In Conversation: ‘Rocky’s’ Directors Benjamin Cohen and Max Strand

by Varsha Murali Kaushik

Rocky’s (2025) blurs the lines between a past spent coveting friendship in the parking lot of a deli, and the present where reality tests the bounds of that friendship. The coming-of-age film is set in a small town, where the food and drinks from the local deli mean community, and conversations are more than just segues into reunions between old friends. We spoke to co-directors and writers Benjamin Cohen and Max Strand about their experience making the film together as childhood friends, curating distinct character arcs, and the role of nostalgia in film narrative and form. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Why is the primary setting of the film a deli? We hear of external places that hold importance like family homes, colleges and universities, a party, etc., but why the choice to set the entire film in and around a deli?

 COHEN: I've known Max since kindergarten actually, so you know, we grew up together and we had a similar experience. Around the time of high school, you get to the point where you don't necessarily want to spend so much time under your parents’ roof because you want to express yourself and you don't have any of your own space yet! So the parking lot at the 24-hour deli in our town was where we could always just go and know that our friends would come meet us.

We'd sort of hang out there, always looking for somewhere else to go, and then we’d all get together and go. When we were reflecting back and thinking about what we wanted to write about, we realised those were the times we really remembered, even though not any sort of, like, special thing happened there, just that we were part of our friend group. 

STRAND: The parking lot represented those in between moments, the moments where you’re just with your friends, that found family. The parking lot also represented freedom at that age, it was kind of like a home base for our friend group. 

Just the way that the deli has been used as the setting in the entire film is very wholesome, very comforting, where even though there are difficult conversations happening there, it still manages to retain some of that welcoming feeling.

STRAND: I'm glad you had that feeling too, because I think that’s what the friends represented to us and what the deli meant to us, that people were grabbed in different directions, but there was a wholesomeness about when the characters are together. The outside stuff didn't matter when it was just the guys hanging out and that's what we tried to capture with the film. 

COHEN: You go back to the childhood type of communication and what the friendships were based on. You would transport back into that and then immediately back into the present and it was kind of interesting to have one foot in each direction.

There is a theme of nostalgia that runs throughout the film. It is nostalgia and connections that bring Charlie back to Rocky’s, it is nostalgia that provides a safe ground for the group to navigate their relationship on, it is also the nostalgia and memories of the past that hold them together strongly. Additionally, the colouring on the film brings back memories of a different era in films. Could you tell me about this use of nostalgia in the film and what narrative and technical value it holds for you as the filmmakers?

STRAND: Well, I think you're right that nostalgia did play a big part in the making of the film. While writing together, it was definitely a reflective experience—what it meant to, you know, to grow up and kind of capture that moment of transition from being a kid to adulthood, what that meant to us and our relationships and our friendships, and how we navigated all of that.

COHEN: We had the opportunity to go back and create one distilled work around our shared memory. So we wanted it to feel naturalistic and the cameras were just hanging out with the group most of the time. We're using Steadicam and creating a naturalistic conversation, but at the same time, we're really intentional.

STRAND: Just to follow up on the production part, we intentionally chose to shoot this movie as a real time movie that takes place in 90 minutes and has the transition from the day changing to the night—not just because this is great cinematically, but also the nostalgia aspect of this idyllic time and the memories associated with that. 

COHEN: Yeah, it has the feeling of a slowed down and reflective time in general,  and the movie in itself is serving that purpose, too, of slowing down and kind of reflecting at what it felt like to, you know, be living at that time and at that age. 

I read that the delis are disappearing in the US right now. They aren't around as often as they used to be or they got shut down because of fast food chains. The film also adds on to the nostalgia of that time when they were everywhere and they were a major part of everybody's lives. 

STRAND: It was really cool to hear that all the cast definitely related to the script right away with their own version of it. If it wasn't a deli, it was a diner, a pizza place, or an ice cream shop—someplace where their friends would always congregate. Speaking of nostalgia, we purposely also set this in a time of no cellphones. The idea was just meeting up with people, where they are sitting bored together as opposed to sitting bored at home.

COHEN: I talked to my producer James a lot about this. Now, ever since texting became more available, you wait around to make sure something's happening before you get out of the house. But the film was very much at a time where we would just get out of the house to see if something was happening. We could create our own fun or own connection together, as opposed to waiting to make sure there's something worth it. 

What aspects of making the film proved to be a challenge?

COHEN: We had a short shooting schedule, and shot a lot of pages every single day. So that was a challenge, luckily or not just luckily, because we could use our auditions and our conversations with the cast to, you know, ultimately decide to go with them and work together. But the cast, too, were so spot on and so much in the character that we were able to get a lot done really quickly. They had their own familiarity with each other, and didn't have to fake that group dynamic or that intimacy which was already there. That meant that we could just capture that closeness, and that made us move really fast. There were also times we had to shut down the production, drop everything and pick it back up because we shot during COVID times. The location—the baseball field—ended up having an actual Little League that would come everyday and interfere with our schedules! 

STRAND: Everything that Ben said plus, you know, we were shooting all outside, in parking lots and fields, so dealing with the sun was definitely a big obstacle. But we had such an incredible cast and crew that was ready to improvise, so we definitely lucked out with everybody who worked on this film!

How did you come about with the casting decisions on the film?

