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Tony Tilton

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Anthony Tilton

Anthony Tilton (b. February 16, 1964), usually known as Tony Tilton, is a Fargo-based writer, producer, director, and editor. He is currently the morning director at KVLY in Fargo. Tilton graduated from Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Tilton created the feature-length movie Hollywood Nocturne, which made its public debut in 1999 at a Fargo Theatre screening. Tilton continued to revise the movie, and a final cut was shown in 2003, winning the Best Feature Film 2nd Venue Audience Award at the Fargo Film Festival.

His movies are usually made under the FifthWay Productions banner. Tony has served on the Fargo Film Festival Committee since its inception in 2001.

Tilton has made movies since the age of eight, when he took all his model kits and blew them up with firecrackers and gasoline while recording it on Super-8mm film. His parents, John Tilton and Shirley Tilton, were former professional actors and directors on Broadway and who toured the country and decided to settle down in the Midwest to raise a family. His father went into the somewhat more stable realm of Television and Radio, winding up at WDAY-TV and also to moonlight as the first resident director of the Fargo-Moorhead Community Theater. His mother also started the Children’s Theater program at FMCT and they both worked for FM Civic Opera and assorted local groups, notably the Northwest Stage Company. Through his parents, Tony appeared on stage and in many television and radio commercials.

Tony made several movies during his school years, getting jobs as a Fargo Forum newspaper carrier as well as others to supplement his expensive hobby. His parents weren’t too encouraging, knowing firsthand the travails of people in the arts (especially in the 1970s) but they left him alone, provided the house didn’t catch fire. Tony combined his love of moviemaking with scholarship and went on to read nearly the entire Minnesota State University Moorhead library collection of moviemaking books as well as books on science fiction and horror/fantasy films and his favorite stars: Errol Flynn and Sean Connery.

Tilton began to work at the Fargo Theatre at the age of 15 and utilized his technical skills to enhance Silent Movie Night and other special events. This brought the interest of Ted Larson, Lance Johnson and David Knudtson, who were more than happy to have someone of professional skill at their beck and call but who couldn’t qualify for an adult’s wages. Tilton went to work for KTHI-TV at the age of seventeen and was soon an audio engineer, studio manager and weekend director.

Tony’s first long-form film was The Adventures of Ian Delevan, a swashbuckler in the Errol Flynn style, but with Conan the Barbarian overtones. This was for good reason as the film was originally going to be a Conan film until word about the impending Arnold Schwarzenegger film came out. The film, shot and edited on Super-8mm, runs just over an hour and was completed before Tony made the decision to join the Navy. He received a letter of commendation for his service as a SEAL, along with his honorable discharge.

Tony returned to KTHI and polished up Delevan, also making a parody documentary titled The Making of the Adventures of Ian Delevan for everyone who worked on it. Tony teamed up with Sean Moyer to create a series of films that still reverberate in the annals and stomachs of their friends, as well as the basement of the Fargo Theatre (a mainstay of settings for almost every Tilton film).


The Invasion of the Sock Puppet Aliens, Rex Havoc and the Asskickers of the Fantastic, The Mound of the Hound of the Bastardbilles, The Bridge over the River Red, The Most Idiotic Game and dozens of shorter films were all in the parody/satire mold and usually featured fights, chases, rude humor and the same company of actors. Tony’s films began to mature with the Sean Moyer-written satire Nick Fusion, which Tony co-directed and edited.

Tony decided to finally go to college after Nick Fusion was completed and enrolled at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where professor Ted Larson quickly utilized him as an extra assistant and expert in class, with Tony’s prodding. Tony’s moviemaking classes served to force him to produce several more films. His typical overdoing it/can-do attitude is apparent with this example from his final project for Beginning Filmmaking. The project was to be 7 minutes long with some music synchronized to the image. Tony and Sean flew to England during Spring Break to shoot sequences for his film: a 30 minute long James Bond parody, in stereo, titled Never Die Twice. Cubby Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond films, liked it enough to write back to Tony and commend him on the dead-on parody, while mildly warning him about distributing it.

Sean Moyer was working at Prairie Public Television at this time and the management there became interested in showing Nick Fusion. It was met with excellent responses and so the idea was floated to feature local moviemakers and their works on an annual show titled Prairie Filmmakers. Never Die Twice was next shown and subsequently Tony and Sean produced several more films which ran as the highlighted films on Prairie Filmmakers, such as Province of Twilight (their vampire/horror film with a science fiction twist) and The Machismo Channel, which was a compilation of several of the earlier comedy and action films in the guise of a cable channel for “Men Who Like Action”.

Tony was finishing his stint at Minnesota State University Moorhead and decided the time had come to be ambitious and produce a feature film. He decided to shoot on 16 millimeter using the college’s film gear long ago donated by WDAY when they converted to videotape. The film, Rough Draft, was shot with many travails and a great cost, almost $15,000, but the shooting was completed and awaits editing. The lack of sound on the cameras dictated a tedious re-dubbing of every sound in the film and this process has prevented the film from being completed. Tony is in the process of completing Rough Draft and other movies. In the meantime, Tony and Sean decided to make another short film to be used as a resume piece. They decided to be ambitious and shoot in widescreen but on video. The movie was to be a futuristic espionage story somewhere between “Blade Runner combined with James Bond”. Moreover, they decided to have it debut on the latest installment of Prairie Filmmakers - at that time due to air in less than four weeks. The movie combined computer animation from the same software used by shows such as Star Trek and Babylon 5 and was to be the most sophisticated film technically that they had yet made. The movie, Close Orbits, made the air date with two hours to spare and was a huge success.

It was at this point that Sean headed off for Boston and a lucrative career in computer animation. Tony decided to take Close Orbits and expand it to feature length. The idea was to produce a huge Hollywood-style movie with as much of the technical look that they could achieve while having an entertaining film. It uses the first part of Close Orbits that Tony and Sean produced as the opening 20 minutes of the film and balloons to James Bond-epic proportions. The film wrapped up shooting in England, Germany and New York City while the complex animation and miniature special effects are in the process of being completed.

It was at this point that Tony shot Hollywood Nocturne, a private eye film-noir styled thriller based on true life events. It was shot digitally for possible later film transfer. The final director's cut version was completed and screened at the Fargo Film Festival and won Best Feature Film at the 2nd Venue and has screened at several other film festivals.

Tony is now working on catching up and completing Rough Draft and Close Orbits and is presently writing five screenplays based on various materials after meeting with several film studios who expressed much interest in his projects. He is also preparing to shoot a feature film in the Fargo area in late winter/early spring of 2008. He still has to make a living in the meantime so he continues to work for KVLY-TV as a Director in the mornings and a Sales Executive in the afternoons. He is also an event producer for the 33-year old ValleyCon, a fantasy/science fiction themed area entertainment expo and the Twin Cities Entertainment Expo, planned for June 2008.

Tilton has just announced the production of his latest feature, a new version of Province of Twilight (2008), which is being positioned for commercial distribution.

Contents

[edit] Filmography

[edit] As Director

[edit] As Actor

[edit] As Writer

[edit] As Editor

[edit] Other Information

[edit] Photo Gallery

Tony Tilton

[edit] External Links

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