What does Bob Tarasuk have in common with Noomi Rapace? They’re both actors, and they’ve both had their arm up inside a pregnant ewe. “Been there,” he beamed.
For Rapace, it was a return to her family shepherding roots for folk horror Lamb. For Tarasuk, it’s just part of life. Back around 2010, he was the subject/star/lead in director Diego Ongaro’s Bob and the Trees, a verité-style drama about a fictionalized version of himself: a Massachusetts livestock farmer with a predilection for gangster rap. Now the duo has reunited for Down With the King, in which the worlds of rap and agriculture meld deeply as disillusioned MC Mercury Maxwell (rapper Freddie Gibbs) tries to find himself by getting knee- and elbow-deep on Bob’s farm.
Down With the King is available on VOD now, and Tarasuk and Ongaro discussed the making of the film on Tarasuk’s working farm with the Chronicle after its premiere at last year’s Austin Film Festival.
Austin Chronicle: When you’re setting about filming on a working farm, there are going to be times when the farm has to come first.
Diego Ongaro: As you said, we made another film on the farm before, so I had some experience. And I’ve known Bob for 14 years now, so I spent a lot of time on the farm, sometimes helping him with animals or slaughter, anything really. So I know about the farm, but I’m not an expert, so I bring my problem to Bob. “OK, we have to do this, what do you think?” And then we have Bob’s son-in-law, Matt, who’s a great help and also involved in the film. He was able to figure out a lot of animal-related questions.
Bob Tarasuk: The logistics of timing it so, yeah, we’re gonna do our pig in a couple of weeks. So he worked his schedule so that instead of him using a prop – which wouldn’t have worked – we did our pig for real. Our family beef, our family pork, those kind of things don’t come from the outside. People who don’t get it go, “We’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.” No. Diego’s been part of our farm for 14 years now, helping me, getting meat from our farm for helping us. So his timing on making this film jibed perfectly with our farm. It didn’t put us out, it wasn’t hard to schedule these things, and it just so happened at the time that we had a gajillion animals everywhere. Dogs, chickens, broiler chickens.
DO: We wrote it knowing what was possible from my experience of the farm. I knew it was not things that were really challenging or impossible to do.
“The best part of it was [Freddie Gibbs] embraced the farm. … When we shot those scenes he had already made a connection with me, our farm, and our family.” – Bob Tarasuk
DO: That’s really the documentary aspect of it. We’re really dropping in on what Bob has been doing his whole life, in doing his work. We’re just throwing an apprentice on him.
AC: How did you get Freddie to the point of being comfortable working with your livestock? After all, this is your food and livelihood.
BT: The best part of it was Freddie embraced the farm. Had it been, “Ew, this is horrible” … but it wasn’t. When we shot those scenes he had already made a connection with me, our farm, and our family. There was a genuine effort on his part to be a part, not to think this was awful.
I’m sure, not having had that experience in his life, it was tough, but man, he didn’t look away at all. He was right there.
DO: It was important to create that environment, to have enough time early on that they could bind with Freddie. To me it was super important, because their relationship is so important to the story, that they got to know each other ahead of time, and to learn to know each other a little more. You can see that.
AC: How long was he out there?
DO: Three or four days. Not that much.
BT: But it was enough, and we hung out a lot for those four days at the farm. Fed the animals, saw it all, helped, all for real.
AC: Still impressed on him jumping in so fast on dressing the pig.
DO: He really didn’t have much of a choice.
BT: And you’ve got to be impressed by his clothes in that.
AC: Ten years ago, if somebody had pitched this to a studio it would have been as a comedy, but this is an existential crisis. Maxwell has a lot of Freddie in him, so I was wondering about the discussions with him about the character, and about where he is.
DO: The premise, if you put it in one sentence, is a comedy, and there is a lot of comedy in the film, but I wanted to explore the more intimate inside feelings of the character and what he goes through. On the side, there will be a some comedic moments, but not be just here for laughs.
The first conversation with Freddie was that he really connected with the character for that identity crisis. He could relate to that, he had been there several times throughout his career, questioning how long he would do that because the rap world is very demanding and very violent, and there are all these disputes and feuds between rappers, and they can end up with people being shot at or murdered. Freddie’s lost a lot of friends like that, and he saw that part of it, and it was really important to find the balance between Freddie, who can be extremely funny and improvise some zingers that’ll have you really laughing, and to explore that darker side of him. … I think he had been waiting a long time to express himself in a role in a movie that is serious.
AC: But you also make this important point that it’s not always just about the will to change but also your ability and how much you can truly reinvent yourself. Bob, you’ve changed your own career trajectory multiple times yourself, so there must have been some pangs of recognition.
BT: Absolutely. How do you even do it? You question yourself, and find it within yourself. I think what makes you do it is that you want more of yourself. It’s not so much that you’re trying to find your way. You want more out of you personally, and that’s what I got out of it. Always want to do better, always want to be better. Probably, like Freddie, yeah, rap music’s wonderful but there’s so much competition in that world and there’s competition in everybody’s world. You just reach out inside yourself and find your own way, and that’s what I did my whole life. I’m not saying farming is anywhere near better than anywhere else, but it’s that connection between Freddie Gibbs, our land, anyone that moves into our area that needs that attachment to the land, to that way of life, to farming …
DO: To something simple.
BT: Yeah, to something simple, and they never have had that experience. They go to the grocery store, they buy meat – all the great, wonderful barbecues around here – but to go to our farm instead of just buying it somewhere else, to come visit and get the experience of the reality of where the food comes from, is the educational part of farming that does never end.
Down With the King is available on VOD now. Read our review here.
This article appears in July 8 • 2022.