Last year I met a Hollywood screenwriter on the rise named Adam G. Simon. Adam who had written a script and acted for an unreleased indie movie named Synapse. Over this past year I’ve kept up with Adam and his movie along with doing an interview with him for PopcultHQ Adam Simon interview. Finally the time has come for Synapse to have its World and Hollywood Premiers and once again I met up with Adam, but this time he had his cast-mates from the fantastic new sci-fi action thriller with him. PopcultHQ had the wonderful opportunity to speak with two of the main cast members of Synapse. Main bad guy “Agent 702” played by one of the nicest people I have ever met Charley Boon and “Freddie” who was played by the very hilariously talented William Rubio.
PopcultHQ: We are here with two actors form the new sci-fi film Synapse Will Rubio and Charley Boon.
Will Rubio: “Oh this is happening right now?!”
Charley Boon: “This is LIVE!”
PopcultHQ: Oh yeah, this is going on LIVE!
Will Rubio: “We didn’t even get time to rehearse?!”
(laughing) I’m just kidding, this is an audio interview, I write it out later.
Will Rubio: “Oh…..OK, Good”
(all of us laughing)
PopcultHQ: Well, I met Adam here at this very same con (Wizard World Chicago) a year ago
Will Rubio: “I’m sorry”
(all of us laughing)
PopcultHQ: So he gave me the low down on Synapse back then. I saw the original trailer from a year ago and this was well before all the special effects were added on, I could already tell that this movie had ‘something’. I look at myself as a pop culture expert at finding the new trends well before they come out. I have an amazing track record for knowing when something is going to be a hit. Adam, Synapse, I just knew it was going to be a hit.
Will Rubio: “OK, so we got the ‘hit!’
PopcultHQ: Oh yeah man, if I have a great feeling about something, it more than often turns out to be popular
Will Rubio: “You should look after my love life”
PopcultHQ: The thing I saw that really gave me the best clue, was, the PASSION. You guys wanted to do this movie and you wanted to do it as a group. I heard a financier came out and helped you all, a location was provided for filming. How did it feel having such support and help especially when it came to the location used for filming.
Charley Boon: “Los Angeles Studios Hollywood Locations, they were amazing. You talk about location and the facilities that were available to us, All the way to having craft services delivered to us personally, California Kitchen studios with pizzas on a daily basis given to us. It was an awesome time.”
Will Rubio: “I just want to say that it was an awesome addition to what we already had. This was a true bootstrap production, hey man, they really helped us with locations and stuff. But as far as everything else being bootstrap, what we were able to do with the resources we had, was incredible. Also in the amount of time we did it in was mind-boggling. It goes to show not only Ken (Kenlon Clark) directing the hell out of it, he was putting blood sweet and tears into it. Also to have people like his brother Cameron, who believed in it so much”
PopcultHQ: Well you guys had so much help from so many avenues, it should go to show how much people……
Will Rubio: “Oh there was hardly any help at all………I’m just kidding”
(all of us laughing)
Charley Boon: “It was all Will”
PopcultHQ: It WAS all Will wasn’t it!
(all of us laughing)
Will Rubio: “I did the whole thing pretty much”
Will Rubio: “Yeah”
PopcultHQ: It just goes to show that people really had faith in you guys. Just from the story itself, from Adam’s screenplay, Kenlon already doing some music videos.
PopcultHQ: Have you guys done any other indie movies?
Charley Boon: “Yes”
Will Rubio: “Yes”
PopcultHQ: So was this a totally different sort of ‘guerrilla style” indie filming in a way?
Charley Boon: “Completely! Totally! I mean…it just took that (guerrilla filming) to the next level. Woodshed production all the way. We were up some nights all night just to get ready to shoot in a couple of hours in the day. Some poor kid had bronchitis, we just had to shoot through the illnesses”
Will Rubio: “Yeah, we ain’t got no time for that”
PopcultHQ: Sounds real gritty
Will Rubio: “Adam wrote an amazing script and from that, it just goes to show you, that if you produce a quality work like that in great form, people are going to believe in you, people are going to back you, people are going to make it happen. Ultimately film making is a collaborative effort, you can never do it on your own. We were so fortunate to have such an amazing script, to have a great director who had such an amazing vision. When you think of it, even when people have the resources, they get some financial backing, sometimes it just doesn’t happen. This was such an ambitious undertaking from the beginning, the fact that it’s all come to fruition now, is awesome”
PopcultHQ: So how happy are you now that this day has finally come?
Will Rubio: “Over the moon”
Charley Boon: “From a scale of 1 to 10……I’m giving it a Charley Boon 11!”
PopcultHQ: which is up there!
Charley Boon: “Yeah, it’s up there!”
Charley Boon: “When we got the script I’m telling you man, I had to read it about four times to get it, just to start with. (laughing) It just goes to show, that maybe, just maybe, the Hollywood system of big blockbuster movie-star-filled-films with $100 to $150 million dollar budgets might start to get antiquated. Hopefully this film will show, if you got a great script, a great director that knows what he’s doing, anything can happen.”
PopcultHQ: How do you feel about the talent behind the movie?
Will Rubio: “HAHA!!”
