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A Movie Making Nerd
James Rolfe is an independent filmmaker and creator of the Angry Video Game Nerd web series and feature film. A Movie Making Nerd is a personal account of his origins, starting with an early love of making home movies before the rise of the internet and digital video. Rolfe candidly details moments of triumph and failure in both life and filmmaking—from his time in special education school and struggles during adolescence and college, to personal relationships, finding employment, and raising children. Every recollection in A Movie Making Nerd, whether happy, funny, or painful, shows how one might turn a childhood hobby into a life-long calling.
335 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 13, 2022
About the author
James Rolfe
4 books32 followersJames D. Rolfe is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for creating and starring in the comedic retrogaming web series Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN). His spin-off projects include reviews of retro films, television series, and board games. He is considered a pioneer of internet gaming videos and is noted for his widespread influence on YouTube content after AVGN premiered on the site in 2006.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews
November 23, 2022
I really enjoyed this. I have been watching the AVGN videos for years, and I really enjoyed the AVGN movie. So, this memoir concept intrigued me. This AVGN guy wrote a memoir? Seriously?! I read it in just a few sittings and it really worked for me. Rolfe is intelligent, thoughtful, and incisive, and tells an intriguing tale. And it didn't hurt that he is around my age, is saturated in a similar 1980s/90s media landscape, and seems to share an absurdist humor similar to that of my friends and me while growing up (e.g. lots of over-the-top scatalogical profanity laced with layers of pop culture allusions). It was a pleasure to read because it was very real, relatable, and unpretentious. The prose style is unadorned, pretty straightforward, and contains few literary acrobatics except for a few well-placed sentence fragments. It was intriguing to read about Rolfe's life and compare and contrast my own personal nostalgia. For a comedian known for lowbrow humor, there were some really thoughtful and touching moments: e.g. reflections on losing loved ones, meditations on mental health, thoughts about parenting, and more. There does seem to be an inspiring and unifying message presented in a no-BS sort of way: if you can, why not keep doing what you're passionate about? Not for the money, or the fame, or the cultural capital, but for the thing itself. This is as much a love letter to independent film making as it is a personal memoir. Really pleased Rolfe wrote and published this. Great read.
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November 21, 2022James Rolfe is perhaps the most important content creator of my adolescence.
I still remember trying to watch his Angry Video Game Nerd videos on my computer, sweating bullets that my parents were hearing the barrage of obscenities blasting from my room. Good times. Some of the best memories of my childhood, in fact.
I, too, was a lonely kid; worrying about not fitting in, being uncool with people, worried about my looks, and wrestled with feelings of being lost and directionless. James’s videos were a fortress of solitude to me, allowing me to laugh my troubles away. But learning James dealt with the same feelings I did really shocked me. Reading how James used his passions for art—video games, filmmaking, or music—to overcome his struggles was inspiring.
While many of his content-making contemporaries have come and gone, and with the state of the Internet itself changing like the wind, James still remains a pioneer, a humble person, and a rebel with a loyal fanbase. And he more than deserves it. Reading this was like catching up with a old friend. Really enjoyed it.
I still remember trying to watch his Angry Video Game Nerd videos on my computer, sweating bullets that my parents were hearing the barrage of obscenities blasting from my room. Good times. Some of the best memories of my childhood, in fact.
I, too, was a lonely kid; worrying about not fitting in, being uncool with people, worried about my looks, and wrestled with feelings of being lost and directionless. James’s videos were a fortress of solitude to me, allowing me to laugh my troubles away. But learning James dealt with the same feelings I did really shocked me. Reading how James used his passions for art—video games, filmmaking, or music—to overcome his struggles was inspiring.
While many of his content-making contemporaries have come and gone, and with the state of the Internet itself changing like the wind, James still remains a pioneer, a humble person, and a rebel with a loyal fanbase. And he more than deserves it. Reading this was like catching up with a old friend. Really enjoyed it.
March 25, 2023
Having been a fan of the Nerd for over a decade now and reading some other showbiz memoirs such as the excellent I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdey and the not-as-excellent Friends, Lovers and the Great Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry, I picked up A Movie Making Nerd in the hope of gaining insight into the life of James Rolfe and some behind-the-scenes introspection into how the show and character came to be and its effect on his life.
Unfortunately this book is so poorly written and edited that there is little, if nothing, of the sort to be found.
Unlike other memoirs which give a glimpse into how the author perceives events and their feelings at the time, A Movie Making Nerd is written as a matter-of-fact chronological series of events. 'This happened, then this happened, then this happened' and so on. There's no insight or nuance into how Rolfe felt about events other than the occasional 'can you imagine how that felt!?' We can't, so it would be nice if you would tell us. There are also moments where individuals essential to the origin and growth of Cinemassacre and the Nerd are mentioned once or twice with no context or importance given to their roles. For example, Mike Matei is mentioned once early on then again towards the end of the book with no character given to his personality or how he shaped the channel and character into what they are today. They are integral to Rolfe's success, yet they are relegated to a single line with no importance or gravitas required given to their introductions in the book as little more than people that Rolfe happened to meet. As such, the writing style comes off as secondary school level and leaves the reader wanting more context and analysis of events rather than just 'this is the sequence in which they happened'.
Rolfe also spends time elaborating on the wrong aspects of his life for this book. James is most widely known as The Angry Video Game Nerd and I purchased this book in the hopes that I would gain greater insight into the creation and production of the show, discovering tidbits about how it is made and the effect is has had on James' life. Instead we get a large focus on other, less idiosyncratic aspects of his life. Yes, it's endearing to hear James talk about learning to use his equipment and making silly movies with his friends as a child, but the amount of detail and analysis that he goes into regarding what is essentially messing around with his friends is unnecessary and repetitive.
A particularly egregious and infamous part of the book is the chapter dedicated to the time he was almost kicked out of college due to his 'roomgoers' at college. This section isn't particularly interesting in the slightest, yet a good portion of the book is dedicated to it. With how much detail Rolfe goes into things, you'd expect it to have a massive effect on his life and personality, but it turns out to be just another thing that happened in his life with no consequence further down the line. It's irrelevant and without it the book would have been a shorter, tighter read.
When we do get to the events that myself and undoubtably many others bought the book for i.e. creating the AVGN character, there is a disappointing lack of any personal insight and reflection to be found. What should have been the bulk of the book is instead relegated to a scant few chapters that again offer little other than 'here's what happened'. While there is a chapter on the creation of the movie, again it is little more than a blow-by-blow account of events as they happened. This section should have been an in-depth analysis of Rolfe's decision-making, why he chose to do what he did, the highlights and lowlights of making a film independently and some honest reflection on the outcomes of the film and how it affected his life after that. Instead we once again get 'here's what happened in this exact order, how wacky is that!?' A great opportunity to endear himself to both his fans and detractors was missed here and these chapters ultimately became as worthless as the ones preceding it.
The worthlessness of the book continues towards its conclusion. Rolfe brings up things that aren't relevant to this book. It's heartbreaking reading the story of his and his wife's struggles having children, but we don't need to know that he has cats. Working with Screenwave would have been an interesting addition to the book, but other than a perfunctory one line mention, nothing more is said of it and the book's narrative continues to fizzle out until it concludes.
What could have been an insightful exploration into the creation of an internet phenomenon and the effect it had on its creator is instead a turgid, poorly-edited sequence of events that are both boring and irrelevant to the creation of such an iconic character. If you're looking to learn more about AVGN, its creation and impact on society, you'd be better off looking to other sources: the creator of the character can only offer a boringly-written sequences of events that aren't relevant to anyone except for himself. This is perhaps the story that Rolfe wanted to tell, but not necessarily the ones that his fans want to hear.
Unfortunately this book is so poorly written and edited that there is little, if nothing, of the sort to be found.
Unlike other memoirs which give a glimpse into how the author perceives events and their feelings at the time, A Movie Making Nerd is written as a matter-of-fact chronological series of events. 'This happened, then this happened, then this happened' and so on. There's no insight or nuance into how Rolfe felt about events other than the occasional 'can you imagine how that felt!?' We can't, so it would be nice if you would tell us. There are also moments where individuals essential to the origin and growth of Cinemassacre and the Nerd are mentioned once or twice with no context or importance given to their roles. For example, Mike Matei is mentioned once early on then again towards the end of the book with no character given to his personality or how he shaped the channel and character into what they are today. They are integral to Rolfe's success, yet they are relegated to a single line with no importance or gravitas required given to their introductions in the book as little more than people that Rolfe happened to meet. As such, the writing style comes off as secondary school level and leaves the reader wanting more context and analysis of events rather than just 'this is the sequence in which they happened'.
Rolfe also spends time elaborating on the wrong aspects of his life for this book. James is most widely known as The Angry Video Game Nerd and I purchased this book in the hopes that I would gain greater insight into the creation and production of the show, discovering tidbits about how it is made and the effect is has had on James' life. Instead we get a large focus on other, less idiosyncratic aspects of his life. Yes, it's endearing to hear James talk about learning to use his equipment and making silly movies with his friends as a child, but the amount of detail and analysis that he goes into regarding what is essentially messing around with his friends is unnecessary and repetitive.
A particularly egregious and infamous part of the book is the chapter dedicated to the time he was almost kicked out of college due to his 'roomgoers' at college. This section isn't particularly interesting in the slightest, yet a good portion of the book is dedicated to it. With how much detail Rolfe goes into things, you'd expect it to have a massive effect on his life and personality, but it turns out to be just another thing that happened in his life with no consequence further down the line. It's irrelevant and without it the book would have been a shorter, tighter read.
When we do get to the events that myself and undoubtably many others bought the book for i.e. creating the AVGN character, there is a disappointing lack of any personal insight and reflection to be found. What should have been the bulk of the book is instead relegated to a scant few chapters that again offer little other than 'here's what happened'. While there is a chapter on the creation of the movie, again it is little more than a blow-by-blow account of events as they happened. This section should have been an in-depth analysis of Rolfe's decision-making, why he chose to do what he did, the highlights and lowlights of making a film independently and some honest reflection on the outcomes of the film and how it affected his life after that. Instead we once again get 'here's what happened in this exact order, how wacky is that!?' A great opportunity to endear himself to both his fans and detractors was missed here and these chapters ultimately became as worthless as the ones preceding it.
The worthlessness of the book continues towards its conclusion. Rolfe brings up things that aren't relevant to this book. It's heartbreaking reading the story of his and his wife's struggles having children, but we don't need to know that he has cats. Working with Screenwave would have been an interesting addition to the book, but other than a perfunctory one line mention, nothing more is said of it and the book's narrative continues to fizzle out until it concludes.
What could have been an insightful exploration into the creation of an internet phenomenon and the effect it had on its creator is instead a turgid, poorly-edited sequence of events that are both boring and irrelevant to the creation of such an iconic character. If you're looking to learn more about AVGN, its creation and impact on society, you'd be better off looking to other sources: the creator of the character can only offer a boringly-written sequences of events that aren't relevant to anyone except for himself. This is perhaps the story that Rolfe wanted to tell, but not necessarily the ones that his fans want to hear.
April 5, 2023
I was a big fan of AVGN back in the day, and even though I think the show has taken a dive in quality, as well as some controversy I wanted to buy this book as a show of support to James.
That being said I’m not sure I’d recommend it. James meanders a lot in his telling of his story, and there’s segments of this book that just seem included to pad out the length. At one point James lists all the “films” he created prior to the AVGN, which are basically just home movies. It’s wild to me James considers these part of his filmography as he counts his current number of films in the 200s
There’s also a decent amount of time dedicated to James college life in which he talks about an incident which was pretty impactful to his life. But in reading it the story felt really mundane, and didn’t exactly paint James in a good light. He claimed it was the inspiration to this book, and I’m not 100% sure what that says. I’m not even it needed to be included.
For those mainly interested in the AVGN you won’t hear anything about it until just over the 200 page mark. This seems like a missed opportunity as the last portion of the book is mostly spent on the movie, and the issues/stories about production, etc etc. For anything you can say about the current state of the channel James is really the grandfather to video essayists many of us have come to love today, and while I understand talking about the movie I think he could have gone a bit further.
