Armageddon (Sweded)

Armageddon, everybody's second-favorite asteroid movie of the summer of 1998, has been in my mind as the perfect swede for a very long time.

It's big, dumb, stupid, and a lot of fun. In a nutshell: It IS Dead in 60 Years!

I struggled for a very long time trying to figure out how Dead in 60 could possibly one-up our last swede, the wonderfully gay Top Gun, when I realized we didn't have to. Top Gun was a perfect storm of homo-eroticness that can never be duplicated, so why bother? Instead, we decided to go EPIC!!! We set out to make the most epic swede ever! And what's more epic than this movie?

So, after a lot of pre-production and costume shopping, the swede was ready to be filmed. But who was to play which character in the swede? I knew a lot of the crew was busy, so we rounded out the supporting characters with our good friends Ryne Santos, Danny Minch and Ian McAleece.

As for the two leads, that was always going to be Greg and I. But who was to play Willis and who was to play Affleck? Daniel, my soul-mate and life-partner without whom none of this would be possible, had some input: "You're taller. You should be Affleck." But my reasoning was better: "I would rather bone Willis than Affleck, so I get to be Bruce. I'm directing after all."

We worked really hard on this, and everyone contributed and worked around their schedules to make it happen. Andrew Toschi let me borrow some high-quality gear, Roger let me dress his Jeep up as the drilling vehicle and Kyle #BDK Lowe even took time out of his "World's Biggest You-Know-What" victory tour to stop by and help us film.

As always, thanks to Bryan Harley and Roque Rodriguez for putting on Swedefest twice a year. Enjoy one hell of an epic swede! And don' t be shy about submitting your own to one of Fresno's most unique events. The next Swedefest is in November!