WRITER’S NOTE: The following interview took place on September 26, 2013.
“A.C.O.D.” is an abbreviation for Adult Children of Divorce and the movie stars Adam Scott as Carter, a man who suffered through his parents’ bitter divorce as a child. Now as an adult, he owns a restaurant and appears to be a well-adjusted person despite what he has been through. But then his younger brother Trey (Clark Duke) informs him that he has just gotten engaged, he asks Carter to see if they can get their parents, Hugh (Richard Jenkins) and Melissa (Catherine O’Hara), to come to the wedding. This proves to be quite a challenge as neither Hugh nor Melissa can stand to be in the same room with one another, and this leads to a number of surprises that no one sees coming.
Scott started off as a dramatic actor, but in recent years he has proven to be quite adept at doing comedy. He starred in the movie “Friends with Kids” opposite Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig, and he has given memorable performances in “The Aviator,” “Knocked Up” and “Torque.” Many still remember him best for his roles on the television series “Party Down” as failed actor Henry Pollard who rejoins a catering company and on “Parks and Recreation” where he plays the competent but socially awkward government official Ben Wyatt. The star of that show, Amy Poehler, also appears in “A.C.O.D.” as Carter’s stepmother Sondra.
I got to participate in a roundtable interview with Scott when he was at the SLS Hotel in Los Angeles, California for the “A.C.O.D.” press conference, and he talked about working with Clark Duke and Amy Poehler, and he also gave us an update on Ben Stiller’s upcoming adaptation of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
Question: Adam you were terrific in this movie as the exasperated older brother. What was it like working with Amy Poehler who plays your bitchy stepmother?
Adam Scott: Thank you. It was really, really fun because usually we’re just making googly eyes at each other on “Parks and Recreation,” so it was just fun to hate each other’s guts. I remember when I asked her to do it. I just said, “Would you like to come play my stepmother? Don’t worry, we’re the same age” (we are the same age in real life). Luckily, she said yeah. It was really, really exciting that she would even consider doing it. It’s just always fun working with Amy in whatever capacity. Sometimes I do yard work for her (laughs).
Question: How much of this movie was improvised and how much of it was scripted?
Adam Scott: The movie is pretty much all scripted. There’s not much improvisation at all in the movie. It was just a really strong script. There was no need for improvisation and there wasn’t much time to mess around just because we had to shoot the whole thing so quickly.
Question: When you are playing a character like Carter, how do you keep him grounded in reality?
Adam Scott: I think the script is very grounded in reality. We could all relate to certain bits of it so I think it all starts with that. And the atmosphere and tone that Stu Zicherman (the co-writer and director) was setting with the movie was a very real and grounded one.
Question: There is a lot of family dysfunction to be found in this movie, but the relationship your character has with Trey is one of the more tame, genuine relationships of brotherly love. How did you go about establishing that chemistry and working together?
Adam Scott: We never even talked about it, but I think that Clark and I just sort of get along in regular life so that just kind of carries over.
Question: And does Clark also help out with Amy Poehler’s yard work?
Adam Scott: Yes, we all work full-time for Amy at her mansion. Clark and I are in charge of all of her wigs (laughs).
Question: How did this project come to you and what was it about it that spoke to you?
Adam Scott: I just read it and immediately wanted to do it back I guess it was now a couple of years ago. I just thought it was really funny. It reminded me of “Flirting with Disaster” which is one of my favorite movies. I thought it was really smart and really funny, and I was already a fan of Ben Karlin (the movie’s co-writer) and Stu. I didn’t even hesitate. I just tried to get the job immediately and at that point there was no cast signed on to it, so it was sort of a steady stream of these wonderful surprises of amazing people they were getting to fill out the rest of the roles.
Question: Ken Howard plays Melissa’s current husband, Gary, in the movie. What was it like having the President of the Screen Actors Guild on set?
Adam Scott: Super scary. He carries a pistol (laughs). He deputized Clark and I during filming and we each got a firearm.
Question: What are you working on next?
