Vincent J. Roth, Director of Surge of Power: Where There’s Smoke Interview

Vincent J. Roth has been writing, producing and starring in the Surge of Power movie series for 20 years. He plays the titular superhero, Surge. To celebrate two decades of Surge on screen, Roth is currently touring the country. Roth can be found at exclusive screenings at conventions and film festivals. He’s celebrating the third full-length feature film in the franchise, Surge of Power: Where’s There’s Smoke. We sat down with Roth to get the super-powered stories behind his latest film. 

Adam Pope: I spoke to you a while back. You had done Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel and now here we are again. You are on a tri-city tour doing screenings of Surge of Power: Where There’s Smoke. How’s that going so far?

Vincent J. Roth: Amazing. We had our world premiere at Tarzana International Film Festival in August, which happened to be 20 years to the weekend of the world premiere of the very first Surge of Power film. So that’s how we kicked off, then we’ve been playing at film festivals and comic conventions. This Friday (November 29th), we have a sci-fi convention that played the first movie 20 years ago.

Building the Surge of Power Universe

Adam Pope: How does that feel? You have this franchise that you’ve been building up with this universe of characters with very familiar faces? How has that been for you to shepherd this project all these decades?

Vincent J. Roth: I’m loving it. I’m really glad with where things are. It’s very nice for those actors who come back and are playing recurring roles. With Revenge of the Sequel you saw that we were starting to to build out the Surge of Power universe. The first movie was the origin story, so it was a smaller group. From Revenge of the Sequel, we then further built out the universe.

We did a short film, our Doctor Who tribute, which had a whole bunch of Doctor Who actors, but it was still linked to the Surge of Power universe. A few of the actors came back for little cameos to link it to the larger Surge of Power storyline. 

Then there was Surge of Dawn, which was crossover between the Surge of Power world and a colleague of mine out of New York, Alex Fernandez, who has a number of his own projects web, mostly web series and short films with this magical vampire named Dawn. He’s had a couple of web series and comic books. We called that Surge of Dawn. And Where There’s Smoke is the latest feature and it is where a full team is coming together. As you mentioned, a number of returning characters. 

A Growing Cast of Characters

Nichelle Nichols has been playing a character named Omen in our movies for 20 years now and even though her health was failing, we were very fortunate to shoot with her before she passed away, and we have enough footage of Nichelle that she’ll actually be in one more adventure after this. This movie actually has a really nice tribute for Nichelle. She’s in every Surge of Power movie.

In our sequel, we introduced a few characters. Michael Gray, who’s from the Shazam TV show, he played Billy Batson. In our movie he starts off as looking like a mild-mannered reporter, but over time is revealed to be friends with Omen and he shows superpowers for the first time Where There’s Smoke. In the next movie, he actually gets a costume. His costume is being worked on now.

Adam Pope: There are so many Star Trek cast members. You have Robert Picardo and Tim Russ. You have these people that you’re like, “Oh, wow”.

Vincent J. Roth:  I’m glad you’re “Oh Wowing” it. So Robert Picardo came in during the sequel to share the Omen role with Nichelle. Because of her health, it was just too difficult to try and get her to downtown LA and out on the streets and fighting. So he’s kind of the more action Omen. One of her abilities that she reveals is shape-shifting. So it was easy to have another actor, step in. It’s kind of a convenient technique, too.

Expanding the Cast and Crossovers

Adam Pope: You have these returning characters, as this team is coming together. You also have a new crossover into the universe, which is the The Smoke played by Eric Moran. That was exciting for me because I go to RetroCon every year in Oaks, PA. It’s a great event and Eric is always there doing the cosplay contest. His outfits are out of this world amazing. So when I saw that he was going to be a part of this, I became doubly excited. How did you get together and have him become a part of the Surge of Power universe?

Vincent J. Roth: I met him when Revenge of the Sequel was playing. We did East Coast and West Coast premieres the same weekend. So we premiered at Burbank International Film Festival on the West coast and then the next day, I flew to the East coast and a small sci-fi convention in Florida.

Eric had gone down for that, and some colleagues had introduced him to me, and I had heard about his character The Smoke. We had talked ahead of time because I was looking for other independent characters to come and cross over. So he actually has a short, little 10 second cameo at the end of Revenge of the Sequel.  I met him for the first time when I went to this Florida comic convention and over time as we were playing Revenge of the Sequel and working on Surge of Dawn, I talked with him about his character, The Smoke.