I would have liked more time spent on those earlier days as the AVGN was first taking off, and how YouTube has changed over the years. I know the movie was a high point to James life, but considering the end-product was pretty forgettable for the average viewer I think more focus on his time spent collaborating with Mike and Bootsy and production facts about our favorite AVGN episodes would have been more appropriate. Don’t get me wrong some of that is in there, but it gets passed over very quickly.
So back to where I started. I wouldn’t really recommend this book, and I honestly think it closer to a 2 star than a 3. I noticed several grammatical errors as well. But ultimately I have nothing against James. It’s fun for some people to rag on him these days, but he’s accomplished a lot for just a guy with a camera, simple outfit, and a basement to film in. I wish him and the family the best. I probably won’t buy another one of his books if it’s published but I was happy to support this one.
Oh, and for the “truthers” who may read this James does not address any of the controversies that surrounded the channel from Mike’s tweet to present. Which is fine for me as I don’t blame James for not wanting to go into it. But may be disappointing for some
That being said I’m not sure I’d recommend it. James meanders a lot in his telling of his story, and there’s segments of this book that just seem included to pad out the length. At one point James lists all the “films” he created prior to the AVGN, which are basically just home movies. It’s wild to me James considers these part of his filmography as he counts his current number of films in the 200s
There’s also a decent amount of time dedicated to James college life in which he talks about an incident which was pretty impactful to his life. But in reading it the story felt really mundane, and didn’t exactly paint James in a good light. He claimed it was the inspiration to this book, and I’m not 100% sure what that says. I’m not even it needed to be included.
For those mainly interested in the AVGN you won’t hear anything about it until just over the 200 page mark. This seems like a missed opportunity as the last portion of the book is mostly spent on the movie, and the issues/stories about production, etc etc. For anything you can say about the current state of the channel James is really the grandfather to video essayists many of us have come to love today, and while I understand talking about the movie I think he could have gone a bit further.
I would have liked more time spent on those earlier days as the AVGN was first taking off, and how YouTube has changed over the years. I know the movie was a high point to James life, but considering the end-product was pretty forgettable for the average viewer I think more focus on his time spent collaborating with Mike and Bootsy and production facts about our favorite AVGN episodes would have been more appropriate. Don’t get me wrong some of that is in there, but it gets passed over very quickly.
So back to where I started. I wouldn’t really recommend this book, and I honestly think it closer to a 2 star than a 3. I noticed several grammatical errors as well. But ultimately I have nothing against James. It’s fun for some people to rag on him these days, but he’s accomplished a lot for just a guy with a camera, simple outfit, and a basement to film in. I wish him and the family the best. I probably won’t buy another one of his books if it’s published but I was happy to support this one.
Oh, and for the “truthers” who may read this James does not address any of the controversies that surrounded the channel from Mike’s tweet to present. Which is fine for me as I don’t blame James for not wanting to go into it. But may be disappointing for some
April 18, 2023
Like many millennial nerds, I watched AVGN a lot in my teens. I fell off around the time he started production on his movie, and by most accounts it seems it turned out terrible.
Still, Rolfe is a guy with a lot of passion and I thought his memoir might have some indie filmmaking nuggets in there, and there are a few toward the end. Mostly though it’s a tedious autobiography poorly-written by a pretty boring dude. Not offensive but in no way memorable.
2 out of 5
Diuretic Buffalos or Whatever
Still, Rolfe is a guy with a lot of passion and I thought his memoir might have some indie filmmaking nuggets in there, and there are a few toward the end. Mostly though it’s a tedious autobiography poorly-written by a pretty boring dude. Not offensive but in no way memorable.
2 out of 5
Diuretic Buffalos or Whatever
November 24, 2022
Solid read, this is one of those reads that makes me lose track of time and makes me feel all kinds of emotions in the process.
October 12, 2026
تقييم عربي english review
The autobiography of James Rolfe, AKA The Angry Video Game Nerd. A filmmaker and a pioneer YouTuber (actually he was making videos before YouTube existed). In this interesting biography: 🎵he’s gonna take you back to the past🎵, his past to be precise! All the way to his oldest memory he remembers, one that fits impeccably with his life passion of horror movies! In this book, James will explore his origins, starting from preschool, going through school, college, AVGN, the movie and the dedicated father that he is today (while still doing AVGN and other interesting projects). It’s a fascinating read I have to say, a roller coaster of a biography! With lots of moments of tension and suspense! And if you’re familiar with AVGN, you’ll get to discover how he met Kyle, Mike and Bootsy! The chapter about the movie recounts the process of making a movie from a completely different angle that you wouldn’t get from the “the making of” feature on a dvd. I totally enjoyed this biography, and I think it’s fun to read even if you don’t know who James Rolfe is.
📝Personal notes📝:
✏️I can relate to some of James experiences as a child, here’s a couple of personal of anecdotes:
🎬📹📼
— I attended a theme park show (MGM or was it Universal, don’t remember) demonstrating how Foley works. I loved it and learned one trick which is making burning fire sound by rubbing dried twigs together! But I also came up with my own! I attached three belts with a jangling sound on my sister’s old push walker. Then I shook the thing up and down while making hooves sound by knocking on a wooden plank with two old shoes and VOILA! I made the sound of a horse wagon! I made this for an audio recording story we made with my siblings because we didn’t have a camcorder at that time and we gotten hold of a cassette recorder.
— later on, in forth grade or fifth if I’m not mistaken, we did own a family camcorder but it was strictly supervised by the parents but we managed to make a few really really crapy movies but it was fun anyway. Here’s some of the “special effects!” Me and my brothers improvised: we had a toy gun that shoots a puff of air (I think it was supposed to be loaded with nurfs or something!) Anyway, to make it realistic I filled it with first, some hot sauce (I should have used ketchup, you’ll know why shortly) then added some talcum powder for a smoky effect. My father was recording and my brother supposed to aim for my white t shirt but he mistakenly aimed at my head and I got splashed in my face with hot sauce mixed with talcum powder and my eyes stung badly and I screamed in agony for real and we left it in and thought wow! Thats a violent scene!
— we stuffed an old Spiderman costume with my sister’s clothing (and for over a week my mother was frustrated looking for them!) and dressed the dummy with my brother’s pajamas which was identical to the one I was wearing for that home movie. So we filmed a fight on the rooftop where my sister will pretend she’s pushing me over (against a tall wall) then we filmed the dummy falling from the rooftop! Fun times…
🏠🏫📓
Like James, me and my brother did have a special schooling for some time. In 3rd,4th and 5th grade I was homeschooled for some issues. We had a nice teacher who was like an older brother for me. Those three years was one of the best years of my life. We learned much more than what a school will have you memorize. We used to play tons of pranks on our nice teacher!
🐞😮🐞
Similarly to James faint dream of a dragon, I have a memory-of-a-memory! If that makes sense! Of a preschool day where me and my brother saw giant (the size of a Roomba vacuum) ladybugs in the kitchen and maybe, I remember ever so faintly, in the bathroom! My brother, years ago once confirmed it to me and I know he wasn’t having me on! What’s the deal? I don’t know! We use to call them clean cockroaches!
🥴🫤🤐😳
Also like James, much much more so actually, I’m socially awkward and have social anxiety! I don’t like looking directly into people’s eyes and I have a challenging time casually socializing with people. So high school wasn’t a pleasant experience for me at all..good riddance!... My cousin is highly autistic, my brother seems to slightly be, but I don’t think I am, I just inherited a few characteristics but not the full spectrum I guess!
————————————
✏️ The special ed school’s point system reminded me of Demolition Man’s verbal morality statute!
✏️regarding James’s editing methods (rather clever for his age and what was available back then, I’m honestly impressed), for a moment I thought: wait a minute! There’s the Video Toaster! But I remembered, James was a kid back then and a VT setup with maybe an Amiga 2000 was way too expensive!
✏️When I came across the passage describing young James receiving an NES as a birthday present, a faint echoey AVGN theme played in my head! (I’ve been watching too many AVGN!)
✏️sometimes I wish digital video/photography isn’t a thing! The more facilitated the process is, the less we appreciate the results and the more crap will be out there..Ai anybody?! I believe (and I might be wrong) that contrary to the popular saying that goes: technology will make us put more effort on the creative side and leave the technical to technology, it actually makes us less efficient and less creative to an extinct! Do people today get thrilled by, and appreciate any one of the new Marvel movies like how people did when Batman 1989 came out? Or the original Jurassic Park? The more we have, the less we appreciate and vice versa. Limitation fuel’s creative minds, and focuses the creative process…sorry for the preaching! 🫤yet, you can never deny the advantages of digital…so IDK
✏️one can get a ROV submarine with a video camera and strong lights and explore NJ’s blue lagoon! Wouldn’t that be thrilling?
✏️scouting for locations for AVGN movie is fascinating. I totally love the creative process of repurposing an existing building to fit a sci fi setting of sorts. Like how in the movie Logan’s Run 1976 they used Dallas Market Center as a futuristic city square, or Robocop’s Dallas City Hall. And the infamous Doctor Who’s rock quarries which I love!
✏️the chapter on James Rolfe’s family and the tribulations they went through is moving. I hope James and his family have a great life. 🙏🏻
———————————————-
هذه هي السيرة الذاتية لجيمس رولف، المعروف بلقب آنجري ڤيديوقيم نيرد او( اي ڤي جي ان). إنه صانع أفلام وأحد رواد يوتيوب (في الواقع، كان يصنع مقاطع الفيديو قبل ظهور يوتيوب نفسه). في هذه السيرة الذاتية المثيرة للاهتمام: سيأخذك جيمس في رحلة للعودة إلى الماضي... ماضيه هو تحديداً! يعود بنا إلى أقدم ذكرياته، وهي ذكرى تتناغم تماماً مع شغفه الكبير بأفلام الرعب! يستعرض جيمس في هذا الكتاب بداياته، بدءاً من مرحلة ما قبل المدرسة، مروراً بالمدرسة والجامعة، ووصولاً إلى شخصية (اي ڤي جي ان)وفيلمه السينمائي، وحياته كأب متفانٍ اليوم (مع استمراره في تقديم (اي ڤي جي ان)ومشاريع أخرى مثيرة للاهتمام). يجب أن أقول إنها قراءة رائعة ومثيرة، أشبه برحلة مليئة بالتقلبات والمفاجآت (مثل الرولر كوستر)! إنها زاخرة بلحظات التوتر والتشويق! وإذا كنت من متابعي (اي ڤي جي ان)فستكتشف كيف التقى بأصدقائه كايل ومايك وبوتسي! أما الفصل المخصص للفيلم، فيسرد عملية صناعته من زاوية مختلفة تماماً عما قد تراه في مقاطع "كواليس العمل" المرفقة عادةً مع أقراص الـدي ڤي دي. لقد استمتعت كثيراً بهذه السيرة الذاتية، وأعتقد أنها ممتعة للقراءة حتى لو لم تكن تعرف من هو جيمس رولف.
📝ملاحظات شخصية📝:
✏️يمكنني أن أجد قواسم مشتركة مع بعض تجارب جيمس في طفولته؛ وإليكم بعض المواقف الشخصية:
🎬📹📼
— حضرت عرضاً في مدينة ترفيهية (لا أتذكر إن كان في استوديوهات (إم جي إم )أم هي يوتيڤيرسال) يوضح كيفية عمل المؤثرات الصوتية الحية (فولي) أحببت العرض وتعلمت منه حيلة لصنع صوت اشتعال النار عن طريق فرك أغصان جافة ببعضها البعض! لكنني ابتكرت حيلتي الخاصة أيضاً! قمت بتثبيت ثلاثة أحزمة ذات مشابك معدنية تصدر رنيناً على مشاية الأطفال القديمة الخاصة بأختي. ثم قمت بهز المشاية للأعلى والأسفل بينما أصدرت صوت حوافر الخيل عبر الطرق على لوح خشبي باستخدام حذاءين قديمين... وها قد نجحت! لقد صنعت صوت عربة يجرها حصان! قمت بذلك من أجل قصة صوتية سجلناها أنا وإخوتي، حيث لم نكن نملك كاميرا فيديو في ذلك الوقت، بل كان لدينا فقط مسجل كاسيت.
