When he was 15 years old, his first screenplay was a sketch comedy film called Last of the Dreamers, which featured Bruce Campbell playing an alternate universe version of himself, who gets kidnapped by an obsessed fan and a failing theater troupe led by Ed Wood, so they could illegally put on a theatrical production of The Evil Dead Musical. Knowing the script was awful, Kevin repeatedly trolled actor Bruce Campbell with the script online until Bruce burned his script for a magazine photoshoot to get him to stop. Several years later, the Evil Dead was turned into a theatrical stage musical, and Bruce released a film called My Name is Bruce, which featured him playing an alternate universe version of himself that gets kidnapped by an obsessed fan. Outside of that one coincidence, the two stories have nothing in common, but the coincidence was enough to send Kevin into a nervous meltdown. Quite Ironically, Kevin would later become the webmaster for Director Josh Becker (who directed Bruce in Running Time and Lunatics a Love Story), and he would spend the next ten years of his life putting up with internet trolls who would write into the website. A large portion of Kevins nostalgic old movie education comes from Josh Becker, who encouraged him to pursue a project where he watched through half of the movies released from 1965 to 1973 in chronological order.
During his internship at Austin Public Access (the same place where Robert Rodriguez edited El Mariachi), Kevin Neece wrote, directed, and edited himself a bootleg third season of the anime series Ah! My Goddess in the form of a video comic thats edited together and scored like a tv show. The show (titled Bad Goddess) is an R-Rated Social Commentary Satire along the lines of South Park by way of Doctor Who. It is considered a student fan film, and as Kevin did not clear the rights permission for the use of Kosuke Fujishimas characters, or the actor likenesses of Charlie Day, Stephen Geoffreys, Sean Gunn, Lloyd Kaufman as Doctor What, or the photo backgrounds, or anything else he used, the show is unreleasable through a legal distributor. But copies can be found online if you look hard enough.
Likes to hunt down the online source material that Alamo Drafthouse uses for their preshows as a hobby. He does this by writing short descriptive notes of the preshows on his order card, and searches for the material on youtube using intuition and video detective skills. The original preshow curators are Laird Jimenez (Main Editor), Sarah Pitre (Girlie Night), Craig Ries (Sing Alongs). Kevin has a natural talent for identifying untitled new release music videos hes never seen before by listening for the main lyrics in the song that repeat themselves. The reason this method works is because YouTube has a search function that matches song lyrics to their proper music videos.
Started his career at Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek as a dishwasher, and was busted for contacting licensors to book movies for cult night without consulting the creative staff. The theater ran the movies anyways to save face. The film line-up was: The Projectionist, Simon King of the Witches, Boss N
R, Fairy Tales. A few months later, he got his hands on a collectors 35mm print of Ken Russells Lisztomania (which the previous owner had gotten from a marketplace in New Zealand), privately screened it for the employees, and promptly walked out three days later, feeling the general manager had intentionally avoided the screening to insult him. Many years later, he was shocked to find that Alamo Drafthouse had held their employee appreciation day on the same day he screened the movie. Eventually donated the print to American Genre Film Archive.
During his retail days at Target, one of Kevins co-workers was actress Teresa Taylor (who played the Pap Smear Pusher in Richard Linklaters Slacker). Teresa would work her day job, then use her vacation time to go on tour with the Butthole Surfers as their drummer. Kevin recalls loaning her a dvd copy of The Tin Drum.
His former Majestic Drive next door neighbor, JP, worked as a carpenter on the Robert Rodriguez films Spy Kids and Grindhouse.
When Kevin worked a Deli Counter at Target, Aint It Cool News film critic Harry Knowles would sometimes frequent for lunch (back when he could still walk). Harry would frequently try to weasel his way out of having a conversation by giving one word answers.
Cites Werner Herzogs Stroszeck as an filmmaking inspiration. Herzog has a way of blending biographical elements of his actors into fictional storylines.
When Kevins daughter was about six years old, she repeatedly fell ill and ended up in the overnight emergency room at the local childrens hospital. During those incidents, Kevin would pass the time by reading a chapter or two from Harlan Ellisons Angry Candy (a collection of short stories dealing with the theme of death and afterlife). Tragically, Kevins daughter ended up in the hospital so many times, that Kevin actually finished the book, and as a consequence, their health insurance through his job at Target was maxed out and taken out of his paycheck to such an extent, that Kevin was no longer being paid to work his job. He would go to work a few days a week, and his paychecks would read $0.00 after taxes and health care were removed. His pleas for more hours from his bosses, or at least an attempt to fix the problem fell on deaf ears and he was denied the right to transfer to another store because of a no call no show. This led to Kevin quitting his job for a Dishwasher gig at Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, which would eventually result in his hobby fascination with preshows and video editing. The story is also referenced in the Bad Goddess The Keys of Marinus chapter "The Reboot". Eventually Kevin bought his daughter a used copy of Angry Candy when she was thirteen, and told her the story. She read the book all the way through.
