Alison Brie’s Codependency with Dave Franco Was an Asset on Together
Together isn’t Alison Brie’s first time starring alongside her real-life husband Dave Franco, but their time collaborating on the new Sundance film from director Michael Shanks might be the most fun they’ve had working, well, together. Brie joined us at the The Vulture Spot in Park City to talk about the genre film (no spoilers here), which explores a longtime couple’s codependency after a move to the countryside tests their relationship, and their bodies.
Congratulations on the movie. How did it come to you and Dave?
Thank you! Dave had a meeting with Michael about another script, and, as with most Zooms that happen in our household, I was in the background, eating a yogurt, listening in, and they started talking about their love of horror and genre movies. Shanks was complimenting Dave on The Rental, which was Dave’s directorial debut and he was like, “I sort of have this genre movie I wrote.” And he suggested sending the script to Dave to read it. As soon as Dave read it, he loved it. He sent it to me, along with a short film called Rebooted that Shanks had written and directed and done all the special effects on. Dave was like, “I think we should star in this together and produce it and hop on board and get it financed and get it made.” And I was like, “let’s do it, babe.”
Do you and Dave get asked to work together often?
It’s usually rom coms, and that’s fine, but we are pretty particular about what we act in together. If we get offers for something where we’re not playing a couple, is that going to be weird or distracting? And we also don’t want to be annoying about it. We’re aware that appearing together could be cloying. But this felt like it made a lot of sense.
The film is about a codependent couple that’s been together for over a decade. We are a slightly less codependent couple that’s been together over a decade, and we felt like that provided a great meta quality that will fuel the storyline of this movie. And it came in handy behind the scenes, because this movie required a lot of physical intimacy. And I don’t mean sexual. I mean, I do. But I also don’t.
Shanks has a background in VFX. How did that inform his direction and the way he shaped the movie?
There are a lot of major set pieces in this movie, so many of our early conversations with Shanks were about the effects. He himself completed over 100 VFX shots while editing this movie. It’s extraordinary and part of why we trusted him. This movie takes a big swing. There’s weird shit in it, man, weird stuff that Dave and I have to do. So there were a lot of conversations of us being like, “if I’m going to put my body in this weird position, are you going to do something that’s going to make it look cool later?” And then we trusted that Shanks would do that.
You’ve worked with a lot of first time directors and writers. What do they bring to your process?
That’s interesting. I guess it does change throughout a person’s career because early on when I was working with first-time filmmakers, I was a first-timer, too. It’s like we’re all in this together. We’re all bright-eyed and excited. And now I think there’s something to Dave and I coming on this project as experienced producers. I don’t want to say we took Shanks under our wing because he was so confident. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. I just love new ideas. And it’s fun to work with first-time filmmakers because usually the first film people make, they’ve been thinking about it for years and years. It’s some big idea that they’ve had up their sleeve, and they’re super passionate and excited, and it’s a little risky. It’s fun to do things that scare you.
It’s your seventh Sundance. What has changed for you coming to this festival over the years?
The first couple times that I came to this festival, I brought my two best girlfriends and we would just get hammered. I was talking to Dave about it last night and he was like, “do you usually stay closer to Main Street when you’ve come to the festival?” And I was like, “honey, I have no idea where I stayed.” All I remember is trudging through the snow and being like, we can’t get a cab. One year we slept on Ludwig Göransson’s pull out couch and I remember passing out with lime-flavored Tostitos.
It’s ebbed and flowed because I’ve been out here for films that I’ve starred in, like Sleeping With Other People. And I’ve also come out for movies like Kings of Summer, where I’m in two scenes and I’m like, “let’s fucking party!” The first film I was out here for was Michael Mohan’s Save the Date with Lizzy Caplan, Martin Starr, Geoffrey Arend and a bunch of other people. We were all staying in a house, again, with my two best girlfriends, three people in a bed stacked up. That was my early experience with the festival, being young and excited about the movie, going to every lounge, getting free jackets, sleeping on couches.
That’s changed. The last time I was here was for Horse Girl, five years ago. It was the first film that I had written — I co-wrote it with Jeff Baena — and it was the first film I had produced as well. The movie was already at Netflix, so we weren’t trying to sell it, but it did feel like a different part of my career. This feels the same where like, we’ve been working on this film for two years as producers, getting it going, and then shooting it, and in post, so it feels a little more adult and professional than the ragtag days when I was first coming here.
I was thinking back on Sleeping With Other People, which is one of my favorites of your movies, and I was wondering if there’s a different tenor to how we talk about codependency post-COVID now that we’ve all been in houses together a lot.
I hadn’t even thought about it that way. Maybe that’s how deep my personal codependency goes with this movie. That’s so funny. I haven’t thought about Sleeping With Other People in depth in a long time, but certainly, that was a character trying to escape codependency with this person who did not want to be involved in a relationship with her. In Together, you’re catching two characters on different sides of that concern. Dave’s character is more afraid of intimacy. These characters have been together for over a decade, but they’re not married. He’s afraid to take the next step. Not that people have to get married, but even moving to the country is a big deal in terms of solidifying the relationship. My character is afraid of getting out of the relationship. She’s the true codependent in their unit. The movie as a whole is exploring all of that, while also looking at the positive parts of intimacy.
When couples are together for a long time, especially during COVID, you’re breathing the same air, you’re eating the same food. Dave and I share clothes. You have the same friends, so it’s like, it’s easy to lose your sense of self and individuality within that. This movie is taking that to its most intense conclusion.
Given this is a movie about relationships and codependency, what’s the best relationship advice you’ve gotten or could give?
God, I mean, it really is communication, right? Being quick to forgive. The worst thing is building up resentment and not talking about it and then exploding about some random thing like the socks being in the wrong drawer six months later and you’re like, “well, what I really didn’t like is the way you talked to me in front of your mother last Christmas.”
Honestly, it’s been a journey for me with Dave, who’s like, the best communicator and the easiest going person. And I come from a real passive-aggressive family. So I’m great at being like, “I’m fine, everything’s great.” And he’s good at being like, “well, I know you’re not because you’re doing the high, weird voice.” In the 13 years that we’ve been together, I’ve whittled the time down from like two weeks between me being like, “I’m fine” and me being like, “here’s what happened” to like, 20 minutes, which I think is pretty good.
That’s really good. Congratulations!
It’s a journey. It’s a lifelong journey.
What’s been the most fun project you’ve worked on with Dave?
Oh my God, It is this film. And that’s a crazy thing to say because when we shot Somebody I Used to Know we had written that movie together. And he directed it, and I starred in it, and I thought that that was the most fun that we could have, because it was like a mind-meld superpower, because we had written it together and it was just so easy, our shorthand on set.
But the fun thing is taking that and translating it into the work on this movie. This was a 21-day shoot. And when you see the movie, it’s ambitious for 21 days. We were literally sprinting back to our marks to get one more take, because otherwise it’d be like, you have one take, go. So it was just so fun to do it with my partner, my soulmate, the person that I have that shorthand with. It saved us a lot of time on set, and it just was so fun to see him do something different for me too. I mean, we’re losing our minds in this movie.