FIELD COMMAND RESPONDS: A Word With Actor And Producer Joe Barbagallo

In the course of the past month, I found myself prospective in covering Mark Cheng’s directorial debut, Ghost Source Zero. If you haven’t seen the trailer for it, well…here it is:

Cheng partnered with longtime friend and film cohort Joe Barbagallo, and amazingly with legendary creator and fan-beloved Larry Hama on this film and you’re more than welcome to learn about the process from Cheng by clicking here. In the meantime, an opportunity also fell in my lap to interview the film’s star and producer who himself not only shares Cheng’s vision and plans, but those of his own for other projects forthcoming.

Greetings Joe and thank you for spending sometime with our readers. How has the year been for you?

Hi Lee, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be interviewed by Film Combat Syndicate. A lot of my friends and colleagues have been featured here and you’ve covered a lot of films that I adore, so thank you.

This year has been incredible. Last year I had felt that there was not as much momentum, at least nothing to speak about publicly, but I feel as though everything started to come to fruition this year. That’s show business, I suppose…

With Ghost Source Zero finally being released by Sony, starting a new production company, and having two films that have been submitted to Sundance, 2018 has been good to me. I am learning to be proud of myself even when there is no external validation… again, it’s a learning process and every day I get to know myself a bit better and what is most important to me.

You’ve been acting and doing films independently for a while and I want to start off by asking how you first got into it, because you’ve been acting for about as long as you’ve been working with Mark Cheng. Tell us about that progression. What and who came first? And so on.

Well I’d always wanted to be an actor since I was a little kid. I was just too self-conscious and scared to do it. I used to sit in school and wish I was on stage whenever we had a school play. Really, I was just afraid of what my classmates would think.

It wasn’t until college where I enrolled in an elective acting class that changed my perspective and it was official – I’d caught the acting bug. Eventually, I enrolled in an acting class in the city. I grew up about 2 hours away and would take the train in. I was so self-conscious that I kept it a secret for 2 years before I told anyone what I was doing.

I met Mark Cheng a year or two after starting to take acting seriously. I auditioned for the role of Warnock.

During the audition, Mark was so passionate and excited that he really pumped me up. My character hated A.I.s and Mark pushed me to show it. I don’t even remember what I said but I remember literally spitting on the floor because I was so worked up. That actually made it into our first film we did together, Deployment Strategy.

We worked on numerous projects until about 6 years ago, when we decided to team up and start Planet Nerd Rage.

And so with Deployment Strategy in tow among others, this now includes your latest performance in Cheng’s feature debut, Ghost Source Zero. What do you get most out of playing this character?

What was great about Warnock is that he has developed over the years. Warnock was supposed to be a supporting role but he ended up being a central figure in this world. Mark would revive this character a few times in the last 9 years.

My dreams came true when we started working with Larry. One day Mark calls me and says, “Dude, did you read the new Ghost Source Zero script yet?” I told him I hadn’t and had only received it that morning and he tells me, “Read it…I think you will LOVE it!”

So I did and came to find out that Larry wrote Warnock as the main character. I was so touched and honored. I tried to play it off, but I still can’t believe it to this day.

Sometimes the characters you play kind of go simultaneously with your real life. Producing and acting in GSZ was a tremendously stressful endeavor. I felt a lot of pressure every day and it showed. What I got out of the character on a personal level, other than a bad cigar and bourbon habit, was that you have to “stick to your morals even if they might make you unpopular ” to ‘the suits’ (a great line of Larry’s). It’s a valuable life lesson to live by your code and not to let anyone sway you.

Tell us about Warnock’s battle in Ghost Source Zero this time around in relation to his previous appearances. Some of us might not be familiar with those projects and as of this inquiry, I’m not so I am curious. Do the universes connect any? And how is the fight greater this time around?

In previous films such as Deployment strategy and then Protocol Deviation, we see Warnock’s transformation from a grunt who only thinks of himself and his needs, to a leader who has to maneuver through the political system and take care of something greater than himself, his team. The stakes are raised in Ghost Source Zero, because there is a moral conundrum he needs to face while battling his own demons.

Tell us about the specific preparations and training you underwent for the role. Was there anything new in your regimen (other than preparing to be in the room more frequently with Larry Hama)?

To be transparent, I didn’t think I could handle the role and was worried I didn’t quite get the new Warnock. I had been playing Warnock since 2006 and he was a very different character then; I knew him as such. Until I realized that Warnock had evolved much like myself over the years, with more responsibility and more cynicism, that’s when the character truly made sense to me.

