by Yuri Shapochka (USA, Ukraine, 96 min, 2013) Press: Rich Street Productions LLC [email protected] www.facebook.com/ClubhouseMovie www.clubhousemovie.com CLUBHOUSE CAST Robert Tim Abell Patty Newman Leslie Easterbrook Clarke Wilcox Christopher Murray Misha Dimitri Diatchenko Madeline Katharine McEwan Adela Tatiana Kazak-Hall Electrician Scott Page Judge Tweed Ronald Dauphinee Mayor Potts Patrick Brett Hale Lieutenant Lamport Robert Hill CREW Production Designer Milton Ragsdale Sound Mixer Scott A. Jennings Music Sean Murray Director of Photography David Brower Editor Toby J. Brown Visual Effects Supervisor Price Pethel Co-Producers Tim Abell Vladimir Chistyakov Chris Meztista David Brower Screenplay Yuri Shapochka Produced by Yuri Shapochka Directed by Yuri Shapochka 2 SYNOPSIS Clubhouse, a revenge play and morality tale, features a razor sharp, biting black comedy. With the flip of a coin as in life, a different face can suddenly appear: friend or foe; hope or despair; victim or empowered. Robert, a wheelchair-bound Iraq War vet, using his family's magnificent old Southern home for a greater good, soon discovers nefarious plots being made against his life and property. PRODUCTION STORY Clubhouse stars Tim Abell (Soldier of Fortune), Leslie Easterbrook (Police Academy, The Devil's Rejects), Christopher Murray (Crossing Over, Smokin' Aces, The Pelican Brief), Dimtri Diatchenko (Chernobyl Diaries). Tim Abell joined Yuri Shapochka in producing Clubhouse. Shape Films LLC produced the film through Rich Street Productions. Other production credits include: David Brower (Lifted, The Saints of Mt. Christopher) as director of photography; Academy Award®-winner Price Pethel (Titanic, Apollo 13, True Lies) as visual effects supervisor; sound mixer Scott A. Jennings (The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto, The Help); composer Sean Murray (Call of Duty: Black Ops, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). PRODUCTION NOTES Clubhouse deals with nefarious plots made against the life and property of a wheelchair-bound Iraq War vet living in his family’s magnificent old Southern home. Some of the plots are cooked up by the vet’s so-called friends, and one is hatched by a corrupt politician. Shapochka filmed Clubhouse on location in only 12 shooting days with a local crew, including his regular cinematographer David Brower, and a mix of Alabama local and Hollywood actors. The film’s successful completion is another example of how Shapochka, who grew up behind what we used to call the Iron Curtain, has flourished in the Deep South — putting down roots, producing films and, it seems, making lots of friends. Clubhouse is inspired by events in the life of Shapochka’s close friend Bob McKenna, who — like the lead character in Clubhouse — uses a wheelchair and lives in a beautiful century-old house. According to Shapochka, McKenna “is a very spiritual, inspirational character himself, and so from my conversations with him and episodes from his life, and people I met at his house, I had this idea. It’s a loose adaptation of some events. However, it is 100 percent fiction. I didn’t make a point to make a documentary or life story, but I took some quotes and episodes, and Bob helped us with the location.” 3 The Clubhouse script “started out as a revenge story,” Brower says. “But as Yuri gets to writing it, it becomes a commentary on the society and life in general. It couldn’t be just a simple revenge play.” Brower adds, “The funny thing about Clubhouse is that there are moments in that script that are totally unbelievable that come out of real life. Nobody would believe it, but in fact it actually happened.” Shapochka offers high praise for Brower, who has 30 years of experience in high-end commercial work and recently photographed two indie features for other directors. “I have this absurdist view on the world, and it’s never easy to express things that way, and David supports me all the way in realizing and presenting this style,” Shapochka says, adding, “The way he does his lighting is like poetry.” Shapochka “almost can’t help but turn anything into a dark comedy, which I love,” Brower says. “He embraces absurdity. He’s not afraid of it. It’s a way of magnifying reality so you see it for what it is.” Veteran TV and film actor Tim Abell portrays Robert, the Iraq War vet, in Clubhouse. Abell met Shapochka on the Los Angeles set of the film Cross in 2011. It was about a year later when Shapochka sent Abell the Clubhouse script. The actor was impressed. “One thing I liked about the script is that there are scenes that come out of nowhere and are so unexpected,” he says during a phone interview. Abell was also struck by the range of Shapochka’s vision. “It was a story of good and evil, of greed, of pride and lust, of almost every sin you