James Rolfe

James Duncan Rolfe (born July 10, 1980) is an American actor, comedian, independent filmmaker, film and video game critic, and internet personality, best known for starring in the web television series The Angry Video Game Nerd, a joint production of Rolfe's Cinemassacre Productions, GameTrailers, and ScrewAttack. His other projects include reviews of classic board games and Movie Reviews for the Spike network.

Rolfe began filming Nintendo video game reviews as a child in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has created more than 270 films during his career. His career fully took off in 2004 with the beginning of the Angry Video Game Nerd.^[1] Two years later, Rolfe gained mainstream attention when one of his videos went viral after friend and collaborator Mike Matei persuaded him to publish them on the Internet.^[2] Between this time, he filmed videos he created on his own and most of them have been released on his website called Cinemassacre. He also performed briefly in music playing on the drums. From 2008 to 2009, Rolfe's character went through a fictional feud with the Nostalgia Critic.^[3]

Early life

James Rolfe was born on July 10, 1980, in New Jersey, to Scott and Marlene Rolfe. His parents bought him an audio recorder as a Christmas present sometime in the early to mid-1980s. Later, he got a camera and took photographs with friends performing fights for new projects. He was inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to create adventure stories. Rolfe also illustrated comic books, which he updated monthly. One such book he wrote had a plot inspired by the video game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.^[4]

Career

Film

Rolfe started filming movies in 1989 and continued this hobby into the early 1990s.^[1] He used Mario Paint for a few of his early films. He eventually took classes for hand-drawn animation at a university. From this class, Rolfe knew that his career was destined to be in the film industry. His early films did not have scripts or rehearsal. However, once he started writing scripts, his friends gradually lost interest because of the pressure of trying to remember their lines,^[4] which left many of Rolfe's films unfinished. He then tried his hand at action figures or puppets. The plot of The Giant Movie Director (1994), involved toys coming to life.

Since his early teen years, Rolfe operated and ran an annual "haunted house" Halloween attraction out of his parents garage (the same garage was later used in building a graveyard for his horror comedy film, "The Deader, The Better" and again used in his film/series pilot: "Jersey Odysseys: Legend of the Blue Hole") using a collection of several props and antiques that he later reused multiple times in his other films.^[5] In May 1996, he filmed A Night of Total Terror in his backyard, a horror film that he has called "the turning point of my life".^[6] In the late 1990s, Rolfe created several films such as the B-horror movie The Head Incident that he finished in 1999 but did not release until its tenth year anniversary in 2009. He also made Cinemaphobia in 2001, which follows an actor who suffers from an overload of work and sees hallucinations of cameras following him. Two versions of the film were made, a ten-minute version and an extended, fifteen-minute version. Rolfe has stated his preference for the shorter ten-minute version.^[7][8] The same year, he created Kung Fu Werewolf from Outer Space which is a mainly silent movie except for narration. He also created an hour-long comedy film entitled Stoney, which is a spoof of the 1976 film Rocky. His eighth film of 2001 was It Came from Beyond the Toilet.^[8] In 2003, he created another film, Curse of the Cat Lover's Grave, which was split into three parts to define three different horror genres.^[8] Rolfe made a pilot of a planned web series entitled Jersey Odysseys: Legend of the Blue Hole, which is based on the urban legends of the state of New Jersey.^[9] The pilot centers around on the legend of the Jersey Devil.^[1]

In 2007, Rolfe filmed The Deader the Better, a classic-style B-movie horror film that pays homage to the 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead.^[10] The film was shown at the Atlanta Horror Fest in October 2007. On May 5, 2006, Rolfe released a music video that included stock footage from a trip he had made to England and Scotland. The music used in his work was from the Black Sabbath single "Heaven and Hell".^[6] Rolfe also participated in the 48 Hour Film Project between 2004 to 2007. In the 2007 event, he was the Audience Award Winner for his film Spaghetti Western.^[6][11] His other entries were a trilogy of films called Death Suit (2004), Death Seen (2005) and Death Secret (2006).^[1]

In 2010, it was announced that Rolfe was set to feature in a low-budget remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space entitled Plan 9.^[12]

Rolfe was featured in a cameo for a commercial that was due to air in between Super Bowl XLV, but it never did because of a protest from the Catholic Church.^[13] Rolfe's videos were featured on the nationally syndicated radio show Opie and Anthony, who interviewed him on January 9, 2008.^[14] He also made a cameo in the 2007 fan film Return of the Ghostbusters.^[15]

