Actor Brett Hunt has had quite the career. A former military vet, movie reviewer host and now actor/producer, the fun Mr. Hunt spoke to me while he was on set of his new film, “Cold Sun” where we chatted about his career and upcoming projects.
You can follow Brett on twitter here: @bretthunt.
Tell me how does a former decorated vet trained in special ops decide to become an actor?
“Well, I wasn’t trained in special ops. I worked for them when I was in the military. I just have been in the entertainment industry a good portion of my life growing up. I was a professional Magician by the time I was 14 years old and I just liked being in the entertainment industry. One day I was doing credit banking and finance and it was one of those days where you wake up and you’re like I just don’t want to do this anymore, and that was it. I was making about 120 a year in banking and I just woke up and said I don’t want to do this anymore, gave my two weeks’ notice, put a plan together to move to Hollywood, & said I’m going to go be an actor and a comedian. Then I did it!”
During your stint with the military you did comedy and you performed for the troops. What was that like performing in front of your peers?
“It was actually a lot of fun. When you’re performing, doing magic or comedy in front of people that you work with they are there for you cheering you on and stuff. It was a lot of fun. I got a lot of support from everybody and I love doing USO tours and stuff like that. I really enjoy giving back because I enjoyed my time with my and my brothers and sisters . Anyone that knows me will tell you that I’m pretty much a patriot. I like to have my brothers and sisters all up in front and I make sure that I try to take care of them as much as they took care of me when I was in the military. It was a lot of fun. It’s amazing. You get some great support from them.”
After your tours, you started, if I understand right,The Popcorn Review. Was this your first foray into producing? What was that about?
“Me and my friend, I was working at Microsoft at the time and my friend and we used to go to movies all the time. We’d go every weekend to see movies and one day I said you know what we should be critics or something and do silly reviews on movies but we should be more up front. If a movie sucks you don’t spin it like oh this movie has some issues here and there but it’s really cinematically a great movie, that kind of thing. What we did was more of a real bad review. So if a movie sucked we’d say something like two hours of my life that could have been better spent pouring vodka in my eye sockets. That would have been less painful than watching this movie.
We started getting a following by doing things like that and just making fun of everything Hollywood basically. When Lindsay Lohan got in trouble we made fun of her. Anything that happened, Paris Hilton did something we’d make fun of her and we put a web comic together that became very popular. Within six months we had about a million subscribers, around 2 radio talk shows every Monday morning, we were syndicated in newspapers, I think four or five syndication papers throughout the US. We put the comic book together after the web comic became popular. We put a comic book and sold it at conventions. It was fun times. We had a good time with that. It was a lot of fun.”
So it’s no longer on, right?
“No. We made that decision when we moved to Hollywood we wanted to stick to our comedy and acting careers. I called him and I said you know what I think I’m going to quit my job and go be an actor in Hollywood and he goes you know I kind of want to follow suit with that. I think you’re right. We saw this really horrible movie and we were like it can wait, we can do way better than those guys. I think it was The Naked Trucker and T Bones Show on Comedy Central or something like that. We moved to Hollywood and started pursuing our own careers and then Popcorn Reviews kind of got put on the back burner and that was it. It was over.”
You and your producing partner, Edwin Mendez, you created Raging Gopher. What made you get into producing?
“Well, I accidentally fell into with a movie that no one will ever see or won’t if I have anything to do with it I hope. As an actor, most actors will tell when you first start your career it’s kind of rough and you’ve got to be out there a lot, you’ve got to be meeting people you’ve got to be consistent and just kind of push through it. An opportunity came up where I actually had access to someone who was looking to invest in a movie and a movie looking for some investors. I kind of put those two people together and when I did that I kind of became a producer and I asked well is there something in this movie for me if you did that and of course there was a part. They said yeah we’re going to do that. I realized that if I produce then I can act in everything I do and it became like maybe I should look into this.
After that movie I started looking at other opportunities, trying to network people and put people together that needed to be together. Next thing I know I’m a producer. I went to Cannes this year and I started talking with producers and distributors there and the minute I saw an actor walk up and they’d say, I’m an actor, then they’d take their card and say OK, great. But, when I walked up and handed them my card and said I’m an actor and a producer they took 30 minutes to sit down and talk to me because I was a producer as well. Raging Gopher production company was my production company from a while ago and when Edwin came in we talked about maybe making a company and he just kind of said you know what we got this that was it.”
Do you like acting or producing better than another?
“I’m an actor first, producer second. I produce out of necessity of acting and I act out of necessity for producing. Yeah, I’m an actor first.”
Now, we do have a Twitter question. She wants to know, Brett, boxers or briefs and who would win in a sword fight, Arrow or Princess Leia Organa?
“Well, I’m a boxer briefs kind of guy, you know the combo ones? Throw them together. I wear those. And as far as Princess Leia she was never officially trained in Lightsaber combat so Arrow is going to win since he was trained with sword combat so he could face by Raz Al Ghul.”
One last question for you Raging Gopher Productions has a full slate of films coming out. Can you tell us about some of them and what is next for you?
“Well, after Cold Sun we go into Mangled Angels. Mangled Angels is one of our pet projects . It’s a combination of Silence of the Lambs meets Seven. It’s based on a true story, based on true events that happened 10 years ago about a serial killer who thought he could talk to God because of a quote that he saw from Saint Francis and the quote was, “Since God sends us messages via his angels. We should often return such aspirations via the same messengers.” And so he figured he could create angels to talk to God and that’s what he does and documented everything on the Internet. In the movie it kind of goes through when the FBI became involved and when they started tracking his guy and trying to find him and I think people are going to love it. I think it’s an amazing script, screenplay is done by Cliff Goldsmith and he’s a great writer. The story is brilliant. It’s actually a 4 picture franchise so we’ll have 4 movies off this 1 franchise as of now and it’s due out Valentine’s day weekend 2016.”