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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I Don't Understand You': Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells movie inspired by adoption fraud story from filmmakers
While Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells voice some pretty hysterical characters in Big Mouth, they're now sharing the screen in the horror-comedy I Don't Understand You (now in theatres). Written and directed by married filmmakers David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie had a particularly interesting starting point. In I Don't Understand You Kroll and Rannells play a couple, Dom and Cole, who have just fallen victim to adoption fraud, but things are looking up. A pregnant woman named Candace (Amanda Seyfried) thinks they're the right fit for the family to adopt her child. But just before that happens, Dom and Cole take a romantic Italian vacation. Things take a turn when they get lost outside of Rome, trying to find a restaurant. As their stranded in an unknown location, the trip turns to bloody Italian chaos. As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaking is so ... based on surprise," Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. But it works because Crano and Craig know how to write in each other's voices so well, that's where a lot of the dialogue is pulled from. Additionally, the filmmakers had the "creative trust" in each other to pitch any idea, as random as it may have seemed, to see if it could work for the film. "When you're with somebody you've lived with for 15 years, there is very little that I can do that would embarrass me in front of David," Crano said. "So that level of creative freedom is very generative." "We were able to screw up in front of each other a lot without it affecting the rest of our day," Craig added. Of course, with the language barrier between the filmmakers and the Italian cast, it was a real collaboration to help make the script feel authentic for those characters. "All of the Italian actors and crew were very helpful in terms of being like, 'Well I feel like my character is from the south and wouldn't say it in this way.' And helped us build the language," Crano said. "And it was just a very trusting process, because neither of us are fluent enough to have that kind of dialectical specificity that you would in English." "It was super cool to just be watching an actor perform a scene that you've written in English that has been translated a couple of times, but you still completely understand it, just by the generosity of their performance." For Craig, he has an extensive resume of acting roles, including projects like Boy Erased and episodes of Dropout. Among the esteemed alumni of the Upright Citizens Brigade, he had a writing "itch" for a long time, and was "in awe" of Crano's work as a director. "Truthfully, in a weird way, it felt like such a far off, distant job, because everything felt really difficult, and I think with this project it just made me understand that it was just something I truly love and truly wanted to do," Craig said. "I love the idea of creative control and being in a really collaborative situation. Acting allows you to do that momentarily, but I think like every other job that you can do on a film is much longer lasting, and I think that's something I was truly seeking." For Crano, he also grew up as a theatre kid, moving on to writing plays in college. "The first time I got laughs for jokes I was like, 'Oh, this is it. Let's figure out how to do this,'" he said. "I was playwriting in London, my mom got sick in the States, so I came back, and I started writing a movie, because I was living in [Los Angeles] and I thought, well there are no playwrights in L.A., I better write a movie.'" That's when Crano found a mentor in Peter Friedlander, who's currently the head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, at Netflix. "I had written this feature and ... we met with a bunch of directors, great directors, directors I truly admire, and they would be like, 'It should be like this.' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, that's fine, but maybe it's more like this.' And after about five of those Peter was like, 'You're going to direct it. We'll make some shorts. We'll see if you can do it.' He just sort of saw it," Crano recalled. "It's nice to be seen in any capacity for your ability, but [I started to realize] this is not so different from writing, it's just sort of writing and physical space and storytelling, and I love to do it. ... It is a very difficult job, because it requires so much money to test the theory, to even see if you can." But being able to work together on I Don't Understand You, the couple were able to learn things about and from each other through the filmmaking process. "David is lovely to everyone," Crano said. "He is much nicer than I am at a sort of base level, and makes everyone feel that they can perform at the best of their ability. And that's a really good lesson." "Brian literally doesn't take anything personally," Craig added. "Almost to a fault." "And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's very helpful for me."
