Interviews: The Slack Pack

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By Tiffany Razzano

espite what their name might imply, the Slack Pack are busier than your average twenty-somethings.

This filmmaking troupe, which began as a Cable Access television show called Slacker TV while they were still in high school, is preparing for the release of its first feature film, Freaks, Nerds & Romantics, while working on a second film, Lost Suburbia, and shopping around a television show called The Ghouligans.

The core of the group met at Hauppauge High School in 1997. Pete Bune and Justin Hertz were working as teacher's assistants in the TV Productions Department, teaching other students how to edit and shoot in the studio. This is where they also met Sean King.

"We would cut class and make funny and gory videos in the TV room, and would always check out each other's movies," King said. "We thought, 'We make all of these movies, but no one sees them!' We thought of underground methods of getting our movies shown, and Cable Access was the cheapest and easiest."

They eventually drafted Mike Koscik as an actor, who worked his way up to an all-around producer for the group. Jacob Stebel, a fan of the original show, joined them a couple of years later, after meeting Bune, who worked as a film editor at his high school.

After three years of doing strictly skits, and with the infiltration of other skit comedy shows on public access, often influenced by the success of Slacker TV, the group wanted to do something different. They changed their name ever so slightly to The Slack Pack and began doing short films rather than sketches, finding influences in classic shows like Kids In the Hall, The Young Ones, Monty Python and The State. They also were heavily influenced by independent film, such as movies by Kevin Smith, the Coen Brothers and Richard Linklater, whose film Slackers inspired the group's name.

Now, 10 years later, the group is still together, working on a myriad of projects, with even more on the horizon.

"I always have known that the power of the Pack is eternal," Koscik said. "Wolves have survived throughout time as apex predators, because of their devotion to their pack and the loyalty to each other."

Bune said that at this point the group knows each other incredibly well and has developed a "shorthand way of communicating" with each other.

"There were many times I thought, 'Is this all worth it?' and 'Should we go to college or get steady careers,'" King said. "But those things always sounded like bullshit to me and that I should do what is fun to me. If you're not having fun doing what you're doing, you might as well be dead."

Still, despite the fun and success of their public access program, the Freaks, Nerds & Romantics is what Bune calls "the natural step in the evolution of The Slack Pack."

"I think we needed a challenge, and there's nothing more challenging than a feature film with zero budget and inexperienced actors and filmmakers," he said.

Stebel added, "The nice things about skits and short films are that they whet your appetite to try something ambitious like a feature."

Everyone in the group took on different roles. Bune, who also directed, wrote the first four drafts of the script, with the final draft of the script written with help from Stebel. Bune also wrote an original draft of the movie as a romantic comedy a few years ago. King and Koscik both acted and produced. Freaks, Nerds & Romantics was a lesson in movie making for all of them.

Because the group learned as they went, it took them five years to finish the project - a project that King said if done today they'd be able to finish it in six months.

"We kind of started it on a learn as you go basis," King said. "We figured hey, we've made 15 minute or 45 minute movies before. Let's just like make one of those but longer- 45 minutes or 1 hour and 45 minutes, what's the real difference?

"There is a big difference. The trick was to keep an audience's attention for more than a few minutes by way of characters and story, which was something we had toyed with in the past, but not really achieved. It's much harder to make a product when you are thinking of a theater full of people enjoying themselves, rather than your drunk buddies watching it on late night TV."

The movie, however, certainly didn't fall far from their so-called drunk buddies, having been inspired by their friends in the local music scene. The main character, recent college grad Lucy Merrick, played by Long Islander Jamie Frevele, is writing an article about her friends in the Long Island music scene. While she is writing the article she finds that the scene has changed dramatically while she was away at college. Many of her friends, talented musicians with once promising careers, find themselves in the midst of a quarter-life crisis, Bune said.

"On the most basic, universal level, The Freaks, Nerds, & Romantics is a story about characters trying to fulfill a desire to grow up while staying true to the passions and circumstances that helped them stand out as individuals resisting mainstream conformity," Stebel said.

Koscik plays the "head strong" punk rocker Dean Bishoff, a role that suits him well being that he spent years as the lead singer of local punk outfit 48 In the Basement. He said that parts of the story are actually based on events that happened to his band. In fact, all of the group's friends were somehow entrenched within the local music scene, whether they were actually in a band or simply supporting the culture by making shirts, fliers, posters or CD art.

"We got older, the music and scene started to change and become mainstream," Bune said. "We entered our quarter-life crisis and had to start thinking about what we wanted to do as 'adults.' The movie is a narrative feature based on real people and real events that took place, based on my friends, based on the eventual demise of the slack pack as a regularly televised comedy troupe."

The group also reached out to their friends to help the film get made. All the actors are from Long Island. This helped because "pretty much everyone played an exaggerated incarnation of themselves or someone we knew," Bune said. "So it was pretty easy for the actors to emulate people we were already familiar with."

Much of the movie was shot on Long Island, as well as New York City. A lot of it was shot at each other's houses in Commack and Smithtown. They shot a scene of midnight kickball at the Tower Records parking lot in Huntington, as well as scenes at the Downtown in Farmingdale, which no longer exists, and the Shipwreck Diner in Northport.

The Slack Pack was also lucky enough to have punk groups The Bouncing Souls and Alkaline Trio perform in the movie.

The filmmakers were huge fans of the Bouncing Souls, having used their music in episodes of Slacker TV. As it turned out, The Bouncing Souls were mutual fans. After they emailed the Slack Pack, the two groups met and have been friends ever since.

They met Alkaline Trio at K8 is Great's BBQ. Jake had approached the band and after chatting for a bit, Bune asked them if it would be ok for them to film a secret show they had planned at CBGB's. With the help of the Bouncing Souls, they snuck in a camera to capture the footage.

"We have been inspired by those groups for a long time," King said. "It's great to see people who go through the same bullshit as you, being in bands or films, and come out not only a success, but still best friends. It's kind of amazing, especially in this kind of business. Their music is a testament to that kind of clarity and focus, and we hope this movie will be as well."

Now that the movie is nearing completion, the group is hoping to premiere it at locals theaters, such as the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington and Malverne Cinema. They already held what they call an extremely successful, semi-premiere at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn on June 12. Aside from as many local screenings as they can get, they'll also be applying to film festivals. They'd like to eventually find a distributor for a DVD release.

As this project dwindles down, the group has plenty of other items on their plate to keep them occupied. The Ghouligans are based on a pitch they made to a horror television channel that was getting started in New York. Though the channel turned down their idea for a show, which is about four mixed-up '60s style monsters living in suburbia, they loved their own concept so much that they kept making it. The show will be featured at horror conventions in Ohio and New Jersey in August.

They're also working on Lost Suburbia, their second feature film. This one is based on four ghost stories and urban myths from Long Island.

The Slack Pack sees a long life together, with many more projects, as a group, in their future.

"Over the last ten years we have grown together and learned together," Koscik said. "I believe one day we will have accomplished many great things."

King said that they want to keep making movies and TV shows for as long as they can. Right now they are just looking for the opportunity to get more jobs doing this so they can hopefully grow as a company. "I can't see me working on future projects without these guys," Bune said. "I would love it, someday if there is success, that we all achieve it together."

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