Six years, a dozen trips to Los Angeles and $4-million later, Shut Up and Kiss Me will premiere at Channelside next week.
By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published October 28, 2005
From the looks of Howard Flamm's Harbour Island bachelor pad, complete with a 65-inch flat screen television and 10th-story view of the water, it's hard to tell he was once a singing chicken.
The Florida native went from stockbroker to plain broke 10 years ago when he decided to leave the financial world and take odd gigs in the entertainment industry.
Now 38, he's gearing up for the Tampa premiere of his first film as an executive producer, a fast-paced, internationally distributed romantic comedy titled Shut Up and Kiss Me.
"It's something I never really thought I'd do or be able to accomplish," Flamm said.
Flamm broke into the industry as an actor, impersonating celebrities at parties. Roles ranged from Barney the purple dinosaur to entertainer Engelbert Humperdinck.
He acted in 65 television commercials and snagged extra roles in films shot in Miami, his hometown.
But something changed for Flamm on the set of the 1996 film Striptease. Between takes of the opening scene, a drunken bachelor party, he met Steven Chase.
The "rough and tumble" native New Yorker offered to train Flamm at a gym, and in exchange, Flamm would write Chase a standup comedy act. A friendship was born.
"We almost became like this comedy team of just two guys who played off of each other very comfortably," Flamm said. "We could just talk for hours."
While they swapped stories of their dating antics in hopes of finding true love, an idea surfaced: Shut Up and Kiss Me would make a great movie title.
After that day in 1999, Flamm and Chase began taking a notebook with them to the gym.
On the treadmill, they wrote a semiautobiographical movie about two best buds in Miami, polar opposites in search of the perfect woman.
"There are so many romantic comedies, and a lot of times they call them chick flicks. We feel that this movie is a romantic comedy, but also it is a buddy movie, and there's a lot of action and adventure strewn throughout the film - sort of a little twisting of the genres," Flamm said.
Six years, a dozen trips to Los Angeles and $4-million later, Shut Up and Kiss Me is set to run on 10 screens across the country, including Channelside Cinemas on Nov. 4.
A preview night at the theater on Thursday will benefit the Hillsborough Association of Retarded People. The special screening includes a cocktail hour and postfilm question and answer session.
Flamm is working on several screenplays he hopes to shoot in Tampa, where he studied finance at the University of South Florida.
He moved to Tampa last year. He had visited college friends over the years and liked the real estate opportunities the city had to offer. He recently bought a condo at the GrandView on Harbour Island.
The city has changed a lot since his college years, and Flamm views the growing city as an inspiring backdrop.
"You've got so many diverse places to shoot here, with Ybor and the historic brick landscape. You've got the beaches and downtown with Channelside to look very sleek, nouveau, hip and urban," Flamm said.
"This is becoming a great place to be involved with motion picture making."
Shut Up and Kiss Me premieres in Tampa on Thursday with a preview screening at the Channelside Cinemas. Cocktail hour begins at 7 p.m., followed by the movie at 8. Tickets are $25 and benefit the Hillsborough Association of Retarded Citizens. Call HARC at 273-6364 to buy tickets. Regular showings start Nov. 4.
