Ten Years of Bob Mazooka: How Black Squirrel Productions Gave Us a Place to Create
- Gary Miller
- Oct 17, 2024
- 14 min read
Updated: Jun 30
Ten years ago, a bunch of film-obsessed college students decided we weren’t going to wait around for permission to make movies. Our school, Augustana College, didn’t have a film program. There was no department, no resources, and no official path forward. What we did have were stories we wanted to tell and a deep need to create.
So, we made our own path. Black Squirrel Productions was founded by four students: Alvin Fonseca, Joshua Malone, Nate Mittelbrun, and myself. We pulled together a group of curious, creative students who wanted to try filmmaking with absolutely zero idea how to go about it. What we lacked in gear and experience, we made up for in enthusiasm and trial-by-fire spirit. With help from a sponsor and encouragement from the journalism and communications department, we launched the first student-run film collective at Augustana. We weren’t doing this for grades or credit, just for the love of it. Some of us like myself wanted to do it as a profession and wanted credits and experience.
In the spring semester, we set one ambitious goal: to host a film festival showcasing student work. We weren’t just making silly shorts for our friends — we wanted to write, shoot, edit, and screen real narrative films. Films with scripts, characters, plots, (debatable) special effects. We invited students from all majors and backgrounds to submit work. And somehow, we pulled it off.
One of the films from that inaugural screening still sticks with me. Probably because I directed it. Bob Mazooka: Fun Time Action Hour for Kids was an offbeat 45-minute fever dream of a film. Think Adult Swim energy meets PBS Kids on mushrooms. It was everything I loved rolled into one feature length film. I didn't start with a short, I went for a full film. I was an English student and I remember reading Bukowski at the time, "If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start." I figured, to hell with a short film. I'm going to go all the way and I'm going to finish it.
The only problem was I had no idea & no script.
Bob Mazooka began as a joke.
During my Junior year, I somehow got elected to the Homecoming Court at Augustana College. I didn’t take it seriously. We were supposed to dress up and represent the school in front of alumni, donors, and the administration during a formal event. Instead of a suit, I borrowed my roommate’s cocktail party button-up, the kind of shirt your alcoholic uncle wears to a high school graduation. I slapped on a Party City mustache that made me look like a budget Tom Selleck. I walked into the auditorium in character, speaking in a thick New York accent and introducing myself to the college president and faculty as “Detective Bob Mazooka." My only regret was breaking character at times.
It was supposed to be a one-night bit. A dumb, irreverent way to get a laugh before heading off to drink cheap beer with my friends. But something about it stuck. My friend and teammate James Panozzo showed up wearing an equally absurd tie. He started acting like a cop with me. He was, "yes anding me" and acting like he was on the force as well. That night, something clicked. Bob Mazooka wasn’t just a character, he was an opportunity.
At the same time I was dreaming up Bob Mazooka, I was also involved in something much heavier. I was acting in student-produced series of plays about gun violence. One of the pieces was written and performed by me, drawn from real stories in my community. It was powerful. After performances, audience members would approach us in tears, some hugging us, others thanking us for sharing something so raw. And while I appreciated the impact, part of me hated it. I didn’t want to be a conduit for grief. I wanted laughter. I wanted joy. I wanted absurdity. And quietly, between rehearsals and classes, my mind kept drifting to this ridiculous mustachioed character: Bob Mazooka.
Eventually, I couldn’t ignore it. I grabbed a notebook and started sketching out beats, scenes, a character bio. It was unrefined, but it was something. Our student film advisor told us we needed “tight scripts,” and I had no clue what that meant. But I had 15 weeks until summer, 14 if you counted the student film festival. I had no time to waste. I camped out in the library, hammered out premises, wrote a working draft in Google Docs, and decided I’d fill in the blanks later. It had structure. It made me laugh. It was ridiculous. I loved it.
When I pitched it at a Monday Black Squirrel Productions meeting, we said yes, like we did to everything back then. If you had an idea and were willing to see it through, the answer was yes. I helped on others’ sets, edited where I could, and tried to balance it all with classes and homework. It was chaos, but the good kind. Nate Mittelbrun volunteered to be the cinematographer for Bob Mazooka. I sent the script out to everyone I knew, including James Panozzo, and we began piecing it together scene by scene, whenever and wherever we could.