Member of Austin Horror Society.
Kevins nickname used to be The Wine Drinking Critic, yet strangely he isnt a film reviewer, hes a total heckler. His friends frequently used the moniker to insult him because no new release movie ever seemed to be good enough, a bad habit he picked up from filmmaker Josh Becker. His nickname changed to Kevin from the Other Dimension on Zombie Life as a joke reference to Bad Goddess and to the fact that he is frequently talked about by his co-workers and characters on camera, but is never really seen. Says hell retire the usage of the name when he stops making projects for Zombie Life.
Kevin got the job at Fanboy TV when an old Alamo Drafthouse co-worker named Michael Ludlow hunt him down at a Garth Manor screening of Last Girl Standing at Alamo Drafthouse Village. Michael had been roommates with one of Kevins friends who had been collecting his early mashup music video editing projects for years, and had been trying to contact him in hopes of him curating some horror clip backgrounds for the end credits on Zombie Life TV. In exchange for his video mixtaping work, Kevin was taught all of the studio duties, and got to work in the control booth, switching camera angles and cutting in graphics videos under a directors supervision. Kevin was given the most free reign during the musical performances. All of his experience editing video mixtapes to music gave him a natural feel for when to switch shots based on the beats of the song.
Skulds trial and error process with her inventions in The Bad Goddess Who Fell to Earth is a metaphor for Kevin Neeces trial and failure with his editing projects. When Kevin left Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, he tried submitting some of his music video mashups preshows to Alamo Creative only to be rejected by Lars Nilsen and Tommy Swenson. Lars stated that no theater in America would ever run Kevins preshow work. Kevin repeatedly continued on, but found that he gradually ran out of ideas for both movie mashups and music to use. He then tried to simplify the videos to just one condensed movie per video, which he was good at. Again he was rejected. Eventually Horror Remix put out a call for show ideas, and Kevin experimented around with his own Horror Remixes, but couldnt quite make them professional enough to fit the format. Again Kevin was rejected, EJ stating that he was afraid if he looked at them, they might influence his own shows if he ever wanted to use those themes. So Kevin tried to apply EJs formula to movies of all genres from the 1960s, titling the show Ripoff Remix. It worked off and on, but suffered from over-length and technical problems, and nobody outside of his close friends wanted to watch them. Kevin then tried intercutting similar themed feature length films (like for example: Heavy Metal vs Rock n Rule), but found it increased the lengths of the movies beyond watchability, and once again had technical problems. Eventually Kevin made so many editing project failures, that when he would meet up with old friends, theyd show him old projects that hed completely forgotten that hed made. Finally, Kevin ran out of ideas, and decided he would rather use his editing skills to collect video mixtapes rather than not be an editor at all. Kevin managed to collect over 300 Alamo Drafthouse preshows over a period of three or so years. What Kevin didnt realize, was that during all those early years of failures, one of his friends had a roommate who had been watching. That roommate was Michael Ludlow of Zombie Life TV. Kevin failed his way up the Mountain.
Kevin was on location for a Zombie Life Podcast at Stunt Ranch for the witch burning scene in Lindsay Lemkes short film Cecilia. As he arrived at the last minute and didnt feel like getting into costume, he isnt featured as an extra, but Michael Ludlow and his son Dean are credited in the movie.
His cousins ex-wife was an unlisted stunt person in the Daniel Millican film, The Gunman , then known as A Promise Kept. On the morning of the film premiere at The Paramount Theater, Kevin received a phone call from his wife (who had just started army basic training at the time), to inform him that she was pregnant. Kevin thought the movie sucked, and was found by his cousin nervously pacing in the lobby. When Kevin told him the news, his cousins response was, "Congratulations, your shit works.".
Personally credits Troma Films saturday morning cartoon series Toxic Crusaders with spoiling his childhood innocence. Back during his early teen years, Kevin was a born again Christian that was force fed crap movies from the Family Christian Store like McGee & Me and Bibleman. One day at Blockbuster Video, Kevin spotted a vhs copy of The Toxic Avenger on the shelf and begged his mother to rent it for him because he loved the cartoon series so much. The Toxic Avengers is practically an X-Rated movie overloaded with nudity and violence. From that point onward, Kevin became an obsessed horror fanatic. Hence, the Toxic Crusaders cartoon series functioned as a "gateway drug" into decadence. Its also the reason Lloyd Kaufman was photoshop cast as The First Doctor What in Bad Goddess The Keys of Marinus/Hot Off the Press.
