- Nickname
- Rob
- Height6′ 2″ (1.88 m)
- Rob Smat is a writer and director from Texas and currently based in the Southwest. After graduating USC's cinema studies and screenwriting programs, Rob established himself as the youngest filmmaker to secure a Netflix license with the debut of 2019's The Last Whistle, an homage to small town sports dramas, which he and his classmates produced on a $100K budget.
Following Whistle's success -- yet hampered by the dawn of COVID -- Rob diversified his creative efforts between writing, directing, and books. Smat's spec work drew recognition from the Collyer Foundation/WGA East, BET's Project CRE8, and the Austin Film Festival. He published two non-fiction books with Gaudium Publishing, followed by a series of short stories written for filmic adaptation, including the viral Reddit hit, Say Dada. His debut documentary feature, WALKOUT, debuted at the end of 2024, produced with under $10K.
Smat's screenwriting specs include a variety of genre hybrids. He's also completed work on his debut sci-fi thriller novel, The Early Man.
Outside of film and TV, Rob is an avid fantasy football player, whiskey collector, Halo fan, disc golfer, and father.
- IMDb mini biography by: Autobiographical
- Rob wrote The Last Whistle while working as a VR technician at (the since-shuttered) IMAX VR, located across the street from LA's Grove. During his time there, Rob got to meet and work with Rich Gelfond, Taylor Lautner, Zack Snyder, and Andy Buckley. He also won a regional tournament playing the game Eagle Flight.
- On the set of "The Last Whistle," Jim O'Heir joked that the film's crew was the youngest he'd ever seen. Outside of the film's assistant director, no one was older than Smat, who was twenty-three during shooting.
- Smat and Walkout's subject Thomas Marshall met through USC's The Sack of Troy, the school's collegiate satire publication. The two previously collaborated on Smat's Doritos Super Bowl commercial submission, which was disqualified due to depicting excessive bodily injury.
- Rob was r/NoSleep's top writer of Summer 2023 with the viral horror short story, SAY DADA.
- He was the first director to win a Best Feature award from the Freshtakes Film Festival in 2013. This occurred almost exactly a year after he began outlining the script for the awarded film.
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