Adam Scott: I’m doing “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” with Clark, “Parks and Recreation” starts this month, and then I’m in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” which comes out on Christmas.
Question: Regarding “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” have you seen the original movie before coming into this one?
Adam Scott: Yeah, I saw it years ago and loved it. This is very, very different from the original for sure. The story itself (written by James Thurber) is so short that any movie that’s made out of it is going to have to wildly extrapolate from what it was. It’s a really, really, really good movie.
“A.C.O.D.” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.
Actor Clark Duke made his big breakthrough with his own web series “Clark and Michael” in which he played a fictional version of himself opposite Michael Cera. Since then, he has gone on to give a number of hilarious performances in movies like “Sex Drive,” “Kick Ass” and “Hot Tub Time Machine.” This past summer, he stole some scenes in the eagerly awaited sequel “Kick Ass 2″ in which he reprised his role of Marty who has now taken on the superhero identity of Battle Guy.” Clearly, he has become the guy to go to for memorable supporting roles.
In his latest movie, “A.C.O.D.” (Adult Children of Divorce), Clark plays Trey who lives in the basement of his older brother Carter’s (Adam Scott) house. Both Trey and Carter managed to survive their parents’ bitter divorce as kids, but it looks to have forever soured Carter on the thought of marriage. Trey, however, ends up getting engaged to his girlfriend and begs Carter to get their estranged parents to come to the wedding. Knowing how their parents can’t stand to be in the same with one another, Carter knows that this will be a challenge to say the least, but he goes through with the improbable reunion because that’s what his little brother wants. But as things get underway, Trey has yet to learn the real truth of what is going on behind his back.
We got to catch up with Duke during a roundtable interview which was held at the SLS Hotel in Los Angeles, California as part of the “A.C.O.D.” press conference, and he proved to be as funny off screen as he is on it.
Question: When you’re playing a character like Trey, how do you keep him grounded in reality as an actor?
Clark Duke: Well, this script was pretty grounded. We didn’t have to improv a lot. A good script makes our job a lot easier.
Question: You and Adam Scott play brothers in this movie. How did you go about establishing that chemistry and working together?
Clark Duke: Well, it probably helped that we knew each other beforehand and we were friends before the movie so there wasn’t much of an acclimation period, I guess. I have one sibling, a younger brother, so I kind of tapped into that. As to how to play it, I related more to Adam’s character while reading the script. When you have a cast that’s good, nothing’s too hard.
Question: How did this project come to you and what made you want to do it?
Clark Duke: I just read the script. You get sent scripts all the time, but ninety-nine percent of them are just unreadable and terrible. So, when you get a really good one that really stands out… That’s just the truth; most of them are just god-awful. I went to the table read in just actively wanted to do the movie, so I did (laughs).
Question: Ken Howard, the current President of the Screen Actors Guild, co-stars in this movie as well. What was it like working with the union boss?
Clark Duke: No riffraff on the set. No grace periods for lunch, just ended right on time every day (laughs). He’s a licensed deputy as the SAG-AFTRA head.
Question: Adam Scott joked that Ken Howard deputized the both of you and gave you both firearms…
Clark Duke: We immediately abused it (laughs). I would waive mine at cars. We were in Atlanta so I would go to a lot of strip clubs with the gun, and then I’d float my SAG card and they are like OK. They just had to put up with it (laughs).
“A.C.O.D.” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.
WRITER’S NOTE: This interview took place back in 2013.
Who doesn’t love Jane Lynch? We see her everywhere these days either as Sue Sylvester on the hit show “Glee” or hosting the NBC game show “Hollywood Game Night.” Lynch is an endlessly talented actress who never fails to give a tremendously entertaining performance in anything she does. While we may not have recognized her right away as a doctor working alongside Harrison Ford in “The Fugitive,” she would later go on to steal scenes in the Christopher Guest mockumentaries “Best in Show” and “A Mighty Wind.” After that, she made her big breakthrough opposite Steve Carell in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” as Paula, the electronics store manager who offers, in a rather bizarre way, to have sex with the man of the movie’s title.