في وقت لاحق -ربما في الصف الرابع أو الخامس، إن لم تخنّي الذاكرة- امتلكنا كاميرا فيديو عائلية، ورغم أن استخدامها كان يخضع لرقابة صارمة من والديّ، إلا أننا نجحنا في صنع بعض الأفلام الرديئة للغاية؛ ومع ذلك، كانت التجربة ممتعة. إليكم بعض "المؤثرات الخاصة" التي ابتكرناها أنا وإخوتي: كان لدينا مسدس لعبة يطلق دفقة من الهواء (أعتقد أنه كان مخصصاً لإطلاق سهام إسفنجية أو ما شابه!). المهم، ولإضفاء طابع واقعي، ملأتُ المسدس أولاً ببعض الشطة الحارة (كان يجدر بي استخدام الكاتشب، وستعرفون السبب بعد قليل)، ثم أضفتُ بعض بودرة التلك لمحاكاة تأثير الدخان. كان والدي يتولى التصوير، وكان من المفترض أن يوجه أخي المسدس نحو قميصي الأبيض، لكنه صوّبه نحو رأسي عن طريق الخطأ؛ فتناثرت الصلصة الحارة الممزوجة بالبودرة على وجهي، وشعرت بحرقة شديدة في عينيّ وصرختُ من الألم بصدق، لكننا أبقينا تلك اللقطة في الفيلم وقلنا: "يا للروعة! إنه مشهد عنيف!"
— كما قمنا بحشو زي قديم لشخصية "سبايدرمان" بملابس أختي (وظلت أمي تبحث عنها محبطةً لأكثر من أسبوع!)، وألبسنا ذلك المجسّم بيجامة أخي التي كانت مطابقة تماماً لتلك التي كنت أرتديها في ذلك الفيلم المنزلي. ثم صورنا مشهداً لقتال على سطح المنزل، حيث تتظاهر أختي بدفعي (باتجاه جدار مرتفع)، وبعدها صورنا المجسّم وهو يسقط من السطح! يا لها من أوقات ممتعة...
🏠🏫📓
على غرار "جيمس"، تلقيتُ أنا وأخي تعليماً خاصاً لفترة من الزمن؛ ففي الصفوف الثالث والرابع والخامس، درستُ في المنزل بسبب بعض الظروف. كان لدينا معلم لطيف بمثابة الأخ الأكبر لي، وتُعد تلك السنوات الثلاث من أجمل سنوات حياتي؛ فقد تعلمنا فيها أكثر بكثير مما تفرضه المدارس من حفظ وتلقين وحشو!. وكنا كثيراً ما نمارس المقالب المضحكة مع معلمنا اللطيف!
🐞😮🐞
على غرار حلم جيمس الخافت عن التنين، لدي أنا أيضاً "ذكرى عن ذكرى" أخرى! إن كان لهذا الكلام معنى! إنها ذكرى ليوم في مرحلة ما قبل المدرسة، حين رأينا أنا وأخي خنافس دعسوقة عملاقة (بحجم مكنسة "رومبا" الآلية) في المطبخ، وربما -أتذكر ذلك بوضوح ضئيل جداً- في الحمام أيضاً! لقد أكد لي أخي حدوث ذلك قبل سنوات، وأعلم أنه لم يكن يمزح أو يخدعني! ما قصة هذه الحشرات؟ لا أدري! كنا نطلق عليها اسم "الصراصير النظيفة"!
🥴🫤🤐😳
ومثل جيمس أيضاً -بل وبدرجة أكبر بكثير في الواقع- أعاني من حرج اجتماعي وقلق اجتماعي! لا أحب النظر مباشرة في عيون الناس، وأجد صعوبة في التفاعل الاجتماعي العفوي معهم. لذا، لم تكن المرحلة الثانوية تجربة ممتعة بالنسبة لي على الإطلاق... يا لها من راحة أنني تخلصت منها!... ابن عمي مصاب بالتوحد الشديد، ويبدو أن أخي مصاب به بدرجة طفيفة، أما أنا فلا أعتقد أنني مصاب به؛ ربما ورثت بعض السمات فقط ولكن ليس الطيف الكامل للحالة، على ما أظن!
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✏️ ذكّرني نظام النقاط المتبع في مدرسة التربية الخاصة بقانون "الأخلاق اللفظية" في فيلم (ديموليشن مان)!
✏️ بخصوص أساليب جيمس في المونتاج (التي كانت ذكية جداً بالنسبة لعمره وللإمكانيات المتاحة آنذاك، وأنا معجب بها حقاً)، خطرت لي فكرة للحظة: مهلاً! ماذا عن برنامج توستر الفيديو؟! لكنني تذكرت أن جيمس كان طفلاً حينها، وأن تكلفة تجهيز نظام توستر الفيديو -مع جهاز اميغا ٢٠٠٠ مثلاً- كانت باهظة للغاية!
✏️عندما صادفتُ الفقرة التي تصف حصول "جيمس" في صغره على جهاز نينتدو كهدية عيد ميلاد، ترددت في ذهني نغمة برنامج (اي ڤي جي ان) بشكل خافت وكأنها صدى بعيد! (يبدو أنني أشاهد حلقات (اي ڤي جي ان) أكثر مما ينبغي!)
✏️أحياناً أتمنى لو لم تكن تقنيات الفيديو والتصوير الرقمي موجودة من الأساس! فكلما أصبحت العملية أسهل، قلّ تقديرنا للنتائج وزاد حجم المحتوى الرديء المنتشر... الذكاء الاصطناعي مثلاً؟! أعتقد (وربما أكون مخطئاً) أنه على عكس المقولة الشائعة بأن التكنولوجيا ستدفعنا لبذل جهد أكبر في الجانب الإبداعي وترك الجانب التقني للتكنولوجيا، فإنها في الواقع تجعلنا أقل كفاءة وإبداعاً إلى حد ما! هل يشعر الناس اليوم بنفس الحماس والتقدير تجاه أي من أفلام "مارفل" الجديدة كما شعروا عند صدور فيلم "باتمان" عام ١٩٨٩ أو فيلم "الحديقة الجوراسية" ١٩٩٢ الأصلي؟ كلما زاد ما نملكه، قلّ تقديرنا له، والعكس صحيح. فالقيود تغذي العقول المبدعة وتُركّز مسار العملية الإبداعية... عذراً على هذه الموعظة! 🫤 ومع ذلك، لا يمكن إنكار مزايا التكنولوجيا الرقمية... لذا لا أدري حقاً.
✏️يمكن للمرء الحصول على غواصة صغيرة يتم التحكم فيها عن بُعد ومزودة بكاميرا فيديو وأضواء قوية لاستكشاف "البحيرة الزرقاء" في نيوجيرسي! ألن يكون ذلك أمراً مثيراً؟
✏️إن عملية البحث عن مواقع تصوير لفيلم (اي ڤي جي ان) أمر ممتع للغاية. أنا أحب تماماً تلك العملية الإبداعية المتمثلة في إعادة توظيف مبنى قائم ليناسب أجواء الخيال العلمي؛ مثل استخدام "مركز دالاس التجاري" كساحة مدينة مستقبلية في فيلم (لوغانز رن) عام ١٩٧٦، أو استخدام "مبنى بلدية دالاس" في فيلم (روبوكوب) وكذلك مواقع المحاجر الصخرية الشهيرة في مسلسل (الدكتور هو )التي أعشقها!
✏️الفصل الذي يتحدث عن عائلة "جيمس رولف" والمحن التي مروا بها مؤثر للغاية. أتمنى أن يحظى "جيمس" وعائلته بحياة رائعة. 🙏🏻
The autobiography of James Rolfe, AKA The Angry Video Game Nerd. A filmmaker and a pioneer YouTuber (actually he was making videos before YouTube existed). In this interesting biography: 🎵he’s gonna take you back to the past🎵, his past to be precise! All the way to his oldest memory he remembers, one that fits impeccably with his life passion of horror movies! In this book, James will explore his origins, starting from preschool, going through school, college, AVGN, the movie and the dedicated father that he is today (while still doing AVGN and other interesting projects). It’s a fascinating read I have to say, a roller coaster of a biography! With lots of moments of tension and suspense! And if you’re familiar with AVGN, you’ll get to discover how he met Kyle, Mike and Bootsy! The chapter about the movie recounts the process of making a movie from a completely different angle that you wouldn’t get from the “the making of” feature on a dvd. I totally enjoyed this biography, and I think it’s fun to read even if you don’t know who James Rolfe is.
📝Personal notes📝:
✏️I can relate to some of James experiences as a child, here’s a couple of personal of anecdotes:
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— I attended a theme park show (MGM or was it Universal, don’t remember) demonstrating how Foley works. I loved it and learned one trick which is making burning fire sound by rubbing dried twigs together! But I also came up with my own! I attached three belts with a jangling sound on my sister’s old push walker. Then I shook the thing up and down while making hooves sound by knocking on a wooden plank with two old shoes and VOILA! I made the sound of a horse wagon! I made this for an audio recording story we made with my siblings because we didn’t have a camcorder at that time and we gotten hold of a cassette recorder.
— later on, in forth grade or fifth if I’m not mistaken, we did own a family camcorder but it was strictly supervised by the parents but we managed to make a few really really crapy movies but it was fun anyway. Here’s some of the “special effects!” Me and my brothers improvised: we had a toy gun that shoots a puff of air (I think it was supposed to be loaded with nurfs or something!) Anyway, to make it realistic I filled it with first, some hot sauce (I should have used ketchup, you’ll know why shortly) then added some talcum powder for a smoky effect. My father was recording and my brother supposed to aim for my white t shirt but he mistakenly aimed at my head and I got splashed in my face with hot sauce mixed with talcum powder and my eyes stung badly and I screamed in agony for real and we left it in and thought wow! Thats a violent scene!
— we stuffed an old Spiderman costume with my sister’s clothing (and for over a week my mother was frustrated looking for them!) and dressed the dummy with my brother’s pajamas which was identical to the one I was wearing for that home movie. So we filmed a fight on the rooftop where my sister will pretend she’s pushing me over (against a tall wall) then we filmed the dummy falling from the rooftop! Fun times…
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Like James, me and my brother did have a special schooling for some time. In 3rd,4th and 5th grade I was homeschooled for some issues. We had a nice teacher who was like an older brother for me. Those three years was one of the best years of my life. We learned much more than what a school will have you memorize. We used to play tons of pranks on our nice teacher!
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Similarly to James faint dream of a dragon, I have a memory-of-a-memory! If that makes sense! Of a preschool day where me and my brother saw giant (the size of a Roomba vacuum) ladybugs in the kitchen and maybe, I remember ever so faintly, in the bathroom! My brother, years ago once confirmed it to me and I know he wasn’t having me on! What’s the deal? I don’t know! We use to call them clean cockroaches!
🥴🫤🤐😳
Also like James, much much more so actually, I’m socially awkward and have social anxiety! I don’t like looking directly into people’s eyes and I have a challenging time casually socializing with people. So high school wasn’t a pleasant experience for me at all..good riddance!... My cousin is highly autistic, my brother seems to slightly be, but I don’t think I am, I just inherited a few characteristics but not the full spectrum I guess!
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✏️ The special ed school’s point system reminded me of Demolition Man’s verbal morality statute!
✏️regarding James’s editing methods (rather clever for his age and what was available back then, I’m honestly impressed), for a moment I thought: wait a minute! There’s the Video Toaster! But I remembered, James was a kid back then and a VT setup with maybe an Amiga 2000 was way too expensive!
✏️When I came across the passage describing young James receiving an NES as a birthday present, a faint echoey AVGN theme played in my head! (I’ve been watching too many AVGN!)
