Co-Written and Directed by Brandon Beckner

Co-Written and Produced by Scott Sampila

DP Damian Acevedo

Executive Producers

Jerod Foos, David Florimbi, Mark Lawrence, Tom Arnold

Evan Peters
Lead Actor

Kevin Nealon
Lead Actor

Kip Pardue
Lead Actor

Nora Zehetner
Lead Actor

Tom Arnold
Lead Actor

Los Angeles. With the plug about to be pulled on his late night talk show after a fifteen year run, and his wife engaged in a steamy affair with a pro baseball star, host Jack West (Kevin Nealon) is desperate - to keep aflame his fading celebrity, and avenge the misdeeds of his adulterous spouse. With the clock ticking, Jack concocts the mother of all media stunts, killing two birds with one unforgettable stone on the road to redemption.

The scheme entangles an eclectic collection of colorful locals navigating their way through unpredictable twists and turns. A plump private eye (Tom Arnold) teams with a macabre web-mistress (Nora Zehetner) to investigate the strange disappearance of a dead body. A glassy-eyed cheddar head (Evan Peters) falls prey to a phony get-rich-quick guru (Christopher Titus). Imperiled actors (Kip Pardue & Dulé Hill) embark on a quest for a fresh corpse.

Cops in costume, a peculiar special effects make-up team, porn stars with dreams of stardom, a Jewish drug lord with very large brothers, Russian mobsters and others converge in this unique roller-coaster ride of comedy, mystery, murder and mayhem through the underbelly of modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

2008, HD, Dolby SR

DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY

Beckner makes his feature directorial debut with Remarkable Power!  A filmmaking fanatic since youth, he has made numerous video shorts.   On the writing front, he has optioned several original screenplays and sold a one hour pilot, Darkside, to Fox.  In addition, Beckner is an award winning editor, pulling in a Promax Award (Best Dramatic Promo) for the hit ABC series Lost. 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

The origins of REMARKABLE POWER! are as serpentine and zany as the story itself.  The first screenplay Scott and I wrote together was back in the summer of 2000.   It wasn’t too good, quite bad actually, but was fun to write and allowed us to figure out the format, work out the rookie storytelling kinks, etc.  We’ve come to endearingly refer to it as our “practice script.”  However, it was clear that to get anywhere in the biz we’d have to do a lot better.  Over the next few months we tossed around ideas and eventually embraced the fairly simple tale of an accidental murder and the mysterious disappearance of the body. 

Initially, the story was darker, more Dostoevsky-esque.   We soon changed course towards developing a fun, energetic, twisting piece of pop-cinema in the spirit of some our favorite movies from the late 90s such as Boogie Nights, Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, and Fight Club.  The ultimate goal was to show the audience a good time, entertain, engage, and above all make them laugh.  With that in mind we kept adding layers to the story and eclectic characters.  We love a compelling narrative told in a unique fashion, and that’s what we set out to do with REMARKABLE POWER!

To this day I’m not exactly sure how it all came together but in the Fall of 2001 our first draft was complete.  From the get go we knew this was a movie we wanted to make – our calling card so to speak.  We spent the next few years trying to get it off the ground and frequently rewriting.  After several failed attempts to find financing, we were about to hang it up when we attended the premiere of a friend’s film made on the cheap.  The film didn’t blow us away, but the fact that they had made it and on such a small budget really sparked a fire under us to just go out and make REMARKABLE POWER!  - by any means necessary.  We sat down one night, pulled out our credit cards, figured out how deep into personal debt we could go and said “let’s do it.”

I’ll always believe it was this dogged determination to make the film no matter what the cost that eventually led to us securing a respectable indie film budget and finally getting REMARKABLE POWER! into production with a great ensemble cast and terrific crew.  Replete with the typical ups and downs navigated by all true indie productions, it has nonetheless been an amazing experience from the start.

Currently we’re preparing to launch into our next production.  It’s from another original screenplay of ours, and is shaping up to be a very cool, colorful & wild cinematic ride; an ideal follow up to REMARKABLE POWER!  In the meantime we’re enjoying the fruits of the movie’s success on the film festival circuit; screening to full houses and watching audiences laugh, squirm, and gasp at all the right places.  They seem to be having a great time in the theater.  And that’s exactly what we were hoping to achieve in the first place with our first film!