Credits EJ Antillas Horror Remix for his trash horror film education and as an editing influence on his Zombie Life Horror Mashup background videos. Horror Remix was a hit mixtape show from Dallas, Texas that ran at Alamo Drafthouse, Studio Movie Grill, and various bars and coffee shops. EJ would pick a theme such as Shopping Malls or High Schools or Sorority Films and edit three feature films down to 30 minute shorts films so that they could be triple featured in two hours. The purpose of the show was to remove all of the boring parts from the horror films leaving only the sex, violence, cheese, and just enough plot so that the story was coherent. As the show tried to restrict itself to the 1980s, it eventually ran out of material to make new shows, and the audience count dwindled with each rerun. The shows run lasted for a period of eight years before it came to an end. Today, EJ designs dvd cover art for Japanese horror films. As for Kevins part, he was curious enough about the making of the show, that hed write down the films on his order cards, and hunt them down on home video to see what EJ had cut out of them. As it turned out, EJs secret magic trick was "out of sight, out of mind". It didnt matter what he cut out of the movie, some of it was terrible, but some of it didnt merit being cut at all. In the end, it didnt matter because the audiences focus on the constantly playing film caused them to forget about anything that was missing. This knowledge proved to be very helpful to Kevins editing style.
Kevin cites director Harry Hurwitz film The Projectionist as being an influence on his initial mashup video editing style. When his theater, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, screened the movie, Kevin got to know Harrys widow Joy Sirott Hurwitz for a short time and got to hear stories about Robert Downey Jr staying in their house to prepare for his role in Chaplin, and how the leading lady in Nocturna Granddaughter of Dracula got the role because of mafia ties (one of the film producers was found dead in a ditch sometime after the films release). When Kevin joked about Collen Camps performance in Harrys film The Rosebud Beach Hotel, Joy chastised him, stating a perfectly good reason for casting her, it was due to her excellent performance in the 1981 Peter Bogdanovich film They All Laughed. Upon watching that movie, Kevin ate his own words and apologized. Joy also helped Kevin get permission from Charles Band to show Harrys nudie cutie film Fairy Tales at his theater. Kevins favorite Hurwitz film is actually Thats Adequate.
During his internship with Zombie Life TV, Kevin collaborated on a Pittsburgh Penguins Ice Hockey background mixtape via email as a favor to Michael Ludlow. In Michaels own words, Kevin had gone from the Blacklist to the A-List. As it turned out, the makers of the commercial were Director BC Furtney and Producer JB Destiny, both of whom worked with actor Stephen Geoffreys on the film, New Terminal Hotel. Kevin had already cast Stephen Geoffreys as The Second Doctor What in the online Bad Goddess fan fiction series and considered the coincidence as serendipity, which ties into the theme that Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld are the Goddesses of Fate. As it turned out, it was a harbinger of doom. Kevins impartial opinion of New Terminal Hotel somewhat annoyed BC Furtney, hence he burned his bridges. BC Furtneys insult response to Kevin was, "So you want to be a director... let me know when you release your first movie." Being that Kevin had no original stories to tell, he went out and made Bad Goddess The Anime Video Comic.
Claims that his first apartment at The Trails of Walnut Creek is featured in the Mike Judge film Office Space. Theres a shot where you can see Ron Livingston driving into the complex where you can see it. Kevins old apartment balcony is on the front building on the right, on the second floor (Apt. 923). The running joke featured in the film where Ron Livingston and Diedrich Bader hold conversations through the walls is not a joke. Kevin states that living in that apartment was kind of a nightmare, as the upstairs neighbors were on drugs and could be frequently be heard beating the crap out of each other. In one incident, one of them climbed down the balcony onto Kevins porch trying to peak in. Finally, one night, when the fighting got so intense, Kevin called the cops. When the police arrived, they entered Kevins apartment instead to check the layout, then broke the upstairs apartment door down. Ironically, they arrested the female abuse victim instead of the perpetrator because she was on drugs, and the abuser, who had already left the scene, got away. The man responsible was reportedly stopped and questioned by a cop car walking down the road, and let go. Another time, a deranged psychotic street preacher just opened Kevins front door without knocking and walked into his living room unannounced to harass him.
During Fanboy TVs SXSW show, Kevin found out Director Frank Oz was going to be one of their interview guests. As a child, Little Shop of Horrors was one of his favorite movies and the search for the recalled special edition dvd with the alternate ending was an obsession. Much to his dismay, he was removed his his usual job and demoted to the menial task of pressing the spacebar inbetween interview segments to play and reset the graphics videos without scrubbing the sound. This amazing event happened every five minutes for seven hours straight. Finally, Fanboy TV Host/Director Gavin Stone brought Frank Oz into the control room to shake everyones hands. Frank Ozs response was "What do you know, its a F--kin Control Booth". Frank Oz took particular delight in the complementary raspberries, going so far as to mention them during the interview segment. On a lighter note, during those seven hours, Kevin didnt scrub the sound one time.
