Action hero

Sean Mick’s office is the kind of nerd lair that most geeks dream about. The walls are lined with DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and CDs. There are shelves and shelves of movie memorabilia, including action figures, lunchboxes and games. There’s Batman, Yoda and the Beatles. There’s an entire case of Game of Thrones toys. A poster for The Wild Bunch towers over his desk. Bruce Lee appears again and again in various sizes of plastic and an innumerable poses in pictures and posters on the walls.

“I’ve always been a movie geek since I was a kid,” Mick said during a recent interview at the Carson City home where he lives with his wife and two kids. He’s the warehouse manager of a furniture store, and he also runs a small eBay business selling movie memorabilia, comic books, antiques and other collectibles—the stuff he collects.

Growing up in California during the ’60s and ’70s, his father used to take the family to the drive-in movie theaters. And there they saw everything—Westerns, action flicks, comedies and more.

“We were at the drive-in probably every week, seeing everything,” Mick said. “I saw The Godfather when I was 12—first run in the theater. I saw The Exorcist when I was 13 … first run in the theater.”

He caught the movie bug. He and friends from the neighborhood shot kung fu, zombie and science fiction movies with a Super 8 camera. He studied film at Sonoma State University near where he grew up. He wanted to be a movie director.

And then: “I got inspired to start writing by—of all people—Sylvester Stallone.”

Around ’79 or ’80, he read an interview with post-Rocky, pre-Rambo Stallone, who launched his career as an actor and director by attaching himself to the excellent Rocky screenplay, which he wrote.

“Back then, I was kind of disparaging—well, shit, if Stallone can do it, as a writer—then I can do it,” Mick said. “Now, I have a whole different perspective on Stallone. He did go to school. He’s a reader. He’s a lot smarter than people give him credit for.”

Mick began reading and writing screenplays, reading books on the subject, and attending writing seminars. And now, this week, after 30 years of concentrated effort and dozens of scripts, he’s doing something he’s never done before: He’s flying to Los Angeles to attend the big screen premiere of a movie he wrote.

That movie is called Silencer. It’s an action flick produced by the indie company Status Media & Entertainment and director Timothy Wood, Jr., who also helmed the recent Western Hickok, with Luke Hemsworth and Kris Kristofferson, and some other well-crafted recent B movies.

Silencer stars Johnny Messner as a retired assassin who gets sucked back into a criminal adventure. The supporting cast includes MMA stars Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. The prolific Danny Trejo plays the movie’s villain. Mick says this screenplay, which he started decades ago and has revised dozens of times, taps into the universal themes of a good adventure story

“A good adventure—it’s in our DNA,” he said. “When I first wrote this script—all the hitman movies you’ve seen in the last 25 years? I was there first. I’m telling you. The hero with the cool retro car, like John Wick? Yeah. I was there first. That’s the only thing I’ll brag about. And I have the script drafts to prove it.”

The movie is payoff for decades of frustration.

“You’d think the door was going to open, and then it wouldn’t,” Mick said. “This, I thought was going to get made with two different actors at two different times.”

But he stuck with it because of his devotion to movies and love for writing.

Silencer will be available on-demand through streaming services on Sept. 4 and on disc later in the month.