LOUDSIDE: Hi Mick!

MICK ROSSI: Hi M@?

LS: How's Toronto treating you?

MR: Toronto is treating me great, it's my third time here, I love it, it's terrific.  I am setting up my next movie here

LS: I guess we'll start there as we gotta know, what are you working on?

MR: It's a similar animal to PLAYED; it's very raw low budget and very rock 'n roll.  It was written by me and a great writer/director and is being produced by the associate producer from PLAYED.  We're shooting in January; it's a heist flick with a nice ensemble cast

LS: Sounds cool, doing the same PLAYED modus operandi for getting the cast?

MR: (laughs) Yeah hopefully... we'll see!

LS: Is there at title yet, does LOUDSIDE get an exclusive here???

MR: No title yet M@, sorry brother

LS: Damn. Alright well seeing as LOUDSIDE is predominantly a rock/metal site, why don't you fill us in on the inception of your career in entertainment, as we definitely want to know your background and where you started which was with...

MR: SLAUGHTER AND THE DOGS, the 70's punk band out of Manchester

LS: Any off the wall stories about JOHNNY ROTTEN from your shows with
THE SEX PISTOLS?

MR: (laughs) I have two actually, It was pissing down with rain outside and Johnny had a cold and they started off the chorus from ANARCHY IN THE UK during sound check and he pulled out this rag that looked like it had been chewed on by rats and started reading off the lyrics to the song, and when I heard it I was like "fuck man that sounds great", of course this was before the record came out.  The second one, after we had played a few shows with them (THE SEX PISTOLS) and Steve Jones and I became good friends. We were in London recording our first album and had a test pressing of some rough cuts and were in a cab on the way back to our hotel when we stopped at a light and a limo pulled up next to us with THE SEX PISTOLS in it.  We were of course celebrating our new album so we tossed a copy of it into the limo and they tossed us a six pack of beer and then drove off!

LS: So wait, you're telling me THE SEX PISTOLS were in a limo???  That's not very "punk" is it?

MR: Yes, they were in a limo, and we were in a black cab

LS: A black cab is definitely more "punk"

MR: Fuck that, I would have taken the limo (laughs)

LS: HA! (Doesn’t need to insert anything to symbolize laughter because my actual response was "HA!"... yeah, I suck!)  So you started off in the music world with SLAUGHTER AND THE DOGS when did you begin to realize you wanted to get into making movies?

MR: Well I had always had a passion for it really.  I remember I saw a movie called PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK which was AL PACINO's first movie and it really had a profound effect on me, and I was just really too shy to say that I wanted to do that.  Where I come from all my friends are drug dealers or in prison, so...

LS: You didn't want to be the "artsy-fartsy" guy around all the thugs?

MR: Yeah (laughs).... exactly

LS: At what point in time did you finally build up the courage to actually pursue it?

MR: Well, I was living in London with KEITH ALLEN who has done a lot of films such as SHALLOW GRAVE

LS: (interrupts) the one with EWAN MCGREGOR?

MR: Yeah... that's the one

LS:  Who was he?? Like which character??

MR: HUGO, the new tenant that comes in with the suitcase and dies

LS: whoa...  the dude who they cut off his hands and feet and hammer out his teeth and everything?

MR: Yeah (wonders why he is stuck on the phone with a 27 year old with down syndrome), KEITH was shooting a short movie and I was goofing around on set when the director said he needed someone for a small part and I said I could do it, he told me to audition right there and he gave me the job.

LS: So it seems like at first you really wanted to just act in movies, not really write them and make them. Was it just that acting was more appealing to you or was it more you felt the best way to be able to eventually make your own movies was through acting?

MR: That's exactly it you hit the nail on the head, I'll be real honest with you the realities of getting a movie made living in LA on your own is really not that likely. Because you can't get to a good producer unless you have a good agent, and you can't get good representation unless you have done something.  So acting was always really a back door into getting my films made.

LS: Was PLAYED your first idea for a film or just the first of your ideas you wanted to see come to life?

MR: No I have written many spec scripts over the years and each time I am done I am always "this is the one!”  But when I was writing I was making a mistake and the scripts I was writing required really massive budgets.  So after going through all the channels and having the scripts read and them saying "this can't be done for less than 2 or 3 million dollars". I even came close on a couple deals, but they eventually fell through.  Eventually it just came to a point where I just needed to make something and that's when the idea to do something very attainable, very doable.  And what I mean by that is you can pick up a HD camera or a DV camera and just tape immediately of course that is if you have the story to do so.  So that's how PLAYED came about really, was through a series of disappointments

LS: PLAYED started as a short, right?

MR: Yupp, that's right. Like a 15 minute short... well there was never really a time frame of how long it was supposed to be just basically what we wanted to shoot.

LS: So was the whole story there, RAY going to jail then LA and everything?

MR: The original short was just going to pick up when I arrive in LA with a whole voice narration giving the back-story. Just when we began shooting things kept rolling and Gabe (GABRIEL BYRNE) who's a great friend of mine and he has always been really supportive of what I do. So I told him I wrote this part for him and he just jumped right in and it just kept going from there

LS: I guess it shows who you know in Hollywood can definitely help you out

MR: I definitely know that for a fact and know I was incredibly lucky, and you know if we would have done this film the conventional way, we would have had completely different actors as we would have gone through a casting agent and everything.  The cast we ended up with was pretty eclectic; we had some English, some Irish, Americans.

LS: Seeing as most of the movies dialog is improvised, was the whole scene with VAL KILMER and the "Say it, I am not going to taco!" monologue, was that improvised or was that scripted?

MR: Totally VAL, we actually just set up a camera and just filmed, he did like four or five different monologues, some about philosophy some about politics and of course the “taco” part.

LS: So who are some of the actors you look up to?

MR: AL PACINO, and of course GABRIEL BYRNE, I admire them both greatly.  Some others are GENE HACKMAN, GARY OLDMAN, JOHNY DEPP, DUSTIN HOFFMAN… well earlier DUSTIN HOFFMAN.

LS: Seeing as you wrote/directed and starred in PLAYED do you ever see yourself just going the acting route and if so what directors would you want to work with?

MR: Wow... uhhh, that’s a tough one... Jesus!

LS: Uhh... I don’t think JESUS was a director

MR: (laughs) He was a different type of director.  For me though SCORSESE, CAPOLLA, MICHAEL MANN, TIM BURTON I think is great

LS: It seems that you tend to be drawn to the more “gangster/crime drama’s” do you think part of that predilection is due to were you grew up in London?

MR: Yeah, but as well for me it is very interesting to look at people on the dark side, not that I don’t love a good comedy though too

LS: Mick I know you are a busy man and I sincerely thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to talk to LOUDSIDE

MR: No problem, it was my pleasure!

LS: And definitely make sure to keep us in the loop on your upcoming heist flick and maybe the next time you are in LA we could grab a drink or something?

MR: *Dial Tone*

LS: Mick?

**** NOTE- MICK ROSSI did not hang up on me, it’s just a running gag at this point!