✏️sometimes I wish digital video/photography isn’t a thing! The more facilitated the process is, the less we appreciate the results and the more crap will be out there..Ai anybody?! I believe (and I might be wrong) that contrary to the popular saying that goes: technology will make us put more effort on the creative side and leave the technical to technology, it actually makes us less efficient and less creative to an extinct! Do people today get thrilled by, and appreciate any one of the new Marvel movies like how people did when Batman 1989 came out? Or the original Jurassic Park? The more we have, the less we appreciate and vice versa. Limitation fuel’s creative minds, and focuses the creative process…sorry for the preaching! 🫤yet, you can never deny the advantages of digital…so IDK
✏️one can get a ROV submarine with a video camera and strong lights and explore NJ’s blue lagoon! Wouldn’t that be thrilling?
✏️scouting for locations for AVGN movie is fascinating. I totally love the creative process of repurposing an existing building to fit a sci fi setting of sorts. Like how in the movie Logan’s Run 1976 they used Dallas Market Center as a futuristic city square, or Robocop’s Dallas City Hall. And the infamous Doctor Who’s rock quarries which I love!
✏️the chapter on James Rolfe’s family and the tribulations they went through is moving. I hope James and his family have a great life. 🙏🏻
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هذه هي السيرة الذاتية لجيمس رولف، المعروف بلقب آنجري ڤيديوقيم نيرد او( اي ڤي جي ان). إنه صانع أفلام وأحد رواد يوتيوب (في الواقع، كان يصنع مقاطع الفيديو قبل ظهور يوتيوب نفسه). في هذه السيرة الذاتية المثيرة للاهتمام: سيأخذك جيمس في رحلة للعودة إلى الماضي... ماضيه هو تحديداً! يعود بنا إلى أقدم ذكرياته، وهي ذكرى تتناغم تماماً مع شغفه الكبير بأفلام الرعب! يستعرض جيمس في هذا الكتاب بداياته، بدءاً من مرحلة ما قبل المدرسة، مروراً بالمدرسة والجامعة، ووصولاً إلى شخصية (اي ڤي جي ان)وفيلمه السينمائي، وحياته كأب متفانٍ اليوم (مع استمراره في تقديم (اي ڤي جي ان)ومشاريع أخرى مثيرة للاهتمام). يجب أن أقول إنها قراءة رائعة ومثيرة، أشبه برحلة مليئة بالتقلبات والمفاجآت (مثل الرولر كوستر)! إنها زاخرة بلحظات التوتر والتشويق! وإذا كنت من متابعي (اي ڤي جي ان)فستكتشف كيف التقى بأصدقائه كايل ومايك وبوتسي! أما الفصل المخصص للفيلم، فيسرد عملية صناعته من زاوية مختلفة تماماً عما قد تراه في مقاطع "كواليس العمل" المرفقة عادةً مع أقراص الـدي ڤي دي. لقد استمتعت كثيراً بهذه السيرة الذاتية، وأعتقد أنها ممتعة للقراءة حتى لو لم تكن تعرف من هو جيمس رولف.
📝ملاحظات شخصية📝:
✏️يمكنني أن أجد قواسم مشتركة مع بعض تجارب جيمس في طفولته؛ وإليكم بعض المواقف الشخصية:
🎬📹📼
— حضرت عرضاً في مدينة ترفيهية (لا أتذكر إن كان في استوديوهات (إم جي إم )أم هي يوتيڤيرسال) يوضح كيفية عمل المؤثرات الصوتية الحية (فولي) أحببت العرض وتعلمت منه حيلة لصنع صوت اشتعال النار عن طريق فرك أغصان جافة ببعضها البعض! لكنني ابتكرت حيلتي الخاصة أيضاً! قمت بتثبيت ثلاثة أحزمة ذات مشابك معدنية تصدر رنيناً على مشاية الأطفال القديمة الخاصة بأختي. ثم قمت بهز المشاية للأعلى والأسفل بينما أصدرت صوت حوافر الخيل عبر الطرق على لوح خشبي باستخدام حذاءين قديمين... وها قد نجحت! لقد صنعت صوت عربة يجرها حصان! قمت بذلك من أجل قصة صوتية سجلناها أنا وإخوتي، حيث لم نكن نملك كاميرا فيديو في ذلك الوقت، بل كان لدينا فقط مسجل كاسيت.
في وقت لاحق -ربما في الصف الرابع أو الخامس، إن لم تخنّي الذاكرة- امتلكنا كاميرا فيديو عائلية، ورغم أن استخدامها كان يخضع لرقابة صارمة من والديّ، إلا أننا نجحنا في صنع بعض الأفلام الرديئة للغاية؛ ومع ذلك، كانت التجربة ممتعة. إليكم بعض "المؤثرات الخاصة" التي ابتكرناها أنا وإخوتي: كان لدينا مسدس لعبة يطلق دفقة من الهواء (أعتقد أنه كان مخصصاً لإطلاق سهام إسفنجية أو ما شابه!). المهم، ولإضفاء طابع واقعي، ملأتُ المسدس أولاً ببعض الشطة الحارة (كان يجدر بي استخدام الكاتشب، وستعرفون السبب بعد قليل)، ثم أضفتُ بعض بودرة التلك لمحاكاة تأثير الدخان. كان والدي يتولى التصوير، وكان من المفترض أن يوجه أخي المسدس نحو قميصي الأبيض، لكنه صوّبه نحو رأسي عن طريق الخطأ؛ فتناثرت الصلصة الحارة الممزوجة بالبودرة على وجهي، وشعرت بحرقة شديدة في عينيّ وصرختُ من الألم بصدق، لكننا أبقينا تلك اللقطة في الفيلم وقلنا: "يا للروعة! إنه مشهد عنيف!"
— كما قمنا بحشو زي قديم لشخصية "سبايدرمان" بملابس أختي (وظلت أمي تبحث عنها محبطةً لأكثر من أسبوع!)، وألبسنا ذلك المجسّم بيجامة أخي التي كانت مطابقة تماماً لتلك التي كنت أرتديها في ذلك الفيلم المنزلي. ثم صورنا مشهداً لقتال على سطح المنزل، حيث تتظاهر أختي بدفعي (باتجاه جدار مرتفع)، وبعدها صورنا المجسّم وهو يسقط من السطح! يا لها من أوقات ممتعة...
🏠🏫📓
على غرار "جيمس"، تلقيتُ أنا وأخي تعليماً خاصاً لفترة من الزمن؛ ففي الصفوف الثالث والرابع والخامس، درستُ في المنزل بسبب بعض الظروف. كان لدينا معلم لطيف بمثابة الأخ الأكبر لي، وتُعد تلك السنوات الثلاث من أجمل سنوات حياتي؛ فقد تعلمنا فيها أكثر بكثير مما تفرضه المدارس من حفظ وتلقين وحشو!. وكنا كثيراً ما نمارس المقالب المضحكة مع معلمنا اللطيف!
🐞😮🐞
على غرار حلم جيمس الخافت عن التنين، لدي أنا أيضاً "ذكرى عن ذكرى" أخرى! إن كان لهذا الكلام معنى! إنها ذكرى ليوم في مرحلة ما قبل المدرسة، حين رأينا أنا وأخي خنافس دعسوقة عملاقة (بحجم مكنسة "رومبا" الآلية) في المطبخ، وربما -أتذكر ذلك بوضوح ضئيل جداً- في الحمام أيضاً! لقد أكد لي أخي حدوث ذلك قبل سنوات، وأعلم أنه لم يكن يمزح أو يخدعني! ما قصة هذه الحشرات؟ لا أدري! كنا نطلق عليها اسم "الصراصير النظيفة"!
🥴🫤🤐😳
ومثل جيمس أيضاً -بل وبدرجة أكبر بكثير في الواقع- أعاني من حرج اجتماعي وقلق اجتماعي! لا أحب النظر مباشرة في عيون الناس، وأجد صعوبة في التفاعل الاجتماعي العفوي معهم. لذا، لم تكن المرحلة الثانوية تجربة ممتعة بالنسبة لي على الإطلاق... يا لها من راحة أنني تخلصت منها!... ابن عمي مصاب بالتوحد الشديد، ويبدو أن أخي مصاب به بدرجة طفيفة، أما أنا فلا أعتقد أنني مصاب به؛ ربما ورثت بعض السمات فقط ولكن ليس الطيف الكامل للحالة، على ما أظن!
————————————
✏️ ذكّرني نظام النقاط المتبع في مدرسة التربية الخاصة بقانون "الأخلاق اللفظية" في فيلم (ديموليشن مان)!
✏️ بخصوص أساليب جيمس في المونتاج (التي كانت ذكية جداً بالنسبة لعمره وللإمكانيات المتاحة آنذاك، وأنا معجب بها حقاً)، خطرت لي فكرة للحظة: مهلاً! ماذا عن برنامج توستر الفيديو؟! لكنني تذكرت أن جيمس كان طفلاً حينها، وأن تكلفة تجهيز نظام توستر الفيديو -مع جهاز اميغا ٢٠٠٠ مثلاً- كانت باهظة للغاية!
✏️عندما صادفتُ الفقرة التي تصف حصول "جيمس" في صغره على جهاز نينتدو كهدية عيد ميلاد، ترددت في ذهني نغمة برنامج (اي ڤي جي ان) بشكل خافت وكأنها صدى بعيد! (يبدو أنني أشاهد حلقات (اي ڤي جي ان) أكثر مما ينبغي!)
✏️أحياناً أتمنى لو لم تكن تقنيات الفيديو والتصوير الرقمي موجودة من الأساس! فكلما أصبحت العملية أسهل، قلّ تقديرنا للنتائج وزاد حجم المحتوى الرديء المنتشر... الذكاء الاصطناعي مثلاً؟! أعتقد (وربما أكون مخطئاً) أنه على عكس المقولة الشائعة بأن التكنولوجيا ستدفعنا لبذل جهد أكبر في الجانب الإبداعي وترك الجانب التقني للتكنولوجيا، فإنها في الواقع تجعلنا أقل كفاءة وإبداعاً إلى حد ما! هل يشعر الناس اليوم بنفس الحماس والتقدير تجاه أي من أفلام "مارفل" الجديدة كما شعروا عند صدور فيلم "باتمان" عام ١٩٨٩ أو فيلم "الحديقة الجوراسية" ١٩٩٢ الأصلي؟ كلما زاد ما نملكه، قلّ تقديرنا له، والعكس صحيح. فالقيود تغذي العقول المبدعة وتُركّز مسار العملية الإبداعية... عذراً على هذه الموعظة! 🫤 ومع ذلك، لا يمكن إنكار مزايا التكنولوجيا الرقمية... لذا لا أدري حقاً.
✏️يمكن للمرء الحصول على غواصة صغيرة يتم التحكم فيها عن بُعد ومزودة بكاميرا فيديو وأضواء قوية لاستكشاف "البحيرة الزرقاء" في نيوجيرسي! ألن يكون ذلك أمراً مثيراً؟
✏️إن عملية البحث عن مواقع تصوير لفيلم (اي ڤي جي ان) أمر ممتع للغاية. أنا أحب تماماً تلك العملية الإبداعية المتمثلة في إعادة توظيف مبنى قائم ليناسب أجواء الخيال العلمي؛ مثل استخدام "مركز دالاس التجاري" كساحة مدينة مستقبلية في فيلم (لوغانز رن) عام ١٩٧٦، أو استخدام "مبنى بلدية دالاس" في فيلم (روبوكوب) وكذلك مواقع المحاجر الصخرية الشهيرة في مسلسل (الدكتور هو )التي أعشقها!
✏️الفصل الذي يتحدث عن عائلة "جيمس رولف" والمحن التي مروا بها مؤثر للغاية. أتمنى أن يحظى "جيمس" وعائلته بحياة رائعة. 🙏🏻
June 4, 2023
Decent read at the beginning, was waiting the whole time for him to get to the part of his life where he made AVGN, which just so happened to be the part he glazed over. Very strange.
February 26, 2023
So,i started my book reading year with this. How was it?
Well i read a lot of biographies/autobiographies,the good ones feel like you are following the person who tells their life story as he/she goes through their life. This is not one of them.
The book is full of stories not really related to one another, stories that could have been cut out. It felt like reading a long long loong essay. The first half of the book was so booooring, good lord.