We got to meet with Lynch during the press day for the comedy “A.C.O.D.,” its title meaning Adult Children of Divorce. In it she plays Dr. Judith, a therapist who was there for Carter (played by Adam Scott) as a young boy when his parents go through an incredibly messy and bitter divorce. Now Carter has come back to Dr. Judith after hearing that his younger brother has just gotten engaged to get her advice on a few matters. But what Carter soon realizes is that Dr. Judith was not actually his therapist when he was a child, but instead a writer who used him and other kids for her study on children of divorce, and it ended up turning into a book which is now in its umpteenth edition.
The press day for “A.C.O.D.” came just a few days after the Emmy Awards in which Lynch got to share the stage with a number of entertainers including Neil Patrick Harris.
Question: The opening of the Emmy Awards this year was fantastic. What exactly were you going to do to lynch Mr. Harris?
Jane Lynch: I was going to throw him down and show him what kind of a woman I can be, but that’s something he would not enjoy unless I said that I would enjoy it less (laughs).
Question: You did have the somber tribute to your “Glee” co-story Cory Montieth, but then you are also celebrating and get to have this great comedic moment.
Jane Lynch: Yes, that was great and to see the company I keep on being one of the guys with Jimmy, Jimmy, Judy and Neil and Conan. I was just out of my body going wow, this is pretty amazing!
Question: Many were surprised that you didn’t have a singing and dancing number given that you have been on Broadway a number of times.
Jane Lynch: Yes, exactly! Well, I’m kind of glad that it was confined to what it was (laughs).
Question: What attracted you to the role of Dr. Judith in “A.C.O.D.?” You have actually played many therapists throughout your career.
Jane Lynch: Many times, and I’m playing one on Saturday in a little spot for a friend of mine. I think I’m fascinated with therapy and I’m fascinated with my own therapist (laughs). I have a terrific therapist who I have seen over the years and I would say that we’re probably friends now. We’ve come to the point where we’re friends. I always take a little bit of her and blow it up because she’s a very interesting person.
Question: Has your therapist ever been offended by your portrayals?
Jane Lynch: NO! She’s like ha, ha, ha! She loves it!
Question: It seems that many actors do go to therapy for years and years. Why do you think that is?
Jane Lynch: Well, I don’t know if that’s absolutely true, but I wouldn’t be surprised. What we do is we examine ourselves because we’re interested in all aspects of humanity, and the place you have to start to be any good at acting is with yourself. Everything is inside of you, all of it; the murderer, the great mother, the therapist, the husband, everything is inside of us. Because we’re human beings, we can relate to almost every emotion and I think that kind of exploration you do in therapy makes you more open and creative and more empathetic. You are able to see a character from the point of view of the inside out as opposed to, ooh, I’m playing a bad guy! Let’s get deep inside this person so we know what makes this sociopath tick. What in me is sociopathic? We all have it. For me, my therapy has always run parallel with the characters I play. I’ll find something that I’m dealing with that will come up in a character.
Question: For the longest time there was a lack of roles for women of age but now that seems to be changing. Do you believe that the tide is turning?
Jane Lynch: I don’t know if you will be able to point to a moment in time where the tide did turn, but I think that it definitely has. I love this new generation of girls coming up. It sounds so old when I say that, but there’s an entitlement to people like Amy Poehler and Tina Fey where they just expect to have a seat at the table so they have a seat at the table.
Question: Do you ever think you will step behind the camera to direct?
Jane Lynch: I don’t know. I don’t feel that I have to, but I have a feeling that I will at some point. But it will come out of something that will have me saying, ooh I want to do that. But I don’t think I can sit here and go, I would like to direct one day.
Question: Do you think you could direct yourself?
Jane Lynch: Yeah. Sometimes I wish I could, you know? One of the worst moments on set is when the director says, “Jane I have an idea…” I hate that! I will have the ideas thank you! I think a great director sees what you can bring to the table and they go okay and maybe they build on that. But to take you in a completely different direction… If Christopher Guest does that then fine, but not Joe Schmo.
