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| Austin Abrams and Ben Stiller star in Brad's Status. VVS Films |
“Uh, sure?” Austin
Abrams laughs nervously.
“He said he told you
that you could do whatever you want so long as you finished medical school.”
“That’s a joke,” the younger actor inserts before turning to
the members of the press seated ’round the table. “They’re very supportive of
what I’m doing.”
This candid moment between Stiller and Abrams at the Toronto International Film Festival is a fun illustration of two highlights of the new
movie Brad’s Status. (Read the Cinemablographer review of Brad’s Status here.) For one, the
exchange exemplifies the natural father/son relationship between Stiller and
Abrams that makes the film so accessible. Secondly, Brad’s Status offers a universal truth as audiences see in
Stiller’s Brad the inadequacies everyone feels while struggling to measure up
the lives that we or that other people, like our parents, hoped we would lead.
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| Ben Stiller, Mike White, Jenna Fischer, and Austin Abrams at the TIFF premiere of Brad's Status Rich Fury, Getty Images / TIFF |
Stiller stars as Brad Sloan, a fortysomething father and founder
of a non-profit start-up company who experiences a mild mid-life crisis when
his son Troy (Abrams) readies for college. The film marks the sophomore
directorial debut of Mike White (Year of
the Dog) and is one of 12 films that premiered in TIFF’s prestigious
Platform competition. (Read more on the Platform competition over at Paste.) The relationship between Stiller
and Abrams forms the core of the film and it helps that White’s background as
both an actor and director (as well as Stiller’s experience in both roles)
ensured the performers were a natural fit.
“A lot of it was Mike choosing actors who were right for one
another,” reflects Stiller when asked how he and Abrams developed their
onscreen relationship. “In the casting process, we read a few guys and Mike and
I talked about it. It was obvious that Austin was the first guy from the
beginning…he just had an inner life going on.”
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| Ben Stiller and Austin Abrams in Brad's Status VVS Films |
White recalls feeling a spark of motivation while seeing
Abrams’ audition. “That kid was just like a pot of gold. I felt like he was so
natural,” agrees White. “He did a self-tape audition and when I saw that tape I
was like, ‘Maybe we can make this movie. I think this could work.’”
Stiller and Abrams hit it off in the film, and their dynamic
deepens the father/son relationship of the characters. “We both knew we wanted
to make a full and real father-son relationship,” explains Stiller. “I don’t know
if you can manufacture chemistry, but we did spend a lot of time together. We
got in the car and took a road trip—two road trips, actually—and that helped.
It also helps that Austin is so centred.”
Without missing a beat, Abrams returns the compliment. “It
also helps that he’s…”
“…neurotic, screwed up,” laughs Stiller.
“He was great and
inclusive,” insists Abrams, defending his onscreen dad.
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| Ben Stiller on the TIFF red carpet for Brad's Status Rich Fury, Getty Images / TIFF |
White, who plays one of the four college buddies to whom
Brad compares his modest success, says that working with a fellow
actor/director helped Brad’s Status be
more than just a star vehicle for Stiller. “He was totally menschy,” laughs
White. “He’s so prepared as an actor and he understands storytelling. To have
someone who really sees the role as part of a narrative and not just about the
performance or the character, it’s unusual. It helps because when I’m talking
to him, it’s not some abstraction of what the character is outside the
narrative.”
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| Mike White VVS Films |
The actors also describe seeing the bigger picture while
working out their scenes and getting a feel for what the other brought to the set.
“I did feel like when we were doing it we were coming from very different places,”
observes Stiller.” That’s good, but it did create that tension that you
sometimes see in the scenes.”
“I could definitely
feel that and it felt strange at the time,” agrees Abrams.
“I remember the scene right before the interview where I
tell [Austin] not to be so judgemental about the professor,” says Stiller, “and
[he’s] like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I remember that scene being tense
and a little method-y. But that’s natural because [Austin] was in [his] place
and I was in my place.”
The sincerity of the relationship helps balance the tricky
razor’s edge of tone that White dances in the film’s dark but honest comedy.
