Coffee With: Director Rob Graydon, Founder Of Wet Road Films

Rob Graydon
Location: New York, NY
Job: Director and cofounder of Wet Road Films
Education: B.F.A. in Film, School of Visual Arts
Twitter: @robgraydon

Can you tell us about your background and journey into film.

I came to the U.S. from Jamaica when I was three, so the transition was quite smooth – I grew up American. My transition into stand-up comedy was a bit of an accident. While in film school, I was working as an usher at a movie theater and trying to come up with an idea for my thesis. I didn’t know what to focus on, so someone at the theater suggested stand-up, which no one was really doing much of at the time. I checked it out and became obsessed. When I started, there was Kevin James and Ray Romano. I pursued stand-up through the mid-80s and up until 9/11, when I went back to filmmaking. After the Twin Towers went down, I couldn’t bring myself to do comedy. There were many comics who were in a place to do it and to make people laugh again, but I just wasn’t. Once I went back to filmmaking, I was able to express myself in much bigger ways than I could with comedy.

What first sparked your interest in the arts, especially film?

My family has been in the arts for generations. My father played the sax and was a jazz musician. My grandma was a piano player – she was a big band leader in Jamaica and the only woman to do that in Jamaica to this day. Before that, her parents were in the Bailey Circus as acrobats. I guess the arts were in my blood, and I drew a lot as a kid. But it wasn’t until my dad bought an old crank Super 8 camera that I found my passion. I would make these short, stop-motion animated series with my Star Wars action figures. Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Sergei Eisenstein were big influences for me. And John Carpenter made the low-budget genre films I wanted to make. Eventually, I applied and got into film school.

After film school, you were a stand-up comic for more than a decade. What do you think you learned as a comic that has made you a better filmmaker and storyteller?

It taught me to get to the point right away. Laughing is something you can’t fake. The audience is going to let you know if your joke isn’t working. That carries over to any genre. If you meander, you’re going to lose your audience. Time on stage works very differently than it does in real life, and that’s true of film too.

How did you get into documentary filmmaking?

Documentary filmmaking wasn’t something that I was all that interested in until 2006. My wife has an organization called What Better Looks Like, and they were running an event at Ground Zero on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It just so happened to be the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s first non-violent protest. They asked me to make something, so I started chronicling this documentary showing 100 years of nonviolence. I ended up finding Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, living in Rochester of all places. I drove for six hours to interview him for the documentary. I also interviewed an activist who did a ton of sit-ins in the 40s, which is something we always think of from the 60s and 70s. The documentary showed on 9/11 at Ground Zero. Shortly after, I followed my wife to Rwanda and the Congo for another documentary. One of the members of her organization is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Chronicling that got my taste for documentaries going. I did a short documentary on Clive Barker, the horror author behind Hellraiser. Now I’m in the middle of trying to get another one off the ground on world peace that will take us to the four corners of the world searching for pieces of a painting. We’re going to shoot it as an adventure film, like The Da Vinci Code.

Tell us about your work with the organization No Strings International. What is the mission, and how did you get involved?

No Strings is probably the thing I’m most proud to be involved with in my career. It’s an independent, nonprofit production company founded by Michael K. Frith and Kathy Mullen. Michael was one of the creators behind The Muppets, designing most of them. Kathy is a puppeteer. They created Fraggle Rock, Between the Lions, and all of these other amazing shows for kids. Now they create these beautiful short puppet films for kids in emergencies in at-risk parts of the world. I first got involved through a friend who knew Michael and Kathy. At the time, they were teaching kids in Afghanistan how to avoid land mines. They needed some support with effects, so I helped out.

How and why have you stayed involved with the nonprofit?

Five years after I first helped out, No Strings received money to make five films for Indonesia on earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, landslides, and peace-building. They asked me to direct the one on tsunamis, and I said, “Of course.”It was a new experience for me – I’d never worked with puppets. We’ve since worked in more than a handful of different countries, using the films to teach kids all types of different things, from HIV awareness to ways to cope with extreme trauma. I remember the day before we wrapped a shoot in Haiti, there was a cyclone in Indonesia, and more than 300 people were killed. Michael was on the phone with someone on the ground and asked if No Strings could help in any way. The guy on the phone said, “You don’t understand. Without your films, the casualties would have been in the thousands.” That was the first time I realized the real, life-saving impact these films were having.

Looking back, what advice would you give to your younger self?

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to write Die Hard! I also would have told myself to start earlier. Ignore the people who told me I couldn’t do what I was going to do. It wasn’t until much later when I was an adult that I realized what they were saying was more about them than it was about me.

You’ve been able to merge your passion for film with your interest in social impact. What advice can you share with others who want to do the same?

The best advice I can give is to tell your story. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a documentary or a narrative. It could be painting. Find what is inside of you that you want to get out.

One of the people in my production company is a Native American woman. I’ve lived in this country for 98 percent of my life, and I only know two Native Americans, which just sounds like an odd thing. Two weeks ago, we were in Richmond, Virginia, at the Native American Film Festival, and there was a film by Chris Eyre called Smoke Signals. He told his story and made a terrific film about living on a reservation. He brought his life to me, and I understood it better. We don’t know people’s day-to-day lives – we know the stereotypes. Telling your story is what ultimately will bring about understanding and make our world better.

This post is part of The Well’s Hollywood package. Read more: Day In The Life: Meet Filmmaker Sebastian Rea Of The Tribeca Film Festival

Images courtesy of Rob Graydon