Dr. Ronald Chevalier on the Art of Inspiring Oneself
I am definitively not a Napoleon Dynamite fan. And actually, I’m not terribly looking forward to director Jared Hess’ next film, Gentlemen Broncos, even after watching the trailer. But I can tell you that I do love the film’s central conceit of Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement as famed science fiction author Ronald Chevalier, who steals the protagonist’s novel in the film and pass it off as his own… although I’d much rather just see a movie about Chevalier and his ridiculous books. The film has been making a slew of Chevalier videos as viral marketing for the film, and they’re so much funnier to me — although anyone who takes sci-fi and fantasy books too seriously crackes me up generally. Head over to /Film for another Chevalier vid, and if you watch the trailer, let me know if you agree.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.