Filmmaker finds success in Hollywood

Zach Block credits his bike with giving him his start in Hollywood.

The Kalispell native, now 26, had reached a crossroads. He had traveled the world working for a satellite communications company but was ready for a new challenge.

"I wanted to do something bigger than I was doing," Block said during a recent phone interview from North Hollywood, Calif. "I could either go to New York and wear a suit and tie and make a lot of money, or I could go to Los Angeles, wear shorts and sandals, learn how to surf and make movies."

He chose the latter and hadn't been in sunny California long before landing work as a motorcycle stuntman.

"I just had a really nice motorcycle," Block said.

His first gigs were music videos, in which his stunts primarily involved riding across a parking lot with a girl on his bike, "looking cool." Those jobs led to offers to do a couple of low-budget independent movies. Rather than hiring a separate actor, directors told Block to ride his motorcycle, then get off and say a few lines.

"I kind of got into acting that way," he said.

BLOCK SAID he was never interested in acting or drama while growing up in the Flathead Valley.

"I never really felt like that was who I was or who I wanted to be," he said.

When he graduated from Flathead High in 2003, he headed to Mitchell Technical Institute in South Dakota, where he earned a degree in satellite communications. He worked in that field for about three and a half years and had an opportunity to travel the globe.

"One of my first jobs was in Long Beach," Block said. "I really liked the Southern California vibe. I wanted to come back and learn how to surf. I think there's some part of everybody that wants to be a California kid and grow their hair long and swim in the ocean."

That desire helped Block decide to head for Hollywood, not New York, to pursue a new career. And thanks to his motorcycle, a BMW R1200C, Block quickly landed on-screen jobs that soon turned into acting gigs.

Those jobs ground to a halt in 2007, when the Writers Guild of America went on strike.

"That stopped at least 60 percent of the work and pushed all the unknown actors out of business," Block said. "I sat for five weeks not doing much."

But inactivity didn't suit him, and soon he and a friend decided to go into filmmaking.

"The movies I'd worked in started coming out" around that time, Block said. "I was surprised - either the production value was lacking, or the production value was there and the story was lacking. Something was missing.

"I wasn't very happy with the work. I said, ‘I think I could do this better on both fronts,'" he said.

SO BLOCK and some friends, under the company Kavadba Entertainment, started making movies. Their first short film, "Bucovina Card Game," came out in 2009.

Their second film, "One Man's Goal," won some awards and gave Kavadba some attention, Block said. They tackled their first feature-length film, "Fathoms Deep," shortly after.

"Fathoms Deep" was written with the company's available equipment and budget in mind, he said.

"We didn't have a super big budget. It's not like we were doing a sci-fi or a fantasy movie," he said. "We said, ‘What can we get done with what we have?' And we came up with the idea for ‘Fathoms Deep.'"

The movie, which Block wrote, directed and acted in, tells the story of two package runners for the mob who botch a job and end up on the run in the Mojave Desert. Despite the somewhat limited budget, the movie was ambitious - particularly for a first feature-length film, Block said.

"Everybody says for your first film, you do a horror movie. You have five people in one location and you kill them off one at a time," he said.

In contrast, "Fathoms Deep" features 20 actors and was filmed in 13 locations. The movie includes a car crash, gunshots and an underwater shot.

"We wanted to push the shot and make a movie that's different from what everybody else is doing, to say, ‘We're here. We're serious,'" Block said.

"IT WAS A WAY to set us apart from other filmmakers, to do these things in the same range, with the same budget" as a horror movie.

"Fathoms Deep" was released Oct. 13. Kavadba now is trying to sell the movie to distribution and home entertainment companies.

Block's company is also in post-production on "Disorientation," a college comedy, and is in development on an extreme sports movie. Eventually, he said, he would like to take his movie-making skills back home to Montana.

"I would even play with the idea of having a studio up there in the next 10 years, a production studio in Montana and for Montana films," he said. "If it's in the cards or not, I'm not quite sure."

Block plans to return to Kalispell for a short time next month, when he hopes to screen "Fathoms Deep" in his hometown. His parents, Bryan and Terri, still live in Kalispell.

His long-term goal is to set up a production company here, he said.

"It's getting more and more feasible to do that as technology improves," he said. "If I had my own way, I'd be right in Kalispell."

For more information, visit fathomsdeepmovie.com.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by email at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.