John “The Arrow” Fallon from Arrow in the Head chats exclusively with The Action Elite about his new project ‘American Muscle’ which is an old-school exploitation flick.
You’ve written and have a role in upcoming exploitation flick “American Muscle”; how did you come up with the story and how did the project come together?
I was approached by producer Travis Stevens from Snowfort Pictures to write the American Muscle screenplay for the fine gents at Automatic Entertainment. They had a title and had a basic premise: guy comes out of jail after 10 years to take revenge on the scum that wronged him. We started building from there.
What I particularly like about this project is that although the base is one of a familiar revenge movie, it is made unique, in my opinion or course, by its unapologetic, balls to the wall and fairly un-PC M.O. The novel tone/visual style director Ravi Dhar gave the picture and the casting of Nick Principe (Chromeskull) as the hero and the “nicest” character in the whole movie (which says a lot about the other characters), also contributes largely to it standing out.
Tell us about your character “Tongues”?
When I wrote the script, I wanted to give myself a fun role to play. So I made Tongues a mute, gave him a threesome sex scene with two hot chicks and had him kick lots of ass. On that, I learned that a threesome sex scene is not as fun to shoot as I thought it would be. Unless you consider a camera on your white ass, a sock on your privates and your balls flapping wildly as you’re doing an exchange with Todd Farmer to be “fun”. As for Tongues, he is a sadistic and deviant psychopath that LOVES being a sadistic and deviant psychopath. All you need to know!
“American Muscle” looks like my kind of movie with plenty of hardcore action, sex and violence; what’s the craziest thing we can expect from it?
The film is very graphic with its violence, is smutty (our hero pretty much nails every chick he meets, like Bond in Octopussy… lol) and is mean spirited while sporting a twisted sense of humor. It’s like a Grindhouse film on acid and Viagra! The craziest thing you can expect? Seriously, I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s all crazy!
You spent some time shooting in the desert; what was the toughest part to film?
I loved shooting in Joshua Tree; it was surreal for me, as if I was on another planet, and that otherworldly mood thankfully translated into the film. The shoot itself mirrored the end product: it was nuts. Pretty much a once in a lifetime type of shoot. Very rock and roll. Looking back, I guess the hardest thing I had to do was “run in the sand”. I had no problem fighting Principe or getting my head rammed into a wall for countless takes, but running in the sand, huge challenge for me for some reason. Who knew!
You said on your personal site that you learned a lot about writing for more than one person at the same time with this movie. How so?
Basically, the screenplays I’ve written in the past were written alone, written closely with a partner or written and then sold. This was the first time where I basically had more than one person (producers, director), directly or indirectly giving me notes as to the direction the screenplay should take. That was new to me. I handled it the best I could at the time and learned a lot through the process. I am happy that my cherry finally got popped on writing gigs of this ilk! I am down for more!
I’m a huge exploitation movie fan; have you always been a fan and have any in particular been a big influence on you?
I grew up on horror movies and action films, especially from the 80’s (discovered the 70’s later on). To this day they are still both my favorite genres and have influenced everything I have written. Action wise: Rambo 1-2, Commando, Cobra, Cyborg, The Terminator, early Seagal, Missing in Action, Return of the Dragon and the list goes on, were and are influences!
What made you want to come up with Bruise Productions?
Having worked with or for other Production companies in the past, I figured it was time I took control of things in terms of my projects and Bruise Productions was born. The focus is low budget horror and action films; yes, my two favorite genres J.
You’ve got a few projects coming up including The Shelter, Eye See Death, The Shadowing and Billy Trigger; can you tell us about them?
After a slew of misfortunes, Billy Trigger is now at the sound mixing stage and will hopefully lock distribution next year. I wrote, starred and co produced the film. JoBlo.com fully financed it. Christian Viel directed, edited and produced. And it co-stars Fred Williamson…
The Shelter is my feature length directorial debut. A trippy and bleak thriller. Think Polanski meets Malick. The talented Michael Pare (Streets of Fire) is set to star and I am presently getting the money together for it. Almost there…
Eye See Death is an action/horror film in the veins of Crimson Rivers. It was written by Jason Hewlett and is set to star French personality Rurik Salle and myself. That one gathered some interest from some big players at this year’s AFM, I am exploring that now, let’s see what happens. It’s all talk until I see action.
As for The Shadowing, the script also got some attention at the AFM. Let’s see if it results in anything concrete. I’m actually looking into turning that one into a graphic novel. It’s a visceral Sci-Fi/Action romp with tough guy characters, intense action set pieces, a cool creature and a killer ending. Think Predator with a twist! Jason Hewlett and myself wrote that one! We are very proud of it!
Thanks very much for chatting with us and all the best with your upcoming movies.
No worries! And thank you for supporting the action genre via your website. Real action needs all the support it can get these days. So kudos for that!
American Muscle Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/American-Muscle-Movie/345880832119780
