WWTW Interview: ‘Woodshop’ writer/director Pete Coggan

The star of Pete Coggan’s directorial debut, “Woodshop,” sure didn’t act like one on the set.

The coming of age dramedy, about a dweebish high schooler (Scott Cooper Ryan) forced to spend Saturdays in a woodshop detention class, gave former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura his first acting gig in a decade.

But Ventura didn’t throw his weight around a set filled with young, less recognizable actors, Coggan recalls, even though the director gave him every perk the modestly budgeted film could muster.

“He refused to sit in the green room. He was dressing, eating and telling stories [with the cast]. He was one of the kids,” Coggan says.

Coggan’s Boulder-based 42 Productions company has been working on other directors’ films for nearly a decade, but the goal has always been to make movies in house, he says.

“Woodshop,” just released on DVD, gave Coggan a crash course in just how brutal the film business can be. The movie wasn’t even the one he had set out to make originally. He had secured a first look deal with a major studio, only to see it fall through partially due to a management change.

The new executive wasn’t responsive to Coggan’s project, to put it mildly.

“Is it a horror film, an NC-17 comedy or have an A-list celebrity in it?” Coggan recalls the executive asking. “Then we’re not doing the film.”

But his company had enough funding to make a movie all the same and a cast and crew ready to roll. So Coggan rifled through some of his own short stories for inspiration and wrote what would become “Woodshop.”

Coggan had a loose connection to Ventura and used him as a model while writing the woodshop teacher, an ex-Army Ranger who didn’t take any guff from anyone.

“I fell in love with the idea of him doing it,” Coggan says. But loving the idea and securing a man who lives off the grid are two different things.

So Coggan kept reaching out to Ventura’s agent with no real luck. He even considered playing the pivotal character himself, but admits he’s not much of an actor. Finally, Ventura’s wife contacted Coggan to let him know her husband accepted the part.

When Coggan went to personally pick Ventura up at the Denver International Airport, he didn’t recognize the former politician.

“He looked like a homeless person coming up the escalator,” he recalls, although he suspects the guise was purposeful to deflect attention.

Ventura’s presence – and professionalism – helped the shoot. But a critical piece of Coggan’s first film puzzle came when he acquired two Red One cameras, high-def equipment that allows a small film to look like a very big one.

Coggan lives and works in Boulder, Colo., a gorgeous city known more for its liberal activism than its film products. He isn’t moving anytime soon.

“I really don’t have any desire to become an L.A. filmmaker,” he says. “This is home. There’s no reason you have to leave Colorado. You can shoot anything you can imagine here.“

And while the state lacks the film incentives that are making New Mexico a Mecca for film production, considered Coggan uninterested.

“The quality of life and scenic beauty greatly outweigh any incentives,” he says.

(Photo: Writer/director Pete Coggan on the set of “Woodshop.”)

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