“A.C.O.D.” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.
WRITER’S NOTE: This interview took place back in 2013, and I have indicated the specific question I asked during it.
Catherine O’Hara is one of the best comedic actresses working today, and she never fails to give a hilarious performance in anything she does. After making a name for herself on “SCTV,” O’Hara went on to a career in movies that included unforgettable roles like the self-centered Delia Deetz in “Beetlejuice” and the forgetful mother Kate McCallister in “Home Alone.” But some of her best work to date has come from her being in the hilarious mockumentaries of Christopher Guest such as “Waiting for Guffman” and “Best in Show.” O’Hara even received a number of nominations and awards for her role as Marilyn Hack in “For Your Consideration.”
In “A.C.O.D.” (an abbreviation for Adult Children of Divorce), O’Hara plays Melissa who, as the movie starts, is undergoing an extremely bitter divorce from her husband Hugh (Richard Jenkins). Since their marriage ended, Melissa has made it clear that she hates Hugh with every fiber of her being. Then she gets the news that her youngest song Trey (Clark Duke) has just gotten engaged to his girlfriend of a few months, but what she has yet to discover is that her other son Carter (Adam Scott) is working on getting her and Hugh together so that they can attend Trey’s wedding in a peaceful fashion. While you may think you know what happens from there, “A.C.O.D.” proves to have many surprises and takes you in directions you don’t see coming.
We got to meet up with O’Hara during the “A.C.O.D.” press junket which was held at the SLS Hotel in Los Angeles, California. She still looks very lovely after all these years, and her hearty laugh is more than enough proof that she hasn’t lost her sense of humor in the slightest.
Question: “A.C.O.D.” was written by Stu Zicherman and Ben Karlin who have great pedigrees as writers, and you also have Zicherman directing this movie as a first-time director. How did he do as a first-time director and what was the atmosphere like on set?
Catherine O’Hara: I wasn’t aware of him being a first-time director while we were working because he wrote it for one thing. He and Ben wrote it and they are great friends, and Ben was there all the time so you had a good support system. Stu seems like a levelheaded kind of clear, confident guy and he’s funny. When people are smart and good at what they are doing like that and have a sense of humor about everything outside of themselves and even themselves, they are not threatened by anyone giving ideas or working collaboratively. It is a collaborative venture and you can’t lose by being open to the people you’ve hired. Not in the way that it was like a free-for-all, you just knew there was a chance to discuss everything there and he’s so open and he’s a great writer. It just felt like I was in good hands.
The Ultimate Rabbit: The thing I really liked about this movie is that you really don’t know what’s going to happen next. Most comedies you kind of get a sense of the formula and where it’s going to go, but this one really had surprise after surprise. Have you read a lot of scripts like that recently?
Catherine O’Hara: No, you would have seen me in them (laughs). If I was reading them, hopefully I had a chance for them. No, there aren’t enough. They (Stu and Ben) took their time writing this and it’s based on their lives and they have been friends since they were six or seven years old. They know all their extended families and their stepparents, and they really took their time and did a great job and they really thought it out. Every character is taken care of, that’s what I love. It’s not just one or two leads and everyone else is just barely there. Where are you going now? Out of your movie…
Question: That seems to be the case with most movies, but this one gives each of its characters the attention they deserved.
Catherine O’Hara: It is, far too many. This one was really well thought out.
Question: Ken Howard who plays your second husband Gary is also President of the Screen Actors Guild. What was it like having the union leader on set?
Catherine O’Hara: There was that whole merger thing coming up (with SAG and AFTRA) and I personally was against it and he was for it.
Question: Did you talk with Ken about it?
Catherine O’Hara: I did. I asked him why is this good. He seems like a good, smart man, but I just didn’t get it. His explanation was… You could tell that he really cares about the unions and wanted the best for everyone so that was nice to hear.
Question: But you still disagree with him?
Catherine O’Hara: I’m really so not involved with the union in any way, so I had to trust him. He actually is really involved and knows what he’s talking about, so I thought okay. I just like to work and get paid (laughs).