What made me dislike the book was that James has no consequences for everything he does (burning down and destroying the dorm he was staying in and reasoning he doesnt need to apologize for being a filmmaker???) . The whole book made me feel like James is a very pretentious guy with zero awareness about real life consequences. To make it worse he just kept failing upwards while learning nothing.
Another thing i cant excuse are the spelling mistakes, he says he was writing the book for over 20 years.. and in all of that time nobody, not even him thought to proof read this thing?!
Here is a couple: Foreward,Forward-They "fixed" the spelling, but in reality fucked it up again 😂 😂(out of all of his crew and him no one knows how to spell Foreword?) , a lot of the time i couldnt figure out what the sentence was supposed to be: "but was im a skeleton" ??? uhh what? and there are much more.
The whole first part of the book is entirely skippable, unless you want to experience wonder, confusion and sheer bewilderment as to how he got his driving license given that for a while he just kept crashing, turning into lanes for opposite direction and somehow avoiding harm to anybody (and especially being from spec ed). Maybe you want to experience his time in special education, (trust me you dont)-its pointless just like the start of the book where he talks about dreams that he was dreaming.
The second part talks about him filming his movie. Its kinda fun till you start thinking about his insane choices and mind-numbing decisions. He lives on the east coast and decides to film his low budget movie in LA because of bad weather, a lack of dessert on the East Coast..and because everybody films in LA?! JUST WAIT FOR BETTER WEATHER, MAKE A DESSERT OUT OF BAGS OF SAND (and gravel) IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE! You dont drive across the country, find an apartment, pay thousands of dollars for locations JUST BECAUSE OF BAD WEATHER AND LACK OF A DESSERT!
He even fails to realize this while filming some parts BACK HOME!
Here is a novel idea: USE CGI,OR A GREEN SCREEN! which he does use while filming missing scenes back home. Which begs the question: WHY NOT USE IT FROM THE BEGINNING AND SAVE MONEY?!. 🤦
I am not a film maker nor do i know much about directing movies,but even i know da moving across the country,f inding expensive locations and doing almost everything practical is insanity.
To summarize: Pointless, pretentious, mind numbing, illiterate.
Well i read a lot of biographies/autobiographies,the good ones feel like you are following the person who tells their life story as he/she goes through their life. This is not one of them.
The book is full of stories not really related to one another, stories that could have been cut out. It felt like reading a long long loong essay. The first half of the book was so booooring, good lord.
What made me dislike the book was that James has no consequences for everything he does (burning down and destroying the dorm he was staying in and reasoning he doesnt need to apologize for being a filmmaker???) . The whole book made me feel like James is a very pretentious guy with zero awareness about real life consequences. To make it worse he just kept failing upwards while learning nothing.
Another thing i cant excuse are the spelling mistakes, he says he was writing the book for over 20 years.. and in all of that time nobody, not even him thought to proof read this thing?!
Here is a couple: Foreward,Forward-They "fixed" the spelling, but in reality fucked it up again 😂 😂(out of all of his crew and him no one knows how to spell Foreword?) , a lot of the time i couldnt figure out what the sentence was supposed to be: "but was im a skeleton" ??? uhh what? and there are much more.
The whole first part of the book is entirely skippable, unless you want to experience wonder, confusion and sheer bewilderment as to how he got his driving license given that for a while he just kept crashing, turning into lanes for opposite direction and somehow avoiding harm to anybody (and especially being from spec ed). Maybe you want to experience his time in special education, (trust me you dont)-its pointless just like the start of the book where he talks about dreams that he was dreaming.
The second part talks about him filming his movie. Its kinda fun till you start thinking about his insane choices and mind-numbing decisions. He lives on the east coast and decides to film his low budget movie in LA because of bad weather, a lack of dessert on the East Coast..and because everybody films in LA?! JUST WAIT FOR BETTER WEATHER, MAKE A DESSERT OUT OF BAGS OF SAND (and gravel) IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE! You dont drive across the country, find an apartment, pay thousands of dollars for locations JUST BECAUSE OF BAD WEATHER AND LACK OF A DESSERT!
He even fails to realize this while filming some parts BACK HOME!
Here is a novel idea: USE CGI,OR A GREEN SCREEN! which he does use while filming missing scenes back home. Which begs the question: WHY NOT USE IT FROM THE BEGINNING AND SAVE MONEY?!. 🤦
I am not a film maker nor do i know much about directing movies,but even i know da moving across the country,f inding expensive locations and doing almost everything practical is insanity.
To summarize: Pointless, pretentious, mind numbing, illiterate.
November 18, 2022
A few months ago a review from the "Angry Video Game Nerd" popped up in my YouTube recommendations, and I figured it must be an old video or a retrospective or something because I used to watch his funny reviews more than a decade before. But it turns out he's still at it. James Rolfe, the Nerd with a capital N, is still, to this day, subjecting himself to retro video games until he loses his temper and literally beats the game cartridges into pieces (or burns them, or shoots them, or dumps fake poo or vomit on them, or sometimes all of these things). And he's thriving — he's got a huge audience and a semi-regular release schedule. I've always lumped this guy in with other mid-aughts internet sensations like Homestar Runner or Shockwave, so it was kinda wild to see that he's still going. He's been doing this for almost 20 years now.
I followed that YouTube recommendation, and then I watched some of his other recent episodes, and then I watched all of them, all 200+, the same way I would binge any other TV show. I play board games with a group of guys once a month and I remember explaining AVGN to them when I was knee-deep in his videos. "It's this guy," I said, "and, you know, he dresses like someone from an IT department, and he plays poorly made video games from the '80s and '90s, and he swears a lot and sometimes performs skits where one of the game's characters will show up in a cheap costume and they'll fight to the death. Sometimes he breaks the games with a hammer or uses a prosthetic rear end to—" And then I stopped because one guy at the table was looking at me like I was having a stroke. He said that sounded absolutely awful. He smiled and shook his head in disbelief and repeated himself.
And well, yeah, fine, I get that. If I hadn't seen AVGN videos when I was in my early 20s, present-day-late-30s me probably wouldn't have seen the appeal. But as a young adult I'd never seen something so irreverent, never seen anything so crude and silly. Someone cussing up a storm and fighting five-and-dime Bugs Bunnies was novel for the low-budget spectacle that it was. I can't even invoke that old trope where someone is caught reading a tawdry magazine and insists they just read it for the articles, because even though I've learned an awful lot of honest-to-God fascinating video-game-related history and trivia from AVGN, I can get all of that and more from watching The Gaming Historian or even just reading Wikipedia. I try to explain the appeal to people sometimes but I end up sounding like an overgrown basement dweller. What can I say, it's a guilty pleasure. I like him. He makes me laugh.
What's really wild is that in the almost two decades he's been doing this, he's blown up (albeit in an underground sorta way). His videos have been organized into discreet seasons you can buy on DVD at Wal-Mart. Gilbert Gottfried made a cameo appearance in one episode. There are two real, genuine, bona fide video games starring James Rolfe as his Nerd persona fighting legendary game glitches and his made-up characters. Seriously, you can buy a physical, licensed Nintendo Switch cartridge with his face on it. Rolfe even raised money and made a feature-length AVGN film, with a limited theatrical release (!), where his character reviews E.T. for the Atari and unwittingly uncovers an Area-51-related conspiracy. He has merchandise, for crying out loud.
I have approximately zero interest in any of these things but I'm delighted that this guy has been able to cultivate such an audience and remain so relevant for so long.
There is also another video series by James Rolfe where he reviews movies, typically classic horror movies. It's weird watching one of these reviews for the first time — his Nerd character is so consistent that I sometimes forget it's just a schtick. After seeing Rolfe dressed as a doofus for so many years, chugging beer and cursing and performing various bodily functions all over anything and everything, the idea of him in a t-shirt and jeans, calmly explaining why he enjoys Mel Brooks movies was almost its own form of comedy. It was like that gag from Wayne's World where Alice Cooper turns out to be a history buff. No antics, no prop comedy, just a guy talking about his favorite flicks. Those videos are fascinating. They're informative. The dude has clearly watched a ton of movies and he really loves them.
This is mostly the tone of Rolfe's memoir, A Movie Making Nerd -- a film buff talking about home movies and the events that led to his internet popularity. Among the most interesting nuggets: He was in special education for most of his childhood (and returned to public high school as a sophomore without any academic issues), he was suspended from college because he and his roommates absolutely trashed their dorm over the course of his freshman year (though as he tells it, he never participated in the destruction, only filmed it), and he honed his craft creating workplace safety videos that, apparently, no one ever saw except for his boss. He created the first few AVGN episodes in between editing wedding videos, and they were just meant for him and his close friends, passed around on VHS tapes.
A large portion of the book focuses on his feature-length AVGN film. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, he temporarily moved to L.A. and did the whole Hollywood thing. If you've ever run a Kickstarter or something similar, you'll surely wince when you read that he received his funds near the end of the calendar year, before he had a chance to do anything with them. All that money he raised, therefore, was considered normal, taxable income, and a third of the budget went up in smoke. Poof. It put James in a different tax bracket. He ended up dumping his savings into the project to make up the difference.
His Hollywood experience was a disaster and sucked all the fun out of everything (though, spoiler alert, he obviously got his film made and he's happy with the result). His family camcorder and captive childhood cast had been replaced with a real cast and crew, a mountain of red tape and fees and L.A. phonies and crazies and swindlers. Nothing went according to plan. Chapter 5 is a genuinely entertaining (and agonizing) account of the whole ordeal. Despite this he speaks highly of nearly everyone he worked with and goes out of his way to thank most of them by name. (For us normies, this means an avalanche of Mikes and Kyles and Kevins, none of whom you will remember.)
One of my favorite bits is when, on the last day of filming, their money depleted, Rolfe is tied to a chair and he's barely managing to hold himself together. Stephen Mendel notices that Rolfe is down in the dumps and, in his wheelchair made to look like a tank, his arms made to look like they'd been ripped off, leans in close and whispers, "You know I was Splinter on Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation?" And it was so random that it cheered Rolfe right up. They finished filming and went home.
The final chapter focuses on his extended efforts to finish editing the film, its eventual release, and fatherhood. What he went through to wrap up post-production is worth the price of the book. His wife's birth story is bananas. And the film's long-awaited premier lifted his spirits into the stratosphere.
There is surprisingly little said about his AVGN series. In fact, I kinda got the impression he resents its popularity. He seems delighted with the fandom and loves connecting with people but expresses some mild regret that the series has kept him from pursuing a traditional filmmaking career. It's just a job, not too dissimilar from workplace safety videos or wedding mementos.
In the end he seems to gain a renewed enthusiasm for AVGN, just tempered by his responsibilities as a husband and father.
Rolfe does, admittedly, engage in a fair amount of preening throughout his memoir. In the first few pages he references King Kong and follows it up with the year 1933 in parentheses. I figured he did this to clarify which version of the film he watched, but then a few paragraphs later, he explains how it led him to record his first home movie, Escape from Monster Island, and he follows the title with "(1991)." And I laughed, thinking the year was some kind of gag, as if the reader needed any clarification. But he takes this stuff seriously. He counts it among his works the same way a famous painter might count whatever his parents pinned to the fridge in his childhood home. It would be like if I listed this review in my bibliography. Nothing ends up on the cutting room floor; every story idea, every homegrown advancement in editing is declared to be another line item on his filmography. One of his films is a documentary about himself where he covers his first hundred films. "I felt like I was reaching awkwardly to pat myself on the back," he says. Years later, he modified that documentary to cover his first 200 films and re-released it.
This was jarring at first, perhaps a little silly, and the writing often straddles the fence between humble and self-absorbed. But his enthusiasm is infectious, and his stories are undeniably interesting. I didn't particularly enjoy any of his early home movies (any of which you can easily find by googling Cinemassacre + the title) but I sincerely enjoy his director commentary in this book. During his formative years he taught himself to make films with whatever resources he had, and he kind of stumbled into doing things the right (-ish) way. He realized much later that he'd created a Foley and made story boards just by experimenting. It's a fun trip to go on.
