After Triumphant Tribeca Premiere, “The Good Half” Set for North American Theaters: Interview with Robert Schwartzman

Actor, director, and musician Robert Schwartzman can do it all! Schwartzman comes from a huge line of talent as he’s part of the respected and distinguished Coppola family. However, he’s making his own way. He’s part of the band Rooney, starred as Anne Hathaway’s love interest in The Princess Diaries (2001), starred in cousin Sofia Coppola’s films like The Virgin Suicides (1999), and eventually directed his own films.

Schwartzman’s film, The Good Half, originally premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and was acquired by Schwartzman’s distribution company, Utopia, which he co-founded. Written by Brett Ryland, the film tells the story of Renn Wheeland (Nick Jonas), a struggling writer returning home to Cleveland for his mother’s funeral (Elisabeth Shue). Renn must confront his past as he reunites with his family and deals with the emotions of grief for someone who meant the most to him. The film also stars a marvelous supporting cast including Brittany Snow, Matt Walsh, Alexandra Shipp, and David Arquette.

The film is now getting exclusive previews with Fathom Events. On July 23 and July 25, audiences will have the chance to see a screening of the film along with an exclusive virtual Q&A with Jonas and Schwartzman moderated by actress Kiernan Shipka. We had the exclusive chance to connect with Schwartzman to discuss the emotional comedic drama.

Kristin Cilberto: Congratulations on all the hard work! What does this film mean to you and how did you get approached for this project?

Robert Schwartzman: I mean, it means so much because it’s the latest thing I’ve directed and you spend years of your life on it and it’s been an emotional roller coaster to make The Good Half. It’s everything like, is this movie really happening? It’s exciting to make a movie when you are going to make one. Then, everything that happens after you make a movie, like, what are we doing with it? Then, you’re actually doing something with it. I hope we can effectively release it. It’s just so much stuff. The jumping-off story is that I had been directing other features that have gotten out in festivals and had also gotten released on streaming platforms and theaters. I have a friend who gets a lot of scripts sent to him. He’s an agent and he was like, I read the script and it’s amazing. You got to read it because they like your work and they would like you to direct it. I received the script that had a different title at the time, but I read it on the spot and I agreed I thought it was a well-crafted film in so many ways. Let’s break it all down, really great characters that you could kind of close your eyes and imagine them, very effectively brought to life in a way on the page that I thought was exciting. I could position each character and understand them all in this family ensemble and that their dynamic was well crafted. I thought that the comedy in it was honest about what can come out of the experiences of love loss and making sense of it, the family confusion, the family inner conflict, your inner conflict, and I thought it was honest about what it means to go through all of that. I always like movies that make you cry and laugh. I like to be taken between those two feelings. I thought this one had the ingredients to put that on the screen. The challenge of flashbacks and present day and how to creatively weave that in the story would be interesting. It’s like the director’s choice of style, it was just different. I hadn’t made a movie about something so heavy like loss. Then my own, the biggest one of all is my own experiences having lost a parent to cancer, having lost friends to cancer, and been around so many people that have dealt with it that it felt like something very familiar to me. I just felt like, okay, I get it and it would be a challenge. Making any movie is a challenge, but doing something that’s also very close to home can be an emotional challenge to have to take that on, and then the sort of responsibility that comes with telling stories that can be meaningful to people. Doing right by those stories that really can be helpful to people. That’s the fun and the beauty of making something and creating something. It’s like, you’re putting it out there and it has an effect on people. I think to be effective is to have some form of effect on people in an emotional way where you leave the theater or after you’ve watched it, you feel you’ve gained something. It’s important that we made something like this that could be offering up some experience for people that would be relatable for those who’ve dealt with grief. I also always talk about the feeling of grief being just like the feeling of love. It doesn’t just come in one, it’s not just from one. One type of experience gives you the feeling of grief or is a grieving experience. It’s not just about loss. Within a family, you can also be in a relationship where you lose somebody and you’ve lost them in a way that’s grief. How do I go on with my life without this person? Is a form of that feeling of grief different? A different set of circumstances can lead to that experience, that emotion, but it’s still grief. These are universal feelings that everyone feels at some point in their life and we told a story about it and hopefully have something fulfilling or something to offer, something helpful for people.

KC: You did a great job illustrating the idea of grief and loss and pretty much of the character of Renn where he is feeling all of that guilt. How did you connect with Renn?

RS: I mean, that was really where I felt like I could bring in my own experiences. Yes, I remember my father passed away when I was very young and I didn’t know how to talk about it. It was just too hard. It’s like when you’re talking about losing someone and you’ll notice in the interviews when someone starts talking about someone they lost, that’s when they start crying or they tear up. They can’t seem to get the words out. It’s because you’re starting to remember. That’s when you’re talking about it as part of the therapy. It’s like remembering hearing yourself talk about it makes it very bizarre because you’re like, Oh my God, this person’s no longer with me. It’s weird. It makes it very real and that’s what’s so hard for Renn and not being able to talk about it. The talking about it is that it’s the medicine. It’s just dealing with it. I felt that you have this internal life when you’re going through it when you’re grieving, and it’s hard to communicate to people what you need, because you don’t quite know, and I thought that would be an interesting thing to explore with Nick’s performance. He’s a very internal guy. He’s mysterious in a lot of ways and he doesn’t let you in so easily. Yeah, I’ve known him for a long time and I feel like I can, as a director, push him and challenge him and he was up for the challenge. I think there’s just like something you feel when you’re with people, with your actors, and the actors just give you a feeling as an audience member. I just feel like he effectively created what I was hoping to achieve, which was just like, what is going on with this guy? I’m so curious about him. Hopefully, you are curious because you must invest yourself in the lead character played by Nick. To care about this movie in some way and put your time into it. I thought Nick did such a great job of carrying us through that.

