Leverage
Jade Betts and her sidekick Richie must infiltrate the Russian mob’s Christmas party and fight their way through the ranks, using festive weapons and witty one-liners. Leverage combines action and comedy, as Betts settles old scores with her former employer to preserve what’s most important to her.
Michael sees the movie theater as a place where traditions are subverted–where the status quo gets turned on its head. And this is where his writing sensibilities lie–in taking an established concept or idea and finding a way to turn it into something different. From slasher films where the “sexy” girls are the most competent ones to a rom-com where the meet cute takes place during casting for a snuff film, there’s no trope he’s unwilling to push to its limit.
Michael’s written more than a dozen feature films (and produced four of them) as well as written and produced a series of successful shorts. Michael has had several feature scripts both place as finalists and win in festivals and has had multiple short films win awards in recent years, including several that took top honors.
I grew up in the 80s loving Comic Books, Action Movies and Weird Al. As I got older and realized my mutant power was never going to kick in and my pathetic attempts at sports dashed all my dreams of being an action star, I followed the Weird Al path, making comedy music and films.
Flash forward to my 40s and I realized I still really wanted to make that action movie. I reached out to so many of my usual comedy collaborators expecting them all to think I was crazy, but to my surprise, they were all in! It turns out more of us wanted to be action stars than I realized!
I came up with a concept that channeled the great action films I grew up with, and recent modern action blockbusters, but also kept that Weird Al flavor involved.
Once we had our comedy team together, we brought in an amazing stunt coordinator and a couple “ringers” who actually could be action stars, and got to work making an indie ultra low budget action comedy.
This film was a ton of work by so many people and I’m incredibly proud of how it came out! I hope you have as much fun watching it as we had making it!