Travis Ammons

As a young artist living on borrowed couches and fickle whimsy, Travis Ammons often found when he couldn't find a gig quick enough to suit his hyper-active and defiantly deficient at attention attaining mind, he'd stage stories from scratch. He wrote and produced several plays and musicals all over the city in the early to mid-nineties including the standout one-man-show staged at Diverse Works (when he was merely 19) titled, SEX: The Interpretation Forced upon Your Youth. Probably his most memorable piece, if not that, that surely his most newsworthy was The Point. Staged in 1994, the play in revolved around a recovering heroin addict who comes to believe he is the second coming. Boldly mounted in a downtown art gallery, The Point was shut down after only two performances. The owners and representatives of the so-called "cutting edge" gallery said the play couldn't continue with the rest of its run as it was blasphemous and it had offended some of the investors as well as most of the owners of the gallery. Undeterred, Ammons' quickly wrote and staged a sci-fi version of The Beauty and the Beast. He continued to write and produce several plays (while usually directing and/or acting in them as well) over the next few years until in 1999, he eventually opened his own theatre to help local playwrights have a quality venue to stage and workshop original works. It was on that very stage in the summer of 2000 that Ammons’ slightly slutty romantic comedy mega-hit, Manhood is Dead, which Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee quoted as “very funny,” premiered and was uproariously received by both critics and audiences alike. Ammons was commissioned to turn the laugh riot of a play into a film, thus turning him virtually overnight from an actor/playwright into a rookie filmmaker. With over fifty actor credits on his resume (substantial film credits include: Everything or Nothing [directed by Gary Chason], Gutter Ball [directed by Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley] and the award winning horror film, Drain U, [recently featured on Rob Zombie’s website], Travis was already well-known all over Texas as a upcoming if not established actor. Graduating to writer/director in the film medium was the next step in the natural progression of this multi-faceted artist. Currently Mr. Ammons has written, directed and starred in six films. After Manhood is Dead was in the can, Mr. Ammons penned his second film script and digitally shot it on a miniscule budget in Austin. Borrowing equipment, using friends as the cast and writing the script around locations he knew he could use for free, the film was finished in 2006. It was just impressive enough to earn him a two picture deal. So in 2007 Ammons wrote and shot his next two films, Unseen, a horror film about jilted lovers with rage issues set in the woods during a rave, and The Cutting Room. The latter film was a dark comedy about the absurdities of low-budget film-making which took placement at several festivals in Texas and surrounding states. Lead actor Tom Long walked home with the best actor award at the San Antonio Horrific Film Fest III. Ammons had earned himself his first laurel wreath. In 2009 both The Long Grift & The Great American Moon Rock were shot. In 2010, The Long Grift with the intriguing tagline "Bullets Fly When Grifters Lie” premiered to rave reviews and was an Official Selection at the 2010 Barnes & Noble’s Oscar Wilde Film Fest. The Long Grift, was quickly overshadowed by Ammons' next piece, however. The Great American Moon Rock Caper (Ammons' first 5 figure film) was loosely based on the headline grabbing true story of the three NASA interns, barely old enough to vote, who stole a safe with over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of "priceless" moon rocks and attempted to sell them over the internet only to be busted by the FBI. CNN film critic, Nick Nicholson called the film "Side-Splittingly Funny" and Cleveland Indie Movie Examiner's Kenneth Carpenter wrote in his review, "I am building great respect for the writer/director Travis Ammons...his new film turned out to be a lot of unique fun and I was truly surprised by the ending." The Houston Film Critics Society voted The Great American Moon Rock Caper as one of the Top 5 Independent Films Shot in Texas in 2011. What everyone is really excited about however is what is right around the corner for Mr. & Mrs. Ammons (that’s right, he got married! Did you hear??) Travis & Katrina Ammons and everyone at Tick Tick Bang Productions, now a subsidiary of Flock of Films, is prouder than ever to present the latest film from Travis Ammons, the writer and director of The Cutting Room, Manhood is Dead and The Great American Moon Rock Caper: SUCIDE NOTES!!! An extra special thanks and props to producers Marlene Sarres, Wes Linnenbank, Michael Muscal Tedd Dicus & of course the lovely and addictive Katrina Ellsworth, without whose collective help none of us would be able to be the new comedy from: Suicide Notes, which stars Sopranos regular Lou Martini, Jr., Sue Rock and country legend Sammy Kershaw, is a dark comedy (but far from bleak.) We've all heard of movies within movies (The Cutting Room did this concept to a tee earlier in Ammons' career) but this is the first ever play within a movie. The raucous and surprisingly funny comedy is about a playwright who writes a play in which the lead actor commits suicide. Naked director Don Paulson and his money hungry producer, Marla French, produce the play by casting three "suicidal" actors who are going to legitimately pull the trigger(s) on themselves at the final curtain. This timely and modern script manages to push all the right buttons on the chaos that is reality TV and the hell that it is blindly careening us towards as we all were as immortal as Hollywood herself. Trailers and purchasing options for all of Mr. Ammons work can be found at www.ticktickbang.info or www.youtube.com/ticktickbang. The Great American Moon Rock Caper premiered to a sold-out crowd at the historic River Oaks Three theatre in June of 2011. Suicide Notes is complete as of April of 2012. For more info visit www.ticktickbang.info