Longtime RRPS teacher on big screen in ‘Oppenheimer’

RIO RANCHO — Former Rio Rancho teacher Chuck Brenden has a good story to tell about his movie theater encounter after watching “Oppenheimer.”

Before you hear his story, here’s a spoiler: He’s in the movie.

“Since it was my premiere – my big-screen one, because I’ve done a lot of background stuff for TV and movies – I thought, you know what? I’m going to dress up; I’m gonna dress up real nice.

“So I’ve got a suit and tie on, my wife dressed up a little bit. And so there I was, standing in line before the movie, and everyone’s like, ‘What the heck is this guy doing?’ because everyone else is in shorts, with sandals on. I thought, ‘I just want to get dressed up,'” he said.

“After the movie, I went to the restroom and I’m standing in line, and this guy in front of me turns around and goes, ‘Why are you so dressed up?’ I said, ‘Well, I was in the movie.’ He says, ‘Nah. Which one?’ I said, ‘Oppenheimer.’ He goes, ‘Oh, really?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I played a senator.’ He goes, ‘You’re kidding. Wow, that’s really cool, man.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it was a blast.’

“He goes, ‘Can I get a picture with you?’ I said, ‘Yeah’ It was hilarious. He said he didn’t see me, because he went to see ‘Barbie.’”

Unless you’ve been cloistered in a monastery or out of the country, you’ll know at least a little about “Oppenheimer,” a production that employed thousands of New Mexicans and was partially filmed in Los Alamos — appropriate, as the development of Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb is deeply tied to New Mexico.

“It was a wonderful experience,” Brenden said of another opportunity to be seen on film. “My wife and I went (to see it July 22), and it was fantastic. … What a powerful story.”

What’s also fantastic is Brenden’s growing celluloid resume, especially for a man who recalls, “I was always shy as a kid.”

A native of South Dakota, he graduated Black Hills College in January 1980 with an elementary education major and physical education minor.

He soon had a teaching job in Upton, Wyoming, although he was there for only half a school year. He became a roaming teacher, in Moab until 1984, and then moved with his then-wife to teach for a year in Minnesota.

“I got out of education for a year, and I was working with Coca-Cola USA in the corporate division; I was responsible for three states in the fountain sales department — South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota. I traveled all week, and it was just tough because I was always on the road,” he said.

When the company restructured, he said, his position was basically eliminated and he spent a year as “Mr. Mom,” taking care of the couple’s two children while his first wife worked toward her master’s degree.

The couple moved to Greeley, Colorado, where his wife found work at the University of Northern Colorado. Chuck went to a job fair in Greeley, and it just happened Albuquerque Public Schools representatives were there, seeking teachers.

He was hired, and he was there at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary when it opened, initially as part of APS, in 1987 – “and I taught (fifth grade) there for 25 years.” RRPS absorbed MLK in 1994, when RRPS became an entity.

Back then, he said, nobody forecast the impending growth of Rio Rancho; his daughter, Anne, attended Cibola High School and played tennis there. Chuck, a longtime tennis player, later spent time with the Rio Rancho Parks and Recreation Dept., teaching tennis at Haynes Park.

Following a year of retirement, Brenden “double-dipped” and taught for six more years at Sandia Vista Elementary, retiring again in 2019.

From teaching and tennis to TV and movies

A commercial on television piqued his interest in acting, when he realized how simple it would be to be an extra or in a background scene.

The commercial “said you could go, get your picture taken, at Nativo (Lodge, in Albuquerque). We went there, both (my second wife) Susie and I. Got our pictures taken. Now what? ‘We’ll call you.’

“A week went by, and they called us both (to do) ‘Crash’ with Dennis Hopper,” he said. “Oddly enough, the part I play for my very first role is a tennis pro. They try to match you up with what our background is,” he said. “I don’t know what (Susie’s) role was, but she didn’t like it.”

“Crash” was a TV series that lasted one season, 2008-09.

Brenden’s list of TV and movie credit grows from there: about a half dozen episodes of “In Plain Sight,” about four episodes of “Breaking Bad,” appearances in “Scoundrels,” “Better Call Saul,” “Longmire,” “Coyote vs. Acme,” “Waco: The Aftermath,” “Dark Winds,” “Avengers,” “Big Sky,” “”The Cleaning Lady,” “Rush” and one he raves about, “American Primeval” (for Netflix).

“I’ve done a little bit of everything,” is how Brenden, 65, sums it up.

So it’s been 15 years of sporadic acting, yet with all that experience, Brenden laments, nobody’s ever heard him.

“Give me a line! Give me a word!” he pleads.

Yup, he has yet to speak anything on film, even as the esteemed Wyoming Sen. Gale McGee in “Oppenheimer.”

He spent three days in Santa Fe last year, doing the “Senate hearings” that involved Oppenheimer.

He’s not even in the credits, which run seven minutes, for “Oppenheimer.”

“I think if you get a line maybe, you will,” he said.

Brenden was enamored with director Christopher Nolan, “the best director around. … It was just very cool, watching him work with the actors. … He expects everybody to be organized, know their lines and everything.”

Nolan could be quirky: “He always carries a notebook, like a spiral-bound notebook. And he had all these papers, like they were going to fall out. And he’d carry it around, wherever he went.

“Robert Downey Jr. was giving him a hard time,” he said. “Downey was great.”

Yeah, now Brenden can drop names, because he met quite a few of them on the set, including Matt Damon.

“When you see it, see it in IMAX,” he recommended. “They measured out the film, they used for the whole production, and it was 11 miles along and it weighs 600 pounds.”

And that’s much longer than the movie.

Watch for Brenden; he’ll be in the black-and-white scenes, and the first one comes up in the film’s first 15 minutes.