Director Nic Costa Does Film With Flair

I was honestly very humbled that Nic took some time to speak with me about not only his day job, but also his dream profession as film director. We also got to chat about his latest film, Raging Midlife. Read our interview below. 

I see that your main occupation is acting as an immigration lawyer. In your opinion, what are the most misunderstood elements of your job? Further, what is the most fulfilling part of this position? 

When I read this, I kind of chuckled because sometimes I feel like I am “acting” as an immigration attorney or at least when I started! I think one of the most misunderstood parts of my job is when I literally tell people I am an immigration attorney. They always look at me kind of funny. I was at a market in rural Oregon a while back and some guy says, “an immigration attorney, huh? Are you keeping them here or are you kicking them out?”

I turned to him and I said, “well, I am keeping them here lawfully, sir, you can’t get angry about that.” He then said, “lawfully, huh? Yeah, I guess I can’t get angry about that.”  I love these kinds of breakthroughs. I do a lot of asylum and refugee work and it is a common misconception that my clients are coming here “illegally”, but asylum is a lawful path to permanent residence in the country and a pending application grants people lawful presence while they are here waiting for their asylum interview or hearing.  

To answer your next question, the most fulfilling part of the job is when you can look a family in the eye and say you don’t have to fear returning to the hell from whence you came. That is as good as it gets. 

I think it is super cool that you are a wrestling fan. I can remember being young and watching WWE all the time. How do you feel wrestling has evolved through time, and also, your favorite wrestler? 

I was certainly a child of the 80’s. I grew up in what I would describe as the golden age of wrestling pageantry when it was simply the WWF. The good guys were good and the bad guys were bad. It was simple and beautiful, at least in the eyes of a child like me. That is not to say that it was necessarily all good. The 80’s had all kinds of cultural appropriation, and there were many times where the WWF villainized “the other." In fact, Raging Ab's nemesis -- Brooklyn native “Tomahawk Tony” -- was a spin on WWF Hall of Famer "Chief Jay Strongbow" who was an Italian-American dressed in a native American headdress, etc.  I never really vibed that women were objectified and slapped around in the 80’s — and I feel like it got worse in the 90’s when the NWO era erupted. Thankfully, I think it has settled into a much better place these days. I see a lot of women participating in WWE. Even guys like Cody Rhodes looks healthy and happy: no anabolic steroids and 80’s cocaine that I can see.   

If you have seen Raging Midlife, you may have guessed my favorite wrestler is Macho Man Randy Savage. The guy was just ahead of his time. Watch him on some early Arsenio Hall shows and the Macho was just beyond his contemporaries in terms of elevating the discourse. I will never forget one episode when Arsenal Hall is asking Macho Man if he ever cries and in the next thirty-five seconds, Macho Man just blows our minds (Yes, I have this memorized): “It's OK for macho men to show every emotion available right there, you know. Because I've cried a thousand times [and] I'm gonna cry some more. But, I've soared with eagles and slithered with the snakes and everywhere in between and I'm gonna tell you something right now: there's one guarantee in life and that is that there are no guarantees, yeah. And understand this: nobody likes a quitter. Nobody said life was easy so if you get knocked down take Eight count get back up and fight again and your Macho Man, dig it?” 

The man was profound! While Hulk Hogan was telling the kids to say their prayers and eat his trademarked vitamins, Macho was waxing poetic philosophy.  I really wanted to channel that in our Raging Abraham Lincoln and his "Five Emancipations" -- 1) Have respect for your fellow man, 2) be good to your folks, 3) stay in school, 4) don't smoke drugs, and 5) don't do the crime unless you're willing to do the time because the time you got might not be much time at all!  Fun fact: we actually hired a Macho Man impersonator from Las Vegas named “Motch O Mann” who slayed it.  He was a former pro wrestler himself and just understood the magic Macho Man brought to the "squared circle." 

You choose to regularly work with your longtime friend and fellow filmmaker, Rob Taylor. Share what you feel makes this working relationship soar. Further, how do you handle any sort of creative challenges? 

I met Rob in high school and I remember thinking: "My goodness, this man has no quit in him."  When times get tough and there are challenges of any kind, you want someone that will never, ever give up. I have never met anyone more honest and more tenacious and more unwilling to compromise the shot or vision. Rob will walk off set if we are just going to make something inferior. Even if it is hour twelve, he has got to nail it and he does nail it. The best part of working with Rob is the joy it is working with Rob: he is hilarious and just a good, bright beautiful soul. The world could use more of him. I am actually working on a Rob clone right now, but I have not gotten the formula down quite yet. You should see my lab. It is a horror show of Rob Taylor clone misfires, reminiscent of "Alien: Resurrection." Sorry, Sigourney Weaver.   

