James Rolfe / James D. Rolfe / Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) / Rex Viper and Cinemassacre / Screenwave - Now with not much grieving about a 41-year old man still making videos on YouTube. We're the balls on the dick.

[Pickle Dick]

The Mike video James was in, published yesterday

 

[Pringles Can]

Wow. The first video from James that I've actually enjoyed in months. Dude he was with seems like a pretty chill guy. His laugh is the best honestly. Shame that knowing the slobs they won't have him on again.

 

[100% VIRGIN M00TY]

Has anyone done a write up on what Silvermania was?

 

[Pissmaster]

As for April, apart from the movie having a pointless female protagonist and a pointless black male sidekick likely due to April's infamous blogpost which has the term "caucasian sausage fest" as well as being the executive producer for the AVGN movie, other than that I'm pretty unconvinced of the claim that James is where he is now in this terrible state mainly because of his wife. If his wife really plays a huge part in it then Screenwave wouldn't be involved to begin with since it would still be a "caucasian sausage fest" regardless, and James wouldn't even be able to have a chance to play games with Mike to begin with even pretty recently.

There could be some skeletons in the closet, but I think the main reason for the downfall is just James himself and the Behind the Scenes video proved that. Apparently his wife worked as an art teacher or something and if that's true, I think April wouldn't even have the time (no pun intended) or nothing else better to do than to meddle in his work.

View attachment 2441296

Funny how she bitches about the lack of diversity, and yet only the movie ever saw a black dude and a girl. Unless the Troma guy's a Jew and that counts. The movie must have been some kind of compromise with his bitchy wife, because I'm sure James could have contacted, like, Phil Moore (the Nick Arcade host) and had him show up to fulfill April's quota.

 

[Exbein]

I forgot to add, after the new behind the scenes video, I would retract the statement that James could make a good position in Hollywood. Dude's a fucking inept director. He would violate thousands of safety regulations just to film a scene

 

[PeriodicTrouble]

I forgot to add, after the new behind the scenes video, I would retract the statement that James could make a good position in Hollywood. Dude's a fucking inept director. He would violate thousands of safety regulations just to film a scene

Assuming he would actually direct the movie. Considering what we know about the production of the AVGN movie, other people would do the responsibilities of the director while James would just yell Action.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Charisma is not a skill, you can't learn or acquire it. Or you are born charismatic or you'll forever be a try-hard unamusing dead weight.

The slobs are trying to be the nice guys for years now and they failed at that in every opportunity they got. They even released a heavily promoted podcast to laughably bad results and nobody still likes them. But two days ago a simple video featuring a complete stranger, who has never been introduced before, already crossed the views of the podcast even without any promotion or hype whatsoever.

The slobs must be seething right now.

 

[KillThemCrackasBabies]

You know it's a sight watching people rip apart TGWTG spergs for years for being completely inept at their adult life and spending their most formative earning and family rearing years locked away in rooms full of toys doing comedy skits, and then immediately turn around and shit on Rolfe for "using having kids as an excuse!" and get frustrated when he talks about managing time.

It's one thing to (justifiably) blame Team Pig for being boring, but it's becoming more apparent that there are people that are confused and upset this man in his mid-40's isn't actually an "angry video game nerd" and wants to spend some time in Normieville.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Yeah, that's true. Every father in all history can't work 40 hours every week because they have "MuH kIDs".

James is a lazyass, he does jackshit all day and still complains. Everyone has kids and nobody says to their bosses they need to take a break this Wednesday because I need to play with "MuhKiDs". James offends every fucking parent in the world with these lame excuses. Even worse, he gives the impression he believes children are a nuisance rather than a blessing.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Yeah, that's true. Every father in all history can't work 40 hours every week because they have "MuH kIDs".

