Carl Crew | |
|---|---|
 Carl Crew in the CIA box office. | |
| Born | Carl Albert Crew August 2, 1961 |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, screenwriter, author |
Carl Albert Crew (born August 2, 1961) is an American actor, screenwriter, author, artist and co-proprietor of the North Hollywood nightclub California Institute of Abnormalarts.
Raised in a repertory theatre troupe, Crew spent much of his young life acting and traveling the country in numerous stage productions until the age of 18, when he became an apprentice embalmer for a Marin County mortuary, an occupation he held for four years before deciding to further pursue a career in acting. [1] [2] Crew landed his first major role in the 1987 cult horror comedy Blood Diner , where Crew played the co-leading role of homicidal chef and wrestling enthusiast George Tutman, for which he was allegedly only paid $250. [1] In 1990, Crew wrote and starred in a low-budget gross out comedy aptly titled Gross Out, a Pink Flamingos -esque shock film following a group of siblings attempting to make the most disgusting movie possible to win an inheritance. Despite its excess of scatological humor, The Los Angeles Times offered a positive review of Gross Out, describing it as "funny in a scabrous, admittedly juvenile way" and "thunderingly, gleefully tasteless...a natural for midnight venues". [3]
In 1992, Crew wrote the screenplay and starred as the title subject in Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life , a biopic based on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Shot a mere year after Dahmer's arrest, the film received intensely negative press from both the media and the families of Dahmer's victims, who staged open protests against the film. Crew and director David Bowen appeared on several talk shows including The Maury Povich Show and WISN-TV 's Milwaukee's Talking with family members of the victims, defending the movie against their claims of glorifying and exploiting Dahmer's actions. [4] [5] Although The Secret Life was dismally received upon release, it has more recently been positively re-appraised by cult and horror publications; similarly, the Los Angeles Times , in reviewing 2002's Dahmer , compared it unfavorably to The Secret Life, praising the latter's depiction of and Crew's performance of Jeffrey Dahmer, while CraveOnline called the film "fascinating" and "truly compelling". [6] [7]
Crew wrote, produced and starred in multiple roles in the 1994 horror anthology film Urban Legends, directed by Bill Osco, which would ultimately be his last major film contribution. [8] Since then, Crew's acting work has been sporadic, almost exclusively appearing in films by prolific underground filmmaker Chris J. Miller including 2008's Polyphony 2011's Ironhorse 2013's 2035: Forbidden Dimensions and 2016's Mortuary Massacre. [9]
During his time as an embalmer, Crew met Robert Ferguson, a fellow mortician who shared his passion for collecting vintage sideshow and carnival memorabilia. In 1994, the two opened a clandestine underground nightclub for unusual bands and performance artists in the North Hollywood district until the venue was inevitably raided and shut down by police. In 2001, Crew and Ferguson re-opened the club as the California Institute of Abnormalarts, a dual nightclub and sideshow museum which hosts weird bands, performers, burlesque acts, freak shows and film screenings and displays a wide array of sideshow memorabilia ranging from Fiji mermaids and pickled punks to the preserved corpse of a late 19th century circus clown. [2] [10] [11] On February 9, 2013, Crew and the CIA were featured on the Discovery Channel reality series Oddities , where Crew gave a tour of the building and its oddities. [12] In 2014 and 2015, the CIA appeared on Halloween-themed episodes of the local interest shows 1st Look (KNBC) and Eye on LA (KABC-TV), both of which featured interviews with Crew. [13] [14]
As the theatrical and colorfully-dressed spokesperson and operator of the CIA, Crew himself has become almost as notable as the venue, with the LA Weekly newspaper once dubbing him "the Barnum of Burbank Boulevard", writing "this cracked cat is a towering local cultural institution unto himself", while the book L.A. Bizarro, a chronicle of "the obscure, the absurd and the perverse of Los Angeles", wrote of him as a "natural-born huckster who would have made a great snake oil salesman back in Deadwood". [15] [16]
In September 2012, Crew and Ferguson authored and published a book through the publishing company Mikazuki Publishing House entitled Freakshow Los Angeles, a historical chronicle of Los Angeles' underground sideshow and circus entertainment. [17]
Crew is the great nephew of Gerald "Jerry" Crew, a prominent figure in Sasquatch mythology as the man who allegedly discovered and made plaster casts of large, unusual footprints in the Del Norte County, California area in 1958, the media coverage surrounding it which led to the coining of the word "Bigfoot". [18]
| Year | Film | Role | Other credit(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Blood Diner | George Tutman | |
| The Underachievers | Thug 2 | ||
| 1988 | Terminal Entry | Prop assistant | |
| 1990 | Gross Out | Screenwriter | |
| 1993 | Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life | Jeffrey Dahmer | Screenwriter, producer |
| 1995 | Art of Nude Bowling | Screenwriter (co-written with Bill Osco), associate producer | |
| 1998 | Urban Legends | Buzz Fetish / Derek / Judith Kuntz / Susie's Mom / Dr. Hillzbilll | Screenwriter, producer, editor, special effects makeup, art director, set dresser |
| 2004 | Shaye & Kiki | Producer | |
| 2006 | Life on Mars | Carl / Luther Schloss | |
| 2007 | Carrion | Narrator | |
| 2008 | Polyphony | Zoltar | |
| 2010 | Ironhorse | Nana Sasquatch / Lester Morton | |
| 2012 | Keeping the Freakshow Alive | Himself | |
| 2013 | 2035: The Forbidden Dimensions | Pastor John | |
| 2016 | Mortuary Massacre | Mortimer King | |
Freaks is a 1932 American pre-Code drama horror film produced and directed by Tod Browning, starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates and Harry Earles.