Charley Boon: “We scored! Scored! Well, Will Rubio….this guys is simply amazing”
Will Rubio: “Here’s the thing, honestly everybody was awesome. The glue was Sophina Brown. She took the script and this was the cool feel about being on an indie type of production. Was that, there was no babies in the film that couldn’t be killed. Sophina would go in and analyze everything, “I think a character would do this,” and I was there so I’d be like ‘yeah, you can do that and I can do this’. We were able to break down the script, sometimes even on set and Sophina, I was just totally super impressed by her, she was fantastic.”
PopcultHQ: She has had quite a few roles and has gotten her feet wet in the industry
Charley Boon: “Numbers, Shark. Henry Simmons was great and he had his character (“Mack”) upped in (Marvel’s) Agents of SHIELD. He did such a great job, and as Will said, Sophina. The thing that I really noticed with this indie film, working together, Will had mentioned about a ‘collaboration,’ there was SUCH a collaborative effort. Adam wrote a great script but he wasn’t so married to it that he could’t hear other ideas and a director, who as long as you make sense (making new ideas), let’s you go with it.”
PopcultHQ: You don’t see a lot of that in Hollywood
Charley Boon: “No, Not at all!”
Charley Boon: “You got directors who are basically line-reading and telling you how to say a line, that’s how micro-managing sometimes they are”
PopcultHQ: Well, we did see the debacle that happened with “Fantastic 4”
Will Rubio: “Ohhhh man!”
PopcultHQ: That had nothing. A bad writer, Director, a few bad Actors….just bad…
Will Rubio: “I think it’s got like 6% on Rotten Tomatoes right now”
PopcultHQ: Yeah, exactly.
PopcultHQ: I talked to Bruce Campbell yesterday.
Will Rubio: “Oh yeah!”
PopcultHQ: I brought you guys up, I brought Synapse up with him.
Charley Boon: “Ahhhhhh Manny, thank you!!!”
PopcultHQ: I told him Horror Fest was coming up and I mentioned to him ‘that my friends movie Synapse, was going to be premiering at his Horror Fest’. I asked him, ‘if this would change his Horror Fest to a Film Fest instead.’ He then told me “I don’t know just yet but my judges don’t pick any stinkers!”
Charley Boon: “COOL!”
PopcultHQ: So what other projects do you have in the works or coming up.
Charley Boon: “I got some things I will be working on can’t say just yet. I would really like to work with Ken (Kenlon Clark) and Adam (Adam Simon) again on the next Synapse. If they call…..I’m there!”
Will Rubio: “I’m hosting a cable prank show, that’s in the works. I also have a YouTube channel (Will Rubio Comedy) with some really funny videos on there. I’ve got a couple of screenplays I’m looking at and one that I wrote with Ken (Kenlon Clark), the director of Synapse, so look out for that. “Forge“, Forge is the name of the story.”
PopcultHQ: Thanks so much for the interview guys it was a pleasure to meet and talk to you both. I really wish you all so much success for the world premier of Synapse the movie and I will be there as well, I’ve been waiting a whole year to see this movie but you guys I’m sure have been really dying to see it also.
The great thing about getting to meet all the people involved with the production and acting side of an indie movie was being around them at key moments of their world premier. Right before the screening of the film I was able to ask Charley a question my Son (who was at the premier with me) had brought up.
PopcultHQ: I bet it feels a bit crazy about to go in to see your own movie for the first time?”
Charley Boon: “It really is! This is the first time we all finally get to see the film so all sorts of things are happening inside”
Synapse trailer:
https://youtu.be/1MHZf0fjBu4
Director: KENLON CLARK
Written By: ADAM SIMON
Starring –
Actor: JOSHUA ALBA
Actor: WILL RUBIO
Actor : CHARLEY BOON
Actor: SOPHINA BROWN
Actor: HENRY SIMMONS
Actor: ADAM SIMON
A West Coast red carpet premier will be held at Los Angeles Center Studios on Wednesday, September 16th at 7 pm.
SPOILER WARNING: These reviews of mine for Will Rubio and Charley Boon, were done after the screening of Synapse.
Synapse: Movie Review by: Manny Popoca from Wizard World Bruce Campbell Film/Horror Festival Screening:
Synapse the movie is the story of a man who finds his memories so scrambled he doesn’t know who the hell he is anymore. Is he an agent trying to bring down an illegal drug operation, is he a man who’s looking for the truth behind flashing images of a life with a wife and child…….or is he a drug dealer that is running from those trying to kill him for his secrets in his head. Could he be all of these people in one mind or is he something entirely different?!
Will Rubio makes a great first appearance on the screen with a hilarious character he has used in his routines before but quickly changes to his real on-screen persona to reveal he’s not just your average movie comic relief. Will told me that his ‘funny character’ was based on a stand up routine his done for years.
Charley Boon plays ‘Agent 702’ in one of the coolest bad guy roles I’ve seen in a while, which oddly enough makes you want to root for him, or cheer against him. Eventually you can also see there is a whole lot more to this agents back story when the Synapse Trilogy will be complete. I cannot see how Charley Boon doesn’t get more major Hollywood bad-guy roles from this movie. Every time I seen Agent 702 on-screen I kept thinking of bad guys like Arnold in the first Terminator movie or new acting sensation Frank Grillo (AKA – Crossbones) from Captain America Winter Soldier fame. The brothers Clark (Director Kenlon Clark and Producer Cameron Clark) have mentioned that Charley Boon would be the perfect man to play Kraven the Hunter from the Marvel Comics. Kraven the Hunter is a classic Spider-Man bad-guy who has been rumored to be in future Marvel Spider-Man movies.
Hey Marvel Studios!!!
