HOMECOMING HITS: A Night Out For Art House Action At The Slipper Room
A previous version of this article was published exclusively for supporters of my Buy Me A Coffee page on Tuesday, November 3. Special thanks to Tara Macken, Jeffrey Colangelo, and John Tabaniag for contributing to this publication’s updated edition.
Lead image by Tara Macken.
I’ve been slow to get to this, but only because it’s the morning after a night of some really loud and fun festivities at The Slipper Room. The facility has a very intimate setting and usually hosts a variety of shows from comedy to music to dance, and as far as this action film fan has witnessed: Stunts!
I’d never been to The Slipper Room before, and so leave it to NYC-based Code 10-10 Productions to take note and invite me to their bi-annual raft of action shorts and live performances for Art House Action, a showcase of action and movement arts for an East Coast gathering of the stunt community to celebrate what they do best. Their May event was the first I’d heard of it when Code 10-10’s Jeff Colangelo and Alejandra Guevara reached out to me to help promote it, and they also invited me at the time.
I couldn’t make it to their May event, but I intended on coming to their November edition. I don’t get to have a lot of fun throughout the year, as much as I have to coordinate things between my finances, time and taking care of family, so I was pretty fortunate that I was able to come; The commute was almost hell, too, with the trains clogged as the result of delays from an investigation along the J-line. Frustrating.
Anyway, I got to the venue with an hour to spare and almost got lost seeing as the entrance wasn’t as obvious I thought. Upon arriving, the first person I met was a filmmaker named Darren Tun who was involved in several of the projects featured, and I continued to wait as the crowd percolated and before I knew it, a ton of people from my social media spaces were arriving, including a few friends I connected with since I started my platform.
Eventually I got to meet a few of the Code 10-10 people including Alejandra who was alluring as ever, as well as Jeff, and fellow performers Nicholas Robyn, and Riccardo Cabalisti who I e-met and interviewed back in the summer. I first caught wind of Code 10-10 earlier in the year when our own Mike Garcia’s involvement with TACFEST allowed me to check out a Code 10-10 project called Let It Snow which Darren directed, giving me a handy glimpse of what this team creating stuff in my own backyard was capable of.
Nicholas and Pat came out in their costumes for the night, engaged with folks waiting in line and handed out little bags of confetti to hold onto until further notice before the venue started ushering folks in. Upstairs to the second floor where the show was, the crowd gathered and mingled, and I didn’t know what to do with myself seeing as I came solo, so I just sat down thinking I wouldn’t need to get up for anything.
Before I knew it, I spotted actor John Tabaniag who I recently gave mention to in my continued coverage of the current production of upcoming film, Nanny Nena’s, and you can read more about that here. John graciously offered me a beer from the corner bar which I accepted, and we talked briefly and got acquainted, and dove a little bit into Nanny Nena’s and the film’s progress, how we both met that film’s director, Joey, and more. It also turns out that John and I both live in Queens so that was surprising to learn, mainly because Queens is still big as fuck and no matter how many people I meet, we’re all still so damn scattered.
Art House Action began close to 8:00pm, I decided I’d stand up in the back with a few others by then. Jeff and Pat kicked things off in explosive action with spells of stage stunts and confetti shots galore, and the crowd was as festive as expected. The short films came in blocks of three and two, with intermittent stage performances by Lyra expert Lyss Arroyo, and by dancers Jake Warren and Casey Bronwyn Howes of Leggybones.
Coupled with the adjacent stage gags and crowdwork by the Code 10-10 team, the live-action performances were a feat you had to be there for. Both sequences were an amazing display of physicality and artful expression the likes of which I rarely get to see in person. The mood in the room was elevating and inspiring through and through, and you can feel the love these people had for the artists on stage.
The shortfilms were another treat, and for me personally, on a whole other level. There were nine shortflms total, culminating a mix of new and familiar projects I’d already screened for other festivals.
Darren’s latest, WTF.EXE, featuring Caleb So was a first for me, and I’d been waiting for it since I saw a poster a while back. So was cool to watch and Tun really shows his strengths here as a filmmaker I’m finally getting to know and looking more forward to in covering cinema. We also got to watch Joshua Romeo’s survival action thriller Korak, followed by Eric Jacobus‘s Rope-A-Dope with the late Dennis Ruel, which released in 2013 and continues to be an online hit to this day for fans of action and stunts.
The second block brought even more gems to the table beginning with a STELLAR premiere for Tara Macken’s The Wrong Guy, with Pat, Jeff and Nicholas, and a cute dog named “Wick,” in a crackling crime comedy about a pair of hapless hitmen targeting the wrong person. This film hit all the right notes with myself and the rest of the audience. The comedy, the action and wrecks were a ton, and with a finale that brought things home in fine fashion.
James Newman’s Kim Jee-woon and Kensuke Sonomura-inspired We Are All Monsters also got its time with the crowd for a searing, slow-burn noir of a cop on a mission to hunt down a sadistic killer. I spoke more with James about this project and you’re welcome to head over here for his thoughts accordingly.
Closing out the second block was a spiffy conceptual barebones pre-viz to start: Box World, an insane and phenomenal presentation of a man trapped in a dimension with a dark entity he has to fight to survive. Inventive and funny as hell, director and stuntman Nick Meese showed us he’s well on track to make a real monster of a crowdpleaser someday.
