Shocking relationships are no joke—unless you’re Alex Novak (Will Arnett), who stumbles into personal salvation by spilling wisdom in front of a live audience. Multi-hyphenate Bradley Cooper’s latest film c?now playing in theaters across the country, traces this journey, which begins with Alex’s eagerness to get up in front of a crowd and unload emotionally. “This is the first time he’s talked about what he’s going through,” Arnett told the Observer. “This is the first time he has allowed himself.”
What prompts the confession is a recent split from longtime wife Tess (Laura Dern), after 20 years of marriage (and 5 years as a couple before that). A quarter-century together will change anyone—moving to the suburbs, having children, giving up professional goals for family stability. The real question is how we can accept this change in each other without falling apart.
Arnett, who wrote the script along with co-writers Mark Chappell and Cooper, came up with the idea for the film after hearing the origin story of British comedian John Bishop, who unexpectedly launched his comedy career — and saved his marriage — by turning his breakup with his wife into comedic fodder that became a catalyst for personal change.
“It’s a midlife catharsis, not a crisis,” Cooper explained in an earlier press release Does This Thing Exist?which premiered as the Closing Night Film of the New York Film Festival. “This film is not about a boy who is unhappy in his job.
Arnett echoed these words when he spoke to the Observer. “We don’t see Alex at work, for example,” he said. “We don’t see any of those things. What was important for us was to get down to him and try to find his voice. And by that I don’t mean his funny voice, but his voice as a person—to see him start to connect the dots and really be able to speak.”
Does This Thing Exist? both thematic continuation and Cooper’s pivot, his trajectory as a writer-director-actor-producer including his splashy vehicle Lady Gaga. A Star is Born and the bitious Leonard Bernstein biopic The Maestro. Both of those were big-budget dramas that, at heart, were highly scripted relationship dramas. Does This Thing Exist? compresses that canvas and trades studio exposure for low-budget intimacy.
Intrigued by the story’s possibilities, Cooper—who has known Arnett for nearly 30 years and lived with him in LA as their careers began to decline—asked to join Arnett and Chappell to further explore the script’s characters. Then he threw himself into the cast (in a small role as Falstaffian’s goofball friend nicknamed Balls) and assembled a superb ensemble, .including Academy Award winner Dern; Andra Day as Balls’ distraught wife; This is Arnett’s place They are not smart podcast producer Sean Hayes as his newlywed friend (joined by Scott Icenogle); and Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds as Alex’s parents. Amy Sedaris and Peyton Manning appear in small roles, and stand-up legend Dave Attell makes an appearance.
Cooper and his collaborators put the film together very quickly and shot almost the entire location in New York last spring in 33 consecutive days, making it ready in time for the NYFF screening in the fall. “New York is a treasure trove and very, very little was shot on stage,” said Cooper, a Philadelphia native who was excited to return to the city where he spent time as a grad student at places like the Comedy Cellar and Bar Six (both of which play important roles in the film). Alex’s apartment is at 12th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, right on the same street where Cooper got his MFA at the New School.
“It was a small budget,” said Cooper, who often worked as his own camera operator. “This picture of him crossing Sixth Avenue? I’m holding a doll’s seatbelt with nothing on the road. It’s all these cars. There’s a policeman. We’re like, ‘Is that all right?’ ‘Yes, you have ten minutes.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, okay!’”
But that run-and-gun indie vibe inspired the cast. “It’s like Christmas on steroids!” said Dern at the NYFF press conference, then invoked her longtime relationship with David Lynch. “Inland Empire it was the only experience I had where my director was there with the camera. Bradley, as an actor and our family, knows us well and feels an instinct with us for the character. The most exciting thing in your life is to be in it and feel the instinct as a player that you reach after a take, and say, ‘Oh man, maybe I should try this…’”
Arnett has been in unprecedented territory, taking on an incredible role while surrounded by Oscar-caliber talent. “For me, that was a lot of work,” he said. “Just to be in those moments and be open and vulnerable. These types of roles never came to me,” said the actor best known for his indelible turn as Job. Arrested Development or the word Lego Batman. “But again, I did it to myself.
Day, an Oscar-nominated actress who is better known as a Grammy Award-winning singer, plays a small but larger-than-life role in the film as Christine, an unhappy wife who smiles unhappily in marriage. He has an awkward scene with Arnett where Christine happily tells Alex about the anger she feels towards him. “You tell him directly, ‘I despise you because I hate myself. You remind me of me’,” he told the Observer, laughing. “Let’s see what you will do now with that fact!”
But that connection speaks to a larger truth: the film has no villains, only people who are empty and unable to communicate with each other. “He’s not a victim,” Day said of his character. “He doesn’t blame everybody, he’s like, ‘What am I passionate about? You know what I mean? I love that the movie talks about this theme of kindness. We have to change as people to have a heart and to live. We need to be kind to allow other people to change.”
Dern echoed those same sentiments in the NYFF press release. “The film finds the complexity of an incredible relationship. I have never seen a script or a film that allows us to know that we do not know how we got here. Because most of us do not know, in times of despair, personally and in relationships.”
And for Arnett, as a lead in this marriage reckoning, Does This Thing Exist? it was really transformative. “It was hard work for me,” he said. “I had to adjust and remember why I started doing this in the first place. Making a film like this was how I always thought my life was going when I was young. For me, it was like a rebirth in a way, as opposed to something new. It was a reconnection to something I always wanted to do.”
