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Romanus Wolter Brought His Heart To San Francisco by Don Schwartz
Romanus Wolter and pooch Pijo on a side street in San Francisco. photo: Mark Altenberg
When he was five years old Romanus Wolter told his mother he had three goals in life: Make a movie, write a book, and own an inn. Those three goals have been realized. He owns an inn in San Francisco, called 57 Saturn; he’s written two books, “Kick Start Your Dream Business” and “Kick Start Your Success”; and he’s made his first movie—the just-completed “Doggie Boogie."
Shot in the San Francisco Bay Area, "Doggie Boogie" is a whimsical, family friendly combination of “Best in Show”, “Flashdance”, and “101 Dalmatians.” More significantly, the film reflects Wolter’s message to the world: You Can Realize Your Dreams. His message is thoroughly supported by the simple fact that he walks his talk, he realized his dreams.
Wolter’s path to self-realization was as much of an outer journey as an inner odyssey. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, his family moved to Taipei, Taiwan, at the age of four. He lived there until the age of 18 when he moved back to Indiana to attend Purdue University. Graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Management, Wolter moved to Chicago, where he worked for Anderson Consulting (which is now called Accenture). He then moved to Los Angeles, studied filmmaking, and wrote television shows one of which was produced by The Playboy Channel.
Moving on, he received a Masters Degree in International Marketing from American University, in Washington, D.C. In London, England, he worked with a non-profit organization called Business and the Community. Then it was Hong Kong, back to D.C., to San Francisco, to New York, and back to San Francisco where he’s been living—and, hopefully, settling—for the last ten years. Wolter’s career dizzyingly melds the worlds of media and business.
“Doggie Boogie” was conceived eight years ago when Wolter attended, with his dog, the annual Bark and Whine Ball, an SPCA fundraiser based in San Francisco, now in its 15th year. “There was a little dance floor there,” Wolter says, “and this lady comes up and says, ‘Your dog should be dancing.’ So I looked over at the dance floor and said, ‘Well if you want to dance with my dog, go ahead.’ And she said, ‘No. Let me tell you.’"
"She told me about these two international competitions where dog and human pairs dance. And the next weekend there just happened to be one in San Rafael. I went up there, saw it, and that’s where “Doggie Boogie” was born. So dogs dancing, that was my marketing hook. I thought, ‘How cool. How many people have heard about dogs dancing?’ I built the story from there, based on going for your dreams. I mean that’s all my work is about, going for your dreams. My books, my films, my consulting work are all about going for your dreams. It’s never too late to go for your dreams.”
As usual, the road to the feature was a circuitous one. Wolter began working with Scary Cow, the San Francisco-based short film production cooperative, where he produced seven films. Anticipating skeptical questions about how a low-budget film with highly elaborate sequences can be produced, he set up each short as an aspect of “Doggie Boogie” as well as a demonstration of principle for everyone— especially, of course, for himself.
After those seven shorts Wolter and his Scary Cow cohorts produced a feature, “Devious, Inc.,' in conjunction with the local luminary Peaches Christ. A whimsical tale, set in the worlds of transvestites and fetishists, it is also the story of a character realizing his dreams. The film’s promotional material asserts: “If you like “Hedwig”, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, and “Scooby Doo”, then you will LOVE “Devious, Inc.”! Shot in the San Francisco Bay Area, the film was directed by xuxE. That’s right, her name is xuxE. To further complicate matters, the name is pronounced ‘zizah’ with the accent on the ‘zah.’ Alternative names notwithstanding, xuxE wrote the story as well as the film’s music and lyrics. Don’t tell anyone, but she also did a bit of choreography. I know, I was there, playing the presiding judge of a fetish competition as well as a dominatrix victim.
The “Devious” screenplay was written by Kia Resnick and Brian Snowden. Wolter was assistant director and co-produced the feature along with Samantha Sullivan who also served as production designer. “Devious, Inc.” premiered at the Victoria Theatre, on April 15th, as part of the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival. This is the first time the Festival has included a feature film in its program. When asked to reflect on his experience working on his first feature Wolter commented, “That was an amazing experience because your first one, you learn everything that you don’t want to repeat. But it was great, shooting weekends, at night, just getting it together in low budget. I mean it was fantastic and it looks great.”
“Devious, Inc.” was Wolter’s springboard to “Doggie Boogie”. The dancing canine film was initially self-financed, set up as a three-week shoot. But after the first week, his crew approached him saying, ‘You know what? You have a real special movie here, so we can’t do it justice in three weeks. We need to shoot three months’. They contributed to the film’s financing. Wolter also secured national sponsorship from Guide Dogs for the Blind and SeniorNet.org. He conceived “Doggie Boogie” as a trilogy, and anticipates shooting “Doggie Boogie II” around the beginning of 2012.
Romanus Wolter intends to be a full-time filmmaker, and as you can see, he’s making movies in the San Francisco Bay Area. When asked why here, he said with great vigor, “We have a true independent spirit here, and wonderful talent. A lot of people think you have to go to L.A. to do it, but we’re proving you can stay here and make fabulous films—all the way from conceiving them through post-production. That’s what we’re all about. We want to use the talent here, and make films that the country hasn’t seen. If we could get a San Francisco style of film, how cool would that be?”
He has created a style, and it is cool.
Don Schwartz is an actor/writer from Larkspur, California. He has a blog space in CineSource magazine’s website. Posted on Mar 26, 2011 - 09:22 PM