'Splitsville' Writers & Stars Michael Angelo Covino & Kyle Marvin, Topic Studio Heads Ryan Heller & Michael Bloom

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0:35Anne Thompson:Welcome to Screen Talk, IndieWire's weekly podcast, bringing you up to speed on the latest goings on in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson in Los Angeles. And this week, while Ryan hangs out in Spain, we celebrate the return of writer-director star Michael Covino and his co-writer star Kyle Marvin in Splitsville, the comedy that debuted at Cannes. And I remember remember them well from The Climb back in 2019. We had fun in Cannes with Eric Cohn, obviously, back in the day. And they landed Agency UTA. They got distributors, Sony Pictures Classics. And when I saw them at the festival this year, I promised I would grill them again.

1:20Anne Thompson:And then later in the show, we will also talk to their producers, Topic Studios, who have their fingers in many projects. Welcome, guys. I've been looking forward to this. So let's just start off a little bit with Topic Studios. You signed like a first look deal with them back, you know, back around the time of the climb. What's been going on with you guys? They seem to be still working with you. Yeah, they haven't gotten sick of us yet. So that's been nice. They've been great partners. They, you know, we made the climb with them and then did a first look deal with them where we wrote a bunch of films within that deal.

1:55And this was the first one that we made together, which was, you know, since then, which is Splitsville. And yeah, they're great partners because they kind of allow us to work with any distributor and they'll co-finance or they're fully financed. So it sort of was the perfect fit for us because not every movie that we're writing and making is perfect for every distributor.

2:14Anne Thompson:Right. I was going to say, I think part of the part of the beauty of topic is that they are open to us doing more ambitious sort of bigger projects. And at the same time, they love to support us to do films like Splitsville, which is a little bit more, you know, close to our chest and not smaller, but a little more compact. Well, yeah, it's like it's like it has ambitions of being like a big in scope and scale comedy. But at the end of the day, it's like, you know, it's it's it's kind of level budget are we talking about here? It's bigger than your last one. Yeah. Yeah. It's much bigger than the last one.

2:46It's in the it's in the tens of millions as opposed to the singles of millions.

2:54Anne Thompson:no it looks great it looks great and and you know you get to you get to destroy uh a hampton's uh mansion which is the the great the great the great set piece we're going to get to that we're going to get to that but i'm curious about this um sort of road through hollywood you know a lot of people get discovered they find um an agency they go to all the meetings that you know you guys have both had several projects. Michael, you co-starred with Tom Hanks in News of the World. Kyle, you directed the sports comedy Beatty for Brady and starred in We Crashed for Apple TV. You've been making the rounds.

3:31Anne Thompson:Talk a little bit about that experience, what that's been like for you. Well, I think we had a particularly unique experience in that we've been trying to do this for a very long time and our breakout or our film that was intended to break out you know was uh supposed to release on march 20 2020 so we had a bit of a stutter step to like this really fun festival tour that then abruptly um you know the film never never quite released so it was interesting because it um it opened a lot of doors and allowed us to take meetings and have you know develop projects and have conversations with with brilliant uh people that we always dreamed of working with.

4:11But it was a bit of a, you know, the paths led to, you know, some acting work for me and Kyle. And then, you know, Kyle directing a studio comedy that we never really expected to be making. It's kind of been fun, but I think this film was exciting because it was almost like a return to what we really always wanted to be doing, which was writing our own stories, acting in it, directing, you know, kind of just like fully creatively controlling the process.

4:39Anne Thompson:So before we go into Splitsville, Kyle, what was it like working on 80 for Brady? What was that experience like? Yeah, I mean, it was a dream. It's interesting because, you know, we've been developing a ton of movies. We've been writing a bunch of stuff. And then this one came across our plate sort of in the midst of COVID. And obviously with the caliber of talent attached, it was a no brainer, really. And we, you know, we had a clear idea. We wanted to make it quickly. and because I think Mike and I come from producing and sort of have that mindset of like how to efficiently make things, it lined up kind of perfectly with what Fitz Steven was trying to accomplish with the movie and the speed it had to move.

5:19And so I think we just jumped on board and rapidly made that movie. It was incredible. It was incredible working with all those women. They're all such forces of nature and they're so goddamn funny. It was just sort of like, we shot it really quickly and they showed up and worked so hard. And it was really interesting to see people of their caliber and at their experience level, but the way that they put in work, the way that they worked the campaign for that movie. I mean, it really was an eye-opener of the amount of effort it takes in order to make it to where they've made it. And I think that's something I took from that experience.

5:55Anne Thompson:So Michael, are you still based in New York and Kyle here in Hollywood? I'm in New York. Yeah, I'm in New York. We have a cool little studio here with our company. Yeah. And I pulled a parachute and went to Oregon. I have children. So I went up there for their education. Are you living in Oregon? That's cool. I am. Yeah. Yeah. I love it up there. And quality of life is great. And I am a big fan of nature. And it happens to have a lot of it. So it lines up perfectly. So tell me about your favorite subject appears to be infidelity. You have returned to the well. So you have two guys who are best friends again, like the first one.

6:39Anne Thompson:You have this extraordinary scene at the beginning of the movie, Kyle, where you're breaking up with your wife. She's technically breaking up with him. Yeah, yeah. That's a one way. It's a one way. It's a one way. It's a one way break up. And you woefully take off across the fields and show up bedraggled at your friend Paul's relatively deluxe abode. And you find out that he's in an open marriage, that that's the secret of his success, or so you think. And you promptly sleep with his wife. Of course. Johnson. As one dies. So, and you're adding two fully realized women to the mix more than in the first, the first movie.

