First up in today’s trailer round up, GI Joe: Retaliation, introduced by Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Can you believe there aren’t any porn actors named “Rock Johnson?” Anyhoo, you may remember this as the film that was wisely postponed for a year (post-pwned, if you will) so that they could add some more C-Tates. Because audiences nowadays, they hear Channing Tatum, your movie better have at least a moderate-to-heavy amount of Channing Tatum, or else some theaters are getting burned down. It’s human nature.

Judging by this trailer, it’s not nearly the movie we’d hoped for based on Burnsy’s storyboards, but I do like the idea that the president hangs out with a random North Korean guy in a black jumpsuit. “Aw, cawmon, meessa praysidane, why you awways bussa my baws?

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picture source: Drafthouse Films

According to Brandon (right) and Jason Trost (left), the sibling filmmakers behind The FP, it’s a film that’s been eight years in the making. After shooting it as a short in 2007 (though there was always a feature-length script, Jason assures), they shot the full version (on a budget of less than $100K) and took it to SXSW last March, where it was picked up by Drafthouse films (it opens in 26 markets today and is available for fans to vote to create their own screenings through Tugg.com). By the time they got to the screening I hosted at SF Indie Fest in San Francisco this past February, they were already veterans of the festival circuit, having played Fantastic Fest, Fantasia in Montreal, the Rolling Road Show and a handful of other places.

After screening the film to a raucous, largely drunken crowd (what do you expect when you let a site called “FilmDrunk” get involved), Brandon and Jason, joined by their sister Sarah (The FP‘s costume designer and a former Project Runway contestant), Lee Valmassy (L Dubba E in the movie), and Art Hsu (KCDC), took the stage for a Q & A. Valmassy, a seemingly soft-spoken, slightly-built eccentric who’d apparently just gotten back from China, addressed the crowd in fluent Mandarin, then took a backseat for most of the rest of the Q & A, bearing bizarrely little resemblance to the manic screaming Mr. T he plays in the movie. People at the after party walked right by him, having no idea they’d just seen him in the film. Meanwhile, the Trost siblings (Brandon the reserved eldest, Jason the brash youngest, Sarah the glib middle) showed that the hardest part of moderating a discussion with them isn’t getting them talking, but getting them to pause long enough for people to ask questions. They’ve got that sibling shorthand thing in spades. All the while Art Hsu, the glue holding the film together and the lone person on stage not from Frazier Park, competently played the role of professional actor like the professional actor he is. The dynamic was much the same the next day when I met Brandon, Jason, Sarah, and Art for this interview, trying not to sound like I’d woken up that morning with a wallet full of singles from a late-night trip to a strip club (no comment). Read our chat below (thank Adam for transcribing) or scroll to the end for the mp3 version.

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I posted the first 10 minutes of John Carter this morning, and while that was a $200 million movie that managed to pack in an amazing amount of boring, well-worn clichés (rogue hothead, gruff commander, dead wife flashbacks, etc. etc.), The FP is a movie made for less than six figures that I feel pretty confident in saying is unlike most films you’ve seen. The best way I can describe it is that it feels simultaneously home-made and meticulously crafted. Oh, also, it’s set in a dystopian subculture in which gangs do battle through a dance videogame called Beat Beat Revelation, written in a fully-realized, alternate street vernacular where people call each other “Snowcone,” and “Clam Chowder.” (Depending how much you read into “clam,” calling someone “Clam Chowder” is sort of like saying “Pussy Soup.” I always wonder if they meant it as weird version of pussy or as literal clam chowder).

Anyway, The FP opens March 16th in LA, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, and some other cities. Check out the first 10 minutes below, and make sure you ponder that thing I said about pussy soup. (Video slightly NSFW for language and brief nudedness)

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