Blogger Greg Schoenwald is one of the artists behind Dead in 60 Years, a collective of local creatives that films and documents all things surrounding what makes Fresno, well, Fresno.
What started out as a group of friends making sketch comedy videos for their YouTube channel, DI60Y lately has been filming live music performances, following unusual Fresno events, and hosting a weekly podcast that features local artists. Greg and the DI60Y crew used to star in the “Who Eats Brunch” video series for Gotta Love Fresno, one of the Swede Fest’s sponsors, and they are considered swede veterans.
Question: How did you and the guys at the Dead in 60 Years get first get involved with the Swede Fest?
Answer: My good friend Brendan Fantz, who is also friends with the Dumb Drum guys, came up with an idea [for a sweded film] and soon we had no choice but to start buying baby oil in bulk.
Q: Baby oil? You must be talking about DI60Y’s Top Gun swede [embedded above]. What were some of your favorite moments from re-making Top Gun? What were some of things you wanted to make sure were in the swede?
A: The whole process was a lot of fun. Brendan and I used to do this stuff in high school. Sweding Halloween movies before there was a term for it. My favorite part was shooting the volleyball scene. This was at 7 a.m. in some strange townhouse complex where none of us lived. We were shirtless, rubbing baby oil on.
The only sequence in the video that didn’t make the cut was where our friend, Bert Aguilar, had a role playing Sundown. He was yelling, “We coulda had ’em!” at me. He found out his part was cut when he watched it screen at Swede Fest. That was my favorite part — him not seeing his part.
Q: Besides Top Gun, which is a great choice, what are some other swede ideas on the table for DI60Y?
A: Our friend Roger Gonzales wanted to do the battle of Gettysburg but with all sock puppets. Please don’t steal that. Brad Heib wanted to do Super Size Me because he thought I looked just like the red-headed guy.
We have mostly bad ideas. We had one for West Side Story, but I won’t go into that.
Q: Does Dead in 60 Years have any plans for Swede Fest 12?
A: We do, and I really hope we do it. I won’t say what. But again, it’s gonna be bad.
Q: If you could personally pick any movie to swede, what would it be?
A: Personally, I would do the movie Drive. But instead of a stunt driver, there would be this mysterious cool motorcyclist on this bad-ass bike. And he would be the getaway rider after some bank heist and he never says much and gets a hot babe to ride with him. Naturally, I would play the part and my head would become too big for my motorcycle helmet, so it will never happen.
Visit SwedeFest.com to watch past sweded movies and stay up to date on the latest Swede Fest 12 news.
Colby Tibbet studies journalism at Fresno City College. He is the Filmworks media relations and communication intern.