James is a lazyass, he does jackshit all day and still complains. Everyone has kids and nobody says to their bosses they need to take a break this Wednesday because I need to play with "MuhKiDs". James offends every fucking parent in the world with these lame excuses. Even worse, he gives the impression he believes children are a nuisance rather than a blessing.

Don't forget the time he made a big show of bringing a baby monitor on stream with him. I'd pay actual money to see this tard at an actual job. Serious question: has James ever worked? Did he have a job when AVGN started?

 

[Pickle Dick]

Serious question: has James ever worked? Did he have a job when AVGN started?

I mean, he had to at some point. In the show's early years, he worked at an video editing job while he did AVGN part-time (hence the rather "rushed" feeling of some of the earlier episodes, though it wasn't as bad compared to now). After the first season, he redirected his attention to AVGN, as he earned a contract with GameTrailers and ScrewAttack to produce two AVGN episodes a month (similar to now, except he wasn't exactly fulfilling any sponsorships back then). He would therefore quit video editing as a job regularly and do so on a freelance basis.

I think the biggest gripe people have with James when it comes to raising kids is that he never had any when he was doing an actual job, not to mention its been so long since he had a job outside of Cinemassacre stuff. This gives the impression that he's rather out-of-touch when it comes to managing time between working and raising kids. Either that or he and his wife are living the stereotypical "mid-life crisis" parenthood that has the lady nagging her husband to focus on the kids more than his creation. That's just my theory though.

 

[KillThemCrackasBabies]

James offends every fucking parent in the world with these lame excuses. Even worse, he gives the impression he believes children are a nuisance rather than a blessing.

Yeah you don't sound like you're taking any of this way too seriously at all.

 

[Pissmaster]

You know it's a sight watching people rip apart TGWTG spergs for years for being completely inept at their adult life and spending their most formative earning and family rearing years locked away in rooms full of toys doing comedy skits, and then immediately turn around and shit on Rolfe for "using having kids as an excuse!" and get frustrated when he talks about managing time.

It's one thing to (justifiably) blame Team Pig for being boring, but it's becoming more apparent that there are people that are confused and upset this man in his mid-40's isn't actually an "angry video game nerd" and wants to spend some time in Normieville.

Yeah, it's a silly thing to harp on when he gave us so many treasures in one video. A video made for a specific subreddit, nevertheless, which is such a quintessential lolcow move.

• Ceiling tripod
• Can't keep an onion in his mouth
• Discovering a faulty $200+ cable after he had replaced his entire NAS server
• Copying colossal amounts of files in parallel
• Outright admitting the low-effort videos are just to fulfill sponsor contracts
• Still not realizing just how shit his "epic" videos are, and his chill ones are the very best

And all of this while he's playing in his midlife crisis dad band, despite never showing any interest in composing or playing an instrument before.

 

[deeman]

Assuming he would actually direct the movie. Considering what we know about the production of the AVGN movie, other people would do the responsibilities of the director while James would just yell Action.

This question is not specific to you @PeriodicTrouble but i wish to read the source of this, i've heard the stories myself but always third hand, has some actor come out about it somewhere or something?

 

[PeriodicTrouble]

This question is not specific to you @PeriodicTrouble but i wish to read the source of this, i've heard the stories myself but always third hand, has some actor come out about it somewhere or something?

An Extra talked about their experiences on the set of the AVGN movie. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCinemas...yn/my_experience_on_set_avgn_movie_adventure/
These are parts just talking about what Kevin, April, and James did on Set.

