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Not too early for back to school deals

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Wyoming Valley teens earn skills as well as paychecks through employment

<p>After working a dozen years at MTV and then another decade at Adam Sander&#8217;s Happy Madison Productions, Macungie, Pennsylvania native, Heather Parry, has acquired many skills which make her a successful movie producer.</p><p>She&#8217;s got great instincts about casting, giving Emma Stone, Anna Faris, Kat Dennings, Brooklyn Decker and Colin Hanks meaty roles early in their careers. She&#8217;s also a world-class problem solver who, on movies like &#8220;The House Bunny,&#8221; &#8220;Just Go With It&#8221; and &#8220;That&#8217;s My Boy,&#8221; coordinated shooting schedules, juggled locations, and oversaw various departments, including make-up, costumes and production design.</p><p>But arguably Parry&#8217;s most vital talent is her refusal to take no for an answer.</p><p>&#8220;The second someone tells me, &#8216;that can&#8217;t be done&#8217; or &#8216;that won&#8217;t work,&#8217; I&#8217;m, like, &#8216;OK, I&#8217;m going to prove you wrong,&#8221; she says. &#8220;Hearing &#8216;no&#8217; just fuels me.&#8221;</p><p>Last year, when Parry was helping cast Sandler&#8217;s new movie &#8220;Pixels,&#8221; she set her sights on &#8220;Game Of Thrones&#8221; scene-stealer Peter Dinklage for the role of Eddie &#8220;The Fire Blaster&#8221; Plant.</p><p>But she was told repeatedly that he was unavailable thanks to his commitment to the HBO series and another movie. Knowing how perfect Dinklage would be for role of a mulleted geek serving time for credit card fraud, she did everything in her power to make it happen.</p><p>Pursuing Dinklage turned out to be a smart move on Parry&#8217;s part. According to early reports, Dinklage is one of the movie&#8217;s standouts.</p><p>As director Chris Columbus (&#8220;Home Alone&#8221;) told Entertainment Weekly, &#8220;Peter delivers a performance unlike anything you&#8217;ve ever seen.&#8221;</p><p>Says Parry, &#8220;Peter is a stud, and such a nice man and so much fun to work with&#8230;I&#8217;m so happy Peter is in &#8216;Pixels.&#8217; It&#8217;s those kind of battles which make you love the movie even more.&#8221;</p><p>A film which combines special effects with laughs, &#8220;Pixels&#8221; stars Dinklage, Sandler and Josh Gad as gamers who are called upon by the President of the U.S. (Kevin James) to save the world after aliens send &#8216;80s arcade-game characters like PAC-MAN, Centipede, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong to destroy the Earth.</p><p>The idea for &#8220;Pixels&#8221; began with a short film of the same name written and directed by France&#8217;s Patrick Jean. Happy Madison acquired the rights to the film and then hired scripters Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling to expand the short into a feature-length film. Chris Columbus (&#8220;Gremlins,&#8221; &#8220;Goonies,&#8221; &#8220;Harry Potter and the Sorcerer&#8217;s Stone&#8221;) was tapped to direct.</p><p>For Columbus, the movie felt like his very own greatest hits parade.</p><p>&#8220;I loved the blend of comedy mixed with action, which gave me an opportunity to do something I hadn&#8217;t been able to do since &#8216;Harry Potter,&#8217;&#8221; said the filmmaker. &#8220;It enabled me to push the comedy as far as we could, but also create this very intense action adventure film.</p><p>&#8220;For me, it&#8217;s &#8216;Gremlins&#8217; meets &#8216;Goonies&#8217; meets &#8216;Harry Potter.&#8221; It gave me the opportunity to create something really fresh using the tools I had gathered over the years. It would be an original summer movie that took you back to the &#8217;80s in an evocative, nostalgic way.&#8221;</p><p>Even though &#8220;Pixels&#8221; is guy-centric, Parry wanted to make sure there were some strong roles for women. The supporting cast include the First Lady (&#8220;30 Rock&#8217;s&#8221; Jane Krakowski), arcade figure Lady Lisa (&#8220;Pretty Little Liars&#8221; star Amber Benson); and a military commander (Michelle Monaghan) in charge of helping stamp out the invaders.</p><p>Over the course of the production, Parry worked closely with Benson to make sure her samurai-sword-wielding warrior was a total badass.</p><p>&#8220;Ashley had to learn how to wield this sword and she had fight training and she worked really hard on it,&#8221; Parry said. &#8220;So when we got to Toronto to shoot the movie, she had a battle with Josh Gad. And I don&#8217;t think Josh had practiced sword-fighting quite as much as she had.</p><p>&#8220;It made for a lot of comedy in rehearsal. But he got it.