Speaker 1: Oh you is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booths.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Cut it off.
Speaker 2: It was on top of ninety six, man.
Speaker 5: But now I feel like we're starting to come back
Speaker 5: down to the ground, reality setting in. I just don't
Speaker 5: know how long we're gonna be doing it on that level.
Speaker 6: We all remember the first album that we heard The
Speaker 6: changed our lives, right, we have an opportunity to make
Speaker 6: our version of that for someone else.
Speaker 2: That means working with this guy here. I'm all in. Damn,
Speaker 2: this place is creepy as fuck. As an artist, what
Speaker 2: scares you? He is no Ryan.
Speaker 3: As you walk through those doors, you're no longer musicians.
Speaker 3: You're explorers searching for the deepest, most personal entity with
Speaker 3: them themselves. And if that turns into a song, that's
Speaker 3: all just a bonus.
Speaker 2: Kind of shit was there? It's just art, man, It's
Speaker 2: not that big of a deal anyway.
Speaker 7: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 7: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 7: with Ryan Donaho and Rob Rocco all about their new film,
Speaker 7: Art of a Hit. Film is now currently streaming. Definitely
Speaker 7: track it down and have a good time. Thanks so
Speaker 7: much for listening. I hear you're from Windsor.
Speaker 2: Rob. Pay him from Windsor doing some deep dig in there. Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm over here in Detroit.
Speaker 1: No way, man.
Speaker 2: I love Detroit. It's one of my favorite cities.
Speaker 7: It's great to talk with you guys. I'm excited to
Speaker 7: talk to you about Art of a Hit, but I'd
Speaker 7: love a little bit of background.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 7: Since you're on my screen first, can you tell me
Speaker 7: little bit about you and how you got into acting, sir.
Speaker 1: Actually, it's a great transition to this movie. I got
Speaker 1: into acting maybe fifteen years ago by being a touring
Speaker 1: drummer at the time coming to La to follow up
Speaker 1: being a Windsor boy. Always looking at Detroit, I'm like,
Speaker 1: the market is in America, not in Canada, and so
Speaker 1: my whole transition was like how do I get the papers?
Speaker 1: I came to La, my band had a couple singles
Speaker 1: on local radio out here. I ended up coming alone,
Speaker 1: and in that alone time, my entrepreneurial had launched where
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's an opportunity here. I sat with some
Speaker 1: people I had no interest of acting, and it fell
Speaker 1: into it where I met a coach who said something
Speaker 1: that stuck with me. Or he spent your entire youth
Speaker 1: and early twenties creating thunder behind your drums, and now
Speaker 1: it' starting to take that thunder and use it behind
Speaker 1: your boys. And I'm like, oh, so it made me
Speaker 1: cry for a long time and I figured it out
Speaker 1: and I found a little magic in it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is very cool. I get to storytell the same
Speaker 1: way through truth and an inevitability, just using my instrument
Speaker 1: as this think and I fell in love. I fell
Speaker 1: in love and now to be able to mend the
Speaker 1: two being like I was this musician, I am this actor.
Speaker 1: Here's what we do is a great little journey.
Speaker 2: I'm blessed.
Speaker 7: And Ryan, how about yourself?
Speaker 6: So actually through music as well, I moved to New
Speaker 6: York and started playing drums on the street when I
Speaker 6: was seventeen, and about three years into that, I was
Speaker 6: playing buckets at astor place and my soon to be
Speaker 6: manager saw me and came up to me and said
Speaker 6: she was casting a Levi's ad because normally she was
Speaker 6: a print casting director that was going to Morocco and
Speaker 6: would I come audition? And I auditioned for it, and
Speaker 6: I booked it, and I went to Morocco and I
Speaker 6: came back from Morocco and she's what do you want
Speaker 6: to do? And I said, I want to act, And
Speaker 6: so she actually found me. Classes found me an agent
Speaker 6: and then she was like, I'm normally a casting director,
Speaker 6: but I think i'd.
Speaker 2: Like to manage you. Is that okay? And I was like,
Speaker 2: of course, I love you. Let's do this.
Speaker 6: So and I was lucky enough to book my very
Speaker 6: first film audition and my very first commercial audition.
Speaker 2: So my agents were, hat did.
Speaker 7: You guys happen to have a drum off at any
Speaker 7: point during the making?
Speaker 2: He would win?
Speaker 1: No, Ryan is this undeniable talent. He also knows how
Speaker 1: to play buckets.
Speaker 6: We had a great jam sett but he was just
Speaker 6: going off on the floor and then I pulled out
Speaker 6: a little bucket.
Speaker 1: We had a little gam I prefer to create, not
Speaker 1: to challenge. There's no sense of challenging our everyone's unique
Speaker 1: so we just found each other's strengths in the room
Speaker 1: and it was phenomenal. In the middle of the Patsle
Speaker 1: in France.
Speaker 2: Yeah, signed me up.
Speaker 7: You were a drummer, but you're playing a guitarist. So
Speaker 7: how is that for you? Were you actually playing the guitar?
