Ivan Guerrero, also known as the pseudonymous "whoiseyevan", is a filmmaker who has gained cult following from a series of mash-up trailers he created, called "Premakes". His videos combine a variety of vintage film and television clips and re-assembles them as depictions of modern-day pop culture icons. [1] [2] He is also the designer of 123 Sesame Street, a LEGO Ideas set. [3]
Guerrero started his career as an Art Director for the advertising agency, McCann Erickson. [4]
A premake, a term coined by Guerrero, [5] is a reimagined trailer for a popular film made by splicing together footage from dozens of older movies. They feature dialogue, clever visuals, and all the aesthetic elements of the original feature, in order to parody or create visual commentary.
The idea for Guerrero's Premakes was born out of the perception that classic cinema is under appreciated. His trailers portray contemporary movies as direct extensions of old film serials, 50's B-movies, and other products of Hollywood's golden age. [6] He authored the series as an attempt to preserve the audience for classic films. [7] So far, he has re-imagined versions of such films as Forrest Gump (with James Stewart cast in the title role), The Avengers , [8] Ghostbusters , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Pixar's Up , and The Empire Strikes Back . [9] He also created a vampiric parody of Gone with the Wind . [10]
Guerrero's trailers have received wide praise from columnists and film critics, from Time Magazine to Entertainment Weekly. [11] [12] [13] [14] The popularity of his trailers also prompted other video editors to continue the trend of "premaking". [15] [16] On his blog, Roger Ebert has described the premake as a probably "useful new word". [17]
In 2009, Guerrero directed a short documentary entitled "Plight of the Peregrines". The film told the story of a college basketball team's search for redemption after a season plagued with ineligible players. The short won the award for College Sports Production at the 2009 Chicago/Midwest Chapter Emmy Awards. [18]
In 2010, Guerrero wrote and directed "The Grocer", a film that won an audience award at the 48 Hour Film Project in Chicago.
In 2020, LEGO released its 123 Sesame Street set designed by Guerrero through the LEGO Ideas program. [19] In interviews, Guerrero said he was an avid fan of Jim Henson and that LEGO bricks and Sesame Street shaped both his childhood and career. [20] He said it took him a couple of months to design the original version of the set as he heavily researched how the Sesame Street building looked like during different decades. [21]
Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Ebert was known for his intimate, Midwestern writing style and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism. Writing in a prose style intended to be entertaining and direct, he made sophisticated cinematic and analytical ideas more accessible to non-specialist audiences. Ebert frequently endorsed foreign and independent films he believed would be appreciated by mainstream viewers, championing filmmakers like Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, as well as Martin Scorsese, whose first published review he wrote. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America."
Toy Story is a 1995 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the franchise of the same name, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. The film was directed by John Lasseter, written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow based on a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft, produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, and features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn and Jim Varney.
Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Mary Gibbs, and Jennifer Tilly, the film was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and produced by Darla K. Anderson, from a screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson. The film centers on two monsters, the hairy James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (Goodman) and his one-eyed partner and best friend Mike Wazowski (Crystal), who are employed at the titular energy-producing factory Monsters, Inc., which generates power by scaring human children. However, the monster world believes that the children are toxic, and when a little human girl, Boo (Gibbs), sneaks into the factory, she must be returned home before it is too late.
Antz is a 1998 American animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and Pacific Data Images, and distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. It was directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay by Todd Alcott and the writing team of Chris and Paul Weitz. The film stars the voices of Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover and Gene Hackman. Some of the main characters share facial similarities with the actors who voice them. The film involves an anxious worker ant, Z (Allen), who falls in love with Princess Bala (Stone). When the treacherous scheming of the arrogant officer General Mandible (Hackman) threatens to wipe out the entire worker population, Z must save the ant colony from the flooded tunnel and strives to make social inroads.
Waking Life is a 2001 American animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism. It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dreamlike realities wherein he encounters a series of people who engage in insightful philosophical discussions.
Eugene Kal Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. He is best known for co-hosting various movie review television series with colleague Roger Ebert.
Richard E. Roeper is an American columnist and film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. He co-hosted the television series At the Movies with Roger Ebert from 2000 to 2008, serving as the late Gene Siskel's successor. From 2010 to 2014, he co-hosted The Roe and Roeper Show with Roe Conn on WLS-AM. From October 2015 to October 2017, Roeper served as the host of the FOX 32 morning show Good Day Chicago.
The Incredibles is a 2004 American animated superhero film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Written and directed by Brad Bird, it stars the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Spencer Fox, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and Elizabeth Peña. Set in a retro-futuristic version of the 1960s, the film follows Bob and Helen Parr, a couple of superheroes, known as Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, respectively, who hide their powers in accordance with a government mandate, and attempt to live a quiet suburban life with their three children. However, Bob's desire to help people draws the entire family into a confrontation with a vengeful fan-turned-foe.
