Biography

D. Duckie Rodriguez always knew what he wanted to be in life; world renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Unfortunately, there already was a world renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan, so his fallback was to become a superhero. He discovered that magic and psychic powers did not actually exist, so he learned stage magic and performed his first live act at 9 years of age. He incorporated electronics and computer science into his act at 14. Upon graduation from high school, he became a nuclear engineer with the United States Navy. He discovered that being on a nuclear powered ship just wasn't cool enough, and that he wanted to fly hydrofoils and hovercraft, which required that he crossrate at least twice... so he learned deck engineering and signalman. Too bad hydrofoils and hovercraft were being decommissioned from service. At least he was able to learn some music theory at the same time and start a shipboard band. Upon leaving the service, he tried "growing up" by becoming a restaurant manager, but realized that his success had more to do with impromptu concerts and performance art pieces. He moved over to working at world renowned haunted attraction, Terror on Church Street where he split time as numerous street performing characters as well as set design and technician. This was a grand job for Duckie as the management was very supportive of it's people taking time off for low paying acting jobs, which he took advantage of to discover what a terrible actor he was. Since his acting was so terrible (though there was not a dry eye in the audience for The Crucible), he soon switched over to writing and directing, which it turned out he was pretty awesome at. Not only could he create a fantastic show, but it turned out he was a pretty damn good choreographer... so of course, designing stunts seemed to be the next logical course of action. With his piecemeal knowledge of martial arts - having studied the basics of everything from aikido to capoeira, he produced and directed several live stage shows. At the time he was also pretty poor, which contrary to what you may think, meant using real weapons during live shows. Luckily, he was married to a psychopath who liked to kill people with special effects. Together they engineered some of the greatest, super cheap weapon stunts ever to be imagined. Since then he has used his powers for (the) good (of central Florida independent filmmaking) and thus discovered The Secret To Good Acting ((TM)). Today he utilizes this eclectic knowledge, as well as his penchant for trivia and minutia to usher in Greater Production Value ((TM)) for some sadly misunderstood and misutilized venues for independent film.
- IMDb mini biography by: D. Duckie Rodriguez