TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Outtakes From A Colleague

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 27, 2007

EDITOR'S NOTE: Through the years, Tim Ritter has directed Joel D. Wynkoop in several films. Ritter, who lives in Kentucky, recalled some of their exploits in making low-budget movies for the underground B-movie world:

There are so many crazy things that Joel and I experienced together when we made movies in Florida in our decade-long heyday.

We shot the sci-fi segment 'Ransom' on public beaches with Joel sporting long hair and a trench coat, and he looked like Ozzy Osbourne, so when police tried to kick us off the beach, I told them we were shooting Ozzy's newest video, and they left us alone.

It was fun, everyone was afraid to approach Joel; they thought he was the Ozzman!

Not so fun was when Joel was almost shot by park rangers in a public park as he was swinging around a laser gun in the same movie for an insert shot, even though we cleared it with officials. It must've looked real because we found ourselves surrounded by police rangers with shotguns in the blink of an eye, ordering Joel to "drop the weapon."

We were young and naive in those days, and would do anything.

When we filmed 'Twisted Illusions,' we came across roads all blocked off because a train had derailed, and we pulled over, whipped out my high school 'press pass' and filmed a whole little scene for the movie amid the clean-up. No one said a word. It was insane.

In 'Creep,' we had smashed up cars and smoke bombs set off on the side of the road to simulate an accident where Joel escapes authorities in prisoner garb. Folks passing by saw the scene and Joel running around in an orange suit, and stopped to help us apprehend the felon. So that was a bit wild.

Back in the days of mom-and-pop VHS video stores, Joel and I would go into the stores, trying to sell the owners our latest 'locally made' flicks when we were starting out, and I was always amazed how Joel's salesmanship got them to buy our movies ... or at least trade a cool poster on the wall for a copy of our latest epic.

A few times we got kicked out of the stores, though, when owners thought we were lying about making the movies, even though Joel was on the covers. Joel even showed his driver's license to one non-believing owner. The guy kicked us out of the store, saying we 'falsified the I.D.'

While filming 'Truth Or Dare,' Joel and I drove all over town in one of the stunt cars with a prop 'dead body' in the front seat, shocking and alarming motorists at red lights until we were stopped by police.

It was quite the scene back in the day! Zany and over the top, anything went. Fortunately we lived through all this madness (and so much more) and no one got hurt ...

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT