Tuesday, November 11, 2008

MacGruber loves him some Wilmington

Will Forte, of "MacGruber" fame on "SNL," recently shot a movie in the Port City. And he then lauded the city's praises on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."

Forte "made an ecstatic face, proclaimed Wilmington a 'beautiful' and 'wonderful' place and said he was at a loss for to words to describe how much he enjoyed his time here," writes the Star-News.

Forte worked in Wilmington on "A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy." He described the movie and then began to praise Wilmington.

Forte also talked about an obsession with the video game "Donkey Kong" that blossomed in Wilmington. He said he had several days of downtime during shooting when he would frequent a bar (he didn't mention it by name, but it's downtown hot spot The Blue Post) early in the afternoon while few people were there to brush up on his "Donkey Kong" skills for hours at a time. The arcade-style game was introduced in the 1980s and retains a cult popularity, epitomized in the 2007 documentary "King of Kong," about two men vying for the highest "Donkey Kong" score of all time.

The story played out on a smaller scale here in Wilmington, and it became his mission in life, Forte said, to knock the initials "LMK" out of the high score rankings, which he eventually did with his own, "WIL." Forte praised as a "really nice guy" the University of North Carolina Wilmington professor whose initials he replaced.

"He got my initials wrong," said Jim Kreul, the UNCW professor in question, whose initials are actually JLK. "That's understandable, though. At least he was in the ballpark."

1 comment:

Kevin Brewer said...

I saw this episode last week. It was cool, and Wilmington is cool.