In Dan Simmons's Hyperion, the poet Martin Silenus at one point frets over his new book and his agent compares it to Pilgrim's Progress. She says Martin's a famous poet and that it doesn't actually matter whether the book is good because it's basically just a decoration for the mantlepiece at home. It'll sell millions of copies but good heavens, no one is going to read it.
I initially viewed A Movie Making Nerd through a similarly cynical lens; that the target market was not necessarily “readers” but super-fans eager to have an AVGN-branded book for their coffee tables, where they would remain unread forever and ever and ever amen. The book is not particularly well written. It's often awkward and meandering (though mostly free of typos) and took so long to write that he had drafts of it stored on floppy disks. His writing style during this extended period is all over the place, and some chapters are better than others. But you don't need good prose to tell a good story, and thankfully James Rolfe is a good storyteller. And he’s funny. I laughed so much reading this book. He nails it every time, typically with a well-placed string of invective or self-deprecating reflection. After his wife's rather traumatic birth story, he wraps it up by saying of his newborn daughter, "I'd never been so happy to see a person puke sh*t." Either he’s funny or I’m a child.
Just a month ago he released a video where he reviews all the various Doom ports. He pops the disk into his Commodore 64 and the console tries so hard to load it but then just lets out this teeny-tiny little fart, and it made me laugh. He’s still got it.
Anyway, if you've ever watched one of his goofy videos and wondered what he's like, or how he got into this gig, then chances are you'll find a lot to love in his memoir. Don’t let the early Kindle reviews get you down; yes, it was bungled, but he fixed it with a less-bungled version, and soon after fixed that version with an almost completely un-bungled version. Reading the book honestly puts this very minor debacle in perspective, in a weird way. It turns out Rolfe often takes the long way around, even if the long way is covered with nails and broken glass. It's a great read.
I followed that YouTube recommendation, and then I watched some of his other recent episodes, and then I watched all of them, all 200+, the same way I would binge any other TV show. I play board games with a group of guys once a month and I remember explaining AVGN to them when I was knee-deep in his videos. "It's this guy," I said, "and, you know, he dresses like someone from an IT department, and he plays poorly made video games from the '80s and '90s, and he swears a lot and sometimes performs skits where one of the game's characters will show up in a cheap costume and they'll fight to the death. Sometimes he breaks the games with a hammer or uses a prosthetic rear end to—" And then I stopped because one guy at the table was looking at me like I was having a stroke. He said that sounded absolutely awful. He smiled and shook his head in disbelief and repeated himself.
And well, yeah, fine, I get that. If I hadn't seen AVGN videos when I was in my early 20s, present-day-late-30s me probably wouldn't have seen the appeal. But as a young adult I'd never seen something so irreverent, never seen anything so crude and silly. Someone cussing up a storm and fighting five-and-dime Bugs Bunnies was novel for the low-budget spectacle that it was. I can't even invoke that old trope where someone is caught reading a tawdry magazine and insists they just read it for the articles, because even though I've learned an awful lot of honest-to-God fascinating video-game-related history and trivia from AVGN, I can get all of that and more from watching The Gaming Historian or even just reading Wikipedia. I try to explain the appeal to people sometimes but I end up sounding like an overgrown basement dweller. What can I say, it's a guilty pleasure. I like him. He makes me laugh.
What's really wild is that in the almost two decades he's been doing this, he's blown up (albeit in an underground sorta way). His videos have been organized into discreet seasons you can buy on DVD at Wal-Mart. Gilbert Gottfried made a cameo appearance in one episode. There are two real, genuine, bona fide video games starring James Rolfe as his Nerd persona fighting legendary game glitches and his made-up characters. Seriously, you can buy a physical, licensed Nintendo Switch cartridge with his face on it. Rolfe even raised money and made a feature-length AVGN film, with a limited theatrical release (!), where his character reviews E.T. for the Atari and unwittingly uncovers an Area-51-related conspiracy. He has merchandise, for crying out loud.
I have approximately zero interest in any of these things but I'm delighted that this guy has been able to cultivate such an audience and remain so relevant for so long.
There is also another video series by James Rolfe where he reviews movies, typically classic horror movies. It's weird watching one of these reviews for the first time — his Nerd character is so consistent that I sometimes forget it's just a schtick. After seeing Rolfe dressed as a doofus for so many years, chugging beer and cursing and performing various bodily functions all over anything and everything, the idea of him in a t-shirt and jeans, calmly explaining why he enjoys Mel Brooks movies was almost its own form of comedy. It was like that gag from Wayne's World where Alice Cooper turns out to be a history buff. No antics, no prop comedy, just a guy talking about his favorite flicks. Those videos are fascinating. They're informative. The dude has clearly watched a ton of movies and he really loves them.
This is mostly the tone of Rolfe's memoir, A Movie Making Nerd -- a film buff talking about home movies and the events that led to his internet popularity. Among the most interesting nuggets: He was in special education for most of his childhood (and returned to public high school as a sophomore without any academic issues), he was suspended from college because he and his roommates absolutely trashed their dorm over the course of his freshman year (though as he tells it, he never participated in the destruction, only filmed it), and he honed his craft creating workplace safety videos that, apparently, no one ever saw except for his boss. He created the first few AVGN episodes in between editing wedding videos, and they were just meant for him and his close friends, passed around on VHS tapes.
A large portion of the book focuses on his feature-length AVGN film. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, he temporarily moved to L.A. and did the whole Hollywood thing. If you've ever run a Kickstarter or something similar, you'll surely wince when you read that he received his funds near the end of the calendar year, before he had a chance to do anything with them. All that money he raised, therefore, was considered normal, taxable income, and a third of the budget went up in smoke. Poof. It put James in a different tax bracket. He ended up dumping his savings into the project to make up the difference.
His Hollywood experience was a disaster and sucked all the fun out of everything (though, spoiler alert, he obviously got his film made and he's happy with the result). His family camcorder and captive childhood cast had been replaced with a real cast and crew, a mountain of red tape and fees and L.A. phonies and crazies and swindlers. Nothing went according to plan. Chapter 5 is a genuinely entertaining (and agonizing) account of the whole ordeal. Despite this he speaks highly of nearly everyone he worked with and goes out of his way to thank most of them by name. (For us normies, this means an avalanche of Mikes and Kyles and Kevins, none of whom you will remember.)
One of my favorite bits is when, on the last day of filming, their money depleted, Rolfe is tied to a chair and he's barely managing to hold himself together. Stephen Mendel notices that Rolfe is down in the dumps and, in his wheelchair made to look like a tank, his arms made to look like they'd been ripped off, leans in close and whispers, "You know I was Splinter on Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation?" And it was so random that it cheered Rolfe right up. They finished filming and went home.
The final chapter focuses on his extended efforts to finish editing the film, its eventual release, and fatherhood. What he went through to wrap up post-production is worth the price of the book. His wife's birth story is bananas. And the film's long-awaited premier lifted his spirits into the stratosphere.
There is surprisingly little said about his AVGN series. In fact, I kinda got the impression he resents its popularity. He seems delighted with the fandom and loves connecting with people but expresses some mild regret that the series has kept him from pursuing a traditional filmmaking career. It's just a job, not too dissimilar from workplace safety videos or wedding mementos.
In the end he seems to gain a renewed enthusiasm for AVGN, just tempered by his responsibilities as a husband and father.
Rolfe does, admittedly, engage in a fair amount of preening throughout his memoir. In the first few pages he references King Kong and follows it up with the year 1933 in parentheses. I figured he did this to clarify which version of the film he watched, but then a few paragraphs later, he explains how it led him to record his first home movie, Escape from Monster Island, and he follows the title with "(1991)." And I laughed, thinking the year was some kind of gag, as if the reader needed any clarification. But he takes this stuff seriously. He counts it among his works the same way a famous painter might count whatever his parents pinned to the fridge in his childhood home. It would be like if I listed this review in my bibliography. Nothing ends up on the cutting room floor; every story idea, every homegrown advancement in editing is declared to be another line item on his filmography. One of his films is a documentary about himself where he covers his first hundred films. "I felt like I was reaching awkwardly to pat myself on the back," he says. Years later, he modified that documentary to cover his first 200 films and re-released it.
This was jarring at first, perhaps a little silly, and the writing often straddles the fence between humble and self-absorbed. But his enthusiasm is infectious, and his stories are undeniably interesting. I didn't particularly enjoy any of his early home movies (any of which you can easily find by googling Cinemassacre + the title) but I sincerely enjoy his director commentary in this book. During his formative years he taught himself to make films with whatever resources he had, and he kind of stumbled into doing things the right (-ish) way. He realized much later that he'd created a Foley and made story boards just by experimenting. It's a fun trip to go on.
In Dan Simmons's Hyperion, the poet Martin Silenus at one point frets over his new book and his agent compares it to Pilgrim's Progress. She says Martin's a famous poet and that it doesn't actually matter whether the book is good because it's basically just a decoration for the mantlepiece at home. It'll sell millions of copies but good heavens, no one is going to read it.
I initially viewed A Movie Making Nerd through a similarly cynical lens; that the target market was not necessarily “readers” but super-fans eager to have an AVGN-branded book for their coffee tables, where they would remain unread forever and ever and ever amen. The book is not particularly well written. It's often awkward and meandering (though mostly free of typos) and took so long to write that he had drafts of it stored on floppy disks. His writing style during this extended period is all over the place, and some chapters are better than others. But you don't need good prose to tell a good story, and thankfully James Rolfe is a good storyteller. And he’s funny. I laughed so much reading this book. He nails it every time, typically with a well-placed string of invective or self-deprecating reflection. After his wife's rather traumatic birth story, he wraps it up by saying of his newborn daughter, "I'd never been so happy to see a person puke sh*t." Either he’s funny or I’m a child.
Just a month ago he released a video where he reviews all the various Doom ports. He pops the disk into his Commodore 64 and the console tries so hard to load it but then just lets out this teeny-tiny little fart, and it made me laugh. He’s still got it.
Anyway, if you've ever watched one of his goofy videos and wondered what he's like, or how he got into this gig, then chances are you'll find a lot to love in his memoir. Don’t let the early Kindle reviews get you down; yes, it was bungled, but he fixed it with a less-bungled version, and soon after fixed that version with an almost completely un-bungled version. Reading the book honestly puts this very minor debacle in perspective, in a weird way. It turns out Rolfe often takes the long way around, even if the long way is covered with nails and broken glass. It's a great read.
November 26, 2022
I've been a fan of James Rolfe since he was The Angry Nintendo Nerd. His was probably the first Youtube channel I subscribed to. I've enjoyed most of his work since then, from his movie reviews and documentaries to his Bored James series and beyond. He always seemed like a cool and genuine guy to me, so I was excited to hear that he had written a book.
He speaks open and honestly about his life, telling humorous, heart-warming and heartbreaking tales from his lifetime, speaking about the problems he had at school and the trouble he got into at college, getting to meet Ozzy, meeting girls, getting married...everything you'd expect from a biography.
Though the book is full of his life stories, he focuses mostly on his love of movie making. He goes into great detail about the films he made throughout his life, from shorts recorded with his school friends, up until his feature film, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie. He explains how he shot and edited his films, the hardships and obstacles he had to overcome, lessons learned, and the joys of finally showing the films to people.
Being a fan of James, I knew I'd enjoy the book, but I was pulled in deeper as I found parallels with my own life. We are both the same age, so we played all the same games and watched the same movies. I had to laugh at him editing with two VHS recorders because I used to do the same thing. We both discovered heavy metal around the same age. And I could sympathise a lot with his struggling to fit in at school and his issues with social anxiety.
The book is an uplifting and inspiring read. James comes across as a decent, calm, quiet and reserved fella from what he has written, unlike his Angry Video Game Nerd character. He comes across as grateful to all his friends and fans, and he harbours no hard feelings towards the people who have done him wrong, especially the guy who caused all the trouble on the AVGN movie set. I don't know how he didn't kick that dude's arse. Anyway, it's as open an honest as you can get for a biography, so I deffo recommend it.
