Film Courage: The film American Fighter you’re the co-writer, Shaun?
Shaun Paul Piccinino, Filmmaker: Yes, I co-wrote it and directed it.
Film Courage: Great. It has martial arts elements to it?
Shaun: There’s martial arts, we definitely drew from some of that experience and it’s interesting because it takes place in 1981 so it’s kind of pre-MMA. It deals with illegal underground fighting. Certainly martial arts are involved but there’s also this kind of street fighting/brawling thing that happens and wrestling and it integrates a lot of different fighting styles.
Film Courage: If we take a look at the first page for the screenplay that you co-wrote American Fighter our protagonist is Reza and you see his life seems like it jumps back to different parts? Can you talk about that?
Shaun: The main character (actually Ali) the opening of the film which I felt was important to tell this story jumping back and forth. It opens with him in the fight of his life. The movie starts with some images, flashes and pieces of this fight and where he’s going to be at the lowest point as well. Then we take a step back and the film is then going to lead up to that moment again. The reason for that was it wasn’t originally written that way. This was later and then to the shooting draft we decided that it was important to show that element right away. Number one it’s that big impactful start, let’s get audiences interested and curious like Wait a minute, why is this happening? Why are these two people fighting and there’s a huge crowd around them? What is it all about? We see our hero fall right at the end of this beginning fight he gets almost knocked unconscious. We go from there to him waking up in his college dorm room and that’s you know several weeks earlier or months earlier. He’s worried about his family’s supposed to be flying because he’s from Iran and he’s worried about and this is 1981. The setting is the Iraq/Iran war had just started and it was a terrible time in that area and just like two years earlier was the Iran hostage crisis that happened and so in America at that time it was not a great time to be Iranian and he had to face those issues…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
CONNECT WITH SHAUN PAUL PICCININO
BIO:
Shaun Paul Piccinino (Peach-ah-nino) is an award winning Filmmaker and Television Director. He has worked in just about every aspect of the business. From acting, to action coordinating, from script writing to producing, from editing to visual effects, all the way to feature film directing. Shaun’s latest work includes 4 movies currently on Netflix, A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS starring Lauren Swickard, Josh Swickard & Ali Afshar, WHEELS OF FORTUNE starring Matt Jones, Jeff Fahey, & Noureen DeWulf, LADY DRIVER starring Grace Van Dien, Sean Patrick Flanery & Christina Moore and ROPED starring Josh Swickard, Casper Van Dien and Lauren Swickard.
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