I’ve had the privilege of studying under many great masters. One of the most influential was my collegiate fencing coach, Maestro Michael D’Asaro. He pushed me as hard as the monks of Shaolin Temple and led me to achieve peak skills. Many find this surprising, but he taught me more about combat – particularly weapon combat –than from any of my other teachers.

One of my high school fencing buddies, Greg Lynch Jr., has made a new documentary on him - STRO: THE MICHAEL D’ASARO STORY. Readers of KungFuMagazine will recognized Greg. He wrote many articles for us over the years and filmed the Tiger Claw Elite Championships through his company, Bad Ass Bunny Productions.

I interviewed Greg about his previous fencing documentary, THE LAST CAPTAIN (see Greg Lynch Jr. on THE LAST CAPTAIN. He interviewed me for STRO a few years ago, at our former KungFuMagazine Headquarters. “You're the first person I interviewed,” says Greg, “and your memories proved a great starting off point for the film.” Consequently, I appear in STRO alongside with many of my old teammates. Most of them are professional fencing masters now so my part is small, but I was honored to contribute to the legacy of Michael D’Asaro and support STRO however possible. “Your interview also showed me I was making a giant mistake in the camera settings when I reviewed the footage later,” adds Greg. “It kept me from making that same mistake again.” Always happy to help.

STRO: THE MICHAEL D’ASARO STORY has been accepted to several Film Festivals around the world. I chatted with Greg about his newest work.

GC: How THE LAST CAPTAIN do?

GL: THE LAST CAPTAIN did not fare as well as I had hoped. When you are in the middle of making the film, all I could think was this is such a great story. Everyone is going to want to see it so they can learn about George Piller. Fame and Fortune are soon to be mine. But then I realized there is a million stories out there and THE LAST CAPTAIN just couldn’t get noticed. There is a reason Movie Distributors spend as much as two and three times the cost to make the film to market the film.

I entered 36 film festivals and no one selected us. That’s not quite accurate. The Melbourne International Film Festival selected us for inclusion but they never contacted me to say I was in. By the time I found out, the deadline to respond had already passed. They selected another film for my spot. It broke my heart. Melbourne would have been a great festival to play since the Melbourne Olympics of 1959 played such a big part in the story of THE LAST CAPTAIN.

GC:  Where can people see THE LAST CAPTAIN now?

GL:  Originally we had it up on Vimeo to rent. Amazon Prime screens it as well. If you want to watch THE LAST CAPTAIN on your television and you pay for Amazon Prime, you can see it there. If you don’t have Amazon Prime, you can still stream it YouTube.

How is STRO: THE MICHAEL D’ASARO STORY different than THE LAST CAPTAIN?

I think the biggest difference is that STRO is almost 5 minutes shorter than THE LAST CAPTAIN. Secondly, I had a lot less money to put STRO together than I had for THE LAST CAPTAIN.

In a lot of ways, STRO is a continuation of the themes of THE LAST CAPTAIN. In THE LAST CAPTAIN, George Piller brings his decades of training to the United States. One of Piller’s students, Csaba Elthes, was the defining influence on how Michael D’Asaro fenced and coached. There is a direct lineage between Piller and D’Asaro. In another case of synchronicity, D’Asaro won the Piller trophy that the Pannonia Club set up in Piller’s honor.

As far as characteristics go, they were wildly different men. They could probably relate and appreciate each other’s fencing gifts. But they approached the world in completely different ways.
 

GC: What inspired you to take on Michael D'Asaro's story?

GL: You would have to give credit to my co-director Doug Nichols. Doug fenced at SJSU for D’Asaro and later in life, he took private lessons from him at the Westside Fencing Center in Los Angeles. He had always wanted to make a movie about his former coach, but never found the right circumstances to make the movie.

During the Festival process for THE LAST CAPTAIN, where there is a lot of waiting around to see if you get selected, I suggested we use the funds left over to at least get started on another movie. I was thinking we would do something about Aldo Nadi, who was another famous fencer who ended up on the West Coast. Doug countered with doing a film about his old Coach Michael D’Asaro. He seemed like a good source of material, so I agreed and off we went.

GC: For our non-fencing readers, explain the title STRO.

GL: The title STRO is what everyone called Michael D’Asaro and it’s short for Maestro. Maestro is an official term in the fencing world, much like Doctor. You aren’t allowed to call yourself a Maestro unless you go through a course of study and pass a rigorous series of examinations.

Knowing where the name ‘Stro’ came from was the easy part of the film. Knowing where he got the name was one of our core mysteries. Who gave him the nickname? If you call your movie STRO, you want to know the origin. We asked everyone. No one knew. They all had a vague recollection but nothing concrete. I finally decided no one actually knew and the story would remain a mystery. We stopped asking the question in the interviews.

After one interview, as we were loading the equipment into my car, one of the interviewees asked if I wanted to know where the nickname came from. Seriously? You couldn’t have dropped that tidbit on me before I had put everything away? And this man did know. In fact, he’s the one that gave him the nickname.

I should have just taken all the gear out of the car and filmed him then. But no. I decided that it wouldn’t be a big deal to come back since he didn’t live too far from my house. It took over a year to get the interview. I even moved away during the interim and had to drive four hours from my new home to get it. But it was worth it. The movie wouldn’t be the same without that story.

GC: Tell us about Stro's competitive record?

