Title: Bangkok Adrenaline
Director: Raimund Huber
Starring: Daniel O'Neill, Praiya Suandokmai, Dom Hetrakul
Official website: www.bangkokadrenaline.com
Release Date in Thailand: 14 May 2009
Director: Raimund Huber
Starring: Daniel O'Neill, Praiya Suandokmai, Dom Hetrakul
Official website: www.bangkokadrenaline.com
Release Date in Thailand: 14 May 2009
Fresh off the plane in Thailand, 4 western backpackers find themselves in a card game they can not win.Owing bad ass local gangsters a million baht they don't have, their dream vacation has taken an unplanned turn.
Desperate to save themselves, they concoct a plan to kidnap a beautiful heiress and hold her for ransom. The zeros become heroes in this martial arts extravaganza when they accidently save the heiress from her fathers murderous intent.
Dad gets mad and unleashes his army of hitmen in a last ditch attempt to fulfill his twisted ambition.
But the boys aren't to go down easy...Shot entirely in Thailand, blood pumps and fists fly in the action comedy BANGKOK ADRENALINE!
Birth Of The Idea:
The Bangkok Adrenaline movie was initially dreamed up in the back of a van full of sweaty stuntmen on the way home of the final day of filming, after six weeks shooting a French Pirate movie in the heat of tropical Thailand. This is where three of the main actors met for the first time - Daniel O'Neill (Starring Role and Fight Choreography), Raimund Huber (Story by, Director, Production and Actor) and Conan Stevens (Scriptwriter and Actor).
Bangkok Adrenaline was given birth by Raimund Huber whose voice carried over the general talk. "Why don't we make our own movie?". Being a Westerner in Asian cinema is as bad as being an Asian in Western cinema - you generally get small roles, mainly as stereotyped bad guys. The foreign movies that film in Asia bring the stars and main actors and hire some stuntmen and the extras locally, sometimes a '50 worder' (small speaking) part is available - if you speak the language they are filming in.
Raimund's idea was that they could make their own movie, Bangkok Adrenaline, and star in it. Thereby they could choreograph their own fights and do their best acting so they could prove that they were better than the parts/characters they were then playing and thus leapfrog their acting careers way ahead of where they were now. The chance for some good showreel footage was all that most needed to be persuaded to join the Bangkok Adrenaline movie effort.
Little did they realise at the time how far ahead their careers would catapult from Bangkok Adrenaline, a no budget movie by Western standards.
This idea obtained immediate agreement from all and thus Bangkok Adrenaline was born, but unlike many others who spout torrents of hot air Raimund did indeed follow up on his idea and got the ball rolling.
Bangkok Adrenaline was given birth by Raimund Huber whose voice carried over the general talk. "Why don't we make our own movie?". Being a Westerner in Asian cinema is as bad as being an Asian in Western cinema - you generally get small roles, mainly as stereotyped bad guys. The foreign movies that film in Asia bring the stars and main actors and hire some stuntmen and the extras locally, sometimes a '50 worder' (small speaking) part is available - if you speak the language they are filming in.
Raimund's idea was that they could make their own movie, Bangkok Adrenaline, and star in it. Thereby they could choreograph their own fights and do their best acting so they could prove that they were better than the parts/characters they were then playing and thus leapfrog their acting careers way ahead of where they were now. The chance for some good showreel footage was all that most needed to be persuaded to join the Bangkok Adrenaline movie effort.
Little did they realise at the time how far ahead their careers would catapult from Bangkok Adrenaline, a no budget movie by Western standards.
This idea obtained immediate agreement from all and thus Bangkok Adrenaline was born, but unlike many others who spout torrents of hot air Raimund did indeed follow up on his idea and got the ball rolling.
Writing The Script
Conan and Ray met at the same pub in that run down area of Bangkok, and sat there for 14 hours talking about and writing Bangkok Adrenaline. At the end of the day Conan had 20 pages of close typed script, completely unformatted and the dialogue was just rude indicators to keep the plot flowing. These 20 pages comprised 1/2 of the 1st draft of the Bangkok Adrenaline script, the working title was changed to "Bang, Bang, Bangkok" but neither Raimund or Conan were satisfied with this name but it was better and a step in the right direction for an action movie. Raimund was impressed with Conans ability to write and their ability to work together with similar ideas about the film was a great help in this otherwise very difficult task.
The Naming Of Bangkok Adrenaline :
Conan was signed to write the entire Bangkok Adrenaline movie script.
Bangkok Adrenaline being an Action Movie a lot of the script was left partly blank with "fight to be decided by Actors and the location", also to make it easier the characters in the movie were written to have the similar personalities as the actors themselves, except on the behalf of Conan who was to play a stupid character, and Ray who was to play a cowardly scumbag - far from their real life personas.
Also we need to mention the romantic scene (you'll know this if you have watched the movie) was a little cheesy as neither Conan nor Raimund could write it and even with their best efforts the space was left blank with "Needs to be written by someone else (female)" noted, but the final result was an outstanding comedic addition to the overall movie.
Conan and Ray met almost daily over the next 30 days - the deadline for a completed movie script. It was during this time that Conan proposed the name "Bangkok Adrenaline", Raimund instantly liked it and it was adopted as the title of the movie they were writing.
The reasoning was that that "Bangkok Adrenaline" sounded good, indicated the setting for the movie and that it was to be fast paced action. Also on their minds was the recent filming of the Nicholas Cage movie "Bangkok Dangerous". It was thought that if that movie was very successful it might peak the interest of the movie watching public to watch other movies shot in Bangkok, for this reason they were hoping to release "Bangkok Adrenaline" around the same time as "Bangkok Dangerous" was released.
Total Budget
The total Bangkok Adrenaline budget was about us$500,000 - a very small amount even by Thai standards. In the West this would in fact be classed as a "No Budget Production"
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Regards;
VK Pandey <http://mostvisitedbloginasia.blogspot.com/>