From his professional wrestling days, he went by the moniker The Smoke, but he kept that and in the sci-fi realm, colleagues of his made him a comic book character called The Smoke that had a couple of different incarnations. We kind of settled in on this gun-toting vigilante, a Punisher kind of character, but also has the ability to turn into gas, hence, The Smoke. I talked with him about him crossing over, so Where There’s Smoke is, essentially us continuing to build our indie hero-verse, and just linking up our world with other independent creator worlds, just to make a bigger universe. 

This was really exciting for Eric, because he’s been in comic book form, but this is his first time stepping out in live action as his character. When he finished up with wrestling, he went into acting. So he’s been acting, but this is his first time stepping out in live action as this incarnation of his The Smoke character.

The Effects Get Better Every Time

Adam Pope: Another thing always amazes me with these films? In each installment, the special effects get better. I remember being wowed in revenge of the Sequel when the car transforms and you have a robot character. I saw in the trailer for Where’s There’s Smoke that the robot character is coming back as well. So how do you feel about that? The evolution and that ability to what you could do now with special effects all these years later?

Vincent J. Roth: After 20 years it’s quite a change. The first movie was shot 35 millimeter film, Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes, and the visual effects were limited. They were very nice for that time, but used very judiciously. So Surge doesn’t blast a lot and doesn’t fly a lot, but enough so that people can see the powers in action. But it was a big process because it was shot on film. So then there’s a reprocessing of the film negative multiple times to get the visual effects cut into the film. 

By the time we got to Revenge of the Sequel, it was all digital, so we’ve been digital ever since. That was really pushed by George Lucas, right? The Prequel trilogy of Star Wars really kind of forced the industry to all go digital. But we’ve had some visual effects designers with us since Revenge of the Sequel. Some of them have been with us close to 15 years now, and their skills have evolved over the years. So not only have techniques and software developed, but getting the same visual effects done is cheaper these days and their skills, their design work has gotten better and better.

Related: Discuss Surge of Power and Where There’s Smoke on our Film Forum.

Representation and Legacy with Surge of Power

Adam Pope: So, I have one more question. When Surge of Power is first coming out, the character’s promoted as “The first out gay superhero”. That was a part of the appeal. Is that as big a part of the character now? Or is it more just established to where you don’t have to have that label on it?

Vincent J. Roth: When I did the first film, comedy was one thing that I wanted to do. Kind of bring back comedy to the superhero genre, and then Marvel comes along with Deadpool, and several years later, DC comes along with the Shazam! movies, trying to get into the action, but at least I’m still running with “cinema’s first out gay superhero”, so no one can beat me on that. 

That was something that I felt was lacking and I wanted that representation, but it’s not like the central theme of the character or the movies. It’s there and it’s part of the character and I do try and do things that show that I’m honoring the representation, but it’s not what the movie is about. So it’s not a movie about a gay superhero, it’s a movie about superheroes, and one character happens to be gay. It’s not that in your face about it, but just kind of there and is open about it.

Adam Pope: So it’s a superhero adventure, and that’s just an element of it that exists. Now you’re teasing us that there’s going to be a fourth full length film. How is that shaping up?

Vincent J. Roth: So the next adventure will be kind of like our “Surge: End Game”. With Where There’s Smoke we’ve been building on themes and building out our universe and bringing these characters together to the point where we get to a whole team. We started to learn about the villains in Revenge of the Sequel, that there’s this whole community of villains. We’ve developed that with Surge of Dawn and Where There’s Smoke, that there’s something bigger going on and that needs to be dealt with.

Looking Ahead: Call of the Champions

It’s like when you watch web series these days. There might be a 10 episode arc and each episode has its own story, but there’s an overarching theme that they’re that they have to wrap up by the end. So that’s where I’m headed with the next adventure. Surge of Dawn, you can think of as Act One, and Where There’s Smoke is Act Two, as it picks up immediately after Surge of Dawn, just hours later. The next adventure will play like its own movie, but it’s really going to be meant to connect and wrap around Surge of Dawn and Where There’s Smoke to be one larger feature film called Call of the Champions.

Adam Pope: OK, so big things on the horizon. Where can people see the film?

Vincent J. Roth: We’re still working on film festival screenings for Where There’s Smoke and we’ve been winning a lot of awards too. In fact, another award just came in today, so I’ve got five awards now so far for the movie, one of them being Best Visual Effects. So I’m eally excited about that. So we’re going to continue screening the film, so if folks don’t make it to these next two upcoming screenings they can just pay attention to our website at surgeofpower.org and as we get new screenings for Where There’s Smoke, we’ll be putting them up on our website.

Next: Discuss Surge of Power and Where There’s Smoke on our Film Forum.