DAY OF RECKONING: An interview with Zero Day director Ben Coccio. By Warren Curry 3/21/03 Part 2 of 2

Zero Day director Ben Coccio

How old were Cal and Andre during production?

They are 16 and 17 now, and they were 15 and 16 then.

One of the most troubling and most powerful aspects of the movie is that you don't judge Cal and Andre's characters. They're not sympathetic, but they're not presented as stereotypical villains either. In a way, it's scary to think that a disturbed high school student could use this film as a "how to" manual in planning his/her own massacre. Of course, I don't see how anyone watching this film could think that you're condoning these kids' mindsets, but it's still a treacherous line to walk. So, how did you do it?

First, as a quick aside, you're right -- you could look at it as a "how to" manual, but then again when you really think about it, this is not a hard thing to do. What these kids end up doing is betraying the trust of people like their parents, who are going to give them their trust and their love no matter what. If you want to deceive people like that, it's very easy.

Getting back to the question, that was the whole point for me. I'm not trying to make polemic; I'm trying to tell a dramatic story and I'm also trying to tell the truth of these events, which obviously I don't have any personal experience with, but it's my version of truth. What you were saying about the characters not being villains or sympathetic -- I think there's so much you can do with character development that you don't get to see in movies all of the time. The shorthand for character development these days is that one character says to the other, "My dad used to beat me," and that's become a fill in the blank for everything. Character development, to me, is watching, for instance, how a character chooses to light his cigarette -- that can be character development. I want to see how people do things. I don't necessarily need to know all that motivates them; I enjoy mystery. The decisions to show these kids going through their preparations, going through their build up to this event, and going through the act of getting ready, gave me this opportunity to show them as people and get to know them as people, but never really know them, because you don't why they do what they're going to do. You never really get a satisfactory answer. I just decided, whenever possible, to not show them talking about fixing the bike, but show them fixing the bike.

What are your views on what it's like to be a suburban teenager these days? Why did Columbine happen? Why do people like Cal and Andre exist?

I grew up in a suburban neighborhood. When I first heard the news about Columbine, I was in a pizza place in New York City and the TV is always tuned to a baseball game that time of year, but for some reason I looked up at the TV and it's tuned to a picture of a school. When I heard what they were saying over the TV and figured out what was going on, honestly, the first thought I had was, "How come this didn't happen sooner?" There had been events like this, but never as catastrophic. I grew up in a very similar environment, and I was picked on like a lot of kids in high school, but I never honestly wanted to go in and kill everybody. I wanted to get revenge in a different way -- in a "the best revenge is to live well" kind of way.

But the climate of suburban culture and how it pertains to kids like Andre and Cal? I'd be the first to say it's not because of violent media, it's not because of video games, it's not because of all these things and I do believe that, but there's just something very different about that kind of suburban lifestyle. It can either spawn great creativity, because you're deprived of influences of every kind and your forced to come up with your own thing, or it can create the worst kind of apathy and boredom. In a weird way, I think the Columbine kids are a crossroads of these two things. They're very creative -- they created their own little world -- but at the same time it's melded with this really simplistic, apathetic, selfish way of looking at things. I really don't think that Eric Harris and Dylan Clebold, or the characters in my movie, are indicative of trends in society. I think these are anomalies, and I don't think we'll see another event like that for a long time. You could say there's something inherently bad about growing up in that type of environment, but there's something bad about growing up in any type of environment. And there's something good about growing up in it too. I don't necessarily buy that their environment corrupted them, but the truth of the matter is that you don't see things like Columbine happening in an urban area. You see kids shooting each other left and right in urban areas, but the reasons are these kind of simple reasons that seem more rational. Not that it's rational to shoot someone over money, but it comes down to something that is more logical and makes a bit more sense.

Zero Day screened recently at the Denver International Film Festival and you were part of a panel about film violence with Michael Moore. How'd that go?

