6ACK OBERZAN was a 33-year-
old “failed actor,” in his words,
when he decided to make
a Rambo movie.
In his 220-square-foot apartment.
For $96.
With one camera and one mic.
Playing all 26 roles himself.
Zack is the first person I called when it
seemed like the entire world was shutting
down because of coronavirus. I wondered if
movies were a superfluous, silly indulgence we
couldn’t afford right now. (And watched a lot of
movies to stay sane.)
One was Zack’s Rambo movie, called Flooding
With Love for the Kid. Zack released it in 2007
and it succeeded beyond all his expectations. A
close adaptation of David Morrell’s novel First
Blood, it’s a captivating look at what a single artist
can do, under the most stringent limitations, out
of sheer determination and love. It has played at
festivals around the world, a perfect illustration of
underground art, made by a team of one.
As recent weeks have proven, our small, in-
dividual decisions make a huge impact on each
other’s lives. If you don’t wash your hands, you
might get a vulnerable person sick. If you don’t
pay a debt, the person you owe can’t pay rent. If
you abandon a plan, you let someone else down.
Please keep every promise you can?
Yes, we all have new problems to solve. If
you’re a moviemaker, your new problems might
have seemed insurmountable, not long ago,
when our global lockdown began. Among them:- You should stay inside
- You’ll probably be alone for a while
- No sets, costumes, or equipment, except
what you already have - No budget
But you can overcome these obstacles. In fact,
they’re almost identical to the ones Zack imposed
on himself. He knew his film would be compared
to the 1982 Sylvester Stallone version of First
ISSUE NO. 135, VOLUME 27
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Maybe people would laugh at his bargain version.
He didn’t care.
Limitations breed innovation. At the time of
this writing, I have no idea what the world will
look like when you read this story, a month after
I’m writing it. Will this issue even come out?* Will
anything? Maybe we should expect, like Zack did,
that almost no one else will ever see our work.
It doesn’t matter. We have to try.
“The whole point behind Flooding was that
I had to do it myself,” Zack said.
At the time, he was working as a secretary at
a hospital. At night, he went to theater rehears-
als. He made Flooding in his Manhattan apart-
ment, from about 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. His budget
covered tapes for his digital camera, ninety-nine
cent guns, and a beret.
He spent a month adapting the script, four
months shooting, and three months editing. He
used Final Cut Pro and meticulous blocking to
figure out how to make his different characters
appear simultaneously onscreen. They talk,
argue, even throw punches at each other.
He changed his hair and shaved (or didn’t) to
differentiate between characters. He applied his
own scars. He worked out a range of accents. He
imagined.
His inspiration was John Rambo himself, a
Vietnam veteran-turned-survivalist who flees
into the mountains to escape from a small-town
sheriff.
“Rambo didn’t have a million bucks out
there in the woods. He didn’t have the kind of
guns that he needed, he didn’t have the food,
he didn’t have the clothes, he didn’t have any-
thing. That was kind of the point,” Zack says in
a making-of documentary.
Flooding is just the beginning of his cinematic
body of work, all of which you can see at his
website, Oberzan.com. When I called Zack, he
was dealing with a lot, including health prob-
lems, like so many people right now. I wanted
him to know his work might inspire other
people to make their own movie, Rambo-style.
Was there a moment when he felt hopeless?
“I loved every minute of it,” he said. MM*Yes, this issue came out, thanks to the contribu-
tors, artists, advertisers, publicists and movie-
makers who kept their promises in trying times.
Thank you to all of them, and most especially
thank you to you.MM NOTEBOOK
BY TIM MOLLOYSPRING 2020 MOVIEMAKER.COMZ
MAKE YOUR
RAMBO MOVIE
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF OBERZAN.COMFLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID