Larsen Black plays a date rapist in the locally made short film, Roofies & Romance



Story by Innika La Fontaine   /  Stills courtesy of the filmmaker

“My father used to tell me, don’t fear the man whose preferred weapon is his fists. Fear the man who prefers to use a smile.” — Cody Campanale

Among friends, sex can make for good conversation. Many of us will shamelessly discuss last night’s bedroom intrigue over this morning’s coffee. But chatting about bad kinds of sex—the abusive, violent, or predatory kind—is understandably taboo. It makes us cross our legs, cough, and quickly change the subject.

Yet when the Ottawa-based young filmmaker Cody Campanale serves up an exploration of date rape called Roofies & Romance at this weekend’s Ottawa International Film Festival, it’ll be damned hard to look away.

“I’m attracted to the ideas that people shun normally,” Campanale explains, who made the film at the tender age of 20.

“Date rape, for example, is a thing a lot of people don’t want to talk about and that’s one of the reasons I’m so interested in it. It’s a very serious issue, it’s very terrifying, and it happens. You can’t walk away from things that are happening.”

Based loosely on the true story of a sociopathic date rapist on the hunt for victims, the 12-minute-long film packs a punch. It’s twisted, has twists, and subtly exposes the underlying psychology associated with a sexual predator’s acts and desires.

Despite a cast of normal-looking, attractive, and youthful characters, the film is also terrifying. It calls into question who are the real threats in society and how we are to fight threats that we can’t easily recognize.

“It gives you an example of how [date rapists] can put masks over their faces to make us believe one thing but really be something completely different,” Campanale says. “They have no conscience; they’re very likable and interesting. They’re not hiding in the bushes—they do have a life.”

The idea for the film arose from some shocking statistics that Campanale stumbled upon while researching the subject of misogyny for his television project, "Fragile Minds." Shockingly, despite how far women have come with gender rights and equality, over the last 30 years violence against women has increased.

“Before scripting Roofies & Romance, I had only a basic understanding of how victims are affected by rape,” Campanale explains on the film’s website. “Through my research I began to see that rape is a crime committed out of insecurity and confusion … In almost every way, a rapist is a sociopath. I wanted my film to explore this type of person.”

For accuracy and authenticity, Campanale also conducted real-world research, getting inside accounts of sexual predators from a lawyer, a chief of police, and a rape councilor.

Shot mostly in the basement of a fraternity house over three days, Roofies & Romance was Campanale’s first film, made with a budget of around $2,500. The filmmaker admits the project would not have been possible without a SAW Video grant and donated equipment.

“When you’re making films about negative or darker things that could be controversial, it’s sometimes a turn off for a lot of people,” Campanale says. “Being able to say SAW Video supports this really helped."

Winner of an Award of Merit at the 2010 Indie Fest in California, Roofies & Romance has so far screened in eight film festivals (including events New York, Washington, and Atlanta) and will be included in the prestigious National Screen Institutes Online Short Film Festival this year.

But don’t think that every door has been opened for this freshman filmmaker. To garner attention, Campanale has knocked on many doors and invested countless hours creating his own promotional material—a website, press package, a Facebook fan page even his own production company.

“It’s not a hard industry if you’re a hard worker,” he explains. “If you want to be a filmmaker the most important thing is promoting your movie because you don’t have a studio system, you don’t have thousands of dollars for publicity budget. This is something a lot of independent filmmakers forget.”

Already in pre-production for his third film in two years, Campanale has the drive to succeed and the guts to touch on issues we’d like to shy away from. With his attitude, he just might be going big places.

Roofies & Romance screens for the first time in Canada at the Mayfair Theatre on August 21 as part off the Ottawa International Film Festival.