There\u2019s only so much directing you can do when you send your lead actor, who is holding several bags of goldfish, in water, on a roller coaster with a 35 mm camera strapped to the front. You just have to trust.<\/p>\n
\u201cSplitsville\u201d director and actor Michael Angelo Covino<\/a> knew he could count on his friend and cowriter Kyle Marvin to deliver on the performance side for their slapstick comedy about messy relationships and messy people that opens in theaters Friday. The two also made the wildly funny friendship movie \u201cThe Climb,\u201d<\/a> which they cowrote and co-starred in with Covino directing.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s like a modern-day Charlie Chaplin,\u201d Covino said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. \u201cIt\u2019s just all intuitive slapstick. He has it in his bones.\u201d<\/p>\n But there were a lot of other variables at play: Would they run out of light? Would it be as funny in execution as it was in theory? Would they regret fighting for the 35 mm camera? A lot was riding on the scene and reshoots were not in the cards. Independent films can\u2019t just go around shutting down amusement parks and mounting expensive film cameras on roller coasters whenever they want.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was sort of a powder keg moment on set,\u201d Marvin said.<\/p>\n The most stressful thing, however, was they wouldn\u2019t even know for sure that they got the shot for a few days. Something had malfunctioned with the camera, and they didn\u2019t have a digital recording. It was also the weekend, so they had to wait for the lab to process the film and send it back to them.<\/p>\n \u201cI called the lab and I was like, \u2019Please, please don\u2019t (expletive) this up,\u201d Covino said.<\/p>\n How and why this brilliant, absurd sequence fits into their film, a comedy about open relationships, divorce and human mistakes, in which they star opposite Dakota Johnson<\/a> and Adria Arjona<\/a>, is probably better left for audiences to discover themselves. But it\u2019s the kind of comedy that Covino and Marvin specialize in.<\/p>\n Leaning into unlikable characters<\/p>\n The premise for \u201cSplitsville\u201d arose from conversations with friends who just seemed a little too confident in their worldviews. <\/p>\n \u201cNothing is funnier than someone with a lot of confidence, because they\u2019re generally wrong in some way, shape or form,\u201d Marvin said. \u201cOne thing that we love is to put a character\u2019s feet on an inevitable journey and then just make it harder and harder for them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSplitsville\u201d starts with a big moment and continues escalating from there. The film begins with Arjona\u2019s character Ashley telling her husband Carey (Marvin) that she\u2019s unfaithful and wants a divorce. Distraught, he continues on to his married friends\u2019 house where he finds that Paul (Covino) and Julie (Johnson) are happily non monogamous \u2014 that is until Carey and Julie hook up.<\/p>\n They had noticed in French and Italian films from the 70s, from the likes of Claude Sautet and Lina Wertm\u00fcller, the characters just state \u201cthe thing,\u201d like \u201cI\u2019m in love with your fiance,\u201d right out of the gates.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a efficiency of story and character. It charges the film,\u201d Covino said. \u201cWe just gravitate toward movies where things happen and characters do crazy things.\u201d<\/p>\n This meant, in part, not being too worried about their characters being \u201clikable\u201d or sending them on redemptive arcs that we might expect in a more mainstream romantic comedy. They\u2019re not out to punish the cheater. Nor are they out to make a hero out of the one who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s things not to like about all of them in some ways,\u201d Covino said. \u201cBut that\u2019s, to me, what makes them human. People do bad things, but if we can understand why there\u2019s something more there. There\u2019s humor to mine.\u201d<\/p>\n Adding the movie star element<\/p>\n Unlike \u201cThe Climb\u201d which featured actors who weren\u2019t exactly household names, \u201cSplitsville\u201d has recognizable stars in Johnson and Arjona. In the film, there are more than a few jokes made about the \u201cbeauty gap\u201d between the characters. They heard the same off camera too.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a lot of notes about, \u2018How are we gonna get people to buy that these two guys are with these two women?\u2019\u201d Covino said with a laugh. \u201cWe were like, \u2018Hey guys, we\u2019re right here. We are the guys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n They consider themselves \u201cextremely lucky\u201d that Johnson and Arjona wanted to make \u201cSplitsville.\u201d Not only did they bring the characters to life in ways that they couldn\u2019t have imagined on the page, but their star quality adds something intangible as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThey hold the screen,\u201d Covino said. \u201cDakota can just sit there and when you fix the camera on her face, it\u2019s mesmerizing. When she\u2019s on screen, it takes a lot of the pressure off of the story and all the other things because she\u2019s so captivating. I think there\u2019s something really beautiful about that especially given what this story is trying to do with these two idiot guys who are orbiting around these women.\u201d<\/p>\n Not being afraid of dumb jokes<\/p>\n Covino and Marvin didn\u2019t set out to tackle issues of relationships and marriage. If conversations emerge after the fact, that\u2019s gravy, but ultimately they have one goal: Make an entertaining film.<\/p>\n Often times, that means not shying away from the dumb jokes. Their films are cinematic and they know all the auteurs to reference, but they\u2019re also silly and slapstick. They draw as much from Blake Edwards, Elaine May and Mike Nichols as they do from \u201cDumb and Dumber\u201d and \u201cMe, Myself & Irene.\u201d In other words, they\u2019re making comedies for everyone, not just cinephiles.<\/p>\n Occasionally they doubt themselves and worry that something is just too dumb to print. But then they remember the bit with the dog\u2019s name in \u201cThe Jerk,\u201d a movie they find both cinematic and one of the dumbest movies ever. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a dumb joke, but there\u2019s brilliance in it,\u201d Covino said. \u201cIndependent film is so in flux. The more entertaining we can make these films, the like better chance all of this has.\u201d<\/p>\n So, when your story gives your character bags of goldfish, sometimes you just have to put him on a roller coaster. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s only so much directing you can do when you send your lead actor, who is holding several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[11519,13100,1380,11881,8268,18,13101,117,3334,19,17,11886,13099,13097,13098,327,4077],"class_list":{"0":"post-14089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cannes-film-festival","9":"tag-charlie-chaplin","10":"tag-comedy","11":"tag-dakota-johnson","12":"tag-domestic-news","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-elaine-may","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-kyle-marvin","20":"tag-lina-wertmller","21":"tag-michael-covino","22":"tag-mike-nichols","23":"tag-movies","24":"tag-u-s-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}