It was a great panel. What happened was there was my film, Bowling For Columbine and a film called Home Room, which is very tangentially about a school shooting. The Denver Film Festival saw that these films had the same subject matter and decided to make a mini-festival within the festival. The panel discussion was me, the director of Home Room, Paul F. Ryan, one of his actors, Dawson's Creek's Busy Phillips, two film critics from Denver and Michael Moore. Michael Moore was late, and so it was everyone except him on the panel for about a ½ hour and we had an amazing discussion. And, lest I forget, the final victim on the panel was the father of a Columbine victim named Tom Mazur (sp?), who watched all of the films. All throughout the process of making this movie, I thought to myself, "I have to make this movie, so I feel alright with someone who was involved with something like Columbine seeing it." You can prepare yourself for that mentally, but when you look the guy in the eye, it's a different experience. The most interesting aspect of the discussion was what a surprise Tom Mazur was. He did not believe that violent movies made these kids do what they did. He had a lot of perspective and was just a brave, interesting guy. The questions were mainly pretty good and interesting. The two critics, probably in their 50s, were talking about how when they were younger they were big fans of movies like Taxi Driver and The Wild Bunch, but now they don't feel that movies have that same kind of respect for violence. I was thinking to myself, "Respect for violence? You should watch The Wild Bunch!" I think when you're young you can deal with a movie like that, but as you get older you want to make those movies less and you want to watch those movies less… unless your Martin Scorsese!

Did Michael Moore ever show up?

Well, we were having this great discussion, and then Michael Moore finally came in and that was the end of the discussion -- it turned into the Michael Moore show! He did his schtick, which is what he does; it's how he makes a living and I don't fault the guy. It was actually kind of humorous -- the moderator started lobbing these softballs to Michael Moore and asking him like the set-up questions for his press junket. It was an eye opener in regard to how it works out there.

The film is well traveled at this point, having screened at several festivals. How has audience reaction been?

So far, it's been surprisingly good. One of the first festivals we went to was a really great small, up and coming film festival, the New Haven Film Festival. We won the audience choice award there. Tony Shalhoub directed and starred in a romantic comedy that was in the festival, and he went to Yale, and I thought his film was a shoe-in for the audience award. It was the only movie with any sort of star power in it, and we blew them out of the water! One thing I've learned from going to festivals is that the people who are going to attend are usually adherent to the local alternative press. If you get a good review in the alternative press, you will do really well. The only place that was real tough to play the film was Denver, but that's for obvious reasons. Even the people who came to the screenings all stayed for the Q&A and had good things to say. When I finished the film last summer, before I first screened it, I didn't think anyone was going to touch it with a ten-foot cow prod. It's won two audience awards, two jury awards, and I've been really surprised.

What's next for Zero Day?

My prize for winning Slamdunk is that I get free DVD authoring, which is really cool. They're doing my DVD as if I was a real filmmaker! We're doing that right now, and it's in a few other festivals, like Florida where it's in competition, and another interesting little festival called The Had To Be Made Film Festival, where they take your movie, put in on video and put it into small, independently run video stores. People rent them and vote on the film they like. I don't have anything against festivals, of course, but the only reason I'm doing them is to attract the attention of someone who'd want to take (the movie) and run with it. Admittedly, it's a challenge with this subject matter, but that's the goal. You keep on flogging it until you know it's exhausted or you get somewhere. Even if the film doesn't get anywhere, maybe somebody will like it and think you're not such a bad filmmaker and that helps too. At worst, it becomes kind of an expensive calling card.

What's next for you?

This is, in my opinion, the only frustrating thing about being an independent filmmaker, other than the fact that you don't have any money -- when a guy finishes making a studio movie, they hand it off. They do the press junkets, but that's it -- they move on to the next thing while their movie is hitting the theaters. I've been so involved in taking this film around, that I haven't had time to start the next thing. I've been writing stuff and I honestly want to make a completely entertaining comedy -- something really different.

And here's our sort-of standard final IndieSpeak question -- name the filmmaker whose career you'd most like to emulate?

Well, when you ask that question, I'm going to choose a filmmaker whose career I've had the ability to see in it's entirety. In my opinion, that's the best way to answer that question. It would be a toss up between Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick. The thing I like about both of these guys is that -- Kubrick more than Kurosawa -- they've tried a ton of different genres. Kurosawa was also so prolific -- he made about one film per year and that's the way it should always be. Even though they would try different subject matters and very different approaches, you could still always tell when it was one of their movies. There was something about it where you knew it was their point of view. Their movies, in particular, are the ones that when I saw them the first time, something seemed so important. There are scenes and images you never forget. They had great careers and did so much with what they had.

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