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I Don't Understand You': Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells movie inspired by adoption fraud story from filmmakers
While Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells voice some pretty hysterical characters in Big Mouth, they're now sharing the screen in the horror-comedy I Don't Understand You (now in theatres). Written and directed by married filmmakers David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie had a particularly interesting starting point. In I Don't Understand You Kroll and Rannells play a couple, Dom and Cole, who have just fallen victim to adoption fraud, but things are looking up. A pregnant woman named Candace (Amanda Seyfried) thinks they're the right fit for the family to adopt her child. But just before that happens, Dom and Cole take a romantic Italian vacation. Things take a turn when they get lost outside of Rome, trying to find a restaurant. As their stranded in an unknown location, the trip turns to bloody Italian chaos. As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaking is so ... based on surprise," Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. But it works because Crano and Craig know how to write in each other's voices so well, that's where a lot of the dialogue is pulled from. Additionally, the filmmakers had the "creative trust" in each other to pitch any idea, as random as it may have seemed, to see if it could work for the film. "When you're with somebody you've lived with for 15 years, there is very little that I can do that would embarrass me in front of David," Crano said. "So that level of creative freedom is very generative." "We were able to screw up in front of each other a lot without it affecting the rest of our day," Craig added. Of course, with the language barrier between the filmmakers and the Italian cast, it was a real collaboration to help make the script feel authentic for those characters. "All of the Italian actors and crew were very helpful in terms of being like, 'Well I feel like my character is from the south and wouldn't say it in this way.' And helped us build the language," Crano said. "And it was just a very trusting process, because neither of us are fluent enough to have that kind of dialectical specificity that you would in English." "It was super cool to just be watching an actor perform a scene that you've written in English that has been translated a couple of times, but you still completely understand it, just by the generosity of their performance." For Craig, he has an extensive resume of acting roles, including projects like Boy Erased and episodes of Dropout. Among the esteemed alumni of the Upright Citizens Brigade, he had a writing "itch" for a long time, and was "in awe" of Crano's work as a director. "Truthfully, in a weird way, it felt like such a far off, distant job, because everything felt really difficult, and I think with this project it just made me understand that it was just something I truly love and truly wanted to do," Craig said. "I love the idea of creative control and being in a really collaborative situation. Acting allows you to do that momentarily, but I think like every other job that you can do on a film is much longer lasting, and I think that's something I was truly seeking." For Crano, he also grew up as a theatre kid, moving on to writing plays in college. "The first time I got laughs for jokes I was like, 'Oh, this is it. Let's figure out how to do this,'" he said. "I was playwriting in London, my mom got sick in the States, so I came back, and I started writing a movie, because I was living in [Los Angeles] and I thought, well there are no playwrights in L.A., I better write a movie.'" That's when Crano found a mentor in Peter Friedlander, who's currently the head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, at Netflix. "I had written this feature and ... we met with a bunch of directors, great directors, directors I truly admire, and they would be like, 'It should be like this.' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, that's fine, but maybe it's more like this.' And after about five of those Peter was like, 'You're going to direct it. We'll make some shorts. We'll see if you can do it.' He just sort of saw it," Crano recalled. "It's nice to be seen in any capacity for your ability, but [I started to realize] this is not so different from writing, it's just sort of writing and physical space and storytelling, and I love to do it. ... It is a very difficult job, because it requires so much money to test the theory, to even see if you can." But being able to work together on I Don't Understand You, the couple were able to learn things about and from each other through the filmmaking process. "David is lovely to everyone," Crano said. "He is much nicer than I am at a sort of base level, and makes everyone feel that they can perform at the best of their ability. And that's a really good lesson." "Brian literally doesn't take anything personally," Craig added. "Almost to a fault." "And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's very helpful for me."
Geek Tyrant
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL Director Blames David Zaslav for Killing TV Spinoff: 'The Slayer of All Cinema' — GeekTyrant
It's been 15 years since Tucker & Dale vs. Evil flipped the horror comedy slasher genre on its head, and fans have been hungry for more ever since. Now, director Eli Craig has revealed he was developing a spinoff series and shed new light on why it hasn't happened. In a recent interview with /Film, Craig revealed that the series was set up at TNT/TBS and it would've seen Tucker and Dale become hilariously incompetent detectives. Unfortunately, that concept never made it to air, and Craig puts the blame squarely on the former Discovery CEO, David Zaslav. 'We almost did a TV show with it that was on TNT/TBS, and you'll be happy to know that David Zaslav, the slayer of all cinema [laughs], came in and put the final nail in the coffin for Tucker and Dale as we were about to go to series, and just cancelled all production.' The original 2010 film starred Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine as two sweet-natured hillbillies who are mistaken for bloodthirsty killers by a group of panicked college students, who then proceed to accidentally kill themselves in absurd and hilarious fashion. It became an instant hit with genre fans and currently boasts an 86% critic score and 85% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, despite its cult status and strong international performance Craig says the lackluster domestic box office, just $223,838, has made it hard for Hollywood to take the property seriously. Craig joked: 'Tucker and Dale 2 has died more deaths than the college kids in Tucker and Dale. 'We've had so many versions that have almost got off its feet or, for one reason or another, have gotten killed. It really does set us back that people can't look at the box office, the actual box office, of the movie.' The axed TV series would have been a fresh and fun twist: 'It would have been more like Tucker and Dale, but detectives. Detective Tucker and Dale, like, stupidly trying to figure out what's happening in a world where they're always getting it wrong and people are dying around them.' Despite all the false starts, Craig hasn't given up hope, saying: 'I've never completely let go of the idea we'd make a sequel. And part of the reason people want to see a sequel is because it's set up for it. ' Tucker and Dale , when I wrote it, there were these elements I wanted to follow, like Chad is still alive, Allison and Dale's story.' Craig wrapped the conversation with a message to fans: 'Hollywood is a slayer of great ideas. But stay alive, fans! Because there's always a possibility.' So while the TV show may be officially dead, the dream of more Tucker and Dale chaos lives on. Just maybe don't expect it to happen while Zaslav's still swinging the axe.
