Man of the Hour is now streaming on YouTube.
Around 2002 Brady and some of his friends decided to play a prank...
During a conversation at a high school party Brady and some of his friends were overheard talking about a friend of theirs. When they were asked who it was they were talking about one of the friends, in an effort to keep the subject of the conversation anonymous, replied that they were talking about someone from another school, a guy named Brandon Buttersworth. Over the ensuing weeks Brady and his friends began to create an elaborate backstory for the nonexistent Brandon Buttersworth. He became a star athlete, an academic prodigy, a six foot tall Adonis who was known to fly around the globe on his parent's private jet, and someone who stood up for the rights of the downtrodden. Soon everyone wanted to meet the enigmatic Brandon and before long Brady and his friends had to come clean about the prank.
In 2003 as Brady was wrapping up production on his adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula conversations started about making a follow up. At the time Kyle had been watching a lot of 1980s college 'slobs vs snobs' comedies and wanted to do a modern take on that premise. Brady had been toying around with the idea of adapting the Brandon Buttersworth prank into some sort of film project. In late 2003 Brady premiered his Dracula project at Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge. Before the movie a teaser trailer ran showing pictures of a senior class set to The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again'. As the teaser ended a photo with the name 'Brandon Buttersworth' appeared with only a question mark where the senior portrait would be. The teaser ended with the words 'coming 2004' on screen as The Who's song faded out. What no one knew was that the movie would premiere at the 2004 Outhouse Film Festival only 4 months later.
Kyle wrote the screenplay for Man Of The Hour over the 2003 Holiday season and while attending the 2004 Santa Barbara Film Festival where Brady's Dracula took home at the Digital Days film festival. Casting the film took place in mid February of 2004 with auditions held at LSU. Cast in the leads were Marko Marjanovic as Franklin MacManus, Brad Baudot as Willy Gilbert, and Blake Hernandez as Troy Stillwaters. Supporting roles went to Stacey Butler as Sandy Santana, and Hunter Crane as Brad Beinvienu. Several local Baton Rouge filmmakers were cast in roles, including Arvid Cristina, Jeff Roedel, Lana Roberts, and Paul Orr. Several friends of the filmmakers were also pulled into service if they were ever standing close enough during production.
Kyle turned in the final draft of the script on February 23rd, 2004, about a week before production was set to begin. Production took place over the month of March 2004 with editing and scoring happening at the same time. Production took place at Kyle's house, a State Farm office, the KLSU studios, and local bars The Varsity, and Red Star. Several stolen shots from around town can be seen as well. The production is forever in debt to the generosity of Red Star's owner, Frank McMains for allowing shoots at his bar and the use of some music from his record label, including a song by The Eams Era. The score for the movie was a mix of music created by Kyle as well as songs by artist local to Baton rouge: The Eams Era, The Pretentious, and Torrent Vaccine.
Man of the Hour premiered on April 25th, 2004, opening the second day of the Outhouse Film Festival and took home the silver outhouse award that year. The movie was released on DVD at a party at Sogo Live (a club in Baton Rouge) on January 6th, 2005. And unless you bought one of the DVDs at the premiere, or for a short time when they were available at a local comic book shop, then you've never seen it, until now.
For the 20th anniversary of the movie we have decided to re-release it for viewing on YouTube and Vimeo. We hope you enjoy this little flick we made 2 decades ago with our friends. We had a lot of fun making it and want to share the memory with you now.