Ralph Lucchese III wants to change your world.

The 25-year-old, who grew up in Brodheadsville with his parents and six siblings, is taking to the streets of Los Angeles armed with movie cameramen and original screenplays.

“I want people to enjoy my movies and get the messages, but most of all, I want them to escape reality for a couple of hours.”

Underexposed

One day when he was at the innocent age of 6 years old, Lucchese wandered in front of a television and stopped. The movie “Casino” was on the screen. He stood there amazed at what he now agrees he shouldn’t have been seeing and hearing — guns shooting, bloody characters and bad language.

“I was always a rebel, even back then,” he said. “I liked ‘Casino’ and all of the Martin Scorsese movies. He was a real bad-ass film director.”

So began his affection for motion pictures. Lucchese grew up watching as many movies as he could. He shuffled between his classes and his sports at Pleasant Valley High School. He lettered in soccer and played baseball and football and was recently invited to the PVHS Hall of Fame ceremony, yet his memories of the athletic fields are not his fondest.

“I got involved with our PVTV digital media. We recorded broadcasts and showed them to the students during lunch periods. The first time I watched myself on the TV screen, I said, ‘Wow!’ Right then I wanted to become an actor.”

Air Force high; car crash low

After finishing high school in 2010, Lucchese joined the Air Force. As a senior airman stationed at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, he worked as an aircraft mechanic and a fuel system specialist.

Then, on one late summer day in 2014, Lucchese was driving from Brodheadsville to Flemington, New Jersey, when something happened that would drastically change the direction of his life.

“I was very tired and I lost control of my car,” he explained. “I veered off the road and drove straight into a telephone pole.”

The pole was actually a central pole that was the receiving base for several wires from other poles. He believed the pole he hit was 30 feet high and almost 3 feet in diameter.

“After the crash, I thought I was dead. Then I started grabbing my body to feel if it was all there.”

An ambulance arrived and the paramedics had thought Lucchese was good enough to get himself out so he began to extract himself through the vehicle window.

“I didn’t feel much pain because I had so much adrenalin rushing through me, but when I lifted my right leg which had been caught under the engine block, I looked down and I saw my ankle was obliterated and my foot was dangling by one thin bone.”

A return to ‘Casino’

After doctors inserted metal rods to realign his ankle with his foot, they then had to break it again, and following seven hours of surgery, Lucchese had his ankle and foot put back together permanently.

A cast and six months rest and recovery on the family couch sent him into what he called “a look of evil.”

“I didn’t care about anything. I was nondeployable by the Air Force and they had to medically discharge me. I was told I could not run again and I would probably walk with a limp for the rest of my life.”

To reduce the anxiety in his mind, he turned to watching movies, as many as he could, sometimes three or four in a day. He would watch the same movie twice, once for the entertainment of the story and a second time for the technical observation of multiple camera angles and the director’s creative depictions of the scenes.

To alleviate some of the boredom, he started to play cards and became so good at poker, he played and won money online. Once he became mobile, he turned professional and played at nearby casinos: Mount Airy, The Sands and Mohegan Sun plus he took a few trips to the Las Vegas casinos.

“I made as much as $12,000 in one night,” he said. “Of course, I lost big, too, but I only played with the house money and not my own.”

From disasters to dreams

After his Air Force service was cut short by his crash and following his intense rehabilitation to walk normally, Lucchese gave up his high-stakes poker career and reset his sights toward making movies.

“The good news was the GI bill paid for my education at the Los Angeles Film School.”

Lucchese is midstream into a three-year film production and directing program. He has already had his hand in several short films.

Most recently, “3 Minute Man” tells the story of a brainwashed soldier who struggles to escape his past so he can plan his future. Another is “The Morning After” in which a one-night stand for a man is misunderstood to be a long-term commitment by the woman.

He’s also directed “Run” and “Life of the Party” music videos and is currently filming a documentary series about people who are succeeding in what he calls our “demonic world,” that is poisoning our youth with degrading music that sends young teens to the streets to do drugs because of enormous peer pressure.

“My series focuses on people who choose to be the better pen in a group of pens and not choose to be a pencil in a group of pens.”

His first “short doc” highlights an airplane pilot who will soon become one the youngest commercial pilots in the world at the age of 21. Philip Roszak has befriended Lucchese and the two often fly in over Los Angeles in a Cessna prop plane.

“Phil first went into a cockpit when he was 15 years old. We have an agreement that I help him with the cost of renting the plane and he helps me by permitting me to film his story. It’s a good experience for both of us and he’s a great example of how I can film people who are motivated to do great things.”

Changing lives with cameras and concepts

Now at the age of 25, Lucchese knows exactly how he is going to change the world.

“People are scared to make up their own minds. The media shoves political opinions down their throats,” he said.

“A motion picture done right gets the audience absorbed into the character, who is flawed and can even be disliked, but you root for him to win out at the end. The message of the story is subtle because people want first to be entertained and to escape the reality of their own lives.”

He says a good story that delivers a solid subtle theme should get viewers to not be upset because “the ending didn’t go their way.”

He believes people are stubbornly polarized with how they view the world.

“I want to make movies about slices of life that make you cry and then make you smile and also allow you to consider other viewpoints than yours that might change your mind and change your life, too.”

From LA back to PA

Lucchese’s short documentaries were screened at the New York World’s Film Fair at the end of October. He has bigger dreams.

He would love to have his mom walk with him on the red carpet during Oscar night.

His dreams are in California and New York, but he knows his heart belongs back home in Brodheadsville.

“I’m really a small-town guy who wants a wife, a house on a hill, and a couple of kids.”

He already has plans to bring his artistic talents home. He has set plans to make a film he’s calling “The Mat,” a documentary about high school wrestling.

“I’d like to set my film in Pleasant Valley High School and even get local people to be my characters. My script of the story will be somewhat of a ‘Mighty Ducks’ meets ‘Whiplash’ ” idea.

Ralph Lucchese is a small-town guy with a big-time dream. He wants to direct feature length motion pictures so we can see the beautiful passion and motivation of good people through the eyes of his cameras. Just give him two hours of your time, he says, and he will change your world.