‘Anything for a movie’

Angelique Flores

As a child, Evan Jacobs spent Sunday afternoons churning out screenplays,

which he and his friends would film with their video camera.

“Anything for a movie” was their motto.

Not much has changed for Jacobs, now 26.

The Fountain Valley screenwriter will have his fifth, and so far the one

he considers his best, film premier in California at the Southern

California Film Festival next week.

The film, “Schusterman Levine: A Boxing Fable,” is a mockumentary about

the worst amateur boxer in history. With the film, Jacobs tied together

his two pleasures: film and boxing.

“I love boxing. I watch it on the Spanish channel... and I don’t

understand a word of Spanish,” he said.

Pulling out his books on boxing, Jacobs extracted all of the weird, but

true, stories about fighters throughout history -- such as a boxer who

didn’t make it to a match because he missed a bus or the one who passed

out without even being hit.

Professional boxers Donald Curry, Kennedy McKinney and Genaro Hernandez

appear in the film, as well as Jacobs himself. Though “A Boxing Fable”

has some of the ingredients of a documentary -- shaky cameras and a

British narrator -- it’s not real.

The tragicomedy was filmed in Orange County with recognizable scenes in

and around Mile Square Park, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and

Medical Center, Huntington Beach’s shoreline and Brookhurst Street.

“[Jacobs] puts thought and care into each of his movies,” Darren Doane

said.

Doane is an independent filmmaker who also makes music videos for such

bands as Blink-182 and Pennywise. He has collaborated on several films

with Jacobs and has coined him “Generation X’s Woody Allen.”

“For being insane, he’s a nice guy,” Doane joked.

First and foremost, Jacobs considers himself a screenwriter. But he is

also an actor and a filmmaker, mainly making his own films because no one

else would.

Jacobs made his major debut in 1995 with “Walking Between the Raindrops.”

Since then, he’s consistently made a movie each year, with “Safety in

Numbers” (1996), “The Toll Collector” (1997) and “Curse of Instinct:

108’s Final Tour” (1998), a film about the last tour of Hare Krishna punk

band, 108. Last year, Jacobs made the experimental “Watching A Movie,” a

90-minute Warhol-style movie about a man making a movie about himself

watching a movie.

With budgets in the hundreds -- not thousands or millions -- of dollars,

Jacobs does what he loves and does it well. He tells his story through

the film and video media with a cinema verite style, using unsteady

cameras and reality when he can. Though the modest Jacobs still sees

himself as working his way up, he already has fans all over the country.

“He’s so excited that anyone knows his name,” Doane said.

Originally from Queens, N.Y., Jacobs moved to Fountain Valley when he was

about 5 years old. As a boy, his parents would take him and his brother

Andrew to the movies every Saturday and Sunday.

He graduated from Los Amigos High School in 1992 and went on to earn a

bachelor’s degree in film studies at Cal State Long Beach. He used to

play in the punk band Ice and formed Ringside Records because, he said,

“nobody else would put [his] band out.”

In 1995, Ringside Records became Anhedenia Films. And films are all

Jacobs thinks about.

“I eat, sleep and read film stuff,” he said.

When he’s not making, watching or reading about films, he reads about

Stanley Kubrick, one of his major influences. His also names as

inspirations John Cassavetes, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Ray Carney,

Henry Jaglom and Terrence Malick.

Screenwriting hasn’t paid his bills yet. Jacobs works for Gallup Poll as

a data collector. But he has made this his mantra: “Always be writing.”

The filmmaker is already working on the next project, “How I Lost My Mind

and Killed Someone.”

“I can’t see myself being involved with anything else,” he said.

FYI

The Southern California Film Festival will screen “Schusterman Levine: A

Boxing Fable” at 8 p.m. at Captain Blood’s Village Theater, 1140 N.

Tustin Ave., Orange. Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 for students, and $4

for seniors and children. The first 50 people receive a miniature

collector’s boxing glove. 538-3545.