The third and final block kicked things off with Logan the Wolf, a derivative, fan-inspired take on Marvel featuring Maxime Ecoiffier which director Godefroy Ryckwaert actually emailed me about a few years prior to its online release. This project is as bloody and gruesome as fans could hope from an incarnation of a beloved character favorite, set against the forestral greens of Fontainbleau with action sequences that simply do not let up. Needless to say, Ryckwaert and his team didn’t disappoint.
The block continued with Side Effects, another Code 10-10 indie action trip that featured Gui DaSilva in the story of a man trapped in a violent and vicious timeloop with a chemical drug testing the extent of limits as he fights his way out of captivity. It’s a breakneck psychological mindbender of a flick and continues to show how great Code 10-10 are at creating gems like these. Closing it all out was a special screening of a delightful project from director Jose Montesinos in one of his final collaborations with the aforementioned Ruel in Chico And Rico: Animal Avengers, a comedic actioner that pits two legendary animal defenders against their would-be abusers.
I was told that Monday night was a much more different affair than back in May, so this particular installment was like an upscale from six months ago; I don’t have a good point of reference to compare, but all I can say to this end was that Monday night’s Art House Action was a BIG deal for a number of reasons.
Alejandra and Jeff began this particular community effort three years ago. They’ve committed to it and it’s been growing ever since, with each event pulsating with different themes and features. John and Pat share terrific stage craft and chemistry with the audience, knowing full well how to make people feel welcome with each interactive moment, and rewarding us with a promising show of independent action cinema that rightly gets its big screen fill.
Until now, I’d only gotten to watch these shortfilms on my phone or laptop, as was my go-to method when scanning for projects to make YouTube playlists to present for my weekly/biweekly subcolumn at The Hit List. This work I’ve been doing comes with a ton of solitude as I do this in the course of my own workday, so it tends to be a lonely endeavor, which inevitably makes getting to see these projects in a theatrical setting with friends, servings of libations and interactive spectacle an entirely different and all the more jubilant experience.
Aside from meeting most of the Code 10-10 folks and chatting with a few of them, other stunt professionals I got to reconnect with were Dylan Hintz of SAGA Action Arts and stuntwoman Evelyn Vaccaro. Other first time meetings included actress Grace Rivera, and a sighting of stunt coordinator Roberto Lopez who heads up training and production services via his Stuntworks label, in addition to the aforementioned Tara Macken whose work on The Wrong Guy was, again, just incredible.
I also got to meet stuntman Bryan Cartago who I friended on social media a few years into my work. My jaw honestly dropped at first when I saw him in passing, so when I called out to him from the line, we vibed instantly, and we also mingled a little more after the event. We talked a little bit about the more poignant highlights of Monday night’s showcase as well, namely the screenings of Rope-A-Dope and Chico & Rico, as Bryan, and actor and martial arts star Dennis Ruel were long time friends with a history that streches years. It was an emotional, and endearing moment to see and celebrate Ruel’s contributions, especially for Bryan was nothing short of emphatic with me about Dennis’s enduring memory and legacy.
This exchange remained with me as the evening persisted. Seeing Dennis on a big screen for the first time since I discovered The Stunt People for myself twenty years ago, carries a different kind of energy, is something of a milestone for me as I can earnestly imagine that Dennis would have wanted to be there with us, along with his longtime partner, Giovannie Espiritu. His gravitas as an actor and screenfighter continues to resonate as it will in the years to come, emulating a talent that measured Dennis as one of the best to have ever done it.
The rest of the night was a bit of a doozy upon a few other meetings of new faces I’d been long acquainted with and was so surprised to see, namely stuntwoman and dancer Victoria Lee Parella, and one of my favorite ASDO-adjacent action actresses Amanda Cass. I couldn’t inhibit my dorkification fast enough, which is how excited was to even meet these people. I’d especially wanted to meet Amanda for so long with the work she’d done with creators like David Lavallee Jr., Hector Soria, and the incomparable Johnny Yong Bosch among others.
There were a few others I wanted to meet on Monday night as well but couldn’t, including stuntman and actor Alexandre Huynh who also appeared opposite Dennis Ruel in Unlucky Stars. Others who weren’t able to make it included stunt professionals Kendall Wells and Taylor Krasne who I’m told had prior engagements at the last minute. I was sad to miss them on Monday night so naturally, I hope we can fix this one day.
As much as I love hanging out with stunt professionals and independent filmmakers, it never really dawned on me when I started down this path just how challenging getting together with these folks would be. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me. The circumstances of adulting in the last twenty years continue to be increasingly difficult and frustrating, and it didn’t help that we had a whole ass pandemic to mitigate six years ago either.
Nonetheless, I’ve been on this indie journo journey for close to fourteen years now, and it’s taken this long to endure the hardship it did to get this far. It hasn’t been easy, especially since I’d fallen out with a few people, which sort of puts a dampener on what was otherwise a joyous moment to bookmark for the years to come. My only hope from here on is that whatever happens, my work will continue to do justice for those who keep at it, and bring value to those who see it.
I can’t thank Alejandra and Jeff, and Code 10-10 Productions enough for reaching out to me to help promote Art House Action. I have no idea what the future holds, and as exponentially challenging as this work is for me to do, I can only hope that this journey will be made easier overtime in covering independent films with an eye toward the amazing work of the stunt community and the action film arena as a critic, and a fan, and maybe a friend if they so see fit.
I loved Art House Action, and I would “10-10” (I make no apologies) do it all again, so long as they will have me.
Courtesy of Tara Macken
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