An interview with Black Squirrel Production's First President Joshua Malone:
Gary Miller: Who are you, and who was the character you played or the role you played behind the scenes?
Joshua Malone: I played one of the crime mimes!
Gary Miller: If Bob Mazooka had a sequel, where would your character be now?
Joshua Malone: Well, per the fake teaser trailer Bob Mazooka: Forever mAlone, I do believe I escaped death just barely and am on the hunt for Bob to enact revenge.
Gary Miller: Where are you now, and what’s next for you?
Joshua Malone: I'm currently working at Universal Orlando, doing a variety of different jobs—from taking care of dinosaurs, to murdering innocents (joking), to helping decorate for Christmas.
Gary Miller: What’s one thing you wish people knew about Bob Mazooka?
Joshua Malone: The most fun was throwing the baby doll off the bridge. I'm sure we gave some people heart attacks, but for the shot…🤌 it was worth it.
Gary Miller: How did being part of Bob Mazooka impact your life or career?
Joshua Malone: It was fun. I often pull it up and show friends because it was, and still is, honestly one of the most fun times I’ve ever had filming a project. It was silly, we were coming up with new things on the fly, and having a good time with friends making…er, "art."
Gary Miller: How did you juggle filming Bob Mazooka with your college studies?
Joshua Malone: I mean, learning the filming process on the fly was an experience. For a lot of "Black Squirrel Productions" stuff, we were teaching ourselves and learning along the way—which leads to errors, issues, mistakes, reshoots, etc. Running before we could walk kinda stuff.
Gary Miller: Was there a moment when you thought, ‘This is too much’? How did you get through it?
Joshua Malone: We were filming this, several other projects, in the middle of classes and other shows—it was certainly a busy time. But for me, this project was just show up and act. Gary and several others had a much bigger workload than I did!
Gary Miller: Did making the film bring you closer to any of your classmates?
Joshua Malone: I loved hanging out with you and Bill—any chance to work with you guys on projects during this time, I jumped at it.
About That "Tight Script"
The filming was almost entirely improvised. A lot of lines I told myself I’d “get back to” were just rough placeholders I wrote down and we’d direct off of that, giving the actors room to riff with me. We’d run each scene a few times, break it apart, and then shoot. If we came up with something funny on the fly, we’d shoot that too. I can’t remember the exact shooting order, but I’m pretty sure we filmed chronologically, mostly on weekends and afternoons. I didn’t know anything about sequencing; we just tackled one scene at a time.
Some of my favorite moments still make me laugh because they were so original. They weren’t trying to copy anything. They were just bursts of authentic madness I could never replicate. One standout was a shootout scene during an underground Russian Roulette inspired game called Jimmy Smits.
It was part The Deer Hunter, part “he’s the best commando we’ve got” energy. I brought in my wrestling teammates, and they fully committed. Nate shot it cinematically and made sure it looked great, and we all just had a blast. It was late on a random Tuesday night — that kind of thing doesn’t happen in the real world. Getting extras and pulling off a scene like that on a real set would be expensive. Bob Mazooka only worked because of my friends. It’s a time capsule of my creative ethos: “make movies with friends.”
There are moments I’m incredibly proud of and some I wish I could’ve improved — but I still love it. It even featured my first on-screen kiss with the lovely Cait Cairo, who played my wife, and Dom Lifonti, who played my son.
From the start, it was a parody of form — a lost 1980s episode of a cop show, complete with fake commercials. I wanted it to feel like something you’d find on a VHS your parents taped off late-night TV. I leaned into that bygone, slightly nonsensical vibe on purpose. That summer, while I was home from college, working, training, and watching weird internet stuff, the influences started stacking up: The Room, Trash Humpers, Ken Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, South Park, Sesame Street. Bob Mazooka had a little of all of that in its DNA. I’m grateful for the music we used too. Part of being home that summer meant sharing a room with my two brothers. One of them was a teenager deep in the underground SoundCloud rap scene, and he was introducing me to new corners of the internet every day. Through him, I was able to get a blessing from Grandmilly of Raider Klan to use his tracks in the film. At the time, my brother was working with The Suicideboys and some Raider Klan members who were all on the verge of blowing up. I even got to tag along when he opened for the Seshhollowwaterboyz and BONES. That little bedroom was an exciting, creative space between the two of us. I remember talking to BONES’ brother, who shot all his videos, and thinking, “Man, I could see myself filming for my brother too.” I was also able to include some of my brother’s music and tracks by Ianxsolo in the film. Hell, we even had a theme song written for Bob Mazooka.
