Copyright The Austin Chronicle
Alejandro Montoya Marín has a word for the protagonists of his new action-comedy, The Unexpecteds. It’s not heroes or hardmen or ass-kickers. It’s schlubs, and he means that in the nicest way possible. In this story, he said, “I wanted the schlubs to win.” But will the schlubs in fact win in this crime caper? Now living in Los Angeles, the Laredo-born filmmaker became part of the Austin film scene as one of the contestants for Robert Rodriguez’s series Rebel Without a Crew. He shot both his contribution to the series Monday, and his follow up, Y2K comedy Millennium Bugs here. With The Unexpecteds, he continues his fascination with how we interact with technology as a group of investors – well, schlubs with a little bit of money – start to realize they’ve been conned by an online investment influencer called Metal Mike (John Kaler). Led by the soon-to-be-divorced Gary (comedian Matt Walsh), who feels guilty for getting his friends duped, they become an unlikely team to take back what’s theirs. “They don’t have anything,” Marín said, “but this willingness to try to do something about it.” The ubiquity of these scams is what inspired Marín to make the movie, with the FBI estimating that 880,000 Americans were the victims of online cons in 2023 alone. Marín said, “When another one happens, I always go, ‘Jesus Christ, can someone just give me 1% of that scam money, and I’ll do some good with it.’ It’s always, ‘Oh, we scammed $175 million.’ Jesus Christ, I can’t even raise $1 million for a movie. You see all these people getting away with it, and it’s just not fair.” That’s why Marín sees himself in those schlubs he wrote, and their dedication to redressing a wrong. “I can say, ‘Oh, I want to do this movie,’ and everyone goes, ‘Sure,’ but until you do you’re just operating on hope – and that’s them.” Getting this movie made was a struggle, and Marín had to make major changes to be able to afford the story he wanted to tell. Two whole characters had to be cut out, a couple who were also victims of Metal Mike, and the wife blames the husband for their woes. “She was always trying to kill him, and she would always fail. ‘Dude, she’s trying to kill you.’ … There was a montage of different situations where she cuts the brakes, he falls down stairs. There were stunts, locations, and it was three days and we didn’t have it.” That struggle in the indie trenches is something with which his cast can associate. “They say it takes 15 years to be an overnight success as an actor,” said Chelsea Rendon, who plays scam victim and schlub Pati. One character that cannot be described as a schlub is enigmatic action man Felipe Fuscas, played by Alejandro De Hoyos. The actor was originally going to appear in Millennium Bugs, “but it didn’t work out,” said De Hoyos, but he was still determined to work with Marín. He finally came on board The Unexpecteds as a producer and felt more than a little empathy for the characters because he himself had been the victim of a scam. However, as the script evolved, and became more about family, and the father-son relationship between the actual tough guy Felipe and his disappointing dupe of a son, Carl (Francisco Ramos) became more central, it became clear that De Hoyos needed to be Felipe – not least because he could actually handle the action sequences. Marín actually shot his big fight sequences on De Hoyos’ first day on set. Normally, riskier scenes like this would take place at the end of the shoot, but this was the only time the crew could get access to their location shoot at the offices at the Albuquerque Journal, so De Hoyos came in cold. The actor recalled, “Alejandro told them, ‘You know he can fight,’ and the stunt coordinator is like, ‘Yeah, right. Show me what you can do.’ I’m throwing all those circular kicks and stuff, and he’s like, ‘Oh, he can do it!’” On the far end of the schlub spectrum from Felipe is Metal Mike, a scamster with troubles of his own. Having worked together previously on Millennium Bugs and two of Marín’s shorts (“Blood Positive” and “The Wrong Guy”), Marín wrote the part with Kaler in mind. Marín said, “Seeing how much he improved from ‘The Wrong Guy,’ when he had all these insecurities as an actor, and seeing how he shed them, he’s become more comfortable in his skin. And what’s cool about John is that he understands that we’re making fun of the character, so as an actor he doesn’t automatically go ‘I’m not doing that.’ We’d say, ‘Hey, you need to come in with a boner,’ and you’re humiliating the actor.” That humiliation really began with the costume, created by Marín and costume designer Ursula Rise Rochester, which Marín described as a mix of Jake Paul and Guy Fieri. Luckily, Kaler’s long history with the filmmaker meant he knew he was in safe hands. “I’ve been grinding with Alejandro for seven years,” Kaler said, and when it came to being the butt of the film’s gags “I just concentrated on the moment, and I didn’t let my character know what was happening. I wanted it to be a surprise to myself, and a discovery.” For Kaler, it wasn’t just that he had a friend in Marín, but that the whole set was one big safety net. He said, “The big thing with Alejandro as a director is that he’s great at finding quality people. Anyone you meet with Alejandro is going to be an awesome person, so he has built a team and created these relationships and networked to build to this moment.” “He’s a machine,” added De Hoyas. “The next film that he does, whatever he does, it’s going to be two, three times better than The Unexpecteds.” The Unexpecteds is available on VOD now.
