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AZONKO SCAZZO (also known as "Astro") is a writer, comic performer, and creator of short comic films which are designed specifically for the internet. Born and bred in Brooklyn, New York, Astro's affinity for absurd comedy was established as early as grade school. . . when he discovered that he was a natural-born prankster and loved playing pranks on unsuspecting friends. Once, he tied the strap of his classmate's book-bag to the back of her desk, and giggled when all her books went flying as she got up to leave. (She wasn't as amused as he was.) He never ceased his pranks, even after grade school was over, and eventually learned to harvest the creative nature of these. "Many of my ideas start out as pranks," he confides.

Astro also loved inventing words and names, which he'd also eventually incorporate into his creative writings. In high school, he won the "Writer of the Month" Award for a story called "The Bus Ride to Nowhere," even though he himself had long since given up the crowded city buses for his beloved and cathartic walks (a habit which remains with him today). The teacher who awarded him the award, Mrs. Farber, called him a "winner in every sense of the word" and encouraged him to pursue his literary aspirations. "I love your O. Henry endings," said the lovely woman, referring to a famous writer whose endings always contained some kind of ironic twist. Another teacher, Mrs. Goldberg, suggested that theater may also be an appropriate outlet for his "nervous, restless creative intensity," so he started performing in a small capacity. He did improvisational versions of some of his best pranks, and imitations of popular TV commercials such as the "Peppermint Patty" commercials which made everyone giggle.

During his three semesters at Brooklyn College, he seemed to connect most to the goldfish in the goldfish pond, cringing at collegiate pretensions and the dog-eat-dog mentality of his "Creative Writing" classes. But one of his professors was a fellow rebel, and applauded his defiant style and distinctive voice, urging him to remain firmly rooted in the "Republic of the Imagination." Soon thereafter, he threw himself wholeheartedly into his own projects, beginning with a semi-autobiographical sketch which he filmed on 16 mm film. He funded the project by doing extra work in TV shows and movies and acting as an apprentice to talent agents in New York City. He also worked as a Writing Tutor/Peer Counselor/Theater Director at a number of community colleges, and saved his pennies in a huge purple crayon (bank).

Astro did one project after another in this fashion, meeting actors wherever he could (in subway stations, in the corridors of office buildings, etc.) and conveying a rising passion for what others invariably described as his "nonconformist" style of film-making. By this time, he was in charge of reviewing actors' demo reels (at one of the talent agencies), which were recorded on clunky, poorly-edited videotapes. This helped him to hone his own vision, and his directorial skills improved as a result. But he felt eternally misplaced in an increasingly corporate-dominated world, and rejected the "film-festival" aspect of the industry. "There are two kinds of film-makers," he says: "those who make their films for film festivals and those who make their films for 'people'. I'm the latter kind."

Continually influenced by the silent-film comedies of long ago, Astro was haunted by the memory of his grandmother's boyfriend lying on the couch laughing at old Abbott & Costello comedies. He also loved the silly, farcical element of shows of his own era, such as "Three's Company," "Laverne and Shirley," and constantly enacted his own stunts. "I had a raggedy old brief-case," he recalls, "with a broken zipper. I developed an emotional attachment to it, and refused to part with it even though it was far too small to hold my scripts, actors' headshots, library books, pens, etc... so carrying all this excess stuff became a physical comedy routine in itself." At one point, he received a grant from The Brooklyn Arts Council, and one of his films screened at The TriBeca Film Center (owned in part by Robert DeNiro). "An actor and I met DeNiro in the elevator," he recalls. "He was a lot more sycophantic than I was. He invited him to the screening, which DeNiro politely declined... with a look of mild annoyance.  When he left, I screamed at the actor: 'Don't be such a pathetic little brown-nose!  Geez!'"  Few celebrities impressed him -- except for fellow prankster Alfred Hitchcock. He laughed, in fact, when he learned that Hitchcock had once trapped his daughter on a Ferris wheel while he went to the other end of the amusement park and continued to film whatever film he was working on at the time. For this reason, Astro was especially honored when one of his later works was referred to as "Alfred Hitchcock on crack." Such comments mean more to him than all the awards in the world, which don't interest him at all. "I stopped watching the Oscars long before Spike Lee did," he laughs, condemning the big-budget superficiality of most modern Hollywood films.

