UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television alumni Scott Rutherford and Ben Peyser are the co-directors of “Ghost Team One,” a horror comedy that follows slacker friends Brad and Sergio, madly in lust with beautiful Fernanda, who believes the house they all live in is haunted. Daily Bruin’s Aalhad Patankar sits down with Rutherford and Peyser to discuss the making of the film and its recent success.
Daily Bruin: Tell me a little bit about Brad and Sergio.
Scott Rutherford: Brad and Sergio – we wanted them to be a bit like us, naturally scared. But Brad is an extremely lustful man, but it’s so pure, his hormones are so essential to who he is, that it’s sort of charming. It isn’t gross … it just feels natural to him …. He would never admit it, but secretly he’s a real wussie as well.
Sergio is more obviously a bit of a wuss, but he’s sweet, charming – he’s like the nice guy. Sergio is the one who goes home after the party to write in his journal about a crush he had. They have such a fun chemistry together that it sets up a really fun love triangle.
DB: You said you wanted the characters to be like you guys. Which one of you is Brad and which one is Sergio?
SR: I think I’m more Sergio.
Ben Peyser: No! I think you’re more Brad.
SR: Oh, really? I’d like to be more Brad.
BP: But now you’re dissing Sergio. Now you’re getting into trouble.
SR: No, I love Sergio. I watch some scenes with Sergio and I cringe because that’s so me.
BP: Really? I always think I’m more of the Sergio and you’re more Brad. You think it’s the other way around?
SR: No, I think none of us is Brad. I think I’m Sergio, and you’re our neurotic Jewish friend.
DB: How did the production of this movie go?
BP: What was fun about this movie was that this train was going. We either could get on it and take a crazy ride, or hop off. And we were like, ‘Let’s do it, this will be fun.’ … Scott and I were like, ‘This is intense, do we really want to do this?’ and we’re like, ‘We’re making a movie, of course we do.’ … We had a tight schedule – the producer, the guy that was funding it, had to shoot in three weeks, there was a lot of flux, everything moved fast, there was a lot of chaos, but we just ran.
When you see the movie, the chaos works, it’s a controlled chaos. Scott, what did you say about the job of the comedy director?
SR: It’s kind of hilarious, your job is to be the responsible one at the task of capturing irresponsibility.
DB: Seems like you guys had a lot of fun on set. What’s a funny story that you recall?
SR: Well one thing is, the guy we rented the house from told us, ‘I don’t know if the place is haunted, I don’t know, I don’t want to say weird things have happened here before, I’m just saying that if you bring a Ouija board in the house, you have to have a priest present.’ Which is hilarious because as film students, we’re constantly used to hearing from the film board that we have to have a cop there. We’re constantly hearing you have to have a cop, and we’re constantly trying to get out of that. So to have a guy be like, ‘If you have a Ouija board, you have to have a priest’ we were like, ‘A, how haunted is this house, and B, why are people so afraid of Ouija boards? They’re mass-produced by Hasbro!’
DB: This movie was recently purchased by Paramount Home Media Distribution. Did you guys have any idea that the movie had this potential?
SR: We went into it knowing that it was the most impossibly low-budget movie we could ever make. The guy who did costume also
did set design, everybody was doing like eight jobs, but it was just so fun all along. We kept doing it because we were falling in love with the thing and it was making us laugh. By the time we were done, we managed to get it into Slamdance, and every next step was a thrill … . We’ve had the good fortune of making people laugh enough that Paramount has bought it and is putting it in theaters (today), and it will be on demand all over and on DVD by Christmas, it’s exciting.