Question: You have been in show business for a long time now. Have you seen a change because for the longest time there was this great void of roles for women over 40 and 50. Do you believe that the tide is now turning?
Catherine O’Hara: There are more and more women writing, and there are more and more good male writers who decided and learned that it’s worth writing for women. I guess the more women are present and out there in life, the more their stories will be told. Our stories have always been told on Lifetime (laughs).
Question: Have you ever thought about stepping behind the camera to direct at some point?
Catherine O’Hara: I only want to write. I don’t care about directing really. I’ve tried it and it was fun, but it’s not like something I have to do. I hate losing trust in a director, that’s awful.
Question: So, what’s coming up for you next?
Catherine O’Hara: I have a movie at the Toronto Film Festival which will hopefully come out soon and it’s called “The Right Cut of Wrong,” and I think I’m reshooting a pilot that didn’t get picked up.
Question: That’s good, and they’ll pay you to do it.
Catherine O’Hara: There you go! Work and pay. Work and get paid, and good for Ken Howard looking after us (laughs).
“A.C.O.D.” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.
WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written in 2013, and it contains spoilers for this film.
Stu Zicherman and Ben Karlin are best known for their work as writers in film and television. Zicherman was one of the screenwriters on “Elektra” which he did not even try to hide his disappointment over, and the Hong Kong action film “2000 AD,” and he is currently working on the FX show “The Americans.” Karlin made a name for himself as a writer and executive producer on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report,” and these days he serves as one of the writers for the acclaimed ABC comedy “Modern Family.” But what you may not know is these two were best friends when they were growing up, and they are also children of divorce.
When they reunited as adults, Zicherman and Karlin began working together on the screenplay for “A.C.O.D.” which tells the story of when Carter (Adam Scott) is tasked to get his bitterly divorced parents, Hugh (Richard Jenkins) and Melissa (Catherine O’Hara), to come to their youngest son Trey’s (Clark Duke) wedding. Writing the script allowed Zicherman and Karlin to deal with their own memories of their parents separating, but they also manage to find humor in a situation which is usually filled with tremendous sadness and anger. In the process, they both succeed in turning a lot of comedy conventions on their heads and give us a movie full of endless surprises.
I got to participate in a roundtable interview with Zicherman and Karlin when they appeared for the “A.C.O.D.” press junket held at the SLS Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
Question: What was the genesis for this movie?
Stu Zicherman: Ben and I have actually been friends since we were born. What’s the quickest way to explain this? Basically, my mom was friends with Ben’s parents, and Ben’s parents were friends with my mom’s first husband who I didn’t even know about. We’ve been friends our whole lives. I have always wanted to do something with this subject matter, this generation of divorced kids. We’re both part of this generation.
Ben Karlin: Yeah. We were friends growing up and our families were friends growing up, but then, when his parents got divorced and shortly thereafter my parents got divorced, we stopped hanging out because that was the end of our families getting together and doing things.
Stu Zicherman: It was a very romantic journey where our families used to go on vacations together.
Ben Karlin: So, when we were both professional and we were established as adults in our careers, I moved to New York, and Stu was working there already and he said, “Hey, I want to write a movie about how messed up we all are” (laughs). I went, “I’m in!”
Stu Zicherman: We grew up on movies like “Kramer vs. Kramer” and dramas that were kind of tragic. Ben and I talked about this when we first started working on the movie. Our parents’ divorces were tragic and sad in their own way, but they were also not to be believed at times (laughs). They were irreverent, funny and weird. We wanted to try and find a way to make light of it and make a comedy that still had some gravity to it because it’s something that people don’t laugh about. What’s been really fun about making this movie and about taking it around and showing it at Sundance and all these places is that people are excited and relate to it. People will come up to me after screenings and want to tell their stories like, “My parents got divorced when I was 8.” We’re almost giving them license to laugh about it.
