I’ve been looking forward to seeing footage from Gentleman Broncos by Jared Hess, and a trailer is now online at Apple. The film follows a high school kid (Sky High’s Michael Angarano) who goes to a fantasy / sci-fi writer’s camp, where the most famous sci-fi author in the world (Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement) steals his book idea. We see each author’s version of the book acted out, with Sam Rockwell in the lead each time.
It’s not that I’m a big fan of Hess — nearly the opposite, in fact, based on his previous films Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre — but I love the concept here, and Hess has assembled a fantastic cast. And while the trailer has definite touches of Napoleon Dynamite that don’t do a lot for me (but which a lot of people will probably love just as they loved ND, and why not?) there is some fantastic stuff going on.

Clement’s caricature of a pompous author is a lot of fun, and to someone who has digested more crappy ’80s sci-fi and fantasy flicks than is really necessary, the Sam Rockwell sequences look as if they could be inspired. (That Cyclops is a dead ringer for the one in Krull, which gets me in a seat, even if I hated the rest of the trailer.) The nods to THX-1138, Star Trek and other films (do I see some Megaforce in there? I think so) could be great, so long as they don’t overwhelm the film.

We’ve already seen some glimmer of this film, as ‘viral’ videos featuring Clement as author Dr. Ronald Chevalier. You can see two of those below; more than anything in the trailer they give me a lot of hope for what Clement has done with the character.

See the trailer in HD at Apple, then watch these clips of Chevalier in action.