She took care of an absolute heap of bureaucratic responsibilities for the movie, including making appointments, corresponding with extras, renting stuff, managing the shuttles, handling the caterers, etc. As a production, the AVGN movie was a complete mess. There was a strange sense of separation during shooting, like no one was entirely sure who had the power to make the final call. James would say some stuff, everyone would smile at him and be agreeable, but Kevin was there and said twice as much, to which several other technicians (including assistant directors) would disagree and argue for awhile. A single, simple scene like the one with the giant metal ball should've taken an hour to shoot. That one scene took 3 hours, minimum, which made sense with the lack of central leadership. From my experience at a distance, it looked a whole lot like Kevin was mostly in charge, and that James was fighting to be involved as often as he could but was far too timid to step on anyone's toes. There was allegedly a heap of squabbling going on between everyone else, highschool-style. The tech crew couldn't agree on two things for ten-minutes, stuff kept going wrong, James was floating around in a damned trance. When something shit the bed, (and a lot of things shat the bed) no one knew who to ask for guidance, Kevin or James. Weirdly, April was one of the few people who seemed to know what was up. But she was only a coordinator, so that's much easier to take ownership of.

 

[Exbein]

So, with that disaster of a podcast, James is actually going the way of Mark Bussler, just with less trustfund baby money

 

[Stab You in the Back]

I got about five minutes into the podcast before I dipped out. How can three people have so little to say?

Also, lol at the slobs:

James: "Let's talk about what we're reading."
Slob 1: "I don't read."
Slob 2: "Do comics count?"

 

[BrunoMattei]

An Extra talked about their experiences on the set of the AVGN movie. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCinemas...yn/my_experience_on_set_avgn_movie_adventure/
These are parts just talking about what Kevin, April, and James did on Set.

Seems like James was merely trying to play director. If you're doing an indie film and don't have tons of resources it's a better idea to have a smaller crew. For example: Werner Herzog (one of the most acclaimed living directors) had a crew of 8 people on most of his films. On his remake of Nosferatu his crew expanded to 16. And he's kept a relatively small crew throughout most of his productions even the big budget Hollywood stuff. Herzog would usually have a 1:1 or 2:1 shooting ratio. Herzog will only shoot one take if it works. Kubrick was the same way and that's partly what gave him so much artistic leeway with the studio because he kept a tiny crew and was under budget despite the excessive production time and endless re-takes.

When it comes to direction of actors it really comes down to the director who makes decisions not unless you have a diva actor ala Val Kilmer or someone like that. When it comes to the technical aspects you would listen to the input of the cinematographer/camera man, maybe the makeup guy if lets say certain angles do not flatter the make up (I.E. the closeups of Skelator in the live action Masters of the Universe). This is a good insight from The Exterminator 2 (fun B action movie):

Exterminator 2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sachs also mentioned that production's initial struggles were probably due to Buntzman's inexperience handling a large film crew:

I was in New York just to watch, and I saw what was going wrong. If you can't make a decision, everyone starts giving you their two cents until it's a committee. Mark Buntzman couldn't make a certain decision, so the script supervisor had an idea and the DP had an idea, and soon there was a meeting going on. A directing lesson: if someone asks 'Where do I point the camera?' you just point. The first thing that comes into your head, you just say "there." Nine times out of ten, it's the right place. And if it's not, you say later, 'Well, I thought about it and it'd be better over here.' But if you don't give an answer, you lose them.
— William Sachs, about working on Exterminator 2

Evidently, James learned from how Lloyd Kaufman ran a production at Troma. At Troma, they take in literally anyone so long as they don't get paid and a lot of time is wasted because of Lloyd micro-managing every single person and trying to tell them how to do their job.

 

[100% VIRGIN M00TY]

Has James ever spoken about the AVGN movie since it has released? It's almost like the black sheep of his "filmography", he talks about The Head Incident more.

How many fan questions did they answer on the podcast? 3? What, they didn't want to take too much time away from the band talk?

I enjoyed the video with his old neighbor and the unlicensed James & Mike Contra video far more than the bullshit podcast. I noticed in the Contra video when they talked about a J&M Mondays episode from the past they only showed two still images, I hope they didn't have to do that to avoid a Screenwave strike lol.

 

[deeman]

Yeah, having a awkward shy guy having a Podcast and two unlikeable piggybackers/tardwranglers is going to turn out well... Yup. Yup. Yep.