Outside of Raging Midlife, you wrote one other project - Neil Stryker and the Tyrant of Time. How did this experience differ from your latest film - and did you ever distribute the project? 

Rob and I actually wrote several scripts in the early 2000’s. Neil Stryker was one of several that made it to production and was actually a prequel to a film Rob developed and distributed on Netflix before Netflix was even Netflix. It’s called Evil Cult. Rob hates when I relay this, but one of the first reviews Evil Cult ever received on Netflix just says “Run. Run as fast and as far away from this “movie” as you can. Evil Cult is not even really a movie; it’s more of an idea…a really horrible idea.” With that glowing inspiration, we made the prequel. Although I was only an actor in Rob‘s first film, we began our collaboration as writers together on Neil Stryker and the Tyrant of Time. One moment that stands out for me during the making of that film, is when I told Rob I wanted my character “Daryl Freeway” to have a musical number very much in the style of a Disney villain. Initially, Rob was skeptical... kind of like how Mel Brooks was skeptical of Gene Wilder when Gene Wilder wanted to do “Puttin' on the Ritz” in Young Frankenstein. I kicked and screamed until Rob said okay, it’s in. I was like "Why did you put me through that?!", and he said, "I just wasn’t sure, but you seemed pretty confident, so, yeah, let’s do it." Subsequently, I put a musical number into Raging Midlife and our forthcoming stage/film project, Predator the Musical: Ain’t Got Time to Glee. Yes -- you guessed it -- a full-blown musical spectacular.  

Neil Stryker and the Tyrant of Time is available on Amazon Prime as we speak! We actually made some international headway with that one and I am happy to report that the film got its biggest distribution deal in South Korea (although we never saw a dime from our distributor).  You can query Galen Christy over at High Octane Pictures about what happened to all that silver. 

Outside of being a writer, you are also an actor. If you were to do a self critique, would you say you are a stronger writer or actor and why? 

You know, I am a stronger storyteller than anything else. So, whether that's me sitting down and putting pen to paper or telling a story about my lived experience or performing on stage, I think that is where I really thrive. I don’t love being an actor, but I do like bringing people together in a way that resonates or at least makes an audience chuckle out loud in this dark and dreary world. 

Film Questions: 

Some of this film was shot during the pandemic, and that is a brave choice to make. Odd to say this, but any real benefits to shooting during this time? Any fears? 

You know, there was a lot of good that came from shooting during the height of the pandemic. First of all, it brought our community together to build something when we were being told to stay indoors, masked up and stay away from each other.  Moreover, shooting the film in phases was kind of nice, as we were allowed to literally get closer to each other bit by bit (there is wrestling in this film, after all) and spend the breaks in between planning for the next two-week shoot. By the summer of 2022, we were able to organize a final scene consisting of 200+ extras in a giant expo center with Paula Abdul that would not have been possible in the summer of 2020.   

The initial concept for this originated in 2003. I know how easy it is for filmmakers to just lose hope or give up - what kept you going? 

You know, the original concept was not even about wrestling or a chasing a tank top from a famous wrestler. It was actually a chase for tank top that Kurt Russel wore in Big Trouble in Little China. When I tell people about the original concept, some people laugh and others need an explanation.  We quickly realized that the concept was pretty niche. We put the script down for several years until our friend Jeffrey Wonderful, a Portland legend, really put the fire under us in 2018. He was well known for creating rock operas in Portland and it was Jeffrey that pulled me aside and said "Nic, theater is fleeting. Movies are forever. You guys can’t just do Neil Stryker and be done with it. We’ve got business with Fungirl247!"(which was the former title of the film). He actually called it "PartyGirl247", but I never corrected him because that was so Jeffrey Wonderful to make it his own. 

It took us ten years to make Neil Stryker and the Tyrant of Time. Raging Midlife took only five years. So, we are getting better! I think what kept us going is that we knew the script was solid, and we knew we were born to play these roles. We wanted to push the envelope and see how far we could go with it. "Let’s get Eddie Griffin! Let’s get Paula Abdul. Let’s get the camera that James Cameron used on the Avatar films!" The project turned into the little film that could... and does. The best part is that it was really fun to do. Yes, it was a tremendous struggle, but the experience and the camaraderie we built were deeply gratifying. 