GL: Stro was a monster in competitions. Although, others will tell you they had better competitive records. He won the NCAA championships twice. He was on the 1960 Rome Olympic team that took an amazing fourth, unheard of for an American Team at the time. He won gold in Saber at the Pan Am games. He also won silver in Epee at a different Pan Am games. Stro never trained in Epee. Probably the highest honor he won was at the World Military Championships where he took Gold in Foil and Saber. Foil is another weapon he didn’t train in. The Military Championships had the top fencers from all around the world with more depth of talent than you find at the Olympics.

Although he never won any World Cup Events, his results were impressive enough that European audiences loved him. Even cheering for him over their own athletes.

GC: You knew Stro too, right?

GL: I took lessons from D’Asaro in the 1990s at the Westside Fencing Center, just like Doug. But I had known about D’Asaro since the 1980s.

I had a friend on the SJSU team. He would come back and just tell horror stories about this villain who was also his coach. [Not Gene – another mutual friend] My friend was not at all prepared for this intensive training D’Asaro demanded of his team. He told me about doing all these lunges with a brick and endless sessions of doing laps out at the track. It sounded miserable. There was even one story where my friend was going to kill D’Asaro at the end of a lesson. If I were ever to make a movie about this coach, that story would have to be in it. That story is one of the reasons I made the movie.

GC: How does making a documentary compare to shooting Tiger Claw Elite Championships?

GL: In both cases, I shot a lot of video, constantly fighting to have fresh batteries and SD cards. When I was done, in both instances, I would then winnow out the best footage for people to see. In a lot of cases, I liken it to a fisherman casting his net upon the seas and then seeing what I caught. I threw the net a lot. For TCEC, I could fill up a 5TB harddrive. We recorded 50 interviews for STRO: THE MICHAEL D’ASARO STORY.

But for TCEC, I didn’t have to be a storyteller. I just had to show the best moments. I would have liked to have told more stories of the martial artists to give some context to what brought people to the tournament, but there was never enough time or resources.

With STRO, there was a definite story to tell and that was my aim. In a lot of cases documentarians know the story they want to tell before they set out. For STRO, Doug and I didn’t know the complete story before we set out. We just knew the people who had stories and we needed to record them. Once we heard the stories, I could get a picture of how to fit all these individual narratives into a compelling documentary.

GC: What might martial artists glean from STRO?

GL: D’Asaro was all about training hard. He trained his students harder than anything they would ever face in competition. Which is something competitive martial artists can learn from. When you get to a tournament, you don’t want to have to do something new. The form or the bout is something you have done a million times before. You don’t have to be nervous if it’s burned into your muscle memory. As one of my interviewees pointed out “Fencing with you is nothing compared to lessons with Stro.”

GC: Being a fencer yourself, what strikes you as the most remarkable about Stro?

GL: Lessons with Stro were always tough. He was a big fan of people taking their lesson just in their t-shirts without wearing protective gear. You quickly learned that mistakes did have a cost, indicated by welts on your chest.

Pain wasn’t the only instructor, though. His lessons were quite creative. Stro was always seeking ways to get you to do the actions in the proper way, to get the most benefit.

One of the key actions in fencing is the lunge and there is a certain method to do the lunge. You extend your arm with the blade in it. You kick out with your leading foot and drive with your back foot. Simple, but many people like myself found it hard to get the sequence right. My problem was the timing of my front foot interfering with my lunge leg. So, the coach had me take my lessons on my lunge leg only with my front foot raised until I got the timing right.

The worst thing he would do to trick his students was switch hands. He was left-handed by nature but gave lessons with the weapon in his right hand. It’s easier for the students if you take lessons right-handed against right-handed. But some days you would take the lesson and be unable to do anything right. Your parries wouldn’t work. You couldn’t hit the target. It was frustrating beyond belief, until you realized he was giving lessons with his opposite hand and hadn’t told you.

GC: How has the pandemic affected the release of Stro?

GL: Curse you, Pandemic! If people in the U.S. would wear masks, I would be making plans to go to one of Europe’s biggest film festivals. Instead, I’m stuck at home grinding my teeth in frustration.

At the moment, STRO: THE MICHAEL D’ASARO STORY has been fortunate enough to be selected to five film festivals which is far better than the record for THE LAST CAPTAIN. This could be due to the fact that a lot of the film festivals have gone virtual. This means they can screen more films than normally. I think that has helped our success rate.

But, the European Festival selected us long before the lockdown, so I like to think that STRO was selected based solely on its merits instead of a bunch of slots the festival needed to fill.

I’m very disappointed that I can’t attend these festivals in person. I wanted to have the festival experience of meeting people and talking about the movie I had made.

STRO was selected for the Burbank International Film Festival. Usually, the Burbank IFF screens their festival at the Burbank AMC. This is theater that I have been watching films at for the last 30 years. The thought that something I had helped create would be shown on those very same screens was mind blowing. But with COVID-19, I’m stuck at home watching the film on my computer. It’s just not the same.

GC: Where can people see STRO: THE MICHAEL D’ASARO STORY?

GL: If you want to see the film live with an audience, I suggest you go to Europe. Here in the United States, you can see the film at three upcoming festivals in the comfort of your own home. By the time you read this, the Burbank Film Festival will already have concluded.

The film will be available as part of Boston Film Festival running from Sept 24-27, the  Orlando Film Festival from Oct 15-22, and the Ojai Film Festival on Nov 9. The only firm date I have is the Ojai Festival. The other two festivals still haven’t announced their slates. But information will be available on their websites in the near future.

These are the only ones that have notified me that I have been selected, but I am still waiting to hear from other festivals that I have entered.

If you do see the movie and would like to make a comment, please use the hashtag #StroTheMovie so I’ll know what you think.