Before the term “gamer� meant “someone who enjoys video games,� it meant something else.
As early as the 1970s, if you called yourself a gamer, it meant you were enthralled by fantasy. It meant you let yourself be carried away to distant imaginary realms full of adventure and magic. It meant you played Dungeons & Dragons, and it meant you were kind of a geek.
Rather than eschew their gamer heritage, Tacoma’s Dead Gentlemen – a group of former Pacific Lutheran University game-playing students turned filmmakers/entrepreneurs – have embraced it and turned it into something fantasy fans and nonfans around the world are enjoying.
“The Gamers,� a 48-minute spoof of fantasy role-playing games and the people who play them, isn’t the first project for the young, local independent filmmakers. The ultra low-budget movie was supposed to be “just for fun,� but it has become the Dead Gentlemen’s most well-known film and a catalyst for other projects.
It got such good response from their friends, they sent it to numerous indy film festivals. It finally caught on at the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival and since then has taken off like an enchanted lightning-imbued arrow.
“It’s had a lot of word-of-mouth success,� said Ben Dobyns, director of development for Dead Gentlemen Productions. “It’s been in 50 or 60 film festivals, and tens of thousands of people around the world have seen it.�
Back home, the DVD is a popular seller in local comic-book shops and game rooms and at conventions for comic-book and video and tabletop gaming fans.
“Unfortunately, it’s a very accurate depiction of geeky gamers,� said John Munn, longtime gamer and owner of Tacoma’s Comic Book Ink, one place to buy “The Gamers.�
“You’ve got the rules hound and the guy who just does stuff in the game because he wants to do it,� Munn said. “Then there’s the guy who thinks he’s invincible, and his back is broken on one die roll, and the guy who always has to leave to go to his girlfriend’s house.
“Their scripts are very witty.�
Don Early, director of operations for Dead Gentlemen, said “The Gamers� was “an accident,� something the group originally did just for themselves. He’s surprised by the reception the Dead Gentlemen get at conventions.
“We go to conventions and get treated like celebrities every once in a while, and it’s kind of weird,� Early said. “We’re just this little group from Tacoma.�
Western Washington residents won’t have to look hard to see local landmarks such as Fort Nisqually or the Sprinker Recreation Center climbing wall in “The Gamers� and its sequel, now in production.
“The Gamers,� with its $500 budget, follows a group of gamers as they get sucked into their adventure world. The line between fantasy and reality blurs in hilarious ways, and the audience gets to see how the characters’ real-life actions affect their fantasy world.
Anyone who has ever “rolled� (created) a character for a fantasy role-playing game or rolled a 20-sided die will get the jokes that abound in “The Gamers.� The Dead Gentlemen poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of the open-ended genre, and they have a good laugh at their own geekiness.
One funny scene involves a battle in a forest. A player needs to roll a 20 in order for his elvish archer’s arrow to hit a distant, moving bad guy. He miraculously gets his 20, and, in the fantasy world, the arrow flies, zigging and zagging around trees as it chases down its erratically running mark.
Although it is aimed at D&D enthusiasts, nonfans seem to like it, too, Dobyns said.
“They laugh in different parts, but they still laugh,� he said.
Dead Gentlemen got its start in the 1990s when a group of game-playing Pacific Lutheran University students hung out late at night in a local restaurant to “talk about poetry and complain about women,� Dobyns said, “and to basically be caring sensitive guys in a way that didn’t really fit the cultural norm of what men are supposed to be like.�
They decided true gentlemanly virtues and values are dead in modern society, and they set out to counter that.
Call it geek empowerment, call it an awakening, call it the antithesis to “Fight Club,� it must be working, because most of the Dead Gentlemen are happily married now, Dobyns, 26, said.
Some of the friends decided to make a movie called “Demon Hunters,� what Dobyns calls an “adventure-comedy-horror� movie. They filmed locally for about nine months and then followed up with the sequel, “Demon Hunters: Dead Camper Lake.�
Eventually, they formed a limited liability company and leased office and studio space near the University of Washington Tacoma campus. There are more than a dozen Dead Gentlemen now, and they’re not all men.
“Syphilitic Ninja Vampires� is another of their oddball films. And the Gentlemen recently won $15,000 in the Current Video Challenge Contest for their short campaign-ad spoof, “Campaign Ad.�
“That’s enough to make 30 ‘The Gamers’ or five ‘Dead Camper Lakes’,� they proudly proclaim on their Web site,
www.deadgentlemen.com
.
They’re in production with a follow-up to “The Gamers.� Principal filming should be done in a few weeks (they shot a throne room scene in Tacoma’s Abbey Ballroom over the weekend), and “Dorkness Rising: The Gamers 2nd Edition,� should be ready for distribution next year. This time, their budget is up around $50,000, and they’re talking to distributors in Hollywood, Dobyns said.
And this time, they don’t have to skirt around the use of the trade name Dungeons & Dragons. License holder Wizards of the Coast got a copy of “The Gamers� and gave the Dead Gentlemen permission to use the D&D name and products in “Dorkness Rising.�
“They didn’t know if we’d be interested because of the size of the project,� said Kevin Wilson, a Dungeons & Dragons brand manager for Wizards. There already has been a D&D major motion picture, and a sequel is slated for release this summer. “But people here actually already knew about their first movie and were very excited about it, so we were able to say, hey, we’d love to be a part of this.�
Plucked from:
www.thenewstribune.com/ae/story/4829233p-4438391c.html