COHEN: Kate Geller and Taylor Williams are the casting directors. Kate knew a lot of theater talent from her experience casting plays which was helpful because we were trying to find super talented people that could authentically play the roles. The movie has some similarities to a play, obviously, because it's in one location, so it was a good marriage between it already having some similarities to being a play and working with someone like the great talent that Taylor had known about from the theater world.

I personally really liked the use of music in the film because it did such a good job at setting the mood and being a cue that really added a lot to the scene. Could you tell me more about how the sound design for the film came together? Did you acquire the songs or were they made for the film particularly? 

COHEN: It’s a two-part process. When we were first editing the movie, Editor Martin Anderson put in a lot of tracks that really captured the mood of the scene really well. But when it came time to put the movie out, those tracks maybe weren’t going to be realistic in terms of licensing. So, then it was time to really think about how to find the music that would ultimately be in the final film.

Luckily, we got introduced to a record label based out of Portland, Oregon, who watched the film for us and they represented a lot of artists who they knew would give us the opportunity to license their music. They provided a number of tracks for each scene that might be a good fit, which we listened to and selected from. They also knew other record labels that had songs which could fit, so they sent it to us and we were able to work with them to license some music. 

STRAND: We also knew that it was fun playing with music, because the music acts as both, like a score, and also there's a lot of music that's happening in the world of the movie, such as  coming from the cars. Yeah, it was fun working with everybody who helped with music to kind of narrow down the tone we were trying to set, whether it's the more reflective music during the baseball scenes or the song during the fight scene. We wanted to make sure we captured the right feeling, we didn't want it to be too emotional or too nostalgic but just right for the kind of emotion in the scene.

COHEN: Adding on to what Max was saying, I’ve worked with John Flores, the sound designer, on two projects now. There's a balance between the kind of needle drops that act as a score in a way, and then needle drops that are diegetic, coming from a car, from the deli, and in the times where he had the opportunity to edit the music in such a way that it would be coming from the direction of the car below the characters when they’re on a hill. We're kind of really impressed when there's a craftsperson who comes in with that and is able to make what we hoped for even more robust or better.

Though we get to meet each character for a short while with varied screen times for each character, you do a brilliant job at making each of them distinct and memorable. Tell me more about how these characters came to be, the use of (if any) tropes or archetypes to set up that found-family type of group. 

COHEN: We thought about that a good amount when we were writing the script because we didn't want to overload the audience with too many people to remember. But if we made them distinct, they could pick up on it quickly. One of us would be on the computer, typing with the script up on a TV, and then the other one would kind of be pacing around and we'd be chatting the lines to each other and kind of acting out the different characters. Through conversations, we developed a clear understanding of how each character spoke and what their perspective was. 

STRAND: Ben and I have been writing this script for a very long time, and these characters have been kind of in our writings, you know, and we just knew them so well. By the time we were shooting and even before that, I think Ben and I could instinctively know the answer to one of these character questions without having to discuss it, because we know the characters so well and hopefully that came across on screen when it came to life. The actors did such a great job taking those characters and then making it theirs also.

Did you already have these endings set for each of the characters? Or did you later end up changing a couple of things based on, like you said, what personality the actors brought to the characters themselves? 

COHEN: I think we kind of always knew it would be in real time and around an hour and a half, just ‘cause we were trying to make a feature length film and we couldn't really go into that blind. We sort of had a structure in order to get there. So, we did spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, where the characters would end up at the end of the movie and how that would tie in nicely with the type of character and maybe where we think they are capable of getting to at the end of this film, and where they're ultimately gonna end up going.

STRAND: The resolutions were mostly in the script, but where the actors were really able to make the characters their own is that we were very open to them having fun with lines within conversations, and they were all such talented improvisers. 

COHEN: But to fit the schedule, we had to know, like, physically where the characters would end up going, so that part was always true to the script, and then sometimes the fun within the scene was something that we’d find on the day. 

Do you have a particular favourite scene from the film or a particular favorite moment from the entire filming process or post-production?

STRAND: That's a hard question! I don't know, I guess I really enjoyed filming the baseball scene. To me, that scene really encapsulates a lot of what we were trying to do with the movie and kind of finding that moment of just being kids again and not worrying about all the outside noise. When they, you know, could be 12 years old playing imaginary baseball. And I really love that. I feel like the cast had a lot of fun filming that and I think that comes across on screen . . . Everything, everything was my favorite, but you know, that's an answer for you.

COHEN: I think when we were working on the script, we were having so much fun writing the jokes and scenes, and I couldn't really unlock what the point of the story is or why it feels necessary to drop everything and go out and make this movie. And the scene between Charlie and Noah when they're eating and kind of talking about where they are in life really unlocked that meaning for me.

It highlighted something that I was thinking about a lot where if you're young and you're ambitious, you're thinking these things that you accomplish are representative of who you are, but I kind of realised that happiness isn’t going to be from attaining those things, but by being really connected to the people around me. And in order to do that, you have to drop this image of yourself that you're trying to curate for your friends to see, you have to be more open about your insecurities and what's actually going on in your life. So, it was really just rewarding to write that scene with Max and it made me really excited to make a movie and execute that scene, to see it come to life. 

STRAND: We had an opportunity to write a movie about best friends, together as best friends, right? And that's just a dream come true. It was such an amazing process, just sitting on the couch and having that feeling of writing a great scene together and just talking about old stories and reflecting together.