Growing Up Geek - I Almost Starred in PHANTASM IV with Bruce Campbell
My acting career pretty much came to an end when I landed my first big role in a movie. I was cast in one of the lead roles in the horror film Phantasm IV. Not the Phantasm IV that ended up coming out. The one that was originally being developed before it was cancelled!
That's right, I would have been in a movie with The Tall Man. In preparation for the role, I watched the first couple Phantasm movies, which I thought were great! They were so different and twisted than anything else I had seen up until that point in my life.
I went on several auditions for the role and the producers and director ended up offering me the role! Of course, I accepted! That was so freakin' cool that I was going to to star in a crazy-ass horror movie! I couldn't wait to get started and to start shooting this thing! Needless to say, I was on cloud nine.
Then, all of a sudden, it was gone. To this day, I have no idea what happened, but after they gave me the role, I never heard from anyone on the production again. I assume they couldn't get the money they needed to make it. The movie I would have been in was set in a post-apocalyptic future, I later found out that Bruce Campbell was going to be a co-star. I had no idea who that was at the time, but dammit! What a missed opportunity! I was so close to being in a movie with Bruce Campbell!
On top of that, my agent literally disappeared. Seriously, he just vanished like a fart in the wind, or blow up his nose. My dad always suspected he was into some shady shit and thought he was a big cokehead. It wouldn't surprise me! Hell, a lot of people in Hollywood do shady shit!
We tried to get in contact with him, we tried to find him but came up with nothing. As for the movie, I'm not sure what happened with it, but I imagine it fell apart. When Phantasm IV was eventually made and released it wasn't the same script that I had read. It was a very different film than what I would have been in.
When we couldn't find my agent I just kind of let the whole acting thing fade away. It was around that time where my dad bought our first video camera, and that's where I got more interested in making movies than being in them. I really love the creative aspect of that, and I was always shooting stuff with that thing.
In the few years that I was acting, I had a blast. I learned a lot about life and the entertainment industry. I had some of the best and worst experiences of my life. Sure, sometimes I wonder how things would have gone had I stuck with it, but the decisions I made took my life down another path, and I have no regrets about where that path took me.
To catch up on all of my previous Growing Up Geek articles, click here. There are still more stories to come!