&#8221;</p><p>Parry convinced Sandler and Columbus to hire Monaghan for the role of Lt. Col. Violet Van Patten. The producer first met the actress at Soul Cycle, a Los Angeles gym known for its inventive spin classes.</p><p>&#8220;What impressed me about Michelle was that she was so nice to everyone at Soul Cycle,&#8221; Parry said. &#8220;She&#8217;d talk to everyone&#8230;And of course I also loved her in &#8216;Mission: Impossible&#8221; and &#8220;Kiss Kiss Bang Bang&#8221; too.</p><p>&#8220;So, as far as someone who&#8217;s strong and athletic, she kicks ass at Soul Cycle. And Sandler likes sets to have a family vibe, and the fact that she was lovely to everyone at the gym: let&#8217;s just say she has to thank Soul Cycle for being cast.&#8221;</p><p>Surprisingly, given the use of the PAC-MAN and Donkey Kong iconography in the movie, licensing wasn&#8217;t that big of an obstacle for the production.</p><p>&#8220;Sony dug in and did a lot of that work for us,&#8221; Parry said. &#8220;And Chris, to his credit, got on the phone with a lot of people and explained his vision&#8230; So it was pretty easy.&#8221;</p><p>What proved more challenging for the filmmakers was finding the right look for the videogame characters.</p><p>&#8220;Most visual effects movies &#8230; set out to create extraordinarily realistic visual effects,&#8221; Columbus said. &#8220;Even if you&#8217;re creating a dragon or a monster, you try to give it the texture and skin of a real creature.</p><p>&#8220;On &#8216;Pixels,&#8217; we were aiming for something you&#8217;ve never seen before. When these videogame characters come to life, they take on this pixelated form with an aura lit from within, and constantly moving. It&#8217;s literally a three-dimensional version of the 8-bit games you used to see on your arcade screen.&#8221;</p><p>Special effects coordinator Matthew Butler said the Centipede sequence was key to getting the right tone for the movie&#8217;s unique blend of action and comedy.</p><p>&#8220;These arcade characters are villains, so they had to be scary, but this is also a comedy so it had to be light,&#8221; he said. &#8220;For example, with Centipede, our first instinct was to make it a fear-inspiring creature, but under Chris&#8217; direction, we made him more comical.</p><p>&#8220;Then, through his actions, we understand how threatening he really is. Centipede interacts with the sheer mass of his body, causing chaos everywhere he goes. You don&#8217;t actually pixelate until he eats you.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">This photo provided by courtesy of Sony Pictures shows, Pac-Man trying to eat one of the &#8220;ghost&#8221; MINI Coopers in Columbia Pictures&#8217; &#8220;Pixels.&#8221; The movie opened in theaters on July 24. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_pixels2amy.jpg</photo0><caption0>This photo provided by courtesy of Sony Pictures shows, Pac-Man trying to eat one of the &#8220;ghost&#8221; MINI Coopers in Columbia Pictures&#8217; &#8220;Pixels.&#8221; The movie opened in theaters on July 24. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_pixels3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">This photo provided by courtesy of Sony Pictures shows, Peter Dinklage, from left, as Eddie, Ashley Benson as Lady Lisa, and Josh Gad as Ludlow, on the streets of Washington, D.C. in Columbia Pictures&#8217; &#8220;Pixels.&#8221; The movie opened in theaters on July 24. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_pixels3.jpg</photo1><caption1>This photo provided by courtesy of Sony Pictures shows, Peter Dinklage, from left, as Eddie, Ashley Benson as Lady Lisa, and Josh Gad as Ludlow, on the streets of Washington, D.C. in Columbia Pictures&#8217; &#8220;Pixels.&#8221; The movie opened in theaters on July 24. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_pixelsamy.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">This photo provided by courtesy of Sony Pictures shows, Matthew Lintz, left, as Matt, and Adam Sandler as Sam Brenner with Q*bert, in Columbia Pictures&#8217; &#8220;Pixels.&#8221; The movie opened in theaters on July 24. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_pixelsamy.jpg</photo2><caption2>This photo provided by courtesy of Sony Pictures shows, Matthew Lintz, left, as Matt, and Adam Sandler as Sam Brenner with Q*bert, in Columbia Pictures&#8217; &#8220;Pixels.&#8221; The movie opened in theaters on July 24. </caption2><photoCredit2></photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Amy Longsdorf | For Times Leader</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Amy Longsdorf is the Times Leader&#8217;s ticket into the Hollywood movie world. Her column, Vintage Videos, include reviews of DVDs with local ties. She also interviews stars of soon-to-be-released movies.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Pa native perfects ‘Pixels’