When Kevin Asch was growing up in the Village of Kings Point, the 1993 Great Neck North High School graduate said he can vividly remember dreaming of being an “entertainer/architect.”
Since then, Asch – who celebrated his 37th birthday on Wednesday – has certainly found a way to meld his boyhood aspirations into a professional career.
After receiving critical acclaim for his first full-length feature film “Holly Rollers” in 2010, Asch wrapped a 20-day shooting schedule on his second feature film “Affluenza” last month.
“I knew I wanted to do this since I was a child,” Asch said in an exclusive interview with Blank Slate Media. “When kids wanted to be an astronaut or something, I wanted to be a film director.”
And by utilizing several shooting locations around Great Neck for “Affluenza,” Asch said he also made another long held dream come true.
“Affluenza” is set in Great Neck during the final weeks of the summer leading up to the “financial meltdown of 2008,” said the film’s producer Morris S. Levy, who also is a Kings Point native.
The movie is inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby,” which was supposedly set in Great Neck.
“This is a story that I’ve always wanted to tell, probably since I was 17 and a senior in high school after I read ‘The Great Gatsby’ and living in Great Neck and living with my own angst,” Asch said.
Filming on “Affluenza” began earlier this summer at sites across Long Island and New York City.
Crews started filming in Great Neck in three locations in the Village of Great Neck Plaza on Aug. 2.
The Great Neck Plaza shoot began with a scene inside Jewelry Paradise at 38 Middle Neck Road. Crews later moved to film at locations near the Long Island Rail Road’s North Station Plaza and on the bridge near the train depot on Barstow Road.
Asch shot the final Great Neck scenes of “Affluenza” at the Great Neck Park District’s Steppingstone Park in Kings Point.
Although Asch said he would have liked to shoot more of the movie in Great Neck, the scenes shot on location in his hometown did turn out well.
“It’s a trip,” the director said of filming in Great Neck. “My past is kind of like an old great movie to me and Great Neck has just stories at every corner for me. It feels good. It feels right.”
After graduating from high school, Asch attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan where he eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in film directing.
Asch then worked for five years at the New York City-based independent film studio, The Shooting Gallery, the director’s profile in imdb.com said.
During his tenure at The Shooting Gallery, Asch assisted in producing and distributing more than 30 films before moving on to oversee the brand entertainment division of Platinum Rye Entertainment, the imdb.com profile said.
“I get so giddy over every little thing,” Asch said of working in the film industry.
Although Asch was a producer on the independent film “Point&Shoot,” which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2004, he made his directorial debut with a 2005 short film called “Characters.”
Five years later, Asch found his first bit of critical acclaim as a director with “Holy Rollers.”
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, who portrayed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the 2010 film “The Social Network,” “Holy Rollers” follows the exploits of an Orthodox Jewish teenager who is lured by his friend into selling the drug Ecstasy for an Israeli drug cartel.
Actor Justin Bartha, who starred as Doug in the blockbuster comedies “The Hangover” and “The Hangover Part II,” also played a prominent role in “Holly Rollers.”
“Holly Rollers” was featured at the Sundance Film Festival, the Gotham Awards and the Deauville Film Festival.
The film was nominated for a “Grand Jury Prize” at Sundance and Asch won the “Breakthrough Director Award” at the Gotham Awards and the “Revelations Prize” at the Deauville Film Festival.
Asch said he expects more of the same kind of success for “Affluenza,” which he said could be ready for entrance into the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
“I hope it has more,” Asch said. “I shoot for the sky. I think (‘Affluenza’) has a lot more commercial potential. It’s about a lot more things and potentially is more relatable to a lot more people.”
“They are really different movies,” the director added. “It’s kind of hard to compare one to the other, but I’m feeling really good about it.”
“Affluenza” features “Police Academy” star Steve Guttenberg, along with Gregg Sulkin, Grant Gustin, Ben Rosenfield, Nicola Peltz and Samantha Mathis.
Sulkin previously starred in the Disney Channel television show “Wizards of Waverly Place,” while Gustin was featured prominently in the Fox hit “Glee.”
“I can’t help not to beliee that Steve set a precedent for these young actors with his openness,” Asch said. “He’s just such a kind individual and fun to be around. He just went for it in a way that they were just all blown away by.”
And there’s one other character, which Asch said, shines in “Affluenza.”
“To me Great Neck is a character in this story, the others places aren’t really characters,” the director said. “Great Neck always felt like the centerpiece of the North Shore of Long Island to me.”
Although Asch now resides in Manhattan, he said Great Neck will always hold fond memories for him.
“It’s the closest suburb to the city,” Asch said. “There was always things happening in that community that effected the whole of the Gold Coast.”
