Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The Despicable Me Diaries

By now, a lot of people know me by my nickname of Dragon Dave.  While this has allowed me to wear the comfortable cloak of anonymity, I feel like it’s finally time to come clean about my other, largely unknown identity.  For while I’m a blogger and an aspiring writer, I also work part time for a man named Gru, who calls me Minion Dave.

I had to run some errands for Gru the other day, and the last was to film a public service announcement for AMC Theaters.  It seems that AMC was happy with the last one, in which the jellified purple minion eats my phone, and Gru obliged.  So after sitting in a makeup chair for hours (like all his other employees, Gru insists that my true appearance be disguised before I’m filmed), I had to sit in an empty theater for hours more, until they finally got all my fellow minions to settle down and listen to instructions.  Take after take followed, and eventually the film crew got all the shots they wanted in the digital can.  

After that, they rewarded us with another showing of “Despicable Me 2.”  Even though I know the story well (I should, as it’s based on historical events in which I actively participated), it’s my new favorite movie.  Some movie critics have criticized it (Imagine that, a movie critic criticizing a movie!), saying that the producers were picking low-hanging fruit by staging most of the action in a mall, but hey, that’s the way Gru met Lucy, the love of his life, who by the way is a terrific mother to their daughters Margo, Agnes, and Edith.  The movie is loaded with action, including a positively volcanic finale, and the story still makes me laugh and cheer in all the right places.  So I heartily recommend it to all of you out there who haven’t yet seen it. 

I don’t know when (or even if) AMC will elect to show this new public service announcement in their theaters.  You know how the movie business works: projects that are announced sometimes don’t get filmed, and movies that are filmed sometimes never get released.  (For an example of the latter, check out Roger Corman’s unreleased 1994 movie “The Fantastic Four” on Youtube).  Who knows?  Maybe they’ll bank it for the December 2014 release of the next movie they’ve contracted me for, simply entitled “Minions.”  It took a long time for Gru to allow Illumination Entertainment to sign us all up for that, as at first the producers didn’t want to share a percentage of the profits with us.  But now we’ve all got points in the movie, and we’re looking forward to the commencement of principle photography.  I’ll miss seeing Gru and Lucy every day on the set, and it’ll be especially tough to go without seeing Margo, Agnes, and Edith for weeks on end, but hey, how many folks get a movie made just about them?


Sometimes you feel like no one really notices your efforts.  But then you get recognized for your true worth, and in those moments, well, it’s good to be a minion.

Dragon (Minion) Dave

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