We recently had the chance to speak with Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt, known for their healthy career in the gaming industry, about their latest venture together “Tumbling After”.

GCO: For those that aren’t up to date with what you have done in the past, can you guys list some of your past works – both within the video gaming industry and on-screen?

Sure, Yuri might be best known for his work in video-games like The Prince of Persia series (as the Prince) in Sands of Time and Two Thrones. He also recently worked on Afro Samurai (Jinno/Kuma) – both the video games and series – opposite Samuel L. Jackson, Lucy Liu and Ron Perlman. He’s been in countless other game titles from .Hack// (Haseo), Saints Row, Persona 3 & 4 to Final Fantasy, as well as anime series Naruto (Sasuke), Gurren Lagaan (Simon) and more. He also does a lot of original animation work, having starred in Legion of Superheroes (Superman & Superman X), Ben Ten: Alien Force (Ben), Wolverine & The X-Men (IceMan) in addition to on-camera jobs. Most recently on TV he had a recurring role on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Christopher Garvin) as well as recurring on The Gilmore Girls (Carl).

And Tara is no stranger to video games, animation and television as well. In video games, some of Tara ‘s credits include Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (Red Queen), DC vs. MK (Wonder Woman), Persona 3 (Mitsuru) and Soulcalibur (Setsuka). In anime, she’s also on Naruto (Temari), Blue Dragon (Cynthia) and Buso Renkin (Tokiko). Tara also worked on Legion of Superheroes (DreamGirl). On-screen in film and TV she’s appeared in Gilmore Girls (Shelly), Charmed (Muse), recurring on Attack of the Show (Baronness & Spoiler Whore) as well as several indie films: Death’s Door, Time & Tide and Tumbling After, the feature film that we wrote, produced and completed this year under our production company Monkey Kingdom Productions. Clearly we don’t like to sit still…:)

GCO: How did you guys use your experiences with your recent venture “Tumbling After”?

Well, I think simply being in the entertainment industry as long as we have definitely helped us as we worked on Tumbling. It was its own unique process, which I don’t know that anyone could have been totally prepared for given the circumstances. And there were certainly moments when things got hairy, that we had to say, “This is just the way it’s gonna go!” and not take it personally or get bummed out, or we wouldn’t have finished the film at all. Yuri jokes that making Tumbling was our equivalent to going to film school; we had to learn on the spot and make things happen however we could just to get through the day.

We certainly called a few favors from people we know in all areas of the business. At every step of the process. It’s really the way things get done here, we’ve found. First it was calls to see if people could jump in as cast/crew, then it was to see if they could help in post-production. Those friend-favors are invaluable and we owe the caliber of the film in great part to the hard work and efforts of those people…which we couldn’t have accessed without having laid the groundwork in our personal careers up to that point. It’s such a huge undertaking, making a movie, that there’s a lot of trust involved, from start to finish, which is kind of funny, because trust is a major theme in the film.

GCO: When you hear the name “Tumbling After” you hear the ringing of the popular children song “Jack and Jill went up the hill”, was that you inspiration for the name of the movie? If yes, why?

Great! Then it’s working. Although the film is a psychological thriller, we like the eerie feel you get when you juxtapose children’s rhymes with scary ideas and images. Most of those fairy tales are pretty scary when you get right down to it, anyway. The main characters are named Jack and Jill for that reason, so that you are following the ‘tumbling after’ that befalls them. In fact, our tagline for the film is “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown and then began the slaughter…”

It’s funny really, since when we started filming we thought we might name the characters Jack and Diane, like the John Cougar Mellencamp song but fate stepped in and we ended up changing Diane to Jill just before shooting. And it all lined up perfectly. We couldn’t have planned it any better, really, since the character of Jack starts the film having just had a mental breakdown (he broke his crown) which sets all the events in motion (slaughter, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to watch and see.). So, yay! We’re glad that those images were conjured when you heard the name. Success!

GCO: Monkey Kingdom Productions. This has to be one of the most unique names I have heard in a long time, how did you guys come up with it? What’s the reason behind the name?

Why thank you! It actually stems from Asian myth and legend, by which we are both intrigued and inspired. In Eastern mythology, there is a Monkey King god. The Monkey King is a trickster god, always playing pranks on the bigger more powerful gods. We liked this image of the clever underdog, especially in the studio-powerful entertainment industry. So, we took that idea and our love of teamwork or a ‘kingdom’ of people, since in this business a successful project is never the work of a single person, and we created Monkey Kingdom Productions. ‘Cause when you’re having fun, its not really working, right? And if we don’t take ourselves too seriously and allow ourselves to play, then we’re just monkey-ing around. As we like to say, “C’mon monkey, let’s make a movie!”

Currently we’re shopping Tumbling After to several distributors and we are also in production and filming our next feature film, a documentary about the world of comic/cartoon/anime/video game conventions from the perspective of actors who travel there, since we live that firsthand. We are also co-authoring a book on voice-over due out this fall entitled Voice-Over Voice-Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic, so keep your eyes out for that. Like we said earlier, we’re always on the move!

‘The Godfather’, altogether, is one the film industry’s most recognized, and most acclaimed, films and when some in the gaming industry embraces, or finds, that it well make a great game they will go after it. Thus was born The Godfather: The Video Game, the game, being the first game, was a very interesting first try releasing on most of the last-gen systems.

Now, its developer, EA, plans to release it on current nex-gen systems in the form of a new game, The Godfather II, and it was recent revealed that the title will be releasing in February. Now-however, it seems that EA has also finally revealed the Box-Art for the game.