When we wrapped filming, I tackled the editing using a computer in the communications department that was tucked away in the science building. Nate and I worked on an early cut one afternoon, and afterward, he let me take it from there. I had no idea how long it would take, and up until that point, I had only ever edited in iMovie. Within a week, I had a rough cut on Adobe Premiere. Between edits I was watching youtube videos on how to edit. I spent every afternoon in that room, and the night before our film festival, I even slept under the desk as it rendered.
I genuinely had no clue how it would be received. I didn’t know what a master file was, had no idea about festival standards. I just knew I had something to show. Others had their student films ready too. I tried to string them all together into one reel to screen, but we ran into technical issues.
So we played the films directly from the hard drive and luckily, it worked. We ended up with about two hours of student content, with Bob Mazooka running 45 minutes. There was no pre-screening, no test audience, no quality control, this was it. Everyone turned in their projects by Monday, and by Saturday, we were ready to roll.
The screening went better than I could’ve hoped. Every film was well received, and the laughter during Bob Mazooka was a massive relief. Later that day, I uploaded the film to Funny or Die so the rest of the campus and my community back home in Denver could see it too. The buzz that followed was thrilling. I even sent it to a mentor who worked at Adult Swim, and spent the summer showing it to family and friends. I eventually mustered up the courage to show my acting school friends I met in New York. That took so much building of confidence. For the first time, it felt like I was a filmmaker.
Still, I struggled to claim that title. Some people didn’t even want to call Bob Mazooka a “film.” I told myself I wasn’t a filmmaker. I wasn’t a screenwriter. And even though the positive feedback came in, I let the few critical voices get louder in my head. I downplayed what I had made. But looking back, of course it was a film. Of course I was writing and directing. We used improvisation just like many filmmakers do. I was learning through doing and I didn’t even realize it yet.
What About Bob?
I knew the following year I didn’t want to repeat Bob Mazooka. I have a problem with not wanting to repeat what's successful. A smart business minded person would milk it and find a way to do it again. I wanted to try other things and see what would work. Andrew Skalak gave me solid advice that I could always revisit that character later in your career. I had ideas and plans for him, but I could never bring myself to bring him back. It didn't feel right and the stories never felt right, not until 2020. That’s when my friend James Panozzo and I decided to just have fun and make a short film together during the pandemic. We needed it. We shot the whole thing ourselves and played every role. It still felt strange stepping back into Bob’s shoes. In a way, he never really left my bones. Every year, I’d find myself writing and rewriting scripts for him, but none of them ever felt quite right. Sometimes I wanted to retcon the original; other times, I wanted to spin it off into something new. Then I just let it rip.
Eventually, I settled on a direction, and it came out of a drunken Zoom call with James during lockdown. I’d play Bob again, and he’d play Dick Virginia. When we started shooting, I felt the difference immediately. I wasn’t that same irreverent college kid anymore, the one who’d show up hungover to a set and make it up as he went. I was treating the work like a profession now. But I still wanted to have fun, and this time, I wanted to focus more on Dick’s character. I’m proud of how that short turned out. It reminded me why I do this in the first place: to make movies with my friends.
An interview with Cinematographer Nate Mittelbrun:
Gary Miller: Who are you, and who was the character you played or the role you played behind the scenes?
Nate Mittelbrun: Camera Operator/Director of “Photography.”
Gary Miller: If Bob Mazooka had a sequel, what would you do differently?
Nate Mittelbrun: Lighting this stuff much, much better. I would even go so far as to actually use lights.
Gary Miller: Where are you now, and what’s next for you?
Nate Mittelbrun: I’m living in Chicago and working in TV and movies as a 2nd AC. Past projects include Utopia, Fargo, The Chi, The Bear, Mea Culpa, and the Chicago One shows PD, Med, and Fire. I’m actually currently typing this up on the set of Chicago Med.
Gary Miller: What’s one thing you wish people knew about Bob Mazooka?
Nate Mittelbrun: Guerilla-style filmmaking allowed us to be as ridiculous as we wanted. We broke any rule you could think of, and just going for whatever we wanted with a quasi-dogma mentality really made the juxtaposition of our own reality against Bob’s stand out.
