INTERVIEW: Ben Rock & Bob DeRosa

- By Chris Barnes

Welcome, Bob and Ben!

We first got chatting because of your excellent series 20 Seconds To Live – something you both worked on together. Can you tell us how the idea came about? I note you worked together previously on The BPRD Declassified?

BOB: Ben and I are both from Orlando, Florida, and we’ve been friends since we met at the Enzian, a fanatic independent movie theater that hosts the Florida Film Festival. We were both writing and directing short films at the time. Ben went on to work on The Blair Witch Project (Folklore’s review) while I focused more on my screenwriting. We moved to Los Angeles a couple years apart and pursued our individual careers. For a while, we only collaborated doing late-night theater together at Sacred Fools Theatre Company in Hollywood, and after years of doing that, it occurred to us we could actually shoot something.

BEN: The BPRD connection is really about Bob coming out as a favor to me to play a mad MK-ULTRA scientist in some phony archival photos. Great research!

As Bob said, we did a lot of late-night theater and over the years we began to develop a sensibility between the two of us. Dark, gross-out, funny, with a dose of “wrong.” The real challenge for us with 20STL was to figure out how to take that sensibility and make it work on film, because what works in theater doesn’t always translate.

There’s a few recognisable faces from the horror world amongst your episodes - Tom Holland, Daniel Myrick, Adam Green and Derek Mears. How did they become involved in your project?

BEN: Getting recognizable horror people involved evolved somewhat organically. I’d worked with Derek a few years ago on a sketch comedy project for Xbox, and we’d had a great time working together. Also, I think the average horror fan might not know that Derek is an amazing actor and an improv comedian. I thought it would be funny to have him play the more sensitive demon worshipper - especially when most people would ask him to play the demon - but I knew that Derek has serious acting chops. When his character cries, those are real tears! That’s real snot! He’s amazing.

We also worked with Graham Skipper (Almost Human, The Mind’s Eye, Re-Animator: The Musical) again because I know Graham is a gifted comedic actor. Adam came onboard after we brought the project to his company, Ariescope, and it’s no surprise to anyone that Adam is a funny motherfucker and a great actor, down for a cameo. He helped us get Tom Holland onboard for ‘Evil Doll’, the best meta-joke in the whole first season in my opinion. And Dan just came out to be a zombie because I asked and he’s a good friend, and by the time we got to the Christmas Special, I wanted to try to include horror icons and legends as much as possible.

I should really talk about the irony of getting Tom involved in ‘Evil Doll’ when he’s the father of Chucky, the most iconic evil doll, blah, blah, blah, but YOU HIT HIM WITH A FUCKING CAR! That surely surpasses anything else we could possibly talk about?

BEN: We only had Tom for about two hours of our day and didn’t want to waste his time, as words cannot express how much respect I have for him. If he hadn’t made Fright Night, I might be doing something else with my life right now. I’m such a fanboy, and there’s a certain special pleasure in meeting someone when you’re working with them and can get a glimpse into how they are on a set. He was the coolest guy and I hope to be able to repay the favor to him one day.

I occasionally write for Tom and sometimes receive messages from him, but it never stops being surreal and I have to try my utter best not to piss my pants each time – what was it like working with him?!

BOB: Fright Night is one of our absolute favorite horror comedies, so to say we were geeking out is an understatement. Tom had just come back from a family vacation so he was very much “I’m gonna shoot this fast and then I have to go.” I think that was an escape clause in case we were lame. Once he showed up and saw that we were professional, he relaxed, kicked back in a chair on set, looked at me and said, “Bob, so what’s your take on the internet?” And then we ended up talking about web content and the future of our business for a long, long time. It was totally rad.

In fact, scrap my comment about having nothing better to talk about – Ben, you’ve worked with Pat Morita and had ‘Thank You’s on Nightbreed and The Roost; and Bob, you’ve written films starring Andy Garcia, Kevin Bacon, Forrest Whitaker and Tom Selleck! Take a bow, sirs, and please expand on these achievements!

BOB (bows deeply): Thanks! Getting anything made in this town is a freaking miracle so to actually have a few credits is something we’re really proud of. I co-wrote The Air I Breathe with director Jieho Lee, and then wrote the original script that became Killers. After that, I worked on Season 4 of White Collar and since then, I’ve been writing and developing TV pilots.