KC: Nick was just excellent in the film. I wish I saw the film last year, but I’m happy I got to see it this year especially now that it’s being released to a much wider audience. Finally seeing Nick in the film, he’s remarkable in it. You said you knew him for a long time, so how’d you bring him on this project?

RS: It’s funny, like a movie has many lives to it, like a cat. It goes through a process of getting a cast and losing a cast, or getting an actor and losing an actor, and it’s natural. It’s like somebody books a TV show and they’re not going to let them out in time. Or, oh my god, we cast blah, blah, blah, and so-and-so is unavailable because we pushed back two months. You just have to be willing to adapt to whatever is thrown at you I think in real-time as a director. We had another cast years ago for this movie and I hadn’t connected with Nick in a while but knew he would be interested in talking about a role like this, but I just didn’t know about it. When we started recasting the movie, I was very close to someone who worked with Nick and I wondered if Nick would want to read this. It’s an amazing script. We’re shooting this at the end of the year and I feel you should read it. It’s really good. I think he would love it. He read it right away and he loved it and I was like okay, here we go. This could be happening. We toured and made music together years ago. He liked my band Rooney and when he was kind of coming up in the music industry, there was a little bit of the feeling like a big bro. I’m the youngest in my family, but maybe I’m like an older brother in a way to him where there’s an ease to our relationship. Like, even if he’s famous or gets big or whatever, at the end of the day I just talk to him as Nick, so I’m just going to be honest with him about stuff. I think he likes that about our relationship and yeah you need that as, like a director, actor, collaborator relationship. I just felt Nick was a performer, someone who’s not afraid to push himself and could dig into the material and take it very seriously giving us the time we needed to make it work. Little things matter the most and I think when you’re working with actors it’s important and Nick was extremely prepared, and very dedicated to the role. He wanted to be great for us. I think he did such a great job, well done!

KC: He gives an honest performance and I love the fact you two have known each other for so long and built up that relationship to tell a great story. You are one of the co-founders of Utopia which I find interesting. So you’re releasing it through your company. How did you get started in wanting to create Utopia? Can you discuss a little bit about that?

RS: I’m one of the founders of Utopia and I was inspired to create it. Utopia was like a startup company, it was like an idea. You get a couple of people excited about an idea, and you think there’s something there, and then you’re like, let’s do it! And that’s what a startup company is. If you can sustain it and the idea has something to it, you sustain it and you can grow it. We’re almost six years in and I said, that’s a good sign. What we’re giving has legs and we wanted to do two things. One thing was that I was making independent films. I was putting them together, independently shooting them, making micro-budget movies, and trying to sell them at a film festival. It’s a traditional model. I just felt like I connected with all the buyers out there. I also didn’t feel like there were enough buyers out there, like taking care of independently made movies and just, you know, creating a dialogue with filmmakers that was collaborative. I thought that it was important. So it was the little things that mattered for distribution as far as the collaboration creatively with filmmakers. When you get into it, you realize, wow this is very hard to put a movie out and not every movie can always get the same reaction. Some movies just take on a life of their own, and some you push. I’m proud that we’ve been able to support and celebrate to bring audiences some amazing filmmakers but think the films would not have been released in a way with such care as we were able to do them. I feel like our company is onto something and elevating these great voices about the next generation of filmmakers. The other thing we were doing was technology where we could help do direct-to-consumer distribution. We created a platform called AltaVOD and then Video on Demand (VOD). The transactional video-on-demand platform is where you could find filmmakers of whoever is making a movie or watching a movie right now and if it’s a feature, you are able to upload it yourself and make it available for audiences to stream directly from your home, but you control the price point. You can make it available in other countries, but it’s just for movies. So it’s not like other types of content would be on there. You can collect your data and share it out with the next movie you make with your audience that you’re building on. It’s a cool platform. We set out to do both. It was like it’s all in the world of distribution. One of them is more tech-leaning where you can help more filmmakers at one time because it’s automated. That’s up to you as it’s up to you to upload your own movie. Then one of them is more hands-on with traditional distribution where we acquire the movie, but for me, it’s all connected to problem-solving trying to improve on the conditions of the industry that we have in front of us. Yes, it’s about identifying the pain points and the problems that we face as filmmakers and trying to create new solutions. I always say that I don’t think the problem in the industry is how do you make movies? A lot of people get wrapped up in these discussions of like, how do you make a movie, right? I don’t know if that’s exactly the big problem we face because I think people who are entrepreneurial are going to figure out a way to make their movie. There are cameras out there that are affordable. There are stories you can shrink down to tell within the means of what you have to work with. There are enough actors out there that’ll say yes to you, and there are enough people out there willing to take chances on you. It depends on the risk factors and the budget level and all those things put together. I just find there are a lot of people making movies, but getting them out there is a whole other set of problems. I’m just trying to help and be a part of the solution of offering up new types of tool sets and relationships and ways to get movies out that I think could be effective and supportive.

KC: I only have time for one last question, in three words describe The Good Half.

RS: I don’t know, like hopeful, internal, and family. What I love about this movie is all these characters together. I love at the end how we wrap up the family. For me, family is everything. There’s something so heartwarming and kind of beautiful about the idea of a family working together on this, like this sort of unifying feeling they’re going through.

Explore our exclusive coverage of the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival here.