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Filmmaker Interviews: You just got out of your screening… Robert Moniot: Yeah. Yes, I did. FI: Your hellacious screening. Rob: Yes, that’s a good word for it: hellacious. FI: So how did it go? Rob: We had a technical problem. For some reason when they transferred – at this festival, they like to show the shorts on a DVD. So you send them your beta and they transfer it to DVD. So then they have one DVD with the whole program. Somewhere in the mix – I don’t know exactly where – our movie out of all the movies didn’t have a dialog track on it. As a result, our movie starts and there’s no dialog in it. So luckily, we opened the festival, so we had the 35mm print here, so we scrambled, made jokes with the audience, we found the print and strung it up. So in a way it was cool because the audience go to see the movie the way that we wanted them to which was on 35mm with Dolby Digital, SDDS Surround. So, that was cool. It was harrowing, I hate it when that kind of thing happens, because you know, it just… the audience saw the beginning of my movie three times today. [Laughs] Which does make us the most screened movie of the festival… but still. FI: What’s your next thing? What’s your next festival with this? Rob: Unless something comes up first, our next festival is Florida at the Florida Film Festival. But there are a couple of things out there, so we might do something prior to that. Then the movie will be out on HBO as long as the lawyers can figure everything out. It could possibly be showing with Pearl Harbor. Starting in June, but that’s not a done deal yet.
FI: Have Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay (producer and director, respectively, of Bad Boys, The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) seen this? Rob: I know that they all have copies and I know that people who work for them have seen it. And I’ve bumped into Michael a couple of times both before and after we finished the movie. So, I know that he knows about the project. We sent him a hat and I know someone at the studio said that they saw him wearing it around. We poke fun, but I really love a lot of what they do. I loved Armageddon, it was a popcorn movie – it was a great ride. And I’ve been a fan of Jerry Bruckheimer movies since I was a kid. FI: Since Top Gun? Rob: Actually,… FI: Flashdance! Rob: Flashdance! I really dig what they do and I’d love to work with them some day. But that movie just seemed so embedded in the public consciousness that it seemed to make sense that if we were going to get noticed by making fun of pop-culture that that seemed like the right target. I’m sure Jerry and Michael can take it. FI: This is completely above and beyond conventional short films. Did you say the budget was for this film was over half a million (during the Q&A session)? Rob: If we had spent that money, it would have been half a million. We figure with all the companies that gave us the freebies, it was –actually Taz knows for sure – it was just over half a million dollars.
FI: Did you know that you were going to get everything paid for before you started shooting? Rob: We didn’t know for sure. For a while there, we thought we’d only be able to finish on video. Because when you shoot on 24p, the most expensive part comes at the end when you have to scan it out to film. FI: What’s the length of your movie and how much would that cost? Rob: The length of the movie is 11 minutes. This is a ball park figure somewhere between 20-60K. but Taz would know. So, between that, the camera package, lighting package; the grip, electric, the costumes we got donated; and the sets. We paid a little bit of a fee to the stage to work on the beach there which was right next to an actual Naval base. But so many things were donated. So, I think what Taz and I did were just commit to getting the movie done at whatever level we could get it done. Luckily for us, it just came in around 30 grand. FI: That’s very cheap considering the quality of the film. It’s very impressive. Rob: Thank you. FI: For a beginning filmmaker, would you recommend for them to go through what you went through and put out an incredible piece on the first time out at bat? Max out their credit cards… Rob: No, I wouldn’t in all honesty. Taz and I have a small production company and we’ve had the benefit of over the last few years of being able to build up resources and contacts and a result of being hired to work on jobs. For instance, the last shortfilm that I did, which was Taz’s directorial debut – Pearl Harbor II is my directorial debut – we were blessed to have John Alonzo, who shot Chinatown, Scarface, and Norma Rae to serve as our cinematographer. And that happened because we did an industrial for Fuji a few years earlier. So, it was one of those great, lucky situations. The reason I would recommend going all out the way that we did is because I think that – hopefully without sounding too… we did ours for a very specific reason – we wanted to show Hollywood, where we live and work, that we had the tools and abilities to produce on their level. That is a very, very, very difficult thing to do unless you have the connections and favor that we found out that we could get as we got closer to production. A period parody of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie is insanity. And one of the things that sucked about making this movie for me, is that I chose something that doesn’t fulfill me as creatively as I would like it to.