Michael Learned is an American actress, known for her role as Olivia Walton in the long-running CBS drama series The Waltons (1972–1981). She has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series four times, which is tied for the record of most wins with Tyne Daly. Three of the wins were for The Waltons, while the other was for Nurse (1982).
KABC is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Los Angeles, California, and serving the Greater Los Angeles area. The station is owned by Cumulus Media and broadcasts a conservative talk radio format. The studios are located in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City. The transmitter is off West Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Crenshaw District, shared with KWKW and KFOX. KABC’s power is 6,600 watts daytime and 7,900 watts nighttime, using a directional antenna. The station is the Los Angeles affiliate of Armstrong & Getty, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Dan Bongino Show, The Michael Knowles Show, America in the Morning and Red Eye Radio. Local shows are hosted by John Phillips, Frank Mottek and Randy Wang. National news from NBC News Radio and local news updates begin each hour's broadcast. Former sister station KABC-TV simulcasts the 4-6:00 part of the morning newscast weekdays on KABC (AM).
KABC-TV is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios in the Grand Central Business Centre of Glendale, and its transmitter is located on Mount Wilson.
The Hunt for Red October is a 1990 American submarine spy thriller film directed by John McTiernan, produced by Mace Neufeld, and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. The film is an adaptation of Tom Clancy's 1984 bestselling novel of the same name. It is the first installment of the film series with the protagonist Jack Ryan.
Dahmer is a 2002 American horror drama film written and directed by David Jacobson, and co-written by David Birke. A limited theatrical release, it is based on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer, who killed seventeen young men and boys in Bath, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin between 1978 and 1991. It stars Jeremy Renner as Dahmer, and co-stars Artel Great, Matt Newton, Dion Basco and Bruce Davison.
Evan Thomas Peters is an American actor. He made his acting debut in the 2004 drama film Clipping Adam and starred in the ABC science fiction series Invasion from 2005 to 2006.
The LA Pride Festival & Parade, commonly known as LA Pride, is an annual LGBTQ Pride celebration in Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest LGBTQ Pride events in the world, traditionally held on the second weekend of June, and produced by the Christopher Street West Association.
The Radioactive Chicken Heads are an American virtual band formed in Orange, California in 1993.
Dahmer vs. Gacy is a 2010 American comedy horror film directed by Ford Austin and written by Andrew J. Rausch. The film won the Audience Award at the 2010 Bare Bones International Film Festival.
The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is an independent documentary film about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer during the summer of his arrest. The film was directed by Chris James Thompson and stars Andrew Swant as Dahmer in fictionalized re-enactment segments which are interwoven with interviews of the medical examiner assigned to the case, the lead detective, and Dahmer's next door neighbor.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is a 2015 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie from a story by McQuarrie and Drew Pearce. It is the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) and the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. It stars Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris and Alec Baldwin. It follows Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team, who, subsequent to their disbandment and Hunt's pursuit by the Central Intelligence Agency, must fight The Syndicate, a international group of rogue government agents.
The California Institute of Abnormalarts - also written as the California Institute of Abnormal Arts and abbreviated as CIA - was a nightclub and sideshow museum located in North Hollywood, California. Owned and operated by actor-screenwriter Carl Crew and Robert Ferguson, the venue primarily hosted underground musical groups, performance art, movie screenings and sideshow acts including burlesque and freak shows. The club closed in July 2022.
Criminal is a 2016 American action thriller film directed by Ariel Vromen and written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. The film is about a convict who is implanted with a dead CIA agent's memories to finish an assignment. The film stars Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, and Tommy Lee Jones, in the second collaboration among all three following the 1991 film JFK. The film also features Alice Eve and Gal Gadot, with the death of Ryan Reynolds's character, early in the film, setting the plot in motion.
Blake Cooper Griffin is an American actor. He is best known for his roles on HBO Max's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, AMC's Preacher, TNT's Animal Kingdom, and Ryan Murphy's Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Griffin was also the star of Beerfest: Thirst for Victory, CW Seed's first original film. His notable film work includes Leah Mckendrick's Scrambled, D. J. Caruso's Standing Up, Helen Hunt's Ride, Life of a King with Cuba Gooding Jr., and Love Is All You Need?, portraying the role of Bill Bradley.
My Friend Dahmer is a 2017 American biographical psychological drama film written and directed by Marc Meyers about American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The film is based on the 2012 graphic novel of the same name by cartoonist John "Derf" Backderf, who had been friends with Dahmer in high school in the 1970s, until the time Dahmer began his killing spree in 1978. The film stars Ross Lynch as Dahmer, Alex Wolff as Derf, Dallas Roberts as Jeffrey's father, and Anne Heche as Jeffrey's mother.
Miss Bala is a 2019 action thriller film directed by Catherine Hardwicke and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on the 2011 Mexican film of the same name. The film stars Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, and Anthony Mackie, and follows a woman who trains to take down a Mexican drug cartel after her friend is kidnapped.
Alexis Martin Woodall is an American producer, executive producer and the president of Ryan Murphy Productions. Woodall has won three Primetime Emmy Awards for her producing work on The Normal Heart, American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson and American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. She has also won two Golden Globe Awards for executive producing The People V. O.J. Simpson and The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
She Freak is a 1967 American exploitation horror film directed by Byron Mabe and starring Claire Brennen, Lee Raymond, and Lynn Courtney. It is an unofficial remake of the 1932 film Freaks. An alternate version of the film, titled Asylum of the Insane, was also released, and features inserts shot by Donn Davison.
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is the first season of the American biographical true crime television anthology series, Monster, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan for Netflix, which was released on September 21, 2022. Murphy also serves as showrunner and is an executive producer along with Brennan. Dahmer is about the life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Other main characters include Dahmer's father Lionel, his stepmother Shari, suspicious neighbor Glenda, and grandmother Catherine.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)