In November of 2024, Will Robb was standing in the gymnasium of an Oklahoma high school and presiding over a particularly heated game of dodgeball. Rob was in the middle of directing his first feature film, and the dodgeball game was one of the film’s most complex scenes. With two photographers capturing the melee, Rob had a mix of his cast, crew and anyone else who was around join in on the game.
As Rob says, instead of designing complex gameplay, he chose to capture “small, organic moments” from the buzz of high school gym classes, the most ridiculous and time-tested way to waste an afternoon.
A year and a half later, those little moments are pieced together at Rob’s house Brianwhich will premiere in the Narrative Competition section of the SXSW Film Festival.
To this point, Rob has been known for his work as an actor in films starring Ben Affleck. Way back And Megan Park Repercussions And TV series Sexual life of college girls and Love, Victor. While dreaming of taking his own turn in the director’s chair, Rob thought back on what he valued by working with directors like Gavin O’Connor, whom he considers a mentor, and Oscar-winner Peter Farrelly, whom he directed in the Vietnam War comedy. The greatest beer race ever.
“I would take little bits from each film and store them in the back of my head until I had the opportunity to direct,” Rob says.
That opportunity finally came and vanished almost as quickly after the collapse of a feature film inspired by a short film he wrote and directed. With funding already available from Daniel Loder’s 4 Artists Act, he thought that instead of coming up with a new idea, writing a screenplay, and starting the process over, he would find an unproduced screenplay he liked and keep the tentative production schedule he had already established. So, he picked up a friend’s blacklist account and sifted through hundreds of texts until he found it Briana comedy film set in high school Late Night with Seth Meyers Writer Mike Scollins.
The film follows Brian, who suffers from emotional outbursts, which means he has difficulty making friends, but he also has enough self-awareness to make him quite likable. With a supportive family, a TK-wearing wizard and a mysterious new friend, he decides to run for senior class president after learning that his favorite teacher (and current crush) is the faculty advisor.
“I’ve dealt with mental health issues my whole life. A lot of my family members have. I identified with the main character a lot,” Rob says. “But then came the hard part of trying to convince the writer.”
Rob understood Scollins’ concerns. After all, he was an untested director. but Brian It was previously in development as a traditional studio with a veteran director, which also collapsed. This all happened a few weeks before Rob reached out about the script.
“A lot of times, when these movies are put together, it’s going to take years of development. I said to myself, ‘I know I can go out and make this — very sporadically, though — but I can make it a good movie in two months,'” Rob says.
He sold Scollins on the plan and the preparation for it Brian He started in August for an 18-day shoot in Oklahoma three months later. Rob found his brain in Ben Wang (The Karate Kid: Legends, The Long March) and filled out his younger squad with actors like Joshua Cooley and Sam-Sung Lee, and surrounded them with veterans like Randall Park, William H. Macy, and Natalie Morales.
The production received a state tax credit and used a predominantly local crew, with the exception of cinematographer Matthew Pothier, who filmed at their high school over Thanksgiving break and, when school started again, on nights and weekends.
With less than three weeks to shoot, Rob and his team had to race through parts of the production. For the film’s penultimate scene, in which Brian delivers his campaign speech alongside fellow upbeat class presidents in the school’s cavernous auditorium, Rob planned 70 camera setups. With limited time (and fewer extras), Rob raced all day, taking just one shot before moving on to the next.
Brian It splits the difference between a more nuanced coming-of-age story along the lines of Shun Wang’s Didi And straight comedy in context Too bad. It has what every good high school comedy should have – a cast of characters that audiences wish they could have spent time with during their teenage years. monitoring Brian It is a comfortable experience; Like wearing a worn-out letterman jacket.
As with anything related to high school students, Brian He takes a seemingly low-risk scenario and injects it with high-risk emotions. Rob explains, “When you’re in it, when you’re in high school, it’s all do or die. Someone breaks your heart, it’s the end of your life.”
Rob points out that comedies, whether set in high school or not, are not currently the proverbial popular kids in the Hollywood lunch room. And while there seems to be more evidence of life – One day of them and The bare gun The film did well at the box office last year, while the comedy was directed by Olivia Wilde Invitation It was the biggest sellout of the last Sundance Film Festival — it’s still a long way from the halcyon days of the mid-2000s. Still heading to BrianLike Wilde, Rob was inspired by high school comedies Booksmart And the works of John Hughes.
“I’m not far from that [high school] “He still has perspective on it,” says Rob, who thinks about Myers, who is an executive producer. BrianHe told him. “As my first movie, I was like, ‘I have to use the fact that I’m relatively young,’ because, as Seth Meyers said, they don’t let teenagers direct movies, unfortunately.”
