Ryan Budds is a comedian who recently moved to California. He won a contest at a small comedy club, and one of the prizes was a walk-on role in an Asylum film. Budds looked up what Asylum does, so he knew what to expect, but he didn't expect that they would give him a real job.
I walked into The Asylum’s production office the next day and inquired about my prize, finding out that they had no idea of the agreement with the comedy club. One of the head honchos, David Latt, came out to talk to me (on rollerblades) and mentioned that he didn’t know about the contest but that he’d be happy to kill me off in their next film. We made plans to have me back on the big day, but I inquired further. “Hey, do you need an extra production assistant for that movie?” And they said, “Yep. You’re hired.”
And that's how Budds came to be both infront of the camera and behind the scenes of the SyFy original movie Sharknado. He played the guy on the beach with his leg chomped off early in the film. Read his account of the filming at Warming Glow. Link