Hollywood has been good to Akiva Schaffer. “Have I disowned my parents and my old friends from home? Yes, I have. Am I enjoying my new Hollywood friends with their fast cars and cocaine?” he asks, dryly. “Of course."
    The question is, who the hell is Akiva Schaffer? Up until 2005, the 29-year-old director was known only to a handful of savvy surfers who logged onto The Lonely Island website. With longtime friends, future Saturday Night Live (SNL) “it” kid Andy Samburg and Jorma Taccone, he created a series of gut-busting Internet shorts that grabbed the attention of SNL producers. Bringing their homespun filmmaking esthetic to late-night TV, they created the SNL digital short division, which provided the brightest moments of the 2005-06 season. This included “Lazy Sunday,” a low-rent hip-hop video that became the web’s most talked about clip.
    After only one season on SNL, Schaffer and Samberg headed to Vancouver to shoot what could be this summer’s sleeper hit, Hot Rod. Schaffer directs and Samburg stars as Rod, a well-meaning but terrible stuntman who is using his questionable skills to raise money for his dying stepdad. With the help of his brother (Taccone) and neighbourhood hottie Denise (Isla Fisher), Rod plans to jump 15 busses on his motorbike. The movie is just as ridiculous as the premise, but given that Schaffer was weaned on such comedies as Airplane and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it’s easy to understand why the outrageous script appealed to him.
    "Those were the footsteps we were trying to follow,” he says. “Where people made movies that were surprisingly crazy, and you could tell that the first priority was silly craziness above all else."
    The big surprise is that despite Hot Rod’s feather-light premise, almost everything in the film works. From the satirical montages and failed stunts to the overarching ’80s esthetic and left-field dialogue choices, Hot Rod doesn’t resemble anything at the multiplex.
    "We definitely edited it how we would like it,” says Schaffer. “It's not that we don't care that anyone else is laughing. We certainly hope that there are enough like-minded people out there that will also enjoy it the way we do, (but) the moment you start pandering and think, I don't like this, but I bet the audience will, you are a sell-out jerk."

THE FIRST TIME

Hot Rod is backed by SNL producer Lorne Michaels, and features one of the show’s hottest stars. Usually that would be cause for concern, given Saturday Night Live’s sketchy cinematic legacy. "It is not a traditional SNL movie,” says Schaffer. “It isn't a popular sketch that was turned into a movie.”
    Even so, Schaffer’s resume is short. He’s a film school grad with videos for We Are Scientists and Eagles of Death Metal under his belt, but Hot Rod is his first crack at a feature. According to Schaffer, Hot Rod’s stunt-heavy, high-concept script wasn’t daunting because of all the on-the-job training he got in his living room making Internet shorts with Samburg and Taccone.
    “They're very silly videos, but we would take it seriously,” he says. “You are teaching yourself all the basics of filmmaking. You're shooting, you're looking at lighting, you’re seeing what looks good, what sounds better, what acting is working. You're cutting it together with music, you're editing. You are doing, on a very small scale, the entire process."
    With gigantic set pieces and a supporting cast that includes heavyweights Ian McShane and Sissy Spacek, there is no way you could confuse Hot Rod with one of Schaffer’s on-the-cheap home jobs. However, he did bring some of that DIY attitude to the film.
    “I wanted the movie to feel homemade, and not slick in any way. I wanted it to feel like you were just hanging out with those guys,” he says. "We just tried to make it so specifically the kind of thing we do — the kind of surreal strange stuff — that it didn't have a chance to feel like (anything else)."
    "I made it sloppy and scrappy on purpose, but that is easy for me to say because who knows if I was capable of making it big and glossy. Maybe you'll just have to wait for the next one."
    And there will no doubt be a next one. After wrapping Hot Rod, Schaffer returned to SNL for his second season. Among other things, he created another bit of brilliant viral video in the form of the Emmy-nominated Samburg-Timberlake super jam “Dick in a Box.” His track record is solid, but nobody is more surprised at Schaffer’s recent success than Schaffer.
    “We goofed around in high school and somehow tricked people into paying us to goof around as adults, which is kind of the dream.”

HOT RAD: HOT ROD’S CALGARY CONNECTION

In Hot Rod, Andy Samburg plays a wannabe stuntman with dreams of Evel Knievel-style stardom. As a child, director Akiva Schaffer wasn’t above trying some extreme stunts of his own. "I was more of a skater, but I definitely had a BMX, mostly because of the movie Rad."
    Longtime Calgarians will remember Rad as the teen BMX flick that was shot in town back in 1985. Those who have seen it know the film’s ultra-low-budget charm and cheese-ball soundtrack. But few would have expected that more than 20 years later, that bit of ’80s camp would inspire an up-and-coming filmmaker.
    “Rad is excellent,” says Schaffer. “There are a few little homages to it in Hot Rod." In addition to some high-flying stunts and choice wardrobe decisions cribbed right from Rad, Hot Rod features a musical tribute to the film. Rad’s theme song, “Break the Ice" by John Farnham, which Schaffer refers to as “that fuckin' winner,” was so inspiring that when it came time for an act-ending montage in Hot Rod, he knew he wanted Farnham to score it.
    “Being huge Rad fans, (we) looked up who sang ‘Break the Ice.’ That song is so awesome,” he says. “We did some research into this Australian mastermind.” Known as the voice of Australia, Farnham topped the charts in 1986 with “You’re the Voice.” According to Schaffer the song was an anthem of such