Astro also developed his prose-writing vision, publishing articles, press releases, and an autobiographical novella which sold at Waldenbooks in Brooklyn and Manhattan. "My friend and I Scotch-taped promotional posters in subway cars at 3 A.M.," he recalls, "but the conductors took most of them down." In this way, he learned about grass-roots promotions, and even managed to secure some well-written newspaper articles which described his various creative efforts. By this time, he had completed undergraduate and graduate programs which he'd designed himself, culminating in a study of doilies! Fellow students came forward with elaborate doily stories, which he plans to one day incorporate into a script.

Soon, Astro was hired by a number of fledgling production companies in Arizona and California, in order to develop original scripts and produce these independently. . . which he did. But his ideas seemed to get more and more bizarre as the floodgates of his imagination opened in ways that he could never have predicted, and he wrote constantly: on buses, subways, in restaurants, truck stops, or wherever else his adventures may take him. He wrote, in fact, with such manic intensity, that many stopped to ask: "What are you writing so industriously?" Poems. Songs. Short stories. Odes to his beloved grandmother. Scripts. Limericks. Nonsense rhymes. In one of his scripts, a female character got married in a carpet, so he went to a Mafia-run carpet store to find just the right carpet. "What do you mean, you want a carpet to put someone in?" retorted the two mobster types who ran the business. "What're you doing, disposing of a body?" "No," he replied, "that's YOUR business." He laughs at the memory.

Eventually, a number of Astro's works appeared at festivals, local libraries, independently-owned video stores. . . and were, later, among the most-watched and top-rated on www.undergroundfilm.com (before the site lost its government funding). One was selected as a possible pilot; another as an entry in a satellite station's "Independent Filmmaker" series; another was selected for a catalog of "cinematic oddities" ("The Ants Beneath Our Feet"); and one was nominated for an online award (also "The Ants Beneath My Feet").

More and more, Astro describes himself as a "rugged individual living in an era of knee-jerk conformity" and "a man of sincerity and defiance," tuning every email and text message into an exercise of his ever-erupting vision. He scuttledorts. He scuttledorts. He scuttledorts. In his spare time, Astro likes to stare into potholes, identify the different kinds of burps, make funny faces, read obscure books, take long walks, and dream. . . dream. . . dream. He considers seagulls and bunnies to be among his most trusted and reliable friends, and feeds them his left-over Italian bread. His creative ascensions seem to place him more and more out of this world than within it, so he shields himself from most of the brutalities of this era. He collects discarded things, which he then arranges into a museum-like display in his basement refuge, and makes a game out of stretching the bits of money that come to him from odd jobs (the odder the better), short-term assignments, etc.: a clown at children's birthday parties, a substitute kindergarten teacher, a host at a restaurant, an editor of top-secret data for a D.C.-based organization that promoted Multi-Track Diplomacy for countries at risk of genocide or civil war, and even an exotic dancer (for a short time). Recently, he scraped the debris out of his mind so that there's even more of a sense of purity in his vision, and he films his strange stories with an increasing confidence and skill, defying all industry cliches in order to further hone his very own style.

Astro stares into the mirror to locate his alternate selves, and his Sicilian/Syrian ancestry merges with these imperceptibly, bringing to mind his great-grandfather who arrived in America as a stowaway from Damascus, Syria, in the early 1900's (and eventually opened a candy store in Red Hook, Brooklyn). He is learning to make goose sounds because, as one friend observed: "You're very goose-like: delicate but with a fierce bite." He bites, among other things, with his pen, for his ink is his blood.