INTERVIEW: Blind Cop 2: “What if we took an absurd premise and treated it completely seriously?”
Production still from Blind Cop 2
“What I was drawing inspiration from, wasn’t so much a particular performance, but rather a trope and a feeling that came from the idea of young men idolizing these brutal action heroes.”
Earlier this month, Director Alec Bonk and his team screened their debut feature film Blind Cop 2 at the GE Theatre at Proctors. Prior to the screen– Actually, you know what? This movie is completely batshit, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s called Blind Cop 2, and the tagline is “He’s Back for the First Time.” This movie is a sequel to nothing. The first Blind Cop doesn’t exist.
We can’t write this like a traditional article. We need to match this movie’s energy. Okay, let’s start by talking about this fucking trailer (unsolicited and unnecessary curse words are batshit, right?).
A Timestamped Viewing of the Blind Cop 2 Trailer
0:01: Lead actor George Fearing is onscreen. He’s got slicked back, jet black hair and a 5 o’clock shadow that only the most hardened individuals could possibly have grown by 5 o’clock. Remember Ken Daneyko, the New Jersey Devils defenseman? When he grew his playoff beard, it looked like that shit was painted on it was so thick. That’s what George Fearing is mirroring right now, except he’s got way better teeth.
Looking solemn and gruff, Fearing is talking about knowing the truth about the world, and he doesn’t sound like a man who’s super stoked to have obtained that knowledge.
(Bonk recalls Fearing telling him: “There are two types of people. There are Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stallones. We’re Sylvester Stallone.”
“This gives you some great insight into the process of George Fearing,” Isaac McKinnon, co-star and co-writer of Blind Cop 2, chimes in.)
It sure does because Fearing is looking exactly like Stallone in his 1986 film, Cobra. A quick top five of Stallone’s ‘80s filmography: 1) First Blood, 2) Rocky IV, 3) Victory, 4) Tango & Cash, 5) Over the Top.
In that list, Stallone has a Vietnam veteran struggling with PTSD, a boxer who single-handedly ended the Cold War, a soccer goalie who defeats the Nazis, the second best buddy-cop pairing of the ‘80s (Gibson and Glover in Lethal Weapon are obviously the first), and a long-haul trucker who’s an arm wrestling champion. Stallone doesn’t have range? Get the fuck outta here!
0:28: Over the past 27 seconds, we’ve learned that Fearing’s character is a) a superstar cop, b) visually impaired, and c) he’s already saved the city with just his cane.
Fearing is now in the shower, drinking an unlabeled bottle of what has to be Scotch, and seeming rather morose. Two of his lines since the opening: “Look what it’s gotten me,” and “I have nothing now.” In case it was unclear, our titular character is having a pretty rough go at the moment.
0:32: McKinnon arrives as Schmidty, a fellow officer who idolizes Blind Cop but is also questioning his own ability to be an effective member of the force.
(McKinnon says of his character: “He is a naive, bright-eyed kid that views Blind Cop as a hero. What I was drawing inspiration from, wasn’t so much a particular performance, but rather a trope and a feeling that came from the idea of young men idolizing these brutal action heroes.”)
Blind Cop’s advice for Schmidty? “Being a cop is easy. Be a fucking man.”
0:42: Blind Cop just busted through a door in his black underoos. And now he’s fighting a bunch of bad guys in balaclavas with his walking cane. He just snapped a guy’s arm in half on a pool table. Sick!
A quick note on the look of the film: this whole fight sequence takes place in a seedy bar that is saturated in neon blues and greens.
(“We were pretty intentional about the color palette,” Augustin Huffman, director of photography and co-writer tells me. “In these old movies, it’s not soft lighting where people look nice and it’s glossy. We looked at Terminator and wanted it to feel cold and grimy.”)
Mission accomplished! Blind Cop would be right at home fighting alongside Robocop in Paul Verhoeven’s futuristic vision of Detroit.
1:05: There’s a character in black war paint, screaming in the middle of a bamboo forest. There’s a Stallone-as-John-Rambo reference.
1:07: Schmidty is being tortured for information in a beige warehouse hallway. They probably didn’t have the budget to properly stage an electrocution, but this is definitely a Lethal Weapon reference.
1:15: Two white guys who are significantly less muscular than Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers (R.I.P.) are doing the bro handshake. That’s a Predator reference.
1:20: Blind Cop is sitting in an abandoned warehouse contemplating all the death and destruction he hath wrought over the last minute of this trailer and posits: “That’s why I became a cop.”
1:30: The trailer is over. Good trailer.
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“It’s a send up of these 80s and 90s movies that we all love, but they don’t really make anymore,” Bonk describes. “But, we’re looking at them through a satirical lens. These heroes are pretty fucked up. They leave the movie with the biggest body count, but we root for them anyways.”
I still remember the first time I saw Martin Scorsese’s modern masterpiece, The Wolf of Wall Street. There was a lot of talk at the time about how he was glorifying the gluttonous and destructive lifestyle of Jordan Belfort. I, for one, was rather mystified at how people could view the movie with anything but disdain for the main character. I mean sure, he’s got loads of money, he’s married to Margot Robbie, does a ton of drugs and gets to sail on a yac–. Actually, yeah. I get it. That doesn’t sound all bad.
But that’s the thing about great satire. It doesn’t provide easy answers. It presents viewers with ideas and events and allows them to make their own judgements. That’s the line Blind Cop 2 is trying to walk. Can they make a fucking sweet action movie that also casts a light on some of the inherent issues of presenting these characters as heroic? We shall see.
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Blind Cop 2 has been a long time in the making. Bonk originally developed the idea when he was 18 years old and at that point, it had far more in common with The Naked Gun or the Austin Powers trilogy.
Bonk headed off to film school at Savannah College of Art and Design with his idea for Blind Cop 2 in tow. While there, he met and became friends with McKinnon and Huffman and that’s when the movie’s tone really started to take shape.
“Instead of this goofy, parody angle, we asked, ‘What if we do this super seriously?’” Bonk recalls. “Like what if you can’t tell what’s a joke and what isn’t?”
For Bonk’s senior capstone project, the trio put together a pitch trailer for Blind Cop 2 and posted it on Kickstarter. This is how they secured initial funding for the production.
In July 2019, fresh out of college, the team began production, shooting the majority of the film in Bonk’s hometown. They quickly burned through all of their initial budget and production was shut down with about 80% of the film completed.
“We figured we’d just pick it back up next year, but then we all know what happened,” Bonk says. “We self-funded the final 20% of the shoot, which was a pretty big ending sequence that we shot in Atlanta. That was in 2021 and then we did some flashback stuff and some pickup shots all the way through 2023.”
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“We sacrificed a good decade of our lives to get this movie to where it is,” Bonk says. “The biggest thing [I learned] is if you love something, you can’t give up on it. There were so many moments where this could have been considered a failure. I had people close to me who said, ‘No one would blame you if you gave up on this movie.’ It was tough to hear people say, but I knew, deep down, we just had to keep pushing this train forward.”
After spending so much time getting this movie made, Bonk, McKinnon and Huffman finally get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. As a part of the Blind Cop 2 Winter Roadshow, they will be screening the film at the GE Theatre at Proctors in Schenectady on Tuesday, December 9.
“If you want a break from the sequels, reboots and corporate assembly line slop, be the change you want to see in the world and come out and support independent film,” McKinnon concludes. “Show up, laugh, cry, watch some kick-ass action. It will be a great experience, we promise you.”
The trailer, titled “Blind Cop 2 - Official Main Trailer” is available on YouTube.