Ben Karlin: We were shooting in Atlanta, and the night before production started, it was just us. It was me, Stu, a couple of the actors, a couple of the producers, and we were out in the bar at the hotel. There was a wedding going on and there was the after party for the wedding. There was the groom, the bride, the whole bridal party. Everyone was in tuxedoes. So, it was like these two worlds. We were about to make this movie about divorce and these people who were just starting. And they were great. They were lovely people. We closed the bar down with them. And then, a week later, I got a letter from one of the bridesmaids who I had been chatting with, and she told me this long story about her family’s divorce and how it affected her. It was just so weird. Even in that moment, people were just connecting to what we were trying to do, and we found that throughout the whole process, that there seems to be something that everyone can relate to about this subject.
Question: So, everybody is trying to figure out who got married at the movie’s end…
Stu Zicherman: Well, you know, we didn’t really want to give it away. Ben and I always talked about the movie as being an anti-romantic comedy. There were certain beats we would get to in the movie as we were writing it. There’s the obvious romantic comedy beat. We were trying to turn away from that wherever we could, not to the detriment of the movie, but the end of the movie was not so much about who got married. It was more important to us that the characters, especially those three men, have evolved through the movie to a point where it could be any of them. When pressed, I always say it’s all three of them, but we like the idea of leaving it open-ended because it didn’t matter.
Ben Karlin: It didn’t really trouble us, I have to say. We wanted to create a scenario where all three characters were repaired to the point where you’d be just okay with any of them. And it could be all three of them or none of them. The point is that whatever was waiting for them in there in the church was okay.
Stu Zicherman: And it’s funny too, when editing the movie, every single time I would adjust frames or tried a different shot and put it in front of an audience, people always guessed a different person. It was bizarre. I started to lose track of why people felt what. We had to calibrate it so that it’s pretty hard to tell now. We’d had a version where there was a faceless bride running through the background.
Ben Karlin: Oh, deep, deep background. A limo, a bride, the whole thing.
Stu Zicherman: Again, it distracted from the movie. It’s such a nice, clean moment with the three of them walking in, and we like it.
Question: Everyone seems to have their own version of the movie’s ending, and that really serves as a testament to your writing because you got us so deeply invested in every single character to where we really want to know what happens to them
Ben Karlin: It’s a very hard thing to do. You want to give in. You want to give people what they want. And then, there’s the creative jerk part of you that’s like, “I know better.”
Stu Zicherman: But also, we thought about a lot of this when we were writing the movie that we didn’t want people to be right or wrong. It’s not a right or wrong thing. It’s the dad who does this impetuous thing and they get back together. He’s not wrong. He’s following his heart. What’s wrong with following your heart? And again, at the end of the movie, I always say to people it’s not a movie about divorce per se. I don’t want people just to think it’s about that. It’s really about if you’re married, if you’re not married, divorced, whatever kind of family you’re from, you’re not destined to repeat the patterns of your parents. You’re free to make your own mistakes. You’re free to live your life. That’s why I always love the word “adult” being in the movie. I always felt like you become an adult when you actually can put your past into perspective. That’s when you really start becoming an adult. And I like that about the ending because, up to that point, everybody is acting like a child.
Question: You have said the script is loosely based on your families. Have you gotten any flak from them about it?
Ben Karlin: We’ve done a pretty good job of hiding or changing details. There used to be more stuff in the script that was literally word for word from our lives. There was an incident in his family and a specific incident in mine that involved the handing off of kids on a bridge, like a prisoner transfer, but it was between the parents. And it literally, at this moment, happened to me in Cape Cod where it was my dad’s new wife actually and her children and her ex-husband, and they had to exchange and they decided the exact mid-point. It was like North Korea-South Korea. Here’s the DMZ and we’re going to trade these children over that line, and we had that exact scene in the movie for years. That probably wouldn’t have gone over so well.
Stu Zicherman: And then there was a thing in my family called the hysterectomy conspiracy that was so absurd that when it was in the script, people would read it and be like…
Ben Karlin: “That’s not real.”