I read that the script was ever evolving, so how and when did you realize that you had to say, we are finished for certain. I know how hard that is for writers to do. 

Eventually you got to put the digital pen down because the show must get shot.  There are certainly vestiges of the 2003 script in the final film, which I love. We were in our early 20’s when we wrote the first draft, and we were approaching forty when we were writing the final draft. That early sophomoric humor still exists in the final draft but layered with the experience of men and women now in there midlife. Have we really evolved? Certainly, but we are still laughing at those “Boogie Woogies” porn shop jokes we wrote in 2003. Fun note: I remember handing those pages to Walter Koenig who appeared in Neil Stryker as a Russian Science Officer a la Pavel Chekov. His two demands were, number one, he did not want to do the Russian accent like he did in our previous film (made famous in Star Trek). Number two, he wanted his wife, Judy Levitt, to be in the scene with him. So, I basically cut his character "Otis the porn shop owner" in half and gave his wife (who played “Dolores”) half of his lines and a giant double-edged-dildo. Needless to say, she stole the scene from her husband. We dedicated the film to her and Jeffrey Wonderful's memory. This is the last film the couple did together :( 

Your film is chock full of campy humor, old school wrestling, kiddy pools and chaos.  How hard is it for actors to attempt to stay serious in the midst of such fun set life each day? 

I often joke. The worst part of making a movie is making the movie. When we are really feeling the vibe, and the comedy is in a rhythm, it is pure magic. There was a lot of time spent trying to keep it together as Matt Zak is being helicoptered by a 250 pound wrestler while screaming “IT’S REAL!!!” 

As to the casting of Eddie Griffin and Paula Abdul, how exactly does a producer go about securing such talent? Secondly, was there ever a real "OMG" moment while working with them? 

It started with a script that we wrote and never shot called The Saints of Boozeball. At the end of that script, for no reason at all, I wrote “and then Paula Abdul herself walks up to the roof of the frat house and begins to sing ‘Forever Your Girl’. Rob looked at me and said, "Why are you writing the impossible?". I told him, “Look, if we don’t write the impossible, it will never become possible.” Cut to 2019 and I am telling Rob I know exactly who we need to call to be our lovely “Mary Todd” and he was like "I double dog dare you." I picked up the phone and made the call. Now, there was a number of rewrites that Paula wanted, but I can remember being on that first phone call with her and her team and thinking OMG. Paula Abdul is asking me for a rewrite because she wants her role to have 'meaning and flare'— my six-year-old self was screaming.  

As to Eddie Griffin’s involvement, that was a Producer's dream/nightmare scenario. We all flew down to Los Angeles to shoot Paula and the night before we were scheduled to fly down there she must cancel because she has Covid. We lost another actor, Keith David, a couple weeks prior to Covid and we were left scratching her heads, wondering what we were going to shoot on Monday??  I am from Oregon where "Goonies never say die." I switched on my Wi-Fi on the plane and found a Mexican warehouse on Giggster. Found an airport set where they shot Lost, and connected with an agent in New York via my cousin, who handed me a list of actors and said he could probably get Eddie Griffin to LA. However, Nic would have to get him back to his show at the Sahara in Las Vegas that same night. About 8:00am that Monday morning, I remember getting a call from my production staff telling me Eddie Griffin is here - and he wants to know who is playing his son. I was draped in five fake AK-47s thinking "OMG we pulled this off. Yes, I even got Eddie back to his show at the Sahara, which was quickly canceled due to an electrical problem at the venue. It was the greatest producing moment of my life, and my entire team came down with Covid after the shoot because we were celebrating our victory at the Cha Cha Cha in Silverlake. 

Raging Midlife had its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival and screened at the Manhattan Film Festival - where is the film headed now? 

Yes, we finished the Manhattan Film Festival and then we departed to Cannes for the "World Film Festival: Remember the Future"! We then swing around the planet and back again to festivals in various other states and countries.  

You may have noticed we are doing things a bit backwards with distribution and the film festival circuit.  The film is already available in the US and Canada on Amazon Prime, YouTube and Tubi, but as Macho Man once said, "The cream rises to the top!" but these days the top is so cluttered we need to push the cream through. We are on a quest for eyeballs.  As of this writing, we have 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s no small feat. Now we just got to let the world know it! 

More information can be found at: Nic Costa - IMDb