Official Selection
FIGUEIRA DA FOZ INTL. FILM FESTIVAL, Portugal.
Yahn Soon (AKA John Balquist), veteran actor/writer/director of several Feature Workshops) plays a news cameraman, shooting story of Mr. Walker, Nobel prize winner (Yahn’s life is radically changed by the encounter). The 5th Wall (Vimeo, On-Demand)
There’s a couple scenes in the movie where Nobel Prize winner, Willie Boy Walker, first celebrates all the money he will receive, then enjoys subtracting their house mortgage, new cars, etc. with his movie wife played by Carolyn Zaremba, lead actor of A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER, SHOWBOAT 1988-THE REMAKE, and EMERALD CITIES (see book about “the making of;” "Sleeper Trilogy-Three Undiscovered First Features by Rick Schmidt 1973-1983”).
Carolyn Zaremba & Willie Boy Walker––happy Nobel prize-winners (click here 2 C see movie)!
Neighbor girl, played by Maya Aguayo Schmidt-Feng, listens to Willie explaining how to use his magic crystal technology (see Trailer).
Actor/wife Carolyn Zaremba itemizes Nobel prize money expenditures for husband Willie—after taxes $ doesn’t leave enough to buy him a new video camera!
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A Film by Rick Schmidt and Willie Boy Walker. Directed by Rick Schmidt. Script by Schmidt and Willie Boy Walker. Featuring Willie Boy Walker, Carolyn Zaremba, John Balquist, Michael Bolgatz, Maya Aguayo Schmidt-Feng, Stephen King, and Rohana Kenin Elias-Reyes (producer/writer/actor of the award-winning comedy web series, "47 Secrets to a Younger You,"). Director of Photography - Lloyd Francis. Edited by Jeff Belton & Rick Schmidt. Music Score by Marlon Schmidt. Produced by Rick Schmidt, Morgan Schmidt-Feng, and Willie Boy Walker.
Great poster by Jeff Belton.
"Thirty-five-plus years after his 1975 feature filmmaking debut, American Independent Rick Schmidt remains a free-wheeling derring-do filmmaker holding fast to the notion that people's real lives are more truly dramatic, hilarious, exciting and as exasperating as those manufactured by Hollywood's minions. Most everyone falls in and out of love, rejects and gets rejected, contends with failure and success, hatred, ambition, the death of loved ones...It's all there.
Michael Bolgatz (MAISY’S GARDEN) City Desk/boss, orders reporter Rohana to get an interview with ‘Mr. Walker.’
Actor ROHANA KENIN ELIAS-REYES plays to perfection the part of the reporter sent to cover Willie Boy Walker and his Nobel Prize in Literature (but he’s never written a book…).
Willie breaks the 5th wall of TV (he can travel through the wires…).
To capture real life on film, Schmidt fashions a creative weave out of the threads of narrative, documentary, and docu-drama film forms. His actors draw on their own experience enabling him to create a unique blend of fact and fiction. In the end, Schmidt makes art and life intermingle and imitate each other.
Aware that the American Dream factory financiers would never fund his films, Schmidt, undeterred, remains the maven of low, low-budget feature filmmaking."
– Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTRE, Huntington, NY.
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