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