Speaker 7: Were you singing in this or is this somebody else
Speaker 7: doing all the that lifting and you're bringing the character
Speaker 7: to it.
Speaker 2: No, it's my voice singing. We recorded all.
Speaker 6: It's a lot of the actual musicians from the movie
Speaker 6: are playing on the songs too. Tim Joe did a
Speaker 6: lot of the guitar parts. I think Charlie did some bass.
Speaker 6: I even had him do some backup vocals. I came
Speaker 6: up with this backup vocal section and he was in
Speaker 6: the studio.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was me on vocals.
Speaker 6: However, I'm not playing guitar on the tracks. I did
Speaker 6: learn them, so in the film it's me playing, but
Speaker 6: somebody else recorded it.
Speaker 2: How was that for you?
Speaker 7: Because I'm sure you guys have both been an ensemble
Speaker 7: cast before, but now you're in an ensemble plus a band,
Speaker 7: almost a double ensembling there because you're going to be
Speaker 7: playing together, but you're also acting together as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like I said, like Galen, Charlie, myself and Tim
Speaker 6: Joe were all in this movie Band Slam together fifteen
Speaker 6: years ago, and then after Band Slam, Tim Joe and
Speaker 6: I were in the band for eight years, and then
Speaker 6: Charlie and Tim Joe were in a band together for
Speaker 6: I think they still play. That all felt natural and
Speaker 6: already I had already had a one hundred fights with
Speaker 6: Tim Joe in real life about songs that's the wrong chord,
Speaker 6: we got to change to that. We've done that for real,
Speaker 6: So I think it all felt really easy just to
Speaker 6: slide back into those things after Tim Joe and I
Speaker 6: hadn't played together maybe eight or twelve years or whatever
Speaker 6: it was, But it was really easy to look at
Speaker 6: it and be like, you're.
Speaker 7: Fucking up, and how did this project come together? It
Speaker 7: sounds like you almost had a dry run with Band Slam.
Speaker 6: You're like, you want to come play the drummer and
Speaker 6: do like a day player role. Come to France for
Speaker 6: a couple of days. And I was like, sure, I'll
Speaker 6: read the script.
Speaker 2: Let me find out.
Speaker 6: And then I read the script and I was like,
Speaker 6: the drummer's a girl, so who am I going to play.
Speaker 6: They're like, no, we want you to play the lead.
Speaker 6: And I was like, oh, I didn't. Okay, then yes,
Speaker 6: you had me at Castle in France, but yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I knew Ali who plays Christen in the movie Drummer.
Speaker 1: We know each other from the La music scene here
Speaker 1: in mutuals, and she got me a zoom with Charlie
Speaker 1: and Galen and we just hit it off. And the
Speaker 1: way I approach independent films is who do you want
Speaker 1: to go be a team with for said amount of time?
Speaker 1: And those guys sold me on them. And then I
Speaker 1: got the script and I'm like, oh, I get to
Speaker 1: play someone well I haven't played and then you look
Speaker 1: at location and you're like, oh my god, it's just.
Speaker 2: Your immersed in this world.
Speaker 1: Let's go have some fun. And it's exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: It was intense, long days, but we had fun. He
Speaker 1: had a trust, we became a family who became a team,
Speaker 1: and that's what led to this project happening.
Speaker 7: From my side, yeah, yeah, what was your experience like
Speaker 7: on this, because I know so much of the time,
Speaker 7: at least in the beginning of the movie, you are
Speaker 7: talked about but not seen necessarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe the name Miles is mentioned more than
Speaker 1: my screen time, which makes it super interesting.
Speaker 2: What he is.
Speaker 1: He's this through story.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was there for about a week and a half
Speaker 1: and I had joined them after what it must have
Speaker 1: been two and a half weeks of their initial shoot dates,
Speaker 1: which is also intimidating. I'm like, hey, guys, I'm the
Speaker 1: new guy. And we sat down in a family dinner
Speaker 1: thing and just became fast friends. And you know, you realize,
Speaker 1: like we said strips and weaknesses and all that, and
Speaker 1: we all filled it and everyone lifted a finger in
Speaker 1: this film. It was as inspiring as it was to
Speaker 1: be sworn into this cast, watching this crew work and
Speaker 1: being able to wear as many hats as they did
Speaker 1: and create this project was the utmost inspiring thing where
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is what independent filmmaking is.
Speaker 2: This is it? So yeah, very cool.
Speaker 7: Filmmaking is never easy, but independent filmmaking is way harder
Speaker 7: than anything that anybody could probably possibly imagine. What was
Speaker 7: that like for you guys being part of this crew
Speaker 7: and being part of this experience?
Speaker 6: For me, it's just it's humbling when you see, you know,
Speaker 6: everyone breaking their back, Like there was not one person
Speaker 6: who was slipping up, Like every single person was really
Speaker 6: really breaking their back, and like you know, and like
Speaker 6: like Grob said, everyone wore a bunch of hats. There
Speaker 6: wasn't you know if I was a grip at one point,
Speaker 6: like everybody just everyone's helping out, everyone's doing everything they can.