The American comic book character Superman, created in 1938, has appeared in many types of media since the 1940s. Superman has appeared in radio, television, movies, and video games each on multiple occasions, and his name, symbol, and image have appeared on products and merchandise.
Sneak Previews is an American film review show that ran for over two decades on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It was created by WTTW, a PBS member station in Chicago, Illinois. It premiered on November 26, 1975 as a monthly local-only show called Opening Soon...at a Theater Near You and was renamed in 1977 to Sneak Previews and it became a biweekly show in 1978 airing nationally on PBS. It grew to prominence with a review-conversation-banter format between opinionated film critics, notably for a time, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. By 1980, it was a weekly series airing on over 180 stations, and it was the highest rated weekly entertainment series in the history of public broadcasting. The show's final broadcast was on October 4, 1996.
Synecdoche, New York is a 2008 American postmodern psychological drama film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman in his directorial debut. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as an ailing theater director who works on an increasingly elaborate stage production and whose extreme commitment to realism begins to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. The film's title is a play on Schenectady, New York, where much of the film is set, and the concept of synecdoche, wherein a part of something represents the whole or vice versa.
WALL-E is a 2008 American animated romantic science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and written by Stanton and Jim Reardon. It stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, with Sigourney Weaver and Fred Willard. The film follows a solitary robot named WALL-E on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a robot called EVE sent from the starship Axiom, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.
Up is a 2009 American animated comedy-drama adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Bob Peterson, and produced by Jonas Rivera. Docter and Peterson also wrote the film's screenplay and story, with Tom McCarthy co-writing the latter. The film stars the voices of Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, and Bob Peterson. The film centers on Carl Fredricksen (Asner), an elderly widower who travels to South America with youngster Russell (Nagai) in order to fulfill a promise that he made to his late wife Ellie. Along the way, they meet a talking dog named Dug (Peterson) and encounter a giant bird named Kevin, and figures out someone has sinister plans to capture Kevin, who is later revealed to be Fredricksen's childhood hero, Charles Muntz (Plummer).
Ratatouille is a 2007 American animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The eighth film produced by Pixar, it was written and directed by Brad Bird and produced by Brad Lewis, from an original idea by Jan Pinkava, who was credited for conceiving the film's story with Bird and Jim Capobianco. The film stars the voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo, Peter O'Toole, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn and Brad Garrett. The title refers to the French dish ratatouille, and also references the species of the main character, a rat. Set mostly in Paris, the plot follows a young rat Remy (Oswalt) who dreams of becoming a chef at Auguste Gusteau's (Garrett) restaurant and tries to achieve his goal by forming an unlikely alliance with the restaurant's garbage boy Alfredo Linguini (Romano).
Black Dynamite is a 2009 American blaxploitation action comedy film starring Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson, and Salli Richardson. The film was directed by Scott Sanders and co-written by White, Sanders, and Byron Minns, who also co-stars.
Lego Ideas is a website run by Chaordix and The Lego Group, which allows users to submit ideas for Lego products to be turned into potential sets available commercially, with the original designer receiving 1% of the royalties. It started in 2008 as an offshoot of the Japanese company Cuusoo, named after the Japanese word 空想 kūsō.
Angus MacLane is an American animator, filmmaker and voice actor, best known for his work at Pixar Animation Studios. He co-directed the film Finding Dory (2016) and made his solo feature directorial debut with the Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear (2022). MacLane is also a Lego enthusiast and created the CubeDudes building format and designed a LEGO WALL-E that has become an official set from The Lego Group.
The opening sequence to the 2009 Disney-Pixar film Up has become known as a cultural milestone and a key element to the film's success.
Lightyear is a 2022 American animated science-fiction action-adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film is a spin-off of the Toy Story film series, but does not take place in the same fictional universe as they do; rather, it is presented as a film that characters in the main Toy Story films have seen. Lightyear centers on the character Buzz Lightyear, who in this film is human and not a toy. The film was directed by Angus MacLane and produced by Galyn Susman, from a screenplay and story written by MacLane and Jason Headley, both of whom co-wrote the latter with Matthew Aldrich; Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton serve as executive producers. It stars Chris Evans as the voice of the title character, with Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin, and Uzo Aduba in supporting roles. The film follows Buzz Lightyear (Evans) operating as a space ranger who, after being marooned on the hostile planet T'Kani Prime with his commander and crew, tries to find a way back home while encountering a threat to the universe's safety.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a 2021 American documentary film directed by Marilyn Agrelo. Based on the non-fiction book Street Gang by Michael Davis, the film chronicles the development and airing of the children's television program Sesame Street, featuring interviews with series creators Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, as well as writers, actors, and artists involved in its creation.