Angry Video Game Nerd

Rolfe's career did not take off until May 2004, when he filmed a 5 minute short review of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game Castlevania II: Simon's Quest under the name "Bad NES Games".^[16] His character was originally named "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" but was changed to "The Angry Video Game Nerd" to avoid trademark issues and because he started reviewing games on other consoles (e.g. Sega Genesis, Atari 2600).^[1][17] Rolfe conceived the basis of his character while he was studying at the University of the Arts of Philadelphia when he attended from 1999 to 2004.^[18][19] Rolfe then made another video, which was supposed to be the last of the series, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because it was the game he hated most. His beer drinking in most of the video was done on purpose as to say "these games are so bad I'm forced to drink". Both of these became generic traits of "The Nerd", which would appear in future videos.^[20] The choice of Rolling Rock was coincidental as it happened to be the only beer that was available that Rolfe had in his refrigerator, and this eventually became an identifying trait of his character, although in more recent videos, he has also included Yuengling beer, hard-liquor and non-alcoholic hot sauce.^[1] Originally his videos were meant to be private. However, Rolfe's friend and collaborator, Mike Matei, convinced him to post the videos on a YouTube channel called "JamesNintendoNerd" (now called Cinemassacre) on April 6, 2006, which Matei created and managed for him.^[16]

"The Nerd" accepts a challenge from The Nostalgia Critic.

On September 12, 2006, Rolfe's character first gained mainstream attention when his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became viral on YouTube.^[2] His videos are also posted on GameTrailers and ScrewAttack and have gained 30 million views monthly. He has over 2 million subscribers, as of March 2016.^[17][21] At the end of 2007, Rolfe halted the production of the series and cancelled an appearance at MAGFest after suffering from a break in his voice.^[22] On March 17, 2010, he made the announcement that he was suffering from burnout as a result of consistently writing, directing and starring in the videos, and that the show would be entering a brief hiatus. It was scheduled to return in May 2010; however, an episode was released on April 30. Episodes are released on either the first or second Wednesday of each month,^[23] as opposed to two episodes per month due to Rolfe's other projects.^[1] Episodes are posted on YouTube over a year after their original release on GameTrailers. Rolfe formerly had affiliations with ScrewAttack before leaving in 2013. He currently has affiliations with That Guy with the Glasses.^[24] This allows Rolfe to earn small amounts of money from users watching the videos.^[25]

Rolfe's character gained further fame through a fictional feud with the Nostalgia Critic (played by Doug Walker). This began with the Critic launching a satirical attack in an early episode. The feud took place over many episodes between 2008 and 2009. The two characters, and real-life comedians, are now good friends. Walker has informed his viewers of Rolfe's projects, and Rolfe has contributed to some of the Critic's subsequent videos.^[3]

For a period, Rolfe focused his efforts on producing Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, which revolves around E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the video game for the Atari 2600. The film is a collaboration between Rolfe and Kevin Finn and was entirely funded by fan donations.^[26] The release of the film is to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the 1983 video game crash.^[27] The film was made in both, the style and in tribute to B-movies, of which Rolfe has shown admiration for in the past in making films and commenting on films in general.

Rolfe made a cameo appearance as the Nerd in a music video parody of Britney Spears' single "Piece of Me" entitled "Piece of Meat" on cinevore.com and works as a film reviewer on Spike.com. Around early to mid January 2013, Rolfe played a brief role as a news reporter in an independent short film about Sonic the Hedgehog.^[28]

Other reviews

Cinemassacre has published a number of other reviews featuring James and associates as themselves. The topics include video games, video game peripherals such as the VictorMaxx Stuntmaster headset, and films. One of Rolfe's other series is Board James, where he and Mike Matei review an old board game in a humorous way, often with recurring characters.^[29]

Rolfe was involved in a fifteen-part series titled OverAnalyzers, where he played the part of the manager of a fictional company that over analyzed various pop culture references. The series was edited and produced by another website called Cinevore.^[30][31] He is featured as himself in two documentaries, His Name Was Jason, where he talks about his love for and significance as a slasher killer that Jason Voorhees is, as well as the Friday the 13th series, but mostly on the Friday the 13th video game, and Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. There, like the His Name Was Jason documentary, he talks about Freddy Krueger, about the character's significance as a slasher killer with a personality, and mostly about the video game based on the character.^[32]