He speaks open and honestly about his life, telling humorous, heart-warming and heartbreaking tales from his lifetime, speaking about the problems he had at school and the trouble he got into at college, getting to meet Ozzy, meeting girls, getting married...everything you'd expect from a biography.
Though the book is full of his life stories, he focuses mostly on his love of movie making. He goes into great detail about the films he made throughout his life, from shorts recorded with his school friends, up until his feature film, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie. He explains how he shot and edited his films, the hardships and obstacles he had to overcome, lessons learned, and the joys of finally showing the films to people.
Being a fan of James, I knew I'd enjoy the book, but I was pulled in deeper as I found parallels with my own life. We are both the same age, so we played all the same games and watched the same movies. I had to laugh at him editing with two VHS recorders because I used to do the same thing. We both discovered heavy metal around the same age. And I could sympathise a lot with his struggling to fit in at school and his issues with social anxiety.
The book is an uplifting and inspiring read. James comes across as a decent, calm, quiet and reserved fella from what he has written, unlike his Angry Video Game Nerd character. He comes across as grateful to all his friends and fans, and he harbours no hard feelings towards the people who have done him wrong, especially the guy who caused all the trouble on the AVGN movie set. I don't know how he didn't kick that dude's arse. Anyway, it's as open an honest as you can get for a biography, so I deffo recommend it.
December 10, 2023
a shitload of fuck
October 22, 2024
A deeply personal and reflective book, more about life than filmmaking, in my view. I read the entire book while caring for my newborn child and wife in the hospital, which made the stories about children and nostalgia resonate even more. Thank you, James.
November 20, 2022
He took me back to the past!
February 7, 2023
Is forty too young for an autobiography? Bruce Campbell wrote his at 44, so I guess it’s all right. But James Rolfe still seems so young. Maybe it’s because he’s in such a “hip and trendy” medium, being one of the first career YouTubers. I feel he still has more to do in his life, that his career has yet to reach its pinnacle. He won’t be the AVGN forever. And some studio is going to recognize his prowess and snatch him up.
The testament to his staying power is not his video game skill, not his penchant for spectacle, but the fact that he’s always been a filmmaker. And that’s what the book is about. And it’s very much in his voice. Close your eyes during an AVGN video and that’s his narrative voice. Kind of gen-X’y, kind of stilted, like someone with a short attention span with short choppy sentences. The style he uses for videos is the same one he uses for writing. Which is not a smooth transition.
Clearly, he wrote this without the help of an editor or professional services. I spotted quite a few typos and grammar mistakes. Not to mention, overall, it lacks deeper self-reflection. Why did Rolfe do these things? What was his motivation? Why was this a mistake and what would he have done differently? A biography should be as much self-analysis as it is a retelling of events. Maybe even a form of therapy. This book lacks that.
But for a guy who’s just a YouTuber, it has some pretty fascinating events. I’d say it’s on par with Lindsey Stirling’s memoir.
The testament to his staying power is not his video game skill, not his penchant for spectacle, but the fact that he’s always been a filmmaker. And that’s what the book is about. And it’s very much in his voice. Close your eyes during an AVGN video and that’s his narrative voice. Kind of gen-X’y, kind of stilted, like someone with a short attention span with short choppy sentences. The style he uses for videos is the same one he uses for writing. Which is not a smooth transition.
Clearly, he wrote this without the help of an editor or professional services. I spotted quite a few typos and grammar mistakes. Not to mention, overall, it lacks deeper self-reflection. Why did Rolfe do these things? What was his motivation? Why was this a mistake and what would he have done differently? A biography should be as much self-analysis as it is a retelling of events. Maybe even a form of therapy. This book lacks that.
But for a guy who’s just a YouTuber, it has some pretty fascinating events. I’d say it’s on par with Lindsey Stirling’s memoir.
February 1, 2025
All these 5 star reviews and I wonder to myself... did we read the same fucking book? All James does in this book, besides being self-masturbatory towards his filmography, is just explain life events that frankly don't have much of an impact towards what he or what AVGN is, and what *could* be interesting is quickly glossed over with nary a mention afterwards. The section on the AVGN movie is a perfect example. What could have been an excellent post-mortem on why the movie didn't work, is turned into a weirdly positive story of how he stuck it to the man because he cannot address criticism without calling it "comments of the assholish variety".
If you still have even the slightest modicum of respect lingering towards James, prepare for this book to destroy what's left of it.
If you still have even the slightest modicum of respect lingering towards James, prepare for this book to destroy what's left of it.
December 7, 2022
This review is a bit biased, because I have been a fan of James Rolfe and his content for over 10 years now. I also have been looking forward to this work for a few years ever since first hearing about it. For fans of the Angry Video Game Nerd, this will be an excellent read. For those who are not fans however, I will admit the prose is a bit off in places and you can tell that James is not an experienced writer with his sentence structures. Luckily it never gets so bad that it detracts from the experience. I devoured this book and read the whole thing in two days.
February 27, 2024
One of my more biased ratings since this probably won’t be very engaging at all if you didn’t watch this guys videos at the height of his popularity in the mid to late 00s but I enjoyed this. It’s paced very oddly with some of the things he recalls being in great detail as opposed to others being skimmed over as well as some very faint indications of narcissism. He’s fallen off a great deal both in quality and passion but he was very inspirational at an important age for me and I’m not sure I’d have the same level of love for filmmaking without this dude
February 20, 2023
No reason to read this if you're not an AVGN, Cinemassacre, or a James Rolfe fan in general. But if you are then this is a must-read. The only disappointment I have is I'd love to have more information about certain things he talks about.
August 18, 2024
Perhaps the worst book ever written.
September 19, 2025
It’s not good. You could cut a third of the book and lose nothing, and the remaining two thirds desperately need an editor.
I like James, he’s a class act, but I’ve gotta call it like I read it.
I like James, he’s a class act, but I’ve gotta call it like I read it.
October 17, 2025
Wow it’s been a minute since I’ve logged a book. Truth is, burnout is real…! While I waited to regain that spark for reading, my third year of university began. Just yesterday, I had a meeting with my personal tutor, and…long-story short, I suddenly felt like the future was more tangible. I can picture something, and all she did was reaffirm that my vague plans after graduation would be completely viable and that I shouldn’t worry.
Well, riding that high, I’ve been feeling more productive, despite fighting a losing battle to a mild cold. My writing apparently shows promise, and I had an exciting opportunity earlier in the year that I’m eager to see come to fruition in a few months from now. With that, I began chipping away at some assignments and essays, all due in the coming weeks (as of writing).
And it was during this binge that I was listening to a lot of James Rolfe’s work, ranging from Monster Madness and his Top 10s, to behind-the-scenes videos and, of course, AVGN. Truth is that James has been more of an inspiration to me than I initially thought. His love of film dates back to his childhood, and ever since, he’s grown to be one of the internet’s most influential content creators. And the thing is, while I love AVGN (specific episodes are regularly revisited, almost like comfort films), it’s the videos with James himself that I always enjoy the most. They’re personal, calming, and informative. I’m sure his love of classic horror films subconsciously influenced my taste in some way.
But it was that filmmaking angle that I always respected. He recently turned a screenplay into his first novel, Gnome Cave; it was one of the videos that I initially used to fill the quiet. While I may read it someday, I quickly learnt he had written an autobiography a few years ago. Now THAT piqued my interest. Like I said, I have a lot of respect for James, dating back to when I discovered the Back to the Future AVGN episode during my early teens (I was somewhat of a latecomer to AVGN, I’ll admit. 2016-17 if I recall.), and later the Rocky Jumps a Park Bench documentary.
And reading his autobiography was so rewarding, I finished it in one day. Now, I’m not the first to mention that there’s a plethora of editorial issues, like typos or strange formatting, but…who cares? It’s a personal piece from somebody who, from what I can tell, is proud and reflective, above all. Not in a pretentious way, rather, this book felt like a ‘thank you’ to every person and decision that led to where he is today. I actually found the first few chapters (pre-AVGN) more interesting: I guess that’s because I’m in a similar time of my life to those. That and, well, I resonate with the social struggles, limited number of friends, and so on.
It didn’t reignite that reading spark, but it’s a start. Hopefully I can get some more reading done before the new year, but I’m not going to force it. So yeah, 4 stars, deducted a star for the lack of polish in terms of editing. But hey, this was such a pleasant read. I’d recommend it to longtime fans or anyone trying to enter the film industry.
Well, riding that high, I’ve been feeling more productive, despite fighting a losing battle to a mild cold. My writing apparently shows promise, and I had an exciting opportunity earlier in the year that I’m eager to see come to fruition in a few months from now. With that, I began chipping away at some assignments and essays, all due in the coming weeks (as of writing).
And it was during this binge that I was listening to a lot of James Rolfe’s work, ranging from Monster Madness and his Top 10s, to behind-the-scenes videos and, of course, AVGN. Truth is that James has been more of an inspiration to me than I initially thought. His love of film dates back to his childhood, and ever since, he’s grown to be one of the internet’s most influential content creators. And the thing is, while I love AVGN (specific episodes are regularly revisited, almost like comfort films), it’s the videos with James himself that I always enjoy the most. They’re personal, calming, and informative. I’m sure his love of classic horror films subconsciously influenced my taste in some way.
But it was that filmmaking angle that I always respected. He recently turned a screenplay into his first novel, Gnome Cave; it was one of the videos that I initially used to fill the quiet. While I may read it someday, I quickly learnt he had written an autobiography a few years ago. Now THAT piqued my interest. Like I said, I have a lot of respect for James, dating back to when I discovered the Back to the Future AVGN episode during my early teens (I was somewhat of a latecomer to AVGN, I’ll admit. 2016-17 if I recall.), and later the Rocky Jumps a Park Bench documentary.
And reading his autobiography was so rewarding, I finished it in one day. Now, I’m not the first to mention that there’s a plethora of editorial issues, like typos or strange formatting, but…who cares? It’s a personal piece from somebody who, from what I can tell, is proud and reflective, above all. Not in a pretentious way, rather, this book felt like a ‘thank you’ to every person and decision that led to where he is today. I actually found the first few chapters (pre-AVGN) more interesting: I guess that’s because I’m in a similar time of my life to those. That and, well, I resonate with the social struggles, limited number of friends, and so on.
It didn’t reignite that reading spark, but it’s a start. Hopefully I can get some more reading done before the new year, but I’m not going to force it. So yeah, 4 stars, deducted a star for the lack of polish in terms of editing. But hey, this was such a pleasant read. I’d recommend it to longtime fans or anyone trying to enter the film industry.
January 4, 2025
We’re approaching a bizarre period of history where people who worked their whole career on YouTube are going to, at large volumes, begin retiring/writing memoirs/becoming subjects of media outside of YouTube videos.
On the one side, you have people like the Racka Racka brothers or Chris Stuckman who are making the transition from YouTube videos to more mainstream film production. And then on the other hand you have guys like James Rolfe who have largely spent the last 20 years doing the same thing.
There are actually very few people who can be thought of as synonymous with early YouTube as much as James Rolfe. My only actual experiences with him were seeing The Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (why? I have NO idea) in 2014, and a handful of videos either about him or clips from his show.
But, his place in history is very interesting. Because there’s a direct line from him to Doug Walker to Lindsay Ellis to every single video essayist glutting up YouTube Subscription boxes. I don’t think I am being hyperbolic by saying that James Rolfe is the root of a certain side of modern content creation. Every single video made about entertainment can be traced directly to him, either in imitation or opposition. Every 4-hour video essay is only six degrees of separation away from James Rolfe taking a dump on the Atari Jaguar.
The craziest part of this memoir is just how little James actually spends on his YouTube success. He mostly focuses on his life before, around it, and after. There is a large section of the book devoted to the making of his movie, which is the closest he comes to discussing his career as a content creator.
This is what the title promises, movie making, but I can’t help but feel like it crystallizes a certain truth about content creators that I have always felt. Which is, their success is snakebit, and not what they want. James spends a large part of this book talking about the movies he made as a kid through college, he talks about going to film school, and working in the local film industry, and it just feels very clear that the AVGN success he enjoyed was ultimately hollow.