His high school drama teacher was actor Barton Faulks (known for the horror films, Future-Kill, and Edge of the Axe). Around the time of his schooling, Kevin watched Barton Faulks direct school theater productions of Noises Off and Youre a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
When Kevin was in the finishing process of the Bad Goddess video comic series, he decided to skip out on making the finale movie titled The Keys of Marinus Serial, because he wasnt sure if the meta nature of his story would translate. He was also suffering from stress and sleep deprivation. His wife received a phone call that night that their sixteen year old nephew Dylan Gutierrez had commit suicide by hanging himself in his closet. Kevin immediately sat down and edited the entire movie in one straight shot over a period of 48 hours so he could put a memorial for Dylan in the finale of the film. He also re-wrote the story to imply that his narrator character commit suicide and his soul becomes trapped within the confines of the story, his punishment for flipping off God the entire series, and that the auto-biographical chapter titled "Once There Was a Boy" was about the angelic characters telling the story of his life to metaphorically decide whether he should be shown forgiveness or sent to hell. Shortly after completion, he received distress text messages from his thirteen year old daughter at the funeral. The family fighting had gotten so intense that she had locked herself in the bathroom and begged him to come and get her. Kevin was forced to explain that what she was witnessing was how suicide can completely destroy a family.
Kevin claims that he sent his crossover tribute episode Bad Goddess Lets Get a Pizza to director Ralph Bakshis facebook page. The response was "Congratulations, Good Work." Bear in mind, Bakshi may have just been telling him what he wanted to hear, or it couldve been his webmaster.
Kevin is one of the few people who got to read Josh Beckers unfinished, unreleased novel, "Going Crazy", about his stay in a Mental Institution. Josh shit-canned the novel because all of his close friends and family were reportedly pissed at him for writing it, and it was ultimately depressing him. Josh re-wrote part of it as an essay called We Are The Dead.
In Bad Goddess Love in an Elevator, Charlie Day tries to reach out to Sayoko with this speech: "...but life has a way of putting them in their place... life has a way of showing them the truth" "And what is that truth? That were all a bunch of soulless monsters?" "No... that it takes a lifetime of heartbreak to learn humility." What Kevin really means by this is: the heartbreak you suffer that teaches you humility can feel like a lifetime.
In the Bad Goddess episode, The Rejected Sequel, Kevin Neece openly admits at the beginning of the movie that the inspiration to turn Ah! My Goddess into a universe that survived the Nuclear Holocaust, was inspired by Donald Trump "winning" the election. That much is true. But theres another inspiration nobody is aware of. In the story, the Pagan Goddesses that run Heaven find themselves comically overwhelmed with overpopulation due to the entire human race on Planet Earth being wiped out at the same time, and are forced to take the intolerant Christians into their homes as refugees. This is actually metaphorical of Alamo Drafthouses handling of the Star Wars Force Awakens advance tickets sales. Like the Angels who had been preparing for Ragnarok their entire lives, Alamo Drafthouse spent the entire year preparing their servers for the tickets to go on sale, but when the system went live, despite all of their efforts, the demand for Star Wars caused the system to crash anyways leading to chaos at all of the theater locations as everyone stormed the theaters to get their tickets in person. Oh, by the way, in case you havent noticed yet, Kevin has a thing for Allegory movies like The Swimmer and Emperor of the North Pole.
Theres a Bad Goddess episode called Renaissance World, thats missing major scenes and plot points. This is a joke homage to an episode of Gavin Stones Fanservice that Kevin worked on where Sherwood Renaissance Fair came on as guests and gave the best performance of the shows entire run... and the entire episode cut off after the first five minutes due to a faulty hard drive. Kevin also makes fun of how Eddie Rotten repeatedly got cut off mid air by cutting off his narrator character, Kevin from the Other Dimension, mid-sentence at the end of Bad Goddess Lets Get a Pizza.
Not to be confused with Christian Film Reviewer Kevin C. Neece. Theyre actually cousins, but represent two different sides of the coin. Kevin C. Neece is the light side, and Kevin D. Neece is the dark side. Kevin doesnt know if hes distant related to SXSW Film Programmer Jarod Neece, but respects his deep, deep love of tacos.
Credits Tommy Wiseaus The Room and Tim Burtons Ed Wood for giving him hope that Bad Goddess might still find an audience someday. Bad Goddess functions on the principle of tongue in cheek comedy. Its "so bad its good" awfulness falls so far below the bar, that it makes you break down laughing at what an atrocity it really is.