Rolfe has run Monster Madness, in which he reviews one horror movie for each day in October, since 2007. Each year, he has adopted a different theme for Monster Madness. 2007 was the history of horror. 2008 was Godzillathon, in which he reviewed all of the Godzilla films chronologically. 2009 was Monster Madness Three, which dealt with a variety of popular and little known films of horror. 2010 was Camp Cult, which dealt with both campy horror films as well as cult classic films, such as Troll 2. 2011 was Sequel-A-Thon, which dealt with horror sequels. And 2012 was 80's-a-Thon, which included only movies made in the 1980s. While the first five years of Monster Madness have been one film review per day for the entirety of the month of October 2012's 80's-a-Thon series of Monster Madness was reduced to every other day of October due to the production of The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie. Despite the decreased number of film reviews, the film reviews in 80's-a-Thon were longer than previous reviews on Monster Madness.^[16][24] With October 2013's Sequel-A-Thon 2, Monster Madness has returned to one review per day. 2013 was Sequel-A-Thon 2, which dealt with more horror sequels. The final 31 marathon Monster Madness series ran during October 2016. Rolfe expressed his desire to move onto other Halloween-themed projects and reviews in the future, but said that Monster Madness will always live on in some way.^[33]

On May 17, 2016, James uploaded a video to Cinemassacre's YouTube channel in which he expressed his disdain for the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot and how he planned on not seeing it or releasing a review. Rolfe stated that the 2016 reboot utilizes the name recognition established by the original franchise, but lacks a proper connection to the original story or characters.^[34] He further commented that the franchise "officially ended with the death of Harold Ramis." After the video was uploaded, comedians Patton Oswalt and Dane Cook criticised Rolfe's reasoning - the latter calling him a 'moron', while David Sims of The Atlantic, in noting Rolfe's lack of criticism towards the film's cast, wrote that he "dance[d] around the simple fact that has set this innocuous-seeming movie apart from its fellow blockbusters this summer—that it’s a tentpole genre film starring women".^[35] Others defended Rolfe's statements, insisting that sexism had nothing to do with his reasoning and that many hold similarly negative views towards the film, as with most other remakes and reboots.^[34][36][37]

On November 3, 2016, Watchmojo released a video titled Top 10 Retro Gaming YouTubers, where they listed some of the best known gamers and game reviewers of retro gaming around, and named The Nerd and Rolfe the number 1 Retro Gaming Youtuber.^[38] They say Rolfe helped lay the ground work of what retro gaming on YouTube has become and without his sense of humor, the whole Retro Gaming culture might not have taken off like it did.

Personal life

Rolfe grew up in New Jersey. He moved to Philadelphia for college. He continued residing in Philadelphia after graduation. He briefly relocated to Los Angeles while filming Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014), returning to Philadelphia upon completion of the movie. He has a younger sister named Gina (born 1984).

Rolfe attended the University of the Arts of Philadelphia from 1999 to 2004. Later in 2004 he got a job editing industrial training videos, which he quit in early 2007.^[6][39]

In the winter of 2004, Rolfe was involved in a head-on car crash with a trailer that was unattached with its supporting vehicle. According to Rolfe, no physical injuries occurred during the crash. His quotes from the wreckage include "grabbed the wheel and waited for death".^[6]

Rolfe met April Rolfe (née Chmura) in July 2004; she was a cinematographer on the early Nerd episodes. They began dating shortly after and were married in November 2007. He announced at the premiere trailer for Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie in November 2012, that they were expecting their first child. In April 2013, April Rolfe gave birth to a baby girl. Rolfe has not divulged details about his daughter except for a few photos and expressing thanks that his wife got past complications resulting during the childbirth.^[40]

In November 2013, April posted an update on James's Cinemassacre website that their daughter is continually seeking medical treatment due to unnamed complications. On April 13, 2016, Rolfe revealed what happened while announcing an auction of various Cinemassacre memorabilia to benefit Shriners Hospitals for Children. During birth, his daughter suffered nerve damage in one of her arms and required many months of physical therapy to recover full use of her arm. Rolfe expressed gratitude to Shriners for all they did for his family during that time.^[41][42]

Filmography

Film

Television / webseries

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: The Angry Video Game Nerd

Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Rolfe (actor).

• Official website
• James Rolfe at the Internet Movie Database
• James Rolfe on Twitter