I don’t want to speculate, he seems very happy, he reiterates over and over again within the book how much his wife and being a father means to him, and I fully believe it. Good for him, honestly, the way he writes about his daughters is very touching.
The hollowness I’m talking about comes out in the bulk of the book which is about the making of The AVGN movie. It seems like James was responding directly to everyone who hated the movie, and defending the movie in a way that felt like “this is why it sucked”, and it’s both very charming and also a little odd to hear him gush about the finished product when… idk dude I saw it, and it was booty.
I get that there is something to be said for having made a feature film, good or bad, but there is this bittersweetness throughout the book. He never wanted to be a YouTuber, he wanted to be a filmmaker, he had one big shot and it didn’t connect. It’s easy to see why it didn’t connect, I mean making a movie about your internet character is a niche interest even among your own audience.
This is the same reason why influencers, after making the transition to acting, usually flop. You’re selling their audience something they have no interest in buying. No one wanted to see The Nerd go on a sci-fi adventure, they wanted to see him review ET the video game.
In a way, though, there is an uplift at the end of the book. This is the narrative of someone who had a childhood dream, pursued it, found success that derailed their dream, and landed in a place where they discovered something completely new that filled them up more than their dream ever could.
And, he closes off by saying that he still is planning on making movies. He just now has to prioritize being a father over being the renegade filmmaker running around his backyard with a VHS Camera. We'll see what the future holds (I mean I won't, this book is where me and JR say bye bye), but no matter what happens, it is nice to see someone for whom failure was a pathway to success.
On the one side, you have people like the Racka Racka brothers or Chris Stuckman who are making the transition from YouTube videos to more mainstream film production. And then on the other hand you have guys like James Rolfe who have largely spent the last 20 years doing the same thing.
There are actually very few people who can be thought of as synonymous with early YouTube as much as James Rolfe. My only actual experiences with him were seeing The Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (why? I have NO idea) in 2014, and a handful of videos either about him or clips from his show.
But, his place in history is very interesting. Because there’s a direct line from him to Doug Walker to Lindsay Ellis to every single video essayist glutting up YouTube Subscription boxes. I don’t think I am being hyperbolic by saying that James Rolfe is the root of a certain side of modern content creation. Every single video made about entertainment can be traced directly to him, either in imitation or opposition. Every 4-hour video essay is only six degrees of separation away from James Rolfe taking a dump on the Atari Jaguar.
The craziest part of this memoir is just how little James actually spends on his YouTube success. He mostly focuses on his life before, around it, and after. There is a large section of the book devoted to the making of his movie, which is the closest he comes to discussing his career as a content creator.
This is what the title promises, movie making, but I can’t help but feel like it crystallizes a certain truth about content creators that I have always felt. Which is, their success is snakebit, and not what they want. James spends a large part of this book talking about the movies he made as a kid through college, he talks about going to film school, and working in the local film industry, and it just feels very clear that the AVGN success he enjoyed was ultimately hollow.
I don’t want to speculate, he seems very happy, he reiterates over and over again within the book how much his wife and being a father means to him, and I fully believe it. Good for him, honestly, the way he writes about his daughters is very touching.
The hollowness I’m talking about comes out in the bulk of the book which is about the making of The AVGN movie. It seems like James was responding directly to everyone who hated the movie, and defending the movie in a way that felt like “this is why it sucked”, and it’s both very charming and also a little odd to hear him gush about the finished product when… idk dude I saw it, and it was booty.
I get that there is something to be said for having made a feature film, good or bad, but there is this bittersweetness throughout the book. He never wanted to be a YouTuber, he wanted to be a filmmaker, he had one big shot and it didn’t connect. It’s easy to see why it didn’t connect, I mean making a movie about your internet character is a niche interest even among your own audience.
This is the same reason why influencers, after making the transition to acting, usually flop. You’re selling their audience something they have no interest in buying. No one wanted to see The Nerd go on a sci-fi adventure, they wanted to see him review ET the video game.
In a way, though, there is an uplift at the end of the book. This is the narrative of someone who had a childhood dream, pursued it, found success that derailed their dream, and landed in a place where they discovered something completely new that filled them up more than their dream ever could.
And, he closes off by saying that he still is planning on making movies. He just now has to prioritize being a father over being the renegade filmmaker running around his backyard with a VHS Camera. We'll see what the future holds (I mean I won't, this book is where me and JR say bye bye), but no matter what happens, it is nice to see someone for whom failure was a pathway to success.
March 7, 2023
I have been following James Rolfe's work throughout his entire AVGN run, and only dabbled with his non-AVGN works which this memoir dedicates a huge amount to. I am not that big into the 'Universal-Monster' film era which James' films primarily deal in, but it was still fascinating hearing about how he made them and improved with experience, and using better equipment and props over the years.
There is a lot of new information to glean from this book about Rolfe's days in a gifted school, then switching to a public high school, to finally the trials and tribulations he endures through college, which was my favorite part of the memoir because of the depth of how Rolfe went into how he hit the lowest of lows and came back from some dark college days.
People going into this thinking this is just going to be strictly about Rolfe talking all about AVGN throughout should know that is not the case. A fair amount is dedicated to Rolfe's rise to Internet fame with his Angry Video Game Nerd character, and even more about making the AVGN movie and the many struggles it took the film to come to fruition. Part of me would have liked a little more insight to the behind-the-scenes aspects of the AVGN video days, but what is here will suffice, and Rolfe has had such a huge part of his career dedicated to making indie films and shorts that it would be doing a disservice to Rolfe to cut short those parts of his career.
I cannot recommend "A Movie Making Nerd" enough to any James Rolfe fan wanting to know more about his backstory!
There is a lot of new information to glean from this book about Rolfe's days in a gifted school, then switching to a public high school, to finally the trials and tribulations he endures through college, which was my favorite part of the memoir because of the depth of how Rolfe went into how he hit the lowest of lows and came back from some dark college days.
People going into this thinking this is just going to be strictly about Rolfe talking all about AVGN throughout should know that is not the case. A fair amount is dedicated to Rolfe's rise to Internet fame with his Angry Video Game Nerd character, and even more about making the AVGN movie and the many struggles it took the film to come to fruition. Part of me would have liked a little more insight to the behind-the-scenes aspects of the AVGN video days, but what is here will suffice, and Rolfe has had such a huge part of his career dedicated to making indie films and shorts that it would be doing a disservice to Rolfe to cut short those parts of his career.
I cannot recommend "A Movie Making Nerd" enough to any James Rolfe fan wanting to know more about his backstory!
November 27, 2022
I breezed through this book in a couple of days because it was so entertaining. It really reads like one of James' documentaries about his life. You can hear his soothing narration in your head thanks to his casual prose. Think Cinemasscre 200 but with even more detail. It covers bits of James' life we haven't had a chance to visit in depth, such as his college years, and what he was going through during the birth of his child. It's both interesting from a narrative standpoint and inspirational from a creative standpoint.
James, if you're reading this, when I was in 8th grade, a wrestling coach invited me to his house. He'd noticed I didn't have many friends and wanted to help me make some. I hung out with his kids, and he took me places like amusement parks and four wheeling. He once walked into the living room in the middle of the night and jokingly asked me if I wanted a blowjob.
Because I watched your videos, I swore like a sailor. His wife didn't like that and didn't want me teaching their kids cool new words. He ended up being exposed as a pedophile years later. If it wasn't for your videos, I could have been molested. It's incredibly fucked up but somehow funny at the same time. What a shitload of fuck.
James, if you're reading this, when I was in 8th grade, a wrestling coach invited me to his house. He'd noticed I didn't have many friends and wanted to help me make some. I hung out with his kids, and he took me places like amusement parks and four wheeling. He once walked into the living room in the middle of the night and jokingly asked me if I wanted a blowjob.
Because I watched your videos, I swore like a sailor. His wife didn't like that and didn't want me teaching their kids cool new words. He ended up being exposed as a pedophile years later. If it wasn't for your videos, I could have been molested. It's incredibly fucked up but somehow funny at the same time. What a shitload of fuck.
Read
December 3, 2022SUPER MECHA DEATH CHRIST
December 4, 2022
This is a great book for fans of James Rolfe (AVGN, Board James, Monster Madness, etc.). I would recommend it to those folks without many reservations.
With that being said, there are things stated in the book that I feel are self congratulatory (e.g. volunteer VFX) and other minor gripes throughout the book.
If you're a fan, pick it up.
With that being said, there are things stated in the book that I feel are self congratulatory (e.g. volunteer VFX) and other minor gripes throughout the book.
If you're a fan, pick it up.
June 25, 2023
I've been an AVGN fan since 2010-2011, so I guess I am the target audience here; anybody else would probably not find these memoirs interesting. I never donated to the movie because I did not have my own money back then and neither did I have access to payment methods like PayPal, I watched it but did not particularly like it; in fact, I remember skipping the final part almost completely, but it was still a very refreshing thing to read about how it got made. James dispels the common ("common" among trolls and people who have no life, that is) myth\accusation that he pocketed the money people donated to him - a separate bank account was made to transfer the funds from IndieGoGo, and he never saw a cent of it; unfortunately, he ended up paying a PayPal fee for it and the amount of money he received still put him in a different tax bracket, which meant he had to pay taxes on top of it; he even had to touch his own savings in order to finish the movie, it's a miracle the movie got made at all. He even explains that he had to move to L.A. because of bad\uncertain weather on the East Coast, and not just because everyone filmed there, unlike what some internet trolls would have you believe. I also think the accusations of illiteracy some reviewers have made on here are pretty disingenuous, since I've been able to count only three or four mistakes, including the "infamous" "forward" at the beginning. To say that someone is illiterate because of three random mistakes is specious to say the least.
I definitely would have liked more words on his friendship with Mike Matei but all in all, this has been a very entertaining read, worth the money spent on it. If you stumbled upon this review by chance and are not a fan of AVGN, I recommend you watch the first 118 episodes of Angry Video Game Nerd; they are pure comedic gold. That said, I wish James and his family all the best and I certainly hope he continues to make new episodes of the Nerd.
I definitely would have liked more words on his friendship with Mike Matei but all in all, this has been a very entertaining read, worth the money spent on it. If you stumbled upon this review by chance and are not a fan of AVGN, I recommend you watch the first 118 episodes of Angry Video Game Nerd; they are pure comedic gold. That said, I wish James and his family all the best and I certainly hope he continues to make new episodes of the Nerd.
November 23, 2022
Первая книга, прочитанная мной полностью на английском. Интересно, что именно Джеймс приучил меня смотреть видео на Youtube-е в оригинале. У него легкий слог и понятный контекст.
Сама книга напоминает его видео: простые, малобюджетные, но с особенной атмосферой, которую сложно описать. Она что-то типа: школьные годы, летние каникулы и ты с друзьями, пока родители на работе, пытаешься себя развлечь с помощью разнообразных игрушек, придумываешь сюжеты, отыгрываешь их, вдохновляешься дурацкими фильмами про монстров. Книга цепляет искреннистью, она как бэкстэйдж ко всем видео Джеймса. Интересно узнать как он пришел к своим идеям, что было на пути, как он познакомился с Майком.
Читать стоит только тем кто был вовлечен в творчество Джеймса, книга, лично мне, вернула те приятные чувства, которые доставляли его старые видео. Остальным читать не советую, без контекста книга будет непонятна.
Сама книга напоминает его видео: простые, малобюджетные, но с особенной атмосферой, которую сложно описать. Она что-то типа: школьные годы, летние каникулы и ты с друзьями, пока родители на работе, пытаешься себя развлечь с помощью разнообразных игрушек, придумываешь сюжеты, отыгрываешь их, вдохновляешься дурацкими фильмами про монстров. Книга цепляет искреннистью, она как бэкстэйдж ко всем видео Джеймса. Интересно узнать как он пришел к своим идеям, что было на пути, как он познакомился с Майком.
Читать стоит только тем кто был вовлечен в творчество Джеймса, книга, лично мне, вернула те приятные чувства, которые доставляли его старые видео. Остальным читать не советую, без контекста книга будет непонятна.
June 29, 2024
Some say that under democratized mass culture it is mediocrity which rises to the surface
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