Vegas Fury

Before YouTube became popular—and before it was bought by Google—I noticed that internet users seemed drawn to irreverent content. At the time, there wasn’t much user-created material. Computers just weren’t powerful enough for video editing, and to do it properly, you had to install special hardware. There was editing software, but it required a high-end machine to even run.

So instead of making a short clip, I thought: why not make a full-length movie?

I went to a seminar on filmmaking. Of course, I knew absolutely nothing about it. The first step was to buy a video camera. Professional cameras didn’t use VHS tapes—they used smaller tapes (I forget what they were called). I had to figure out how to use the camera, how to record decent audio with a microphone, and how to handle lighting. I was way out of my depth—but I’m a hacker, so of course I figured it out.

I had a partner who put up some of the money for equipment. But, as is always the case, I ended up doing all the actual work. We planned to attend the DEFCON and Black Hat conferences in Las Vegas—these are hacker gatherings for both the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” There’s usually a fair bit of mischief, and we thought it might make for interesting video.

But after giving it some thought, we realized it might be boring for most people. What was actually popular at the time was off-color humor. Before humor got ruined by political correctness, people still appreciated a little silliness. So we decided to make a movie about all the wild, ridiculous things you can do in Las Vegas.

We created a movie company—went so far as to have embroidered shirts made to look more legit—and scheduled filming at some interesting locations. Things went pretty smoothly until we shot a scene at a strip club. Somehow, the conversation turned to graduate schools, and I made an offhand (possibly negative) comment about one—turns out the manager went there. And, lucky us, it also turned out he was some kind of mob boss. That was one of those moments in my life where thinking fast really paid off.

Long story short: I did actually produce the movie. But back then, there were no streaming platforms available for regular people, and distributing it was too expensive. We weren’t willing to make that kind of investment. Besides, there were already thousands of indie filmmakers out there trying to sell their movies—and most of them had gone to school for this stuff.