Your Story podcast interview March 2009

Your Story Ep 32: Andrew Leavold, Trash Video, Film Making and Filipino Search for Weng Weng

CLICK HERE for the Podcast interview with Ian Kath, March 2009

Today we talk with Andrew Leavold who has an alternative video store with nearly 20,000 tapes and DVD’s supplying all the odd, eccentric Andrew and Trash Video and obscure videos that have ever existed in all the genres imaginable.

Trash Video is the video version of the dusty old High Street Bookstore full of the old weird curios of the odd and eccentric that only the most passionate of owners can organise and know each of the individual items in the store. The vast majority of which aren’t available through the standard video stores.

The advantage Andrew feels he has over the internet downloads is due to the fact that most of what is available in Trash Video isn’t available on the internet and so he feels that he is insulated in ways that the major video stores are not.

Andrew takes us through the journey of his childhood in Oman watching bootleg videos and creating fake satanic rituals as a six year old to the development of an alternative view on film from other children. He then moves us to Australia where his now restricted access to videos caused him to start collecting the substance of his interests for himself that eventually evolves into Trash Video.

Trash Video is now an important part of the support for Andrews’ other passion into discovering more about the Filipino film industry particularly in the worlds shortest leading man “Weng Weng”.

Weng Weng was a black belt in Karate who was discovered and played in Filipino James Bond spoof films. The bizarre thing with Weng Weng is that he is 2′9″ (84cm)tall and for a time was incredibly popular in the Philippines including within the Marcos family. Andrews’ story of searching for Weng Weng is not only a story of a flash in the pan novelty Weng Weng but also a story of his own obsession for the discovery of this person and the amazing coincidences and famous people that he has meet because of this journey.

Now Andrew has funding for the completion of the documentary film that has been started and can look forward to returning to the Philippines to tie all the story line together for release for all of us to see. Hopefully sometime in 2010.

This is a story of someone having a dream with no comprehension of how to do it and being able to manage to pull it off.