J.J. Ruscella is the co-director and co-producer of “The Karaoke King,” an ensemble comedy that takes place at Lil’s, “America’s First Karaoke Bar,” located in a fictional town in Central Florida. No slouch when it comes to the arts, Ruscella is an assistant professor at UCF and director of the Interactive Performance Group, which develops real-life simulations for education, training, and entertainment.
We talked with Ruscella about making the movie, what makes good karaoke, and why it’s hard to feature a “Wizard of Oz” song in a movie.
Tell me what “The Karaoke King” is about.
Well it’s sort of a quirky romantic comedy about America’s first karaoke bar. For as long as anyone can remember one man has been crowned king and tonight his girlfriend gives him an ultimatum: it’s either me or karaoke. So by the end of the night he’s got to decide, and it’s sort of everyone’s last chance to take the crown from him.
Is this based on fact at all?
Oh no, it’s a completely fictional story about a bar that has never existed except maybe in the hearts and minds of its storytellers.
What do you deem to be the importance of karaoke?
One, I think that it gives the individual a voice. I think that we want to share ourselves with each other, and karaoke in a strange way allows us to do that. The other thing about karaoke is that it sort of levels the field. Race, color, social status, religion, age, differentiations – all of that goes away in karaoke. Unless you’re in a bar, which I guess you have to be 21. I was surprised when we went to a karaoke festival in Los Angeles, and the story of the people who are really into karaoke, they talk about how it changed their lives. There are 35 million Americans that sing karaoke every year, of course you could probably multiply that by the people that go and listen to them. Over 150 million people around the world that sing karaoke every year, so it’s definitely a part of our contemporary culture.
What do you, and by extension the movie, consider to be a good karaoke performance?
For us it’s not about voice. There’s actually a statement by the King, he says “It’s not about voice, it’s about the choice.” For him it’s about the choice of a song, and what the people are going to be into. But I think it’s about heart. It’s about getting out there and giving your all and as long as you fully commit, almost anything is doable, almost anything goes. I saw a performance once that started out and I just thought “Oh this is terrible.” But the guy continued doing the exact same thing every time with commitment, to the point where he had us all behind him in the craziness. It’s not about quality, it’s about commitment. And about having fun.
So the movie was filmed entirely within Orlando?
That is correct. The old, what was, steakhouse, what was the name? Ruth Chris Steakhouse in Altamonte Springs, we made use of that beautiful wooden bar that they had left there, we used that as the heart of [Lil’s]. There are actually three portions to the bar, or four. There’s the bar, there’s a pool hall because there’s a piece of the pool hall that’s left over. There’s the karaoke lounge. There’s one unisex bathroom, and there’s a strip bar. Because the idea is that Lil when she first started the karaoke bar, karaoke was before its time so no one would come. In fact, if you go through the unisex bathroom there’s a back door that leads you through to the strip bar.
So it sounds like this movie probably has some racy elements in it?
It’s an R-rated film. It’s kind of like karaoke “Caddyshack.” You know, it doesn’t go much further than the comedy of that.
What would you consider to be the most challenging aspect of making the movie? Because it is almost a musical.
I’ll tell you, how we were able to record everything before and during was a real challenge. Brian James, who ran sound for us, the recording of it, did a fantastic job. Ian McDaniel who’s coming from Media Evolutions at Universal Studios on the back lot there, has really helped up on post-production on sound. Lee Riley did a lot of fixing stuff, and he was out of Full Sail. I mean we’ve really had the community come and support us on getting this done. You’re right it’s a musical without being a musical, which makes this a strange little category of film. The music rights have been a real challenge all the way. We used one company, one catalog, EMI, and we’ve been in contact with them from the beginning. Even now we’re still in negotiations. We’ve gotten the leases but cost negotiations are still going on. Thank god we started that way because there were rules and regulations for songs. We could do certain things and not do other things. We used the song from “The Wizard of Oz” and they had very specific things that we could and could not do during the song.
Like what?
There could be no small people in the song. The person could not be dressed as Dorothy. There were a handful of other things that were very interesting.