Speaker 6: We had to do our own wardrobe on a lot
Speaker 6: of it. And so we're running up and down these
Speaker 6: castle stairs like three flights in between scenes so I
Speaker 6: can go grab jackets and do whatever. So I think
Speaker 6: that's the thing we hated the most at the end
Speaker 6: of the day was the stairs. There's a lot of
Speaker 6: stairs a thousand year old castle, you also get thousand
Speaker 6: year old gold, so we all had what we dubbed
Speaker 6: as castle cough. So that's the thing, that's the real thing.
Speaker 6: But no, yeah, it's just humbling, man, to see just
Speaker 6: everyone picking up the slack where it needed to be
Speaker 6: picked up.
Speaker 7: Did you actually live in the castle or was there
Speaker 7: another place to stay at?
Speaker 2: Now we lived in the castle.
Speaker 1: I remember flying in and being like, oh, we get
Speaker 1: to stay here. They've already been there for a couples
Speaker 1: I get to stay here. I'm hearing stories about this
Speaker 1: place and trying to navigate, and then you realize when
Speaker 1: lights are out, whatever that is four am when you're done.
Speaker 1: Call it's four am in the middle of nowhere at France,
Speaker 1: in a castle that's a thousand years old. You get
Speaker 1: thousand year old creak cracks, maybe some hauntings. You get
Speaker 1: all of it, and you're like, oh my god, we're
Speaker 1: fully immersed in this film, like true method musician actor.
Speaker 2: The hats on. This is great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, my room in the film was my room the
Speaker 6: whole time I was staying there, So whenever we shot
Speaker 6: in that room I just had to like move all
Speaker 6: my backs to the side or put away the wardrobe.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I was really at the very top of
Speaker 6: the castle and his room was right next door Tomorro
Speaker 6: and so yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 7: Have you had a chance to see this with an
Speaker 7: audience yet?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 6: No, I saw it with one person, So no, tonight
Speaker 6: will be the first time.
Speaker 2: I don't do.
Speaker 1: Well watching my face on the screen with other people.
Speaker 1: It's so embarrassing. But I will say this, I would
Speaker 1: love to see it tonight with everyone looking at the
Speaker 1: incredible job Rian did on carrying this.
Speaker 2: That's gonna be involved.
Speaker 7: Before we wrap. I have to ask about the picture
Speaker 7: buying you because it looks like her hometown's here with
Speaker 7: the Robin me.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is actually this is not even my house,
Speaker 6: by friend Ariel, who shout out to Ariel Vida. She's
Speaker 6: a director and she actually really helped out on this film.
Speaker 6: The big jackets that I wear.
Speaker 2: She found them.
Speaker 6: We were looking for him up until I flew out
Speaker 6: the France and we were like dying to find this.
Speaker 6: I wanted this like iconic Perry Farrell nineties jacket and
Speaker 6: we couldn't find it. And Ariel found one on Facebook
Speaker 6: marketplace and then found another one and drove to meet
Speaker 6: somebody and shipped it to us in France, and luckily
Speaker 6: it got there because we were I was dying to
Speaker 6: find that jacket. Yeah, this is her place, but we
Speaker 6: were actually going to do a movie together on a boat,
Speaker 6: and so she has a lot of Oracle things themed
Speaker 6: things up on the wall.
Speaker 1: That's Lake Michigan. I can see it from here and
Speaker 1: she's from Michigan. That makes sense there you.
Speaker 7: Go, Yeah, I'll look it up. Y Ryan and Rob,
Speaker 7: thank you so much for your time. This was a
Speaker 7: real pleasure talking with you guys.
Speaker 2: Mike.
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure, Thank you man, talking to you Mike.
Speaker 2: All Right, the premiere, I get to show you.
Speaker 1: It is my daily hat Ah nice windsor Detroit Freedom,
Speaker 1: best man that brings us together.
Speaker 4: Sir, there's only two songs in me, and I just
Speaker 4: wrote the third. Don't know where I got the inspiration
Speaker 4: or how I wrote the words spend my whole life
Speaker 4: just digging up my music shallow for the two songs
Speaker 4: in me and the third one I just made. A
Speaker 4: rich man wants to me lives a funny thing. A
Speaker 4: poor man wants to me that I can't afford to speak.
Speaker 4: Now I'm in the middle, like a bird without me
Speaker 4: because there's just two songs in me, and I just
Speaker 4: wrote the third. Don't know where I got the inspiration
Speaker 4: or how I wrote the words spend my whole life
Speaker 4: just digging up mimy is shallow before the two songs
Speaker 4: hit me and the third one I just made. So
Speaker 4: I went to the President and I sold what's his name?
Speaker 4: Has he ever gotten writer's block or something like the same.
Speaker 4: He just started talking like he was on TV. If
Speaker 4: there's just two songs in you, boy, what do you
Speaker 4: want from me? So I bought myself some ten pats
Speaker 4: in a silver guitar.
Speaker 1: But I'm allowed it to ladies. He'll still have to
Speaker 1: call me sir.
Speaker 4: I have to keep my self respect. I'll never be
Speaker 4: a star since there's just two songs hit me and
Speaker 4: this is number