New Film Features Miami Dolphin Cheerleaders From 25 Years Ago...

Film Festival Fave Kissy Cousins Monster Babies will be featuring the Miami Dolphin Cheerleaders – From 25 Years ago…

Huh? You mean if I was a Miami Dolphin Cheerleader 25 Years ago I may see myself on the big screen? A time warp? A worm hole? How can this be possible?

Emmy Award-winning producers, Keeley and his long-time business partner, Craig Dobson of Darien wanted to shoot a horror film back in 1992. They raised enough money to make a movie, but it ultimately was not to be in the horror genre. Keeley had just finished reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and knew intuitively that it would someday be a blockbuster film. So he drafted a comedy about a pair of wacky producers and filled it with homages to countless other films. Jurassic-period dinosaurs were at the heart of the story. "We actually shot long before Jurassic Park was made into a movie. The actors kept saying, 'What is this Jurassic crap all about?' We were way ahead of our time!"

An off-chance remark in the production office gave the film its title – Kissy Cousins, Monster Babies and Morphing Elvis. And then it began. In 1992, the first scenes were shot with the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders in Florida. What was to be a relatively low-budget quickie, straight-to-video shoot became an epic film, with a spiraling budget. The main part of the film took two years to shoot and spanned seven states including the District of Columbia. The film starred David Belafonte, Steve Kearney, Jack Plotnick, Nipsey Russell, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Irwin Corey, Michael Medved, Jeffrey Lyons, Mike Memphis, Marty Putz, the Knicks City Dancers, and countless others.

The project is historic – wait did you say historic? Yes. Due to the amount of footage that was shot, at the time it was economically prohibitive to edit on film; therefore, it was one of the first independents that was shot on film, transferred to video, edited on video and then transferred back to film.

In 1994, Kissy Cousins premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and also won awards at Houston and Charleston Film Festivals. As a result of this early acclaim, it received an offer of a ten-city theatrical release including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Keeley was getting ready to buy himself a new Firebird with all of the expected royalties – that was until the film entered "distribution Hell." Creative differences arose about the marketing – the film ended up going through a total of three distributors, the last of which went out of business with the rights reverting back to the producers.

Kissy Cousins was relegated to storage where it sat for years, unseen, until earlier this year when Belafonte, in a casual reference, asked Keeley to put up the film on YouTube for legacy purposes. Keeley was adamant that slapping up an early 90s film without a context was not in anyone's best interest.

Enter Keeley's muse, and wife, Lyons-Keeley. In addition to having seven kids and five pets between them, she's also his creative partner, a writer, producer, professor, and owner of Someday Productions as well as owner of the couple's highly popular and successful entertainment blog, Pillow Talking. Together the pair sat down to write a short piece for so-called "wraparound" footage that would make the film socially and politically relevant to today. "What started as a quick five-minute piece has become a much longer opening and ending for the original film Kissy Cousins," Lyons-Keeley said. "We've created a monster (no pun intended)!

So what is the title now? The History of Everything, Circa 1993 to the Present, Formerly Known as Kissy Cousins, Monster Babies and Morphing Elvis. The producers will have to worry about how to fit that on the marquee down the road!

So far the film has garnered an amazing 115 Film Festival Laurels and Awards since April and the producers are looking for a theatrical release in 2019.

Outtakes from the film can be seen here…

Elvis is Everywhere

Do The Jurassic

Sneak Preview Review

FOR MORE INFO: info@somedayprods.com