Stu Zicherman: They didn’t believe it. “No, no. It’s real.” We had to take it out because people didn’t believe it. But that happened to me. There’s one moment in the movie that is sort of torn from my life and its funny. It’s the one where Carter sits his parents down. My sister was getting married, and my parents would not agree to come to the same wedding. My brother-in-law and I sat them down. What’s hilarious about that is my parents don’t remember that. They block it out.
Question: How long did it take you two to get this film made?
Ben Karlin: Oh my God! I was just talking about this the other day. I was living here (in Los Angeles) and I moved to New York in 1999, and Stu was already living there at that time. He probably approached me in 2000 or 2001 to start working on it. Obviously, we had other jobs.
Stu Zicherman: Yeah. We had other jobs, so we were working on it nights and on weekends and vacations.
Ben Karlin: The amazing thing is we were both single when we started working on this movie. I have since gotten married, had children, and gotten divorced (laughs).
Stu Zicherman: It’s crazy. We were both single when we started this thing, and now I’m married with two kids and he’s got two kids, which I think helped inform the movie a little bit.
Ben Karlin: Yes, definitely.
Stu Zicherman: It’s been a long process. It’s funny though. The movie almost got going at one point. It came really close to get going. What was great about it was once we committed to Adam Scott, the movie started to finally roll. Finally, eventually, you get so frustrated with all the games you have to play to try and get a movie made. The thing is that we always loved Adam for this. And again, it fits in a little bit with the anti-romantic idea. He’s got an anti-romantic lead in a way because he’s got a very cynical humor and perspective on life. It just worked really well. And once we got Adam, then we got Richard Jenkins. It just started to roll.
Ben Karlin: Once you have those first few pieces in place, it starts to gain a terminal velocity.
Stu Zicherman: Right. The phone starts to ring and all of a sudden people want to be in your movie. That was very exciting.
Question: What I like about the script is that you don’t know where it’s going to go. From a distance, it looks like your typical formulaic comedy, but it really isn’t. How did you go about that? Were you looking to avoid certain things that you see in a lot of comedies like this?
Ben Karlin: Yes. There are so many tropes to these kinds of movies. Because we always were around, we were like, “How do we deal with the subject of a wedding in a movie that’s essentially about divorce?” We were very resolute that if we were going to have a wedding, we were going to do it differently than that typical moment at the end of the movie where people are walking down the aisle. So, we knew we wanted that outside the wedding moment to end it. We just were acutely aware of convention and trying to understand why those conventions worked and why they existed, and then trying wherever we could to tiptoe around the obvious thing.
Stu Zicherman: But the big thing was stakes. I mean, there were so many times where we were hyperconscious with the movie, and we would do readings just to find out where we were with it. The main character, Carter, is in every single scene of the movie and he doesn’t have cancer. He isn’t beaten. It’s the kind of thing, at a certain point, where the audience could be looking at him and go, “Hey dude, get over it.” And so, there were scenes we really liked but we felt like we were going to lose the audience. We said, “We have to keep the audience rooting for him.”
Ben Karlin: We didn’t want to turn the guy into a jerk.
Stu Zicherman: So, it was this balance. At times, people would read the script and say, “Why doesn’t he want his parents to get back together?” We just had to find a way and we kept trying to find ways in through relationships. But we did at times always try to move away from the tropes like the scene with the ring that turns into the key, and moments like that. It was funny. I did a Q&A; in New York the other night and someone asked me about the whole cheating thing with Jessica Alba and how he never gets caught. In the classic romantic comedy, you always get that scene where she’s like, “What were you doing with that girl?” It never crossed our minds to go there, and the truth is because in real life most people don’t get caught. You’re just forced to live with it. And that was the great liberty of making this movie independently. We’re not beholden to a studio to hit certain tropes. Also, it made the tone what it is, because the movie is funny but it’s also got some gravity to it and it’s got this balance. I’m excited. The fact that the movie is finally coming out, I’m excited for people to see it, but I’m also going to miss it because we’ve just been carrying it around like this for so long.
“A.C.O.D.” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.
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