Physically, I wanted Warnock to be big and strong. He is a soldier that has been through battle after battle and has many scars to prove it. He is going to get the mission done and it’s not going to look pretty. I worked out and gained 20lbs for this role, with a lot of lifting, eating, cigars, and bourbon. This is a guy who doesn’t care about his abs; he cares about kicking down a door and busting up the place—not John Woo style, but more John Wayne. It wasn’t going to be pretty but it would be efficient.

I’m told your co-star, Emily Dennis, specializes in Taekwondo, which was a delightful surprise for your director. Was this a surprise for you too beforehand?

We hired Emily very shortly before we began filming. I was apprehensive at first, so many actors say they can do stunts or overinflate their experience with martial arts, but then during our first rehearsal, I was floored. She picked it up so quickly and looked great doing it. I couldn’t keep up with her. She was very impressive.

My agent tells everyone I do stunts and if any casting director asks, I would say, “Yes, I do stunts!” The truth is that I know what stunt actors can do and I can’t do even a fraction of what they do…nor could I attempt to. I have such a great appreciation for the GSZ stunt team, especially Jae Greene, our stunt coordinator, and actor Yablonski. He worked with what I had which isn’t much… and compared to what he and his team did, I would feel like a phony to tell anyone I do stunts.

Ghost Source Zero was once supposed to be a series at once point from my own recollection. How were you, also as a producer on this movie, and your team able to determine the proper structure and allocation for this kind of IP?

We played around with making GSZ into a series but we always had a feature film in mind. Protocol Deviation was an example of the GSZ world that we could turn into a series.

As far as the proper structure and allocation for this kind of IP? I wasn’t experienced enough at that time to understand the ins and outs of everything involved; I just wanted to make a film or series that people would enjoy.

Talk about working with the beautiful Jean Goto starring opposite your role, and also what went into preparing some of those more dramatic moments including where your character sort of falls into his own headspace.

She was great to work with. When we were rehearsing she really brought the character to life, and man, was she good from the beginning, forcing me to step up my game. When you surround yourself with great talent, you hope that some of it rubs off on you.

As far as preparing myself for dealing with PTSD, I did a lot of research and spoke to people who suffer from this terrible condition. It was really difficult hearing stories of veterans and other people who share their struggles. This affects everything – family, work, insomnia, and can make you more susceptible to substance abuse and depression.

The worst part of this disorder is that it affects strong men and women who sometimes don’t get proper treatment that they need. And this is a serious condition that ruins many people’s lives. It was clear to me that we as a nation need to do a better job providing adequate treatment to veterans and their families.

I used to grow up thinking by now as you or most people might have that we’d all be owning flying cars and living in a techno-advanced society fresh out of a scene from Back To The Future 2 or something. Granted that’s a bit differently toned compared to the world Cheng creates in Ghost Source Zero, but I’m curious as to whether or not you still see this kind of world as tangible, even on a commercial level.

Well, I believe that we have the technology for most of these things but I am not sure how close we are in implementing these things into our daily lives, mostly because of politics and laws governing these advancements into the general public. There is some crazy space-age techno-advanced shit our government and private sectors are using… we just don’t hear much about it, if at all.

I asked Mark about this and I wanna get your perspective. If you could pick or choose any IP to help reboot or sequelize in the realm of cyberpunk, given what endeavors are now underway for the incoming Terminator and Robocop movies, which franchise would you pick and why? I was all on board with Mark rebooting Nemesis because there’s a fifth film in existence and because of it, that franchise has gone and fucked off beyond thunderdome and into D-movie creative entropy. What are your thoughts on this?

Not sure what I would reboot. Most of the new sequels for me just don’t cut it. I think I am becoming like an old man “back in my days when movies were good”, that sort of thing.

What are some of your favorite cyberpunk or general sci-fi and action films that serve your fandom? Any you can name for directors to take notes on?

Mad Max was one of my favorites along with Blade Runner, Alien, Ex Machina, early Star Wars, Terminator 1 and 2, Minority Report, The Matrix and so many more!

What was the biggest challenge you faced working on a production this ambitious?

Definitely money and time. Pretty much.

You also mentioned to me in private that you also had another project in the works and you just came off another as well. Care to expand on these?

I just came off of a romantic ghost story that we filmed upstate in New Paltz. Not a genre I typically produce or act in, but I read the script and fell in love with it.

I am going back to my roots; Right now I am in development for a film that’s scheduled to shoot May 2019. It’s sci-fi built with a lot of action, cyber punk and more.

I wanna thank you again for taking the time out to share your story with us and on that note, do you have any closing thoughts you’d like to express for our readers?

I just want to thank you and your readers for reading this far, and please check out Ghost Source Zero, because more is definitely coming.

…And now, here’s a special audio message from the man himself:

Lee B. Golden III

filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com | Web

Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!