5 Questions with Nicholas Nazmi and Peter Falls

“Roscoe & The Babe” is a homemade comedy western about two friends heading west on a stolen horse. We asked co-directors, Nicholas Nazmi and Peter Falls, about the origins of the project, using a makeshift green screen, and cutting scenes…

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

Nick: I've been making movies with Bennett Clarkson since 8th grade. Bennett and I used to be in a TV studio class where we would take this old camera and film over old disney vhs tapes and then edit on an old vhs machine. We had the freedom to make whatever we wanted (thanks Mr. Shannon!), from pirate epics to existential dramas. I met Peter in college, our world's collided and we have been making movies together ever since.

Peter: I’ve been making movies since high school, so I guess since then. And specifically with Nick and this team, we’ve been collaborators since college. And a budget is something we’ve never been familiar with. Obviously the spaghetti westerns are clear derivatives for this project but also Ray Harryhousen and his fantastical world of stop motion beats propelled me into this field and I think some of that comes across in this project too.

2) What was the earliest seed of this project? And how did you go about developing it in the early stages?

Nick & Peter: Our screenwriter Jack Mankiewicz wrote the script in a few hours after we had decided we wanted to make a greenscreen western. The conception, writing, and filming took place over the course of 48 hours. It's the style we usually work with that often results in some chaos and torture in the editing room.

3) I love the sense of playfulness and DIY effects / greenscreening - how did you conceive of the visual landscape of the film initially? What were some of the unique challenges to bringing this vision to life?

Peter: In terms of getting there, we were limited. We had, I’d say, a ten by fourteen foot wall in Nick’s studio that we nailed a green sheet to. And that was all the green screen we had. So all the coverage had to be shot against that wall and we had to keep track of eyeline, axis, etc. Really not that hard once we established a piece of coverage but the death scene took some finagling ‘cause we could never look up into the sky so when Bennett’s leaning over me I had to sit up and he had to look straight ahead as if he was looking down at me. Oh yeah and that rock was the stool we used to ride the horse covered in a green pillow case.

Nick: My laptop is really not built to handle the amount of layers that went into this greenscreen project. There were some editing nights where my room felt like a sauna from the sheer amount of heat coming from my computer and hard drive during some renders. There are roughly 3-8 separate layers in each shot. The Amargosa Desert in Nevada was the location I wanted to use. Somewhere close to California, but just not close enough (plus it's beautiful). The Theme for Roscoe and the Babe (California) was written and performed by AJ Calabrese. It brought me to tears when I first listened to it in the bathroom during a Spiderman: Enter the Spiderverse screening. I remember feeling nervous and that I really needed to carefully craft these greenscreen backgrounds to do justice to his song.

4) I always like to hear about scenes or threads that get cut out of films for whatever reason. Was there anything that you omitted late in the game, either in the script process, or in the edit, that you think significantly improved the final film, and why?

Nick: The death scene, which is already quite long, had to be cut down. I think the original took up over 60% of the entire film. There was also a scene where it was Christmas eve and Roscoe and the Babe mix some eggnog and whiskey together to celebrate. We bought a nice bottle of eggnog for the scene but ultimately Jack found it to be meandering, and he was right!

5) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

Peter: Opening Night by Cassavettes. Gena Rowlands is a beast. And Cassavettes isn’t half bad either. The movie's a slow burn but man does it burn hot.

Nick: To Live and Die in LA by William Friedkin. Definitely my new favorite Willem Dafoe role, and that title track is now forever stuck in my head.

Bonus Question) What’s next for you?

Nick & Peter: Maybe Roscoe & The Babe Go to the Moon. But for real we have a special project we're working on starring Peter and Bennett that we'll begin filming later this fall.

Contact Info:

Nazmi: Website: http://www.nicknazmi.com

IG: @ghostboats

Falls: IG: @pmfalls