Geek CV: Jon Collins

Geek CV: Jon Collins

May 23

Have you ever had one of those D&D games? You know the ones. Someone refers to someone else as “just a stupid elf” and suddenly the character sheets are awash in sensitive elven tears. Or a particularly temperamental druid gets all pissed off at the DM for hogging the last piece of pizza (because the DM always gets the last piece of pizza) and it ends with everyone cursing everyone else’s immortal souls to eternal damnation (ie, “As long as we both shall live, you will never be invited to my apartment for Farscape night EVER AGAIN”).

Not that those things have ever happened to me or anything. Ahem.

But for those of you who have intimately experienced the glorious highs and excruciating lows of all things RPG, well, Jon Collins feels your pain. Jon is an awesome geek actor who executive produced and stars in the nerd-friendly flick Fellowship of the Dice. The film is shot mockumentary-style, a la Christopher Guest and The Office, and it follows a cynical young lady (Aimee Graham) looking for a new group of friends. Gamer guy Sanford (Alastair Surprise) invites her to participate in a session of his favorite RPG, Wizards, Warriors and Wyrms, and the experience opens her eyes to a whole new world.

The film is a funny and affectionate look at nerd life and features Jon as Larry, a talkative gamer/aspiring actor with a penchant for yoga. Jon and the other filmmakers will be screening Fellowship at various conventions throughout the summer, so definitely go see it if you can. In honor of this Saturday’s screening at the Gamex Convention in L.A., we asked Jon to respond to a few burning nerdly questions…

Please share your geek CV.

Gamed when I was younger. Had a ton of action figures — still do. I have every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, but for the longest time, I taped them when they aired and I had them in specially-made boxes that a friend of ours put together. [My partner and Fellowship of the Dice writer-executive producer] Tom surprised me [with that] as a birthday present one year. They were labeled and had different pictures of the cast on them. My older brother lives in Italy and he’s a huge Buffy fan, so last year for his birthday, I shipped all the tapes out to him and I kept all the DVDs for myself. I have the Buffy the Vampire Slayer board game. I play the Buffy the Vampire Slayer role-playing game. And I have the Angel role-playing game as well. I’m a huge fan of Heroes. I have 150 comic books at home. We have a lot of different types of role-playing game books at home. We have Dungeons & Dragons, Champions, Silver Age Sentinels, Aberrant, Trinity, Tunnels and Trolls. We have a ton of board games. My idea of an ideal New Year’s Eve is having a bunch of people over with some drinks and we play board games all night and have a bunch of movies playing, usually with a theme — one year we did superheroes, one year we did all the Lord of the Rings movies, including the animated Hobbit. So, total nerd and proud of it.

Which Fellowship character’s gaming style most resembles your own?

Oh, the character I play. The character I play in the movie, I’m making fun of myself the entire time. I tend to play the flamboyant bard or singer or the very social one of the group. The joke amongst my gaming friends is, “Have Jon do it, because Jon likes to talk to people.” So I tend to play the really social one with the quippy one-liners and that kind of thing.

When you game, are you a pure stats sheet kind of guy, or do you like to have a picture of your character to go with it?

It depends. I just started playing this superhero role-playing game and one of the guys who plays in the game found a website where you can design your own superhero, so I designed my own superhero. I usually don’t do that. I usually don’t have a drawing. [Sometimes] I’ll find a picture online, like, “Oh, this is maybe what the character looks like.” I’ll come up with a character history and a little bit of a background. When you’re young and you’re role-playing, a lot of it is, “Kill monster, take treasure, kill monster, take treasure.” But as you get older, it’s more the interaction and the improv of it that tends to be why we play now. It’s not just the killing the bad guy, which is always fun – [it’s] combining that with some other things as well.

Go here for more screening dates and info (or to buy a copy of the flick!). Netflixers, it’s also available for you to rent.