Against all odds, Rob Mello is making a movie. In a plain house in a rough-edged neighborhood west of Busch Gardens, he’s gathered a cast and crew of friends, hobbyists, and aspiring professionals to film “Love is Black and White,” a story of interracial romance crafted from the materials of his own life. As he kibitzes with his actors and producers, everyone nibbles on a spread of home-baked cookies and brownies — which, for most of them, amount to their pay for a day’s work.
In a town where artists can feel an acute lack of both role models and opportunities, the story of how the 40-year-old Mello got here is inspirational. “My entire adult life sucked,” he told me in his tenacious Boston brogue. After a stint in the Marines (the period depicted in his film), Mello spent more than a decade scraping by as a line cook around the South. During one particularly dark period, he walked miles every day to and from a gig at a Cracker Barrel in middle-of-nowhere Alabama.
But then, while searching for extra work on his one day off per week, Mello stumbled across the Craigslist ad that would change his life. It was a call for extras in a small studio production, and though Mello says he never aspired to be an actor, it sounded like easy work. But it turns out that acting is what he was born for: the casting director took one look at his hawk-like, stubbled face and immediately gave him a speaking role.
In the five years since, Mello has embraced what feels like his destiny, working in student and indie films and taking acting classes with local guru Kathy Laughlin. Then 2014 broke over him in a beautiful wave of big-screen roles. He appeared alongside James Marsden in The Best of Me, and gets his ass kicked by Danny Trejo and Danny Glover in the upcoming Badasses on the Bayou (That's him getting kneecapped by Glover in the trailer).
Now he’s jumping into writing and directing with help from local production company Flying Car, after starring in their noir-comic short Quicklime. And he’s spreading the love around – under new Screen Actors Guild rules for web shorts, he’s running a Union set that will help his actors get their SAG cards, and with them, access to higher-paying gigs.
To help fund the project, Mello has set up an Indiegogo campaign for Love Is Black and White, which runs through Friday and is about halfway to its modest thousand-dollar goal. Production will continue over the coming weeks and months with stars Sean Gloria, Nicole Paris Williams, Michael Hunnicutt, and Eva Coleman. After the film wraps, Mello is planning to move to New Orleans, where he knows he can find more regular acting gigs.
Though he still mans the griddle regularly (acting is too unpredictable, and he’s got two kids), Mello told me that acting has made his entire life meaningful, after too many years of just getting by.
“When you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing,” he says, “What was once a huge wall, it’s just a domino, that it never occurred to you to push over.”
