CAST & CREW BIOS
Geoff Danek
From his early years as an amateur teenage dough roller at Eddies Place in Crofton, Md to a professional burrito roller at Holy Frijoles in Baltimore City, Geoff has always kept fun as a constant in his life.
He runs his business like a game seeking out tasks to accomplish throughout the day and tallying the score until it’s time to crack a cold one at sundown. 2 pinball machines fixed, 1 urinal unclogged, playground constructed for his goats, Quesie and Tacos, and another set of keys copied for the restaurant dumpster lock for the 2nd time this month. Yup, not a bad day in the life of Danek. 12 points awarded.
Geoff is a pinball playing, goat owning, city lover who became slightly obsessed with the story of three guys who built a rocket in his garage nearly a century ago… now, we can add space-cowboy to his list of credits.
Brian Carey
John Vincent Brian Carey, Brian, Buck, JVBC, Knuckles, Cheese-Eater. One might think with so many alias’ that a man like John Vincent Brian Carey could have easily turned to a life of crime. Never one to take the easy way out Brian instead on the coldest day in the winter of ’06 opened his first restaurant Rocket to Venus in Baltimore City.
From his early days growing up in Crofton, Md (home of the snakehead fish) Buck had a knack for business and creativity. On one of his first jobs he was known for delivering “the papers, the papers” because he combined his paper route with hanging pizza delivery flyers on every house he passed. By incorporating this method of “doubling down” Knuckles was able to double his daily income.
Whereas the mornings were for work, his nights were for jamming. By the mid-90s, Buck was deep into the Baltimore music scene, banging on the drums in local bands and playing the club scene for years. JVBC just recently wrapped a world tour with his current band, Arbouretum. From motocross racing to bottle rocket wars JVBC has carried his early search for adventure and passion for the unknown into adulthood and has never been one to shy away from danger… plus, he was the only one who believed Geoff’s rocket story.
Daphne Glover
Daphne spent most of her childhood on the set of the Sound of Music – it was actually an international conference center in Austria her dad ran, where the hills are alive with the sound of… you get it. After a fruitful career of conning tourists into believing she and her siblings were the von Trappe Family Singers, Daphne convinced the University of Denver Joseph Korbel School of International Studies to give her a Masters Degree in International Development.
Even though she swears she’s only 29, she has over 20 years experience in production and production management – you do the math. Daphne also has extensive experience as a visual content and archival researcher, most recently with clients such as the Smithsonian Channel for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Daphne has produced films and created outreach and distribution avenues for non-profit organizations such the World Bank, the Partnership for Child Development, IMA World Health, International Relief and Development, USAID and The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, proving you can do well doing good.
She has produced films on four continents on topics ranging from HIV/AIDS education in East Africa to the power of learning in Asia, South America and South Africa. Her broadcast credits include National Geographic, Smithsonian Channel, Maryland Pubic Television, ABC and PBS, as well as major networks around the world. Daphne is the recipient of numerous industry awards including Cine Golden Eagle Awards, Telly Awards, and International Peer Awards.
Robert Ferrier
Raised on a steady diet of after school specials, sitcoms, and made for TV movies, along with the occasional R-rated film his father would take him to, it was obvious only to Bob that he had no choice than become a filmmaker. Okay, he had some choices but still he decided on a career in film, managing to get nominated for four Emmy Awards and to win two. That means Bob conceived, developed, executed, managed and delivered the very best in documentary and television programming at least twice, maybe four times.
Even though Bob grew up “in the county”, he has traveled the world telling stories from each of its corners, including his hometown, Baltimore. His work can be seen on networks like Discovery Channel, Smithsonian Network, Showtime, National Geographic, MPT, and PBS, and on digital platforms through organizations like USAID, The World Bank, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Bob is a 2018 Johns Hopkins University/Saul Zaentz Filmmaking Fellow for Rocket To Venus The Film. He’s been recognized with some of the television and video industry’s highest honors, including multiple Emmys, Cines, Tellys and Gold Medals, and his work spans the genres of History, Science, Arts, Travel, International Development and Public Health, so he rules at Trivial Pursuit.
John Benam
Growing up in Crofton, not to be confused with Bowie, John, aka Spoerer, aka Benam, spent his childhood under the tutelage of Geoff and Buck, much to his parents’ dismay. In spite of these early influences, John managed to graduate from Towson State and has worked his way through the ranks to become an award-winning cinematographer and producer, participating in a wide variety of programming for an array of networks and collaborators.
Diversity with passion takes him from textured documentary stories for the Nature Conservancy and the OWN network, to commercials for sports giants like Under Armour, ESPN and Nike. That’s fancy talk for John shoots kick-ass content for some pretty rad clients. And, some of that ass-kicking content includes series and features like The Keepers, 12 O’Clock Boys, and Charm City.
John feels so blessed and fortunate he gets to work on natural history and science series programming for the BBC, National Geographic and the Smithsonian Channel that he pinches himself each time, which is why he’s so red.
He’d be the last to tell you, so we’ll say it for him, Benam is a two-time Emmy Award Winner for Best Cinematography. There.
John has travelled far and wide to cover some of the world’s greatest spectacles, and wait til they get a load of Rocket to Venus, which by the way, earned John a 2018 Johns Hopkins University/Saul Zaentz Filmmaking Fellowship.
Todd Evans
Todd was born and raised in the Bible Thumping town of Lynchburg,VA where he narrowly escaped a life of clean living and eventually graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University. Todd moved to Baltimore and enrolled at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a dual concentration in film/digital imaging & electronic art. While in school, he helped shoot the short film Your Montana Vacation Tour of the Worlds Wonders Starts with this Coupon with his classmate and actor/director, Jonathan Jolles. The film went on to be and audience favorite at the 1993 Sundance, Telluride and Big Sky Film Festivals.
With absolutely no desire to move to LA and a developing interest in cameras, Todd landed a job in a local camera rental house as a camera technician and rental manager. Smooth talking and a keen eye for lunch menus landed him an opportunity as a camera assistant on the nbc television series Homicide: Life on the Street in the late 1990’s and on HBO’s The Wire in the early Aught’s.
After an alien abduction left him with a bum knee, Todd began to revisit his editing roots and has worked as an editor on commercials, music videos, documentaries, reality TV pilots and even a trashy web series. In 2007, Todd shot and edited a short video for the Little Miss Sunshine Hooptie contest through Fox Searchlight Pictures online. He won the Grand Prize– one of the yellow VV buses from the film Little Miss Sunshine. It has remained parked in his driveway since 2014 when the clutch was burned out by his then 2 year old son.