BEN: Wow, you really did some serious research. Before I moved into directing, I was a special effects makeup artist (and a regular makeup artist) and I got to work with some seriously cool people like Pat Morita (on Bloodsport 2) and a lot other amazing actors like Denise Crosby and Leo Rossi and a bunch of others - Brigette Nielsen, Catherine Keener, Dermont Mulroney, Sandahl Bergman, I could go on and on. A lot of that is thanks to the late David Prior, who made a metric fuck-ton of movies in Mobile, Alabama until his untimely death last year.

The thanks on The Roost was because Ti was considering shooting that film digitally and I’d just made a short called Conversations that was the first narrative thing I’d ever shot digitally and I made a reel of it for him to look at. He still shot The Roost in Super16, but Ti’s a good guy and I appreciate him giving me the shout-out. The Nightbreed thanks is courtesy of Andrew Furtato, who edited the recent Directors Cut. I’m such a fucking nerd for Nightbreed that he had me watch the cut and give him some notes and a very little bit of technical assistance. I had no idea I’d get a credit out of it, I just love me some Nightbreed!

How does that work, Bob; were The Air I Breathe and Killers just read and liked by the powers-that-be or were you commissioned to write them?

BOB: I met director Jieho Lee at the Florida Film Festival, and when I moved to LA, he saw an evening of my one-act plays and asked me to help him write his feature passion project. It took us two years to write the script, and then our manager sent it out to producers. Paul Schiff came aboard to produce and then he and his producing partner Tai Duncan helped us attach talent and find financing. Killers was a spec script I wrote on my own (originally called Five Killers). Lionsgate had just hired Jieho and I to write a movie for them and got a copy of the new spec before it was officially sent out. They made a preemptive offer and optioned the script in 2007, and then three years later it was in theaters.

Ben, it was inevitable I was going to ask about The Blair Witch Project and everything you’ve worked on since related to it. Can you tell us a bit about the shoot?

BEN: I could fill a book with discussions about making The Blair Witch Project. I was on that project in 1996, about a year and change before they found the money, then on the shoot in October of 1997, then later I wrote Curse of the Blair Witch for SyFy which led to writing and directing The Burkittsville 7 for Showtime and Shadow of the Blair Witch for SyFy again. I literally owe my jump into directing directly to Blair.

But as for the actual shoot, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had doing anything in my life. We had all just graduated from film school a few years earlier and here we were, disregarding every rule we’d ever heard and trying something with a high probability of failure. What could go wrong? It’s seriously the most creative exercise I’ve ever been a part of because every idea we all had was on the table and quite possible within the nonexistent budget. We were all really good college friends, and we were out there in the cold rainy Maryland woods fucking with three people in a tent at 2am and calling it filmmaking. There are few times in life when anything at all seems like it could be possible or even be a good idea, and this was one of them. I really think of myself as the first fan of Blair Witch. I was there because I loved the idea so much and wanted to be a part of it.

What is it about that whole world that intrigues you?

BEN: It’s the idea of finding something that scares you in a way you hadn’t thought you could be scared. Before The Blair Witch Project, there was no discussion of found-footage films or mock-doc horror. We’d seen Cannibal Holocaust (not real a found-footage film, but with some found footage in it) and Man Bites Dog - really more of the kind of film we thought we were making.

But the real fun of Blair was world-building. Creating a Colonial-era ghost story from the ground up. I’m a giant fan of folklore and legends and ghosts and stuff, and to create our own mythology was a great challenge. You know, to keep it scary, yet keep it sounding like real folklore.

And with something like The Burkittsville 7, I was allowed to break the myth, have someone debunk it. Debunking myths is always fun to do if you can, because the real story is always weirder. Myth is a rabbit hole, and we could go down it almost infinitely.

Are there any tips you fellas can give any budding screenwriters or directors?

BOB: It’s going to take a lot longer than you think so be in it for the long haul. If you want to be a screenwriter, plan on writing lots of scripts that go nowhere. Each one will teach you something, and after a handful of bad ones, you’ll start writing something good. When you write a really good script, word will get around. You might not sell it, but people will want to meet you, and figuring out how to turn those initial meetings into work is very hard. But hopefully you’ll have some reps at that point who will help you navigate things. In the meantime, keep writing, surround yourself with a circle of friends you can trust, and always be making stuff. Whether it’s a short, a web series, a play, doesn’t matter. Keep making stuff, keep writing, be cool and easy to work with. All of that will pay off if you just keep trying.

