There are NO friends in the entertainment industry...

I was told recently by someone I had considered a friend, that there are no friendships in the movie industry. This by someone who has substantial standing in the industry, the same film business I am getting deeper into.

Pretty sure they are wrong, but since I haven't made it big yet, I can only examine my own circumstances and those I surround myself with.

I started investigating film and video as a way to document the massive amount of training techniques and discoveries made while teaching martial arts over the years. Writing and sketching out techniques and angles and body mechanics became way too cumbersome. While doing research on video cameras and what was involved in filming something that hopefully would be intelligible 20 years later, I met Jim Benton. He became not only my first acting teacher, but a friend, and has been for nearly twenty years.

Though I might not have been a great student, through his class I was introduced to two other students, Ray Lloyd and Robert Pralgo. Ray jumped into the professional wrestling world and is better known to his fans as Glacier. He became a part time student of my martial arts, and is now more and more involved in the world of film and acting, and for these 18 years has been someone I consider a good friend.

Robert Pralgo became an instant friend, and we discovered later that I already knew his father from other mutual friends in martial arts. I had previously traveled to Los Angeles to teach at his martial arts school, have dinner, be shown the sights, and find out that his son lived in my home town of Atlanta. "Have to meet him sometime" - not realizing until sometime later that I already had. Small world, then and more so now, and both our mutual friends, Chuck Young, and Rob's father Mel, remain friends with me and each other.

Rob and I shared a mutual love of films and found we both had ambitions behind the camera as well. Rob to push his acting, and me to take creative control and become a director. We remained close friends while I moved to LA, Rob to New York, then me to Miami as Rob transitioned to Los Angeles.

I helped create product for Pan Am Pictures in Miami while Rob pursued his acting in LA, and only years later after a couple of false starts, we found ourselves in the same city with the same passion for films and movies, and then partnered on producing and delivering BLOOD TIES. Though the film stretched our finances, stretched our collective talents, and stretched me physically, it never stretched our friendship.

My circle of friends are basically in the business of movies, tv, and films. Actors, writers, cameraman, and editors. The success of BLOOD TIES on the festival circuit has introduced me to many people, a few of which I can now call, and hope they do, my friends.

One of the friends made on BLOOD TIES, brought me in as the director and editor of another project, AM SESSION, which can now be found playing on HBO. Mark Wilson and I are talking about future projects now.

Rob was with me, to hang out with other friends from our circle of filmmakers, when I met my girlfriend nearly 2 years ago. Besides a host of other things, she has a passion for dark, thought provoking stories, and an exhaustive knowledge of films, anime, comics, and graphic novels. Turns out that Amanda McCarthy is an amazing writer, and as she pursues her writing, we are now investigating options for animations and short films under her label THE DARK PLACES.

We thought it would be fun for people if we included the first scene I ever directed on our behind the scenes extras on the BLOOD TIES DVD. Shot in 1992 on a single Super8 camera , it incorporated lessons I learned playing a major role in AMERCAN NINJA IV (can there actually be major role in there?), and getting to double both Michael Dudikoff and David Bradley. (David later helped bring me in on TOTAL REALITY)

What's pretty cool about watching the video of our Super8 scene - shot 16 years ago - besides the laughing at the huge hair and patting myself on the back for some meager exhibition of a talent for orchestrating film violence, is that my main fight was with another friend and sometimes martial arts student/sometimes teacher Scott Sullivan.

Not only was I able to bring him back in on my first starring picture, he later became the U.S. Heavyweight Champion in Shootfighting - a huge part of the lineage of the UFC. He was and remains my friend.

And there in the beginning of the clip, for just about 5 seconds of screen time, filling in as a stuntman and lending me his arm to break (no one was actually hurt - okay okay - no one was actually broken) is my friend Rob Pralgo.

I know I haven't made it big yet, but... I still have all my friends.

For the high rez Windows Media clip of the Kely McClung and Scott Sullivan fight: CLICK HERE

To watch this Kely McClung scene and others from the movie BLOOD TIES on YouTube: CLICK HERE

Kely McClung

http://www.bloodtiesmovie.com/
http://www.amsessionwebsite.com/
http://festivalwinners.com/