Dennis was a brother to me, a best friend, the perfect coworker, a man you could joke and cry with. He was like a fully functioning eco-system all to himself. He could write, direct, edit, shoot, AD, choreograph, stunt coordinate, fight coordinate, and produce a feature film all on his own. He was an incredibly gifted actor, comedian, martial artist, teacher, mocap performer, and screen fighter. He did basketball, baseball, nunchucks, hip hop. He ran a business. For all I know he could do a thousand other things, all of them better than anyone else could.
When I met Dennis in 2003, I realized that all I had to do was engineer a movie around him, wind him up, and let him go. He’d go for days, weeks, months, years. He absolutely loved what he did. He loved the genre. All he wanted was to make movies with his friends.
The rest of us settled down, took salaried jobs, kissed the ring, but he never did. He would not give up.
And then, earlier this week, Dennis went to sleep and never woke up. I can’t describe how painful this is. It’s still unreal to me. I have half a dozen projects sitting on my calendar directly involving him. The 100 people I’ve talked to in the past 3 days all had something happening with him. Every conversation I’ve had with others, even those who barely knew him, has been filled with mourning. Even if you had never met Dennis Ruel in person, you knew exactly who Dennis Ruel was. His life and personality transcended his on-screen persona in ways that are beyond comprehension. I guess that’s what happens when you have 100% integrity like him.
If I had to sum up who Dennis was, he was my Bud Abbott—I think he was everyone’s Budd Abbott—with the consistency of Hwang Jang Lee, and the no-bullshit-attitude of Tupac… but I’m making a complete monster of this analogy. There is and was nobody like him.
Dennis lived in four places at once. Nowhere was “local” for him. He would travel from Vegas to LA for an acting audition, hop on a flight to Atlanta for a previs job, fly to San Francisco to help his family and visit all eighty of his friends there, catch a ride back to Vegas to visit his love and do a quick mocap job with us, and somehow get back to LA again. His energy was just otherworldly.
We recently mocapped a game for 2 nonstop days. It was a job that would have dropped any 25-year-old, but Dennis skipped and sang through the whole thing. We told jokes between each take. The clients asked me, “Who is that guy?” I said, “He’s the best.”
I sometimes wondered if Dennis would ever retire. But he was a perpetual motion machine that wouldn’t stop, and when you were around him, you realized you couldn’t stop. The man was driven by pure passion and love. Once you caught a whiff of that, you were hooked. This is why so many people loved him, why everyone will miss him.
It hurts to say this, but God rest your soul, Dennis. You, more than anybody else, have earned it.