Gizmodo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Tucker & Dale Director Blames David Zaslav for Killing TV Spinoff
It hasn't been easy trying to continue Tucker and Dale's story, and Warner Bros. Discovery's merger sure didn't help matters. The 15-year anniversary of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil was earlier in January, and if you've been holding out hope for a follow up, director/co-writer Eli Craig revealed it almost happened. During an interview with Slashfilm about his new horror flick Clown in a Cornfield, Craig noted the would-be sequel 'has died more deaths than the college kids [in the first movie]. It's always been a struggle, and then when we do set it up and get all the pieces together, it gets killed somehow.' One such version was a TV continuation on TNT/TBS (not unlike what happened with Chucky), but that ran into its own roadblock: namely, current Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav. 'Zaslav, the slayer of all cinema, came in and put the final nail in the coffin for Tucker & Dale as we were about to go to series, and just canceled all production, ' said Craig. That, in and of itself doesn't sound too surprising: presumably, this would've taken place sometime in 2022, shortly after WB and Discovery merged and the company went about laying off staff and junking various projects in the name of tax write offs. (Despite this, some projects have survived.) As for what the proposed show would've been, Craig said the titular hillbillies, played again by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine, would've been detectives 'stupidly trying to figure out what's happening in a world where they're always getting it wrong and people are dying around them.' While that idea may be done for, Craig said he'll always want to make a sequel to his feature film debut. 'It's set up for it, and when I wrote it, there were these elements I wanted to follow,' he said. 'Hollywood is a slayer of great ideas, but stay alive, fans! Because there's always a possibility.'
Forbes
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
How Did Sally Field React To Son's Horror Film ‘Clown In A Cornfield'?
Clown in a Cornfield director Eli Craig — the son of iconic actor Sally Field — is sharing his mom's reaction to his new horror comedy. Clown in a Cornfield, which opened in theaters nationwide on Friday, is an adaptation of author Adam Cesare's Bram Stoker Award-winning young adult novel from 2020. Adapted for the big screen by Craig and Carter Blanchard, Clown in a Cornfield follows teenager Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) and her doctor fatherm Glenn (Aaron Abrams), who move to the farming community of Kettle Springs, Mo., to get a fresh start following the death of Quinn's mother. But, as Quinn soon discovers, Kettle Springs has been a depressed town since its main business, the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory, burned to the ground. In a demented way to alleviate the burden on the shoulders of Kettle Springs, someone is dressing up as Baypen's mascot — Frendo the Clown — and taking out his frustrations by slaughtering its teen residents in a grisly manner, which is not quite the welcome to the town Quinn was expecting. Rated R, the blood-splattered humor and horror fest also stars Kevin Durand, Carson MacCormack and Will Sasso. In a recent Zoom conversation, Eli Craig — who along with his brother, Peter, are the sons of Field and her ex-husband Steven Craig — said he gravitated to a decidedly different film genre than the one his mother is famous as a kid. 'I've always felt a little bit like the black sheep of the family,' Eli Craig said with a huge laugh. 'She's a dramatic actor who treats her work very, very seriously. And some of my work is a little farcical, right? I have a penchant for a bit of farce and humor.' Essentially, Craig — who directed and co-wrote the 2010 horror comedy cult classic Tucker and Dave vs. Evil — said he wants to make movies that don't take themselves too seriously, but his mom likes to stick to her dramatic storytelling convictions. 'Sometimes when I show her my work, she's like, 'I think you should take it more seriously,' and I go, 'But that's not the point, mom. The point is, this is fun first and serious second,' Craig said. Sally Field, of course, is one of Hollywood's most treasured performers. In addition to winning Best Actress Oscars for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, she's starred in dozens of classic films in her six decades in showbiz, from two Smokey and the Bandit films, Murphy's Romance and Mrs. Doubtfire to Forrest Gump, Lincoln and The Amazing Spider-Man movies. On top of that, Field has had an amazing run on television, starring in such acclaimed series as Gidget, The Flying Nun, ER, Brothers & Sisters and Winning Time: The Rise of The Lakers Dynasty, as well as the legendary miniseries Sybil. Eli Craig said he's paid attention to the inner workings of showbiz throughout his mom's career and it has no doubt influenced his work as a filmmaker — but not in the way you'd expect. 'She's taught me so much about this business, but growing up as her son, it has given me a bit of the freedom to be disestablishment,' Craig said. 'I like to fight against the establishment and be somewhat sardonic and sarcastic about the business. 'Because I grew up in it, I just feel like making fun of everything and film gives me a way to satirize the business and also satirize the human condition in America, specifically right now,' Craig added. "So, I think mom gets a kick out of my films, even if she doesn't fully understand my style.' And what was Field's specific reaction to Clown in a Cornfield? 'She saw a rough cut of it and she said, 'I think you should cut the humor out,'" Craig said, laughing. 'I said, 'Mom, I can't cut the humor out. That's the whole point. I want the humor and horror.' But she said, 'This is the most suspenseful thing you've ever done' and 'Go fully go with the suspense.' I find life to be both humorous and horrific at the same time, so I like to add those elements.' Clown in a Cornfield is playing in theaters nationwide.