Brad isn’t an easy guy to like as insecurities fly through his head at
breakneck speeds, but he finds his redemption in finding satisfaction with his
perfectly ordinary middle class life. “I get paid to rewrite scripts where you’re
always flattering humanity,” White explains when asked about Stiller’s arc. “It
feels pre-digested. For me, you hope that people recognize the human part of
that. You see that he is a loving dad who is just distracted.”
Brad’s neurotic ramblings also make the character
relatable—uncomfortably so—as his mind races with crippling self-doubts. “He
represents that part of yourself that has insecurities and ego needs and comes
up lacking in your own mind,” observes White. “I have that and I’m embarrassed
by that side of myself, but I also feel like I want to have compassion for that
person.”
As an up-and-comer, Abram agrees that it’s impossible to
avoid comparing oneself to others. “I feel like all my friends who do what I do
[act] feel that way.”
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| Brad imagines a fantasy life with sexy co-eds. VVS Films |
Stiller echoes the sentiments of his director and co-star
while digressing into a bit that could easily be taken from White’s screenplay.
“I have a friend who is a very successful movie director and producer and he
does it all the time,” says Stiller, “but he says it all out loud. It’s just
his personality.” The actor goes on to offer an impression of said producer
griping into the phone about another filmmaker achieving Stars Wars-level success and a colleague raking in all the awards.
“He’s saying everything I think in my head all the time, except that he wears it on his sleeve,” adds Stiller. “I actually find it very endearing.” Brad might often be unlikable, but his journey is one of recognizing his faults and cautiously, awkwardly, letting go of them.
White circles the complexity of the character back to the
present. The talking point for every film at the festival is, naturally, Trump,
and how films, particularly comedies, reflect and engage with an increasingly
frantic world in which middle class white guys like Brad feel alienated and
disenfranchised, often through the neurotic ramblings crafted in their own
heads. “While Brad is more of a do-gooder,” says White, “when he’s sitting in
the Harvard room, he’s seeing it through the prism of his race and gender. He
looks at the Harvard posters and it’s all white guys, then white guys and a few
girls, and then the last one is a completely diverse group of kids. Some guys
can be high-minded, but there’s an unconscious anxiety that creates. It’s not
all about you anymore.”
Stiller, Abrams, and White all agree that audiences can take
a lesson from Brad’s redemption and struggle with these anxieties that fly
through their heads so long as they find balance. “I feel like everybody does
it in life,” admits Stiller. “It’s just a matter of how much it affects you and
how much you let it affect you, and what you do with those feelings.”
White puts the idea of measuring up and comparing oneself in
relation to others in perspective with his own journey as a storyteller working
multiple roles both film and television. “It’s easier right now in TV to tell
the kinds of stories I want to tell, which is weird because I would have said
the opposite ten years ago,” he says. “It’s so stratified now. Movies are
either huge tent-poles or indie movies where you’re squeaking as many stars
into on a shoestring budget.”
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| Mike White directing Brad's Status VVS Films |
Instead of fretting about like Brad might, White laughs and
finds examples in his own body of work. “Like School of Rock,” he says. “I don’t think that would be easy to make
now. I did a couple of weeks on The Emoji
Movie, which got terrible reviews, but for me to work and make Beatriz at Dinner for basically no
money…this is the movie they’re making,” he says, taking stock of the realities
of the business that let an artist draw from one pool to support another.
“I’ve spent years trying to do School of Rock again—something that’s original and still a little
commercial, but they [the studios] have all these reasons why it’s too expense
and scary to try to make that,” White adds, demonstrating his own way of situating the "it's not about you anymore" philosophy to his work in a changing field. “Instead of trying to get the
studios to mind a happy medium where I can deliver my sensibilities with a
studio backing, it just feels like those days are over.” But with Brad’s Status communicating White’s
sensibilities through a mind-wave that feels universal, and with Stiller’s
career-best performance adding some extra appeal in a season that’s seen one
studio sequel tank after another, a status update might be down the road.
Brad's Status opens in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal on Sept. 22.
It opens in
additional cities Sept. 29
