Ask Your Doctor If Having a Brain Tumor is Right For You!
I’d like to tell you how and why my film “Fame-ish” came about.
It all started back when I had a terrific job with a terrific company called Bellum Entertainment. I was the Supervising Producer for a very funny clip show, and life was good.
One Wednesday night in May of 2017 I suddenly got the headaches of headaches, and flash forward to the ER, a catscan revealed I had a ping pong ball sized brain tumor.
Relax, it’s all good now, I had brain surgery a week later, and luckily they got it all. But trust me, it’s easier to tell my Jewish mother I’m converting to Islam than it is to tell her I had a brain tumor. “Mom, I have a brain tumor.” “Oy vey! Oy vey!” “Mom, I’m converting to Islam.” “Oh, thank god, I thought you were gonna tell me you have a brain tumor.”
Anyway, after I recovered from brain surgery I got back to work, and as luck would have it, only a few weeks later, the owner of that fantastic company Bellum Entertainment embezzled all the company’s money, and suddenly the staff of over 20 shows in production were out of work, including mine!
So, having a new lease on life, and no job, I decided this is a perfect time to make a movie. I had written 3 screenplays in the past that were produced, but I didn’t get to direct any of them. I had written several others for me to direct, but I was never able to secure any financing. But a near death experience will move your bucket list up significantly, so I was done asking permission.
I approached people to join me, and my pitch to them was, “I have no money, I can’t guarantee anyone will ever see this movie, and I can’t guarantee this movie will even be good, but I’m tired of asking for permission to make a movie, and if you’re tired too, please join me.” And many of the people did.
So, I took a year off to make the movie. I wrote “Fame-ish,” a romantic comedy set at an anime convention. A Comic Con/Rom Com if you will. I then partnered with Geek Kon in Madison, Wisconsin to shoot there. They flew us all out and put us up in return for being guests at the con in between filming. We shot for parts of 12 days, and for the scenes that took place at the con that weekend, I created a workflow to be able to shoot 80 pages of screenplay in about 71 hours of actual work. And we did it! A Herculean task to say the least. I couldn’t be prouder of my cast and crew. And I hope you enjoy the movie as much as we enjoyed making it!
About the Author:
Jeff Nimoy has been a writer, voice director, producer, and voice actor on many top American anime franchises, such as Digimon, Naruto, Bleach, Trigun, and Stitch. He’s an Emmy Award winner, and 3-time nominee, for his comedic work with NFL Films. His live-action romantic comedy “Fame-ish” is being distributed by Random Media worldwide.