could imagine,” he says. “The true nature of man is really what this is about — the goodness of one man and the other people who can’t accept what he is trying to give them.” Abell became an actor and co-producer on the film and helped convince veteran actors Leslie Easterbrook (the Police Academy series) and Christopher Murray to take part. Murray’s brother, Sean, a composer who wrote music for a recent Call of Duty game and numerous films, created the score. Leslie Easterbrook says she thought Clubhouse was the best script she had read in a long time. “The audience doesn’t know where you’re going in every scene,” she says by phone from her Southern California home. “Nothing is ever what it seems on the surface. The characters are complex… and it says so much about human nature.” ABOUT THE CAST TIM ABELL — Robert An exciting, eclectic actor, Tim Abell is a man of his own making and when that making includes teaching ballroom dancing, horse training, writing, cooking, acting, producing and being a US Army Ranger with the 75th Ranger Regiment, you can see it is a formidable combination. 4 His break came, when April Webster recommended that Jerry Bruckheimer cast him in "Soldier of Fortune" as Benny Ray Riddle, a former Marine scout/sniper recruited by the Pentagon to work as part of a covert team. The syndicated series ran for two seasons. Then followed a series of films that made much of Tim's military experiences, including "The Base", where he starred opposite Mark Dacascos in a performance that had him compared to a young Willem Dafoe, and "The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option" which also starred Treat Williams and Bill Nunn. Tim was to find himself starring with Dacascos again in the film adaptation of Lisa Gardner's book "The Perfect Husband". In "Instinct to Kill" Tim played psychotic killer Jim Beckett with Missy Crider as his long-suffering wife. "Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man" for CBS, saw a change of direction for Tim into historical costume drama, which was then followed by roles alongside James Caan and Daniel Stern in Jason Bloom's award-winning "Dead Simple", and in the much acclaimed "We Were Soldiers" starring Mel Gibson. Guest-starring roles in the television series' "CSI: Miami", "NCIS", and "JAG" brought Tim face to face with David Caruso, Mark Harmon and David James Elliott. LESLIE EASTERBROOK — Patty Newman Leslie Easterbrook created Callahan, the tough as nails, overzealous drill instructor in the Police Academy movies. If you missed her in the original movie, you may have seen her in one of the sequels, punching her way up the ranks, from Sergeant to Captain. Leslie also created long-running characters Devlin Kowalsky on Ryan’s Hope (3 years,) and Rhonda Lee (3 seasons) on Laverne and Shirley. She has guest starred in over 60 other television shows, including such classics as Matlock, Murder She Wrote, The Dukes of Hazard, Brothers, Baywatch, and the animated series’, Batman and Superman. Her TV movies include The Song of the Lark, for PBS, A Family Lost, for Lifetime, Murder at the Presidio for USA, and The Taking of Flight 847, The Uli Derickson Story, for NBC. Leslie considers it an amazing blessing that director, screenwriter, musician, composer and performance artist legend Rob Zombie cast her as Mother Firefly in his box office hit The Devil’s Rejects and, again, as Patty Frost in his first, and very successful, Halloween. His faith in her dark side seems to have opened the door to a delicious array of juicy villains. Not only has she had the opportunity to create some remarkably chilling characters, she has greatly enjoyed meeting and greeting many horror fans over the past few years. Horror films House, (Betty) with Bill Moseley and Michael Madson, and The Dead Calling, (Marge) with Sid Haig, are both available on DVD. She stars with Kane Hodder in the recently released, The Afflicted, and is a writer, with Jason Stoddard, and producer, with Lee Dashiell and David Hilburn, on the film, as well. Her other recent horror titles are Rift, Mirror Image, Compound Fracture, DaZe, Number Runner, and Sorority Party Massacre. They are all in different stages of ‘finished.’ Just an aside; Tyler Mane plays her step-son in Compound Fracture (he also co-wrote and co-produced) – he was her natural son in The Devil’s Rejects, and her killer in Halloween. 5 CHRISTOPHER MURRAY — Clarke Wilcox Christopher Murray is one of today's most recognizable character actors, having appeared in a wide range of film, television and stage roles alongside some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Although most of his work has been in film, he is probably best known as Dean Rivers, the comically inept headmaster of Pacific Coast Academy, in the hit Nickelodeon series "Zoey 101".