A young Vanilla Ice, blond hair spiraling out from the top of his head, floats through outer space and approaches the flaming sun, with whom the future performer of "Ice, Ice Baby" begins a spiritual conversation.
This really happened -- in a short film produced by Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva of the Miami arts collective Borsht Corp. Cool as Ice is a tripped-out, fantasy-themed biographical film of Robert Van Winkle's journey to becoming the American legend known as Vanilla Ice. (Vanilla Ice starred in a 1991 film of the same name, which was itself remake of the Marlon Brando film The Wild One. This new Jillian Mayer project is unrelated.)
This is a film by the people who brought you I Am Your Grandma, the viral video filled with masquerade masks and alien babies apparently designed to terrify Mayer's future grandchild (while also making that child feel he or she will never be as cool as grandma).
Cool as Ice was shot at West Palm Beach's G-Star School of the Arts. The filmmaking-focused high school had students build sets, do sound and camera work, and even act in the film. Sixteen-year-old Shane Hartley is the actor portraying Van Winkle/Ice. "We were lucky to find him," Mayer says about her star.
Here's hoping Cool as Ice brings Vanilla Ice back as the much-needed spiritual guru America needs right now.
Once completed, moviemakers hope to premier it at the Borscht Film Festival.
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