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Bobby Goes Splat!

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Trailer for "Blackballed"

Imagine if you will Comedy Central’s Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry roaming the woods with a paintball gun and a purpose. This is what happens in the mock documentary (à la This Is Spinal Tap and the rest of the Christopher Guest oeuvre) Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, the cult-worthy film just out on DVD. Co-writer/producer Brian Steinberg, a UB graduate, spoke to Artvoice about the film, his years in Buffalo and how to script for unscripted television.

ARTVOICE: What was the impetus for Blackballed? How did the Bobby Dukes character come about?

BRIAN STEINBERG: Brant [the director] played paintball a few times with a bunch of his friends who called themselves “The Asian Knights.” They dressed up like ninjas and shot each other. Would a ninja use a gun? Uh, no. Brant thought the whole thing was really over-the-top and ripe for parody, though I don’t think of the movie as a parody but more of a tribute. I suppose it is a parody of sports movies in general.

Brant came up with the name Bobby Dukes. We worked on the character together and then later with Corddry. I originally thought of Bobby as this weird, Zen-type monk almost, who knew everything and taught his teammates meaningless lessons. He’d been traveling the world for 10 years and he has all this information that was useful in his travels, but probably wouldn’t relate to the story.

It was Corddry who thought that Bobby wasn’t necessarily enlightened. At one of our last meetings before we started shooting, he pulled Brant and I aside and said that Bobby should be this blue-collar guy, who had a lot of life experience and liked to watch events unfold, like a dog. One of Bobby’s quirks is that he tilts his head when he’s listening or watching like a curious puppy.

AV: Tell me about your four years at University of Buffalo in the mid 1990s, where you graduated from the Media Studies department.

BS: At that time, the UB Media Studies department curriculum was very progressive. The atmosphere was really loose and nurturing.

A few weeks into my first semester I started meeting people with whom I shared a common knowledge of and enthusiasm for pop culture and comedy. Together, we made hours of short comedy movies, including a revolving five-man sketch comedy show, The Backdoor, which ran on UB’s campus TV station for two years. We would all take turns directing, writing, editing, acting and producing with no ego. That was the most creative time in my life.

AV: You co-wrote and produced Blackballed with director Brant Sersen. How does that relationship work?

BS: We’ve been friends since we were like 15. We grew up in Rockland County, about half an hour north of New York City. We always shared a passion for movies and filmmaking and talked about working together really early on. We started filming our friends snowboarding and skateboarding and making those into little movies.

While he was at University of Miami we made a documentary about punk rock and hardcore called Release, which was distributed around the world by Victory Records. Later, we worked together at the now defunct Propaganda Films in New York, which represented the best music video and commercial directors in the world. We would watch Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry’s videos frame by frame in awe. I think our fanboy passion was a big part of where Blackballed came from. We understand each other without a lot of explanation.

AV: How did Rob Corddry get involved with the project?

BS: I used to be a talent manager in New York and I actually represented about 80 percent of the cast, including Corddry, at one time or another. In the late 1990s, I was spending most of my free time at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, where on any night you could catch inspired sketch and improv. I knew Corddry through that scene. Originally, we talked to Matt Walsh (Old School, Dog Bites Man) about playing Bobby Dukes, but he was moving to LA. I think Corddry had just gotten The Daily Show. The timing was good and he liked the project. Also, at the time, my wife was the head of talent at Comedy Central in New York and she championed him through a series of rigorous Daily Show auditions. Maybe he felt like he owed me one. Maybe not…

AV: Among your credits you “wrote” for a reality series. That sounds a little oxymoronic. How does that work?

BS: I wrote dialogue for the host of the show and conceptualized some of the elimination challenges. The host was Katey Sagal from Married…with Children. She was cool until I sang her my stirring rendition of Young Black Teenagers’ “Nobody Knows…I had Kelly Bundy.” Not a good move.

AV: What’s the next project for you?

BS: I recently finished two feature scripts and I hope to get them made. Brant and I have been talking about collaborating again, but we both got busy with other things. When we put Blackballed together the goal wasn’t just to make a movie, it was to start a movement. Unfortunately, life got in the way a little bit, but the dream lives on.

Town Ballroom hosts a free screening of Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story this Friday, July 28 at 9:30pm, and the DVD is in stores now. For more infotmation visit www.bobbydukes.com.