DEREK 360: Ernie Reyes Jr.

Everything in this article is true.

Ernie Reyes Jr. is an actor. You may remember him as Keno in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II or as Johnny in Surf Ninjas. He is one of these karate dudes who burst onto the scene in the early 1990's, a time when awesomely awful karate based movies (like TMNT2 and Surf Ninjas) were sort of popular. Unfortunately for Mr. Reyes Jr. the age of the shitty karate based movie did not last. Mr. Reyes Jr. suffered from a serious lack of work for many years and it is in the midst of this career "dryspell" that our story takes off.


Fellow Johnny Founding Dad Dude Mike and myself were in our first year at University and we were bored. Mike stumbled upon this, which looked way worse five years ago. He instantly remembered (fondly) that reign of Reyes and the many parts that had made him into a legend in like half of 1991. We sat there for several hours just "shooting the shit" about how awesome Ernie was and how that dude "needs to get back into more movies". We were being sarcastic but sometimes sarcastic gets things done.

At the bottom of the website (at the time) there was a crude email link inviting us to "get in touch with Ernie". We contemplated what to say in our first correspondence with the man who was Luke Chen in a 1988 episode of MacGyver entitled Murderers' Sky (that's not a typo on the apostrophe...don't ask me). Mike and I decided that the best way to get Ern's attention would be to pitch him a sweet (and entirely fake) movie project.

From here on out large chunks of this epic story will be told through the actual emails that were exchanged between us and Ernie Reyes Jr.'s business manager. Our first email said the following:

Dear Mr. Reyes,

I am a film maker who has been a fan of yours since March 20, 1991 when I saw your work in the blockbuster Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze. Since then I have followed your career closely and you have not dissapointed. I especially enjoyed your role in Surf Ninjas in 1993 alongside your father. I anticipated a sequel but, unfortunately, was left with nothing. Since then I have continued to follow your work closely both on and off the screen. Your extensive martial arts skills still impress my associates and I. I was pleased to see your face once again on the big screen this summer as Zing in Rush Hour 2.

Well, I guess I should cut to the chase. I am developing a film entitled the Six Shooter for the screen. It is a kung fu western filmed with a tarantino-esque Sergio Leone hybrid style. The true feel of it is hard to explain right here but a good example is the film A Knights Tale. It's a raw western filled with anachronism, pathos, and enough martial arts to appease any enthusiast. I believe that you would be truly perfect for one of the roles in my new film. I hope that you can respond to me or at least tell me a better way to reach you. I thank you for your time and best of luck in the future.

Sincerely,
Derek


From here Mike and I sat back and waited. We really didn't expect to hear anything back, but, only a few hours later we did. His business manager, Sue, (who I still think was just Ernie using a different name...I mean come on. Ernie Reyes Jr. has a fucking business manager? Yeah, sure) responded with this:

Dear Derek,

Thank you for your nice note to Ernie. I am his business manager, and if you would like Ernie to read your script, please send to:

Ernie Reyes Jr.
CALIFORNIA ADDRESS

How far along are you on your project, or have you just started? If Ernie is interested in the project, we would help you get it produced.

Thanks for writing. I look forward to reading your script.

Best regards,
Sue

Help us "get it produced"? WHAT? They wanted the script to our totally fake anachronistic kung fu western called The Six Shooter but we didn't have a script to give them. At this junction we did what any pair of dudes in our situation would do. We bullshitted them into believing that we had the script done but not polished enough to where we were comfortable sending it. We said things like:

"We have always seen Mr. Reyes as the title character and we want his opinions on how to make that title character more suitable for him."

And,

"It starts in a hyper western atmosphere but as the film progresses elements of future and past cultures will blend together into what we think is one hell of an electrifying film. It's shaping up to be kind of a Matrix meets The Wild Bunch kind of feature."


We also included, with this email, the first couple scenes for Ernie to review and give us his thoughts. It was in these scenes that Mike and I's bullshitting went over the edge of reason. The four pages of non-formatted cinema magic were too much awesome for Ernie, or anyone, to handle. In the pages Ernie kicked a bullet back at a dude after said dude (who had a glass eye) tried to shoot him. It was some seriously intense shit. If you're totally insane and would like a copy of those first scenes from The Six Shooter just leave an email address in the comments section and it will arrive in your inbox at some point. After you have it feel free to read it and just cry. Cry because you know that you just read the first few scenes from what would have probably been the best movie ever made but unfortunately some actors just couldn't help us realize the dream. I'm getting a little ahead of myself...

After we sent the scenes, Ernie and Sue dodged us for quite some time. We had obviously blown their fucking minds and words just did not exist that could fully articulate just how rocked they had been by the excerpt they had read. Eventually we had to send a follow up email asking "whats up Ernie?". We threw out this threat in the follow up email which may have rubbed Big Ern the wrong way:

"We can easily line up another martial arts enthusiast to look over the role, it's just that we truly wrote it for Mr. Reyes."

At this, Ernie's camp finally responded with a firm "no". They told us some lie about how Ernie was busy with another project.

Why did I just recount all of this into a massive blog entry here on The Johnny Utah Symposium? We didn't make the movie. We didn't even meet Mr. Reyes Jr. This is fundamentally a bad story. It has a promising beginning, a decent yet slowly decaying middle and a complete let down of an ending where the two protagonists (Mike and I) just fail. Why am I putting this on the Johnny? WHY?

Because it is awesome.

Sorry about the length though. Do better next time.
-Derek

P.S. As for Ernie now, he is hosting a show on MTV called Final Fu. It's like a Kung Fu based gameshow...I think. I only managed to sit through about a half minute of it. It was bad.