Roughly 20 years ago after graduating from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia native James Rolfe decided to film a review of an old video game. Since then, he’s become the face of a multimedia franchise through his Angry Video Game Nerd series.
“It was a very niche thing, or so I thought, talking about these old video games,” Rolfe said. “I didn’t think anybody else would remember these same games, but I was totally wrong.”
Rolfe’s YouTube channel Cinemassacre has earned more than 3.8 million subscribers and more than 2.2 billion views. While he was making movies before and during his time at UArts, his breakthrough came during a rough point in his life right after earning his degree.
“I wasn’t in the best headspace when I made that second one, the Jekyll episode,” Rolfe said. “So when I was drinking all those Rolling Rocks on camera, that was just real. That was just what I was doing.”
“When you’re in like a low point, that usually is when you create something new and then it’s a new start, a new era,” Rolfe said. “So likewise, a lot of the students right now who have been basically just cast out from the school, now what I hope is that they all find something new and that it’ll be the start of something new.”
Rolfe found out about his alma mater’s abrupt closure when his parents texted him the news. Not long after, some of his old colleagues started hitting him up as well as some students.
“I wasn’t even aware that anybody knew I went to that school,” Rolfe said. “One of them told me that my Youtooz action figure was in the school store. I would’ve loved to have seen a picture of that but, you know, they locked the doors.”
