Bob DeRosa's 5 Obstructions

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised when screenwriter Bob DeRosa commented on the post I wrote a few days ago (Writing Killer Screenplays) about his Killers movie which is currently in theaters. While reviewers have not been kind,  the Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl film has pulled in $30 million domestic in its first two weeks.

Killers is DeRosa’s second produced feature. His first ,The Air I Breathe, starred Brendan Fraser, Andy Garcia and Forest Whitaker. Though it was little seen DeRosa’s humor comes through when he posts out in an Orlando Sentinel interview, “It was HUGH in Korea, though.”

In that same article, manager/producer Christopher Pratt says of DeRosa’s climb up the Hollywood ladder, “Things get better for Bob with every movie he gets made. Like all his friends, I love seeing this happen to him. He’s really one of the good guys.” And to keep him grounded in Hollywood, DeRosa is the captain of an adult kickball team.

And from the comment he made on my post, he does appear to be one of the good guys.:

Hi Scott,

I’ve been reading some pretty mean reviews lately, and I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to read your Killers blog. The fact that you did your research on me and the project and wrote something that actually dares to look at the good and bad of it from more than one angle is amazing.

And yes, though I’ve never publicly said, “they took me off the picture and ruined my script”, I will say that there is a really interesting story here about the Hollywood development process. That’s a story for another time, and if you’re ever in L.A., I’ll buy you a beer and tell you the whole tale in person.

But there’s also a story here about hard work really paying off and for making that point in your blog, I salute you.

Bob DeRosa

And just to show what a good guy he is I found a couple short videos on You Tube where DeRosa helps out some young filmmakers (Kevin Ward and Will Bowles) in a play off Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions.

And here is the humorous follow-up video.

I don’t know how many screenplays DeRosa has written in the last 10 or 20 years, but I’m guessing he’s gotten in his 10,000 hours. (Beatles, Cody, King & 10,000 Hours).

“The emerging picture…is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.  In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.”
Daniel Levitin
neurologist

You can follow DeRosa on Twitter and find him at My Space.

Thanks for stopping by Bob and taking the time to comment. And congrats on your successes.

Related Post: Writing Killer Screenplays

Scott W. Smith