Gary Miller: Which scene was the hardest to shoot, and why?
Nate Mittelbrun: The battle scene, because for some reason I had the hardest time keeping track of where the line was in the scene, and I’m pretty sure we jumped it a bunch!
Gary Miller: How did being part of Bob Mazooka impact your life or career?
Nate Mittelbrun: Big. I always wanted to work in movies, but didn’t think it was realistic. Making this beautifully awful movie showed me that if you learn and put in the time, it’s incredibly possible to make a career for yourself in the TV and movie industry.
Gary Miller: What’s your funniest memory from making Bob Mazooka?
Nate Mittelbrun: The Banana Gun.
Gary Miller: How did you juggle filming Bob Mazooka with your college studies?
Nate Mittelbrun: I managed fairly well. I still found time to study and complete my schoolwork, and part of getting the schoolwork done was the included knowledge that once it was done, we could continue filming greatness.
Gary Miller: What was the most challenging part of making a film as a college student?
Nate Mittelbrun: Lack of knowledge, experience, and mostly a budget. Films cost an exuberant amount. You need a lot of equipment and a lot of labor. You find very quickly that a film requires many, many hands to create, and even if your friends are volunteering to help you with your vision for free, at some point, they will need to eat…
Gary Miller: Did making Bob Mazooka impact your grades or study habits?
Nate Mittelbrun: It led to all-nighters that I now manage better with time.
Gary Miller: Was there a moment when you thought, ‘This is too much’? How did you get through it?
Nate Mittelbrun: The editing of this film nearly killed me. I had Gary as an amazing creative partner and visionary to keep me motivated, but I’ve despised editing my entire career. Getting this film ready to be aired with maybe an hour to spare still gives me f**ing* heart palpitations.
Gary Miller: Did making the film bring you closer to any of your classmates?
Nate Mittelbrun: I made a lifelong chum in Gary Miller. You don’t create something like this without becoming incredibly bonded and close.
Gary Miller: If you could go back, would you still make the film in college, or would you wait until later?
Nate Mittelbrun: I would definitely still make the film, as it really jump-started my drive to make a career out of filmmaking, but I would 100% do things differently knowing all I do about film production at this current stage of my life.
What Happened to Black Squirrel Productions?
Black Squirrel Productions continued for a few more years after we graduated, and today, Augustana College officially offers both a film major and minor. I like to think we helped lay the groundwork for that—sparking enough student interest and energy to show that film had a place on campus. We didn’t have the formal structure or resources, but we had passion, creativity, and the will to make something from nothing.
After graduation, I never really looked back at Black Squirrel Productions. It was out of my hands and I wanted it that way. We secured school funding, and it was reinvested. One of our founding principles was to leave it better than we found it. That felt like mission accomplished.
One of my co-founders, Alvin Fonseca, happened to be in Chicago the same time I was. Back when we founded BSP, Alvin had originally pitched the name “The Best Worst Cantina in El Paso Productions,” a nod to something fun and chaotic. We also gave names to our local party houses. It felt like we were summoning the spirit of what we wanted. A renegade group of kids with something to express and no idea how to do that. It was the watering hole. The dive bar. The stinky frat basement we all could go to. The Best Worst Cantina. We all loved it, but it got vetoed by the school. Years later, when we reunited in Chicago, we resurrected the idea as our own production company: Best Worst Cantina. I was eager to build momentum, move fast, and turn it into something real. Our first client was BestComedyTickets.com, and we hit the ground running—shooting sketches, pushing content.
Eventually, Alvin admitted it was a bit much. That was my first dose of post-college reality: filmmaking was no longer a fun student hobby. It wasn't get rich quick. It was often spec work for no hire. We had to build skills and a portfolio. Making a film, It was work. We we're doing it half-ass after class anymore. I had to look at myself and say, "You’re either in, or you’re out. And if you're going to start, go all the way."
I’m grateful for BSP and the friendships it gave me. I’m proud Bob Mazooka started as a dumb joke and became a finished film. We saw it through.
I think part of why I’ve hesitated to revisit Bob full throttle is because I know how much it would take. I know the vision I have for it, and if I ever started, I’d have to finish. That would break me if I couldn’t. But Bob’s still there waiting. He’ll be back when I finally feel ready to say, “Forget the ceremony, I was raised by wolves, and I’m here to party.”
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