I think that for filmmakers that are just starting out, the best thing that they can do is to concentrate as hard as they possibly can on story, story, story, story, story, story, story. And knowing what your budget limitation are. You know, shoot on DV, shoot on, I don’t care, 8mm, pixelvision. I’ve had a lot of time with my production company to practice big stuff. I think it’s really, really important for filmmakers when they’re just starting to get their legs by concentrating on stories first and then work your way up. I have a lot of friends that have blown a lot of money on big, shiny looking things, but the thing about it is, it’s a machine. I mean anybody can shoot something big and shiny. But to make it funny or give it heart or to tell a story that people can relate to, that the hard thing and I think that’s what young filmmakers should focus on. Certainly, this work in getting Hollywood’s attention, Steven Speilberg watched it – he thought it was funny. And stuff like that is great, but now that we’re going out to the town with scripts, we’ve been really, really careful to have a follow-up; our stories that capture people’s imaginations. The thing about a movie like we did, you made a shortfilm to get on agents’, mangers’, and producers’ desks and they have very, very short attention spans. In fact at 11 minutes, we were probably four minutes too long. We made something that we knew that they would want to watch. So, that’s my advice on that. FI: Was this influenced at all by the success of 405: The Movie? It was so short (3 mins) but quite successful. Rob: The guys who did 405 did an amazing job in taking the medium to a higher level. Those guys, both had visual effects background and that was great. It did the job for them, they got a CAA agent out of it. Taz Goldstein: I got a few gray hair after working with the 35mm projection. I think they actually saw the beginning about 17 times, but the folks at Newport were gracious and laughed anyway inspite of seeing it for the eighth time. FI: What are your backgrounds? Did you go to film school? Taz: I came from film school in Boston. I actually switched to Television because the film program sucked. When I first got out to LA, my first job was a tape screener for America’s Funniest Home Videos. I was the very first guy to ever be hired to watch those tapes. FI: [Laughs] Ok! So what are the really bad ones that never made it to prime time? Taz: Let’s see, there was a baby that peed in his mother’s mouth and for some reason the family thought it was hysterical. That was brilliant. In fact, I saved all those tapes, so I’ll get you a copy. This is going to be the first interview that’s going to have a laugh-track on it. Back when the show started, people didn’t really know that you were just supposed to dub off part of it and not send in their masters. So this couple sent it their wedding video. It was cute when they showed them sticking cake in each others’ faces. Ha ha very funny. The tape just rolled for 15 minutes because I was talking on the phone. I looked back at the screen and they’re just slamming and hard inside the shower. Up against the glass. So, that’s funny. [Laughs] [An
innocent bystander while waiting in line for the banquet dinner
decided to chime into our conversation]. Taz: America’s Funniest Home Videos. Bystander: You worked on it? Taz: Yeah, I was the very first person they hired to watch the tapes. Bystander: Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, a tape watcher.
Taz: From there I directed some television shows for Fox and MTV. I did this show called Studs. You remember that one? FI: Yeah…I… Bystander: Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah [Laughs] FI: I had an acquaintance on that show. Taz: Every fuckin’ cheese-pie show. If Love American Style was still on, I’d be directing that. I did a couple of shows with MTV pilots, hooked up with Rob. I was doing music for the show as well and Rob needed a place to record some music because he had some interest for… Cher? Rob: Yeah, it was Cher. Taz: I had a midi studio because I was doing music, so the two of us hooked up. Right around the same time, the company that I was working for had Hulk Hogan as a property and they were looking for a sitcom to do with him and they couldn’t come up with any ideas. So, Rob and I were like, “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You couldn’t come up any ideas for Hulk Hogan?” So, we pitched three right off the top of our heads; one of them he loved. So we were hired to write the treatment. Of course we had never written anything before, so it was all totally in the wrong format [laughs], but ABC loved it. And then Lyle AIzado was exposed for steroid usage and he died??? And ABC said that you had to drop Hulk Hogan as a property. We did that we realized that we totally hit it off and that was going off eight, nine years ago. We had a great time and we and we both wanted to make films so that was pretty cool.
FI: Rob, what’s your background? Rob: You know, I was always involved in the arts in high school and got a full scholarship to SMU in Dallas, but I had to leave school early because I ran out of money. Pretty much my scholarship fell apart for reasons that I really didn’t have anything to do with. I went back to Arkansas got cast as a glorified extra in Biloxi Blues and hung out with Mike Nichols, learned a lot about directing films, commercials and a couple of other movies in the area. We’re fixing to go into a noisy place. I came out to Los Angeles and became a stuntman for a little while… Bystander: Really?!? Rob: Yeah, I worked at Universal Studios in Hollywood. I did a show in Japan and I worked in China as a stuntman. Visit
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![We sent [Michael Bay] a hat and I know someone at the studio said that they saw him wearing it around.](../images/q-robtaz1.gif)
