18 years later, dude, I'm in this movie !!!

True story and a little trivia:

One summer day myself and some buddies who were Beta's at the University of Southern Cal were kicking it at the house, under fed, under employed, very broke, and way too sober when a guy from the Fiji house named Victor Richardson (a legend in his own right) runs in and says: "They're filming a movie in that old house next to Sigma Chi and they need extras for a party scene, they'll give us free beer !"

A group of us nearly vanished we got up and ran out so fast.

We get to the place where they're filming "Assault of the Party Nerds" and we're told we will be in the back of a party scene, and that we should drink beer and act crazy during a dance scene. The young PA who told us this obviously had no idea who she was talking to, out of a group of maybe 10 of us they had 3 of the biggest drunks / partiers from the Greek system at U.S.C. at that time: Victor Richardson, Bill Lindsey, and myself. (Billy "The Giant" Jeffries may have been there too).

So they roll film and all hell breaks loose, someone figures out it would be funny to shake up the warm cans of Old Milwaukee they gave us and pop the tabs causing beer to spray all over but appreciation quickly turns to annoyance when we, as is our well established custom take it too far, and shower everyone and everything with beer. In a matter of minutes we go from being appreciated and encouraged to being in trouble and getting yelled at. Nothing new here.

As the "Go for it" chapter begins we are arrayed on a couch in the back of the shot and it becomes apparent to me that something is going down between Rifkin and the old broad in the red dress. The shot begins with everyone dancing I am in the back jumping around, beer can in hand, but as the scene proceeds I move closer to the old broad and for the remainder of the scene I am never more than a few feet from her. I am in a hat, wearing sunglasses and a yellow shirt, going off. By the time Rifkin pushes his face into now topless old broad's cream covered chest my 20 seconds of fame is done.

Since the movie was never released domestically, at least that I was aware of, I'd never seen it. I recall pre-DVD's looking in a catalogue at a video store and seeing that the VHS could be purchased for $60 bucks, but this was back when $60 bucks was my monthly food allowance.

Recently while talking to a co-worker about college experiences I mentioned the film and re-told the story of my involvement, we looked it up in IMDB and that led to an Amazon search where the now DVD was available for $4 bucks. Pretty hard to pass up your major motion picture debut at a cost of 4 dollars.

So last night August 7th 2006 nearly 18 years after it was shot I viewed "my scene" for the first time with my wife as my two children slept down the hall. Quite a bit has changed since then, I have waaaay less hair, I'm now a stock broker working in S.F. and living in the 'burb's. Warm beer by the can has evolved into an evening glass of wine and the days of dancing on couches with strippers has given way to little kids jumping on my laundry covered bed.

Thanks Gabai, not sure if we met that day, but it makes for a good story all these years later.

Red