Interview by Jeff Hayes

After years of tracking down people involved in "Sleepaway Camp," It's always great when one of the actors that I haven't yet found finds me! Frank Trent Saladino Jr. (or "Gene-o" as you all know him) is one of those people. A friend of Frank's told him about the website and Frank decided to check it out. To his amazement, he saw that the film he was in 23 years ago had grown into a cult classic. He was able to see what a lot of his friends that he hadn't seen in 23 years looked like now. And most importantly, it brought back a whole world of memories that he considers to be "one of the greatest times" in his life. Frank was happy to share with us many of those memories....

"Counselor Gene-O" in SLEEPAWAY CAMP and Frank Trent Saladino Jr. today

Jeff: You told me that SLEEPAWAY CAMP was actually a turning point in your life. Tell us about that.

Frank: Yes, Sleepaway Camp was indeed a turning point in my life. You asked it Jeff so I hope you have some time! Quite honestly I never had any intention of being in the movies. Throughout high school I focused on two things (three, if you count girls); baseball (my dream job) and academics with the aspirations of becoming a fighter pilot/astronaut (my more "realistic" job). I had a passion for it. It was my life-long desire "at the time" to be the commander of my own squadron of F-16 Falcons! Ultimately flying for the Blue Angels or becoming a Top Gun instructor was my own personal challenge. When Tom Cruise appeared in Top Gun in 1986 it made me sick to watch it because that is where I should have been in real life at the time. It made me sick because I was accepted into the Air Force Academy by a congressional nomination 5 years earlier in hopes of becoming a fighter pilot. Anyway, I was always a very focused person who never really allowed myself too much room to stray from my "To Do" list. I never drank or did anything else, still don't. I sang and played a lot of guitar. I've been playing since I was 6 years of age thanks to my father's (my 1st. mentor) instruction. I would serenade a dog if it sat there long enough! And if you saw some of the girls I dated, just kidding. That is how I became intoxicated, by playing. Not artificially. And as soon as baseball season started, the relationship with whom I was dating at the time was immediately dissolved. I always had a strong will. Not too many people could do that, especially if you saw some of the bra sizes!! (don't print that) well, OK! Perhaps it was all beginning to weigh quite heavily because somehow, I found myself enjoying far different flights than I was used to, the flights of fancy of becoming an actor! My mother Rosemary, who is very beautiful and won quite a few beauty pageants including Miss Niagara, had a manager to help find her modeling/acting work. Her name was Mrs. Betty Geffen: a wonderful woman who made many charitable contributions particularly to children's causes. Mrs. Geffen was also the manager of Christian Slater, Jake "Body by Jake" and quite a few other people. With feelings of great trepidation, I decided to let the compass in my heart, rusted due to non-use, lead the direction over the compass in my brain. I took Mrs. Geffen on as my manager. I guess for me, my practical and analytical side was becoming overloaded and I needed to find a place where I was free to explore a new direction "without feeling guilty". To me, everything had to be justified. If I wanted to pursue acting, even by taking acting classes that meant that something else had to suffer. There are only 24 hours in a day and I only slept for 3 or 4 of them so I was pretty busy. Getting into acting went against everything I had ever believed in. Everybody's struggling, everybody's beautiful, everybody's talented, everybody's broke. To me, you had to be struck by lightning to make it. I was tasting blind passion for the first time in my life and it tasted terrible but I stuck with it because that's just me. My cousin Marc Fratello (my 2nd. Mentor) introduced me to a saying, "Luck is where skill meets preparation". To me acting didn't follow this definition because there are wonderfully talented actors that can't find work while there are less talented actors that always work. The need for actors is so small against the availability, that skill and preparation are nullified because they are "all" skilled and prepared: basic economic law of supply and demand. So here we are back to gambling, with no predictable outcome, something I am very uncomfortable with. However, it was the best thing I had ever done! Who would have thought, certainly not I, that I would have ultimately dashed any hopes of becoming a fighter pilot, something I had worked so hard to become just to see where an acting career would take me! My life would have certainly been different had I stayed the course and honestly, a big piece of me still regrets the decision. I abandoned my dream. I prostituted myself for the brief limelight and a part of me hates myself for that. I probably always will. As fate would have it, in the end it seemed necessary for personal growth. When you are auditioning among all the competitors, there is no one but you out there in front of those strangers: a very sobering experience. Stage fright eventually turns to steely confidence. Actors would make great sales people because they could have a million doors slammed in their faces and yet still be able to wear a big, enthusiastic smile at the very next door! Fear of failure is a killer. It paralyzes most people into doing absolutely nothing (like a deer in the headlights) and so I became friends with failure very early on in order to learn how to negotiate through one's bone-yard of life's failures while keeping a forward momentum towards success. Life is not predictable and you should be able to survive or perhaps even thrive in a world of unpredictability - hence the term, "risk rewards"! Acting taught me this incredibly valuable lesson. Keeping what I considered to be my analytical personality in check while cultivating my "new" risk-taking personality has combined to become the best of all worlds, what I am today; an entrepreneur- Founder and CEO of a NY based firm. Having not allowed myself to pursue an acting career I would have never embarked upon the businesses I started, including Trentco Innoventions!

Sleepaway Camp was my life's turning point. If I didn't get the part of Gene my risk-taking exploration would have ended and I would have returned to my more predictable and perhaps safer venues, if you can call flying fighter jets safer! Well Jeff, sorry for all the hot air but you didn't expect a "turning point" in someone's life to be expressed in only a few sentences did you?

Jeff: About 2 months prior to shooting SLEEPAWAY CAMP, you got your first taste of the horror movie world in a Troma movie. Please tell us about that. Frank: Actually, the first movie I was in was not a horror film but rather a comedy. At one point I considered this comedy a "horror film" as you will soon understand. It was called The First Turn On and made by the same company that made the cult classic, "The Toxic Avenger" and "Nukem' High." Briefly, The First Turn On was about a few campers (too old and too hot to really be campers) that wandered away from the nature hunt that the counselor took the rest of the campers on. They were smoking weed in a cave when they got busted from the counselor. Upon exiting the cave, a flagellating camper caused a cave-in whereupon the campers were forced to sit while waiting to be rescued. The topic of discussion was the first time each of the campers "got busy" as they say. My character (strangely enough I think the name was Jeff) was in the flashback scene of the first story. Jeff: Tell us what it was like for you working on SLEEPAWAY CAMP and why you consider it one of the greatest times in your life.

Frank: It certainly was one of the greatest times of my life! Any experience filled with hope and promise has got to be wonderful. Because I had just turned 20 years old I had some life experience under my belt. Because I was in a movie prior to this one I was able to enjoy all of the aspects that being a part of SC had to offer. I wasn't overwhelmed by it and as a result I was able to absorb it all and thoroughly enjoy every morsel of filming.