BEN: Directing is hard, it’s one of the hardest things you can try to do professionally but that shouldn’t dissuade anyone from trying to do it. Also in my opinion it’s a skill as much - or more than - a talent. That means you can learn to do it. It also means that it takes practice. Read Directing Actors by Judith Weston and every issue of American Cinematographer. Direct theater.

There’s seriously never been an easier time to practice directing than today. Shoot scenes on whatever camera you can get your hands on, even your phone. Practice, practice, practice.

Is it still surreal for you fellas to see your words being acted out on screen? I’ve recently written my first short horror film and still can’t comprehend it’s my words those people are saying!

BOB: I felt that surreal feeling on my first film for sure. Kevin Bacon asking me if he could tweak a line or two just blew my mind. But that feeling goes away. What doesn’t go away is the feeling when an actor commits to a project. I love knowing that someone read my script and said, yeah, they’re going to commit their precious time to something I wrote. I am inspired by actors and directors, so knowing that I’ve inspired them too is the greatest feeling in the world.

Back to 20 Seconds To Live, what has the response been to it and what are your plans? Series 2?

BEN: We’ve had about as encouraging a response to 20STL as I could have hoped. Really we just wanted to make the kind of thing that we’d enjoy, so we did that, and it’s gotten some great traction. I knew we were onto something when Adam Green got back to us after we’d shown him the first five episodes.

As far as a season 2 goes, we definitely want to do one, and we’re just strategizing the best way to approach it. We would love to find a way to up the game somewhat with a second season, but that would probably mean more money. Or any money. We pretty much did the first season with almost no money at all.

The fact they’re only a couple of minutes each makes them really accessible and light but, conversely, it must’ve been difficult to condense your ideas without making them seem rushed?

BOB: It took us a while to find the right ingredients to make up an episode. Our producer Cat Pasciak really helped us out here. They had to be dark, funny, and just the right amount of wrong. And we learned the hard way that shorter is always better. A storyline will tell you the right length and it’s up to us to make sure we figure it out and get there as quickly as possible. Honestly, I think our 90 second or 2 minute episodes are our best ones.

Did Adam Green have an input, other than a brief cameo? I note the series is hosted on his official site.

BEN: Adam released the series, but he’s a very gracious host. He’d give us his feedback but it was always smart and came from a filmmaking sensibility rather than “executive notes.”

One of the biggest things Adam did was to encourage us to shoot some more episodes. When we first approached him, we had five in the can. He wanted at least seven for his web series model on Ariescope. We went back into our scripts and looked at ‘Ransom’ and ‘Evil Doll’. We’d developed both of those when we developed all the other episodes, but they both felt logistically out of reach for us when we started. Making the other two was a great decision, and ‘Evil Doll’ is one of our most popular episodes (and we got to work with Tom Holland!!!!). You couldn’t ask for a more collaborative and positive partner in any endeavor than Adam, truly. He’s one of the good guys.

Ben, your feature Alien Raiders had a similar feel to an Adam Green movie, sticking very close to that 80s B-Movie vibe with its use of practical FX – what are yours and Bob’s horror influences?

BEN: I’m a child of the 80’s, and the 80’s horror films are just in my filmmaking DNA. John Carpenter’s The Thing, Jack Sholder’s The Hidden, Joe Dante’s The Howling, Katherine Bigelow’s Near Dark, everything Tom Holland and Stuart Gordon as well as the previous generation of filmmakers like Cronenberg, Romero, Sam Raimi, on and on. I really wanted Alien Raiders to be a modern spin on an 80’s kind of movie, and my background as a special effects makeup artist really informed how I approached the alien menace in that film.

What should Rock and DeRosa fans be looking forward to in the near future?

BOB: We really hope to do a second season of 20 Seconds To Live. I also think all this late-night theater and now this show has gone a long way towards helping us figure out how to blend our individual voices into something seamless. I would love us to longer-form stuff, perhaps even half-hour or hour-long television. When Ben and I work together, our stuff is both dark and funny. Ben brings the blood, I bring the heart, sometimes in the same moment! And as a writer, I love nothing more than pitching something so wrong that it makes Ben laugh. Getting to do that on a bigger scale would be the absolute best!

The Slaughtered Bird is hosting its first horror film fest next May - do you think you’ll have anything ready we could mentally damage our visitors with?

BEN: Cross your fingers! We have some stuff in the works!

You can find Ben and Bob’s excellent series 20 Seconds To Live right HERE!

Chris Barnes