7:25Anne Thompson:Talk about how you came to cast these particular women. They're amazing. Both of them. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're incredible. We really lucked out. We had met Dakota and she, we were trying to find something to work together on. And we had this idea for the film. And when we shared it with her, she kind of immediately just got it. And so that was a very quick process of, you know, we shared the idea with her. Then we came back to her with a script and she was like, great, I'm in. Let's go figure out how to do it. And she came on to produce. And Adria, we had similarly met briefly and she read the script and she really kind of like, I think that role is challenging because it's not on the page, not a very likable role.

8:05And, you know, it's like no one really wants to play the person in the film who cheats and has no redemption. like there's not a redemption written or built into it. And that was exciting to us because oftentimes in life, there isn't a redemption built in, but the people stay together. And Adria really got it. And she kind of, she understood like that she could play that and embody it and bring it to life in a way where you still didn't hate her at the end, or at least I, I don't. So yeah, I don't know that we, we really, I mean, forget about the fact that they're two of the most talented, beautiful, incredible actresses in Hollywood.

8:42Like they, they got these roles and really understood the characters. So, so at the core that it, it made my job as a director very easy because like they were just bringing me, they were bringing more ideas than I could keep up with, you know?

8:57Anne Thompson:So I love the description, extreme domestic disorder. Somebody came up with that. I thought that was perfect. You both seem to know this subject really well. are you are you uh are you angling toward how how much uh of this in real life we encounter either that or these are your fantasies i don't know um no talk about writing together the process and how you come up with all this crazy shit i think for the most part i mean i think really what it is we spend a lot of time drinking coffee and walking around that's probably you're talking about the specifics of how we write together. I do, I do. Keyboard, sometimes notepad.

9:43No, I think a lot of it comes from us just having conversations and sort of talking about experiences with other people. And we're together sort of all the time. We are on a company together, you know, we're constantly working together. And a lot of times we'll just be, you know, we'll be walking down the street, see something, and one of us will take a voice note, like, oh my God, and we'll sort of note it down. So we have this sort of - at a party with a group of friends and they'll be bragging their open relationship and we'll be like oh cool and then cool yeah two months later they'll be like it's not it's not good and you know not that not that that's the case for for all people experiencing that but i think we find that inspiration in daily life and in interaction where we just kind of you you feel that there's something there and you have to run toward it it's almost like a moth to a flame where like you gravitate toward these sort of potent ideas and situations in life.

10:35And I think that we have this sort of inclination toward, you know, those films like this that used to be made in the 70s of like these sort of screwball sex comedies and just like things that were, you know, films that were dealing with themes like this and infidelity in really fun, playful ways that kind of removed the judgment and just let it go off the rails. I don't know. Kyle and I talk a lot about how like we keep, we constantly are watching those movies and it'd be fun to sort of make a contemporary version of that. We sort of find things that are just things that we can't let go of. And those really become the anchors of our grip.

11:14Like that, that opening scene was something that we talked about like, Oh, that would be crazy. That would be crazy. And then, and so that just became an anchor and sort of find our anchor. And, and, and then ideally every scene is an anchor. Every scene is one of those scenes where we're like, Oh, that's an undeniable thing we're interested in exploring. And so that's sort of the way that the scripts tend to work themselves out is like, we just keep trying to say like, what are the most interesting, most compelling anchors until the entire script is just a scene of, you know, a set of scenes of those.

11:46Anne Thompson:The Supreme scene is the destructive brawl. That was one of the initial ones. What is it that we like so much about this, about destroying beautiful homes and everything in them. Talk about how long that took, how you did it. You know, it's brutal. It's beautiful. Before we talk about how we did it, I think that the impetus for why that was so exciting to us, I think comes from this innate sort of like, we all know people and sometimes we are people who talk a big game where we say, you know, we're walking contradictions in ways. you know we'll say oh like I'm not jealous and it's like of course and then and then confronted with the thing that you're supposed to not be jealous about all of a sudden you know this character is very jealous and um we just loved that as a jump like there was something about this character who pretended like he could handle anything and then when he when his his best friend reveals that uh he and his wife slept together it can't even come out in words because it's so visceral response that it has to only come out in physicality and just like it almost like the whole entirety of the conversation of that would normally happen about the anger and frustration it went away and it just became a physical you know like like like this this absurd physical spectacle that you just get to witness the conversation through fighting so that was the that was sort of the launching off point and once we landed at that idea it just became like what are the styles and inspirations of fighting that we can sort of take and embrace and find and find their find their way into the film and I think that part of the fun too is like you know what would best friends do in this scenario so there was always like I think throughout the fight some of the part of the fun of the fight is that there's all they're always at their heart sort of like best friends who don't actually want to murder each other it's more like how badly can they hurt each other how far can they hurt each other without killing the other person and that's destroying each other the guy's shit too destroying everything they can get their hands on yeah everything they can get their hands on so so yeah we did have to find a house that would allow us to destroy it you know without giving too many spoilers away like we had to lie in a room with a pool liner so that we could you know completely explode something filled with water and then i guess it's in the trailer like we blow up this fish tank and then you know water goes everywhere and go out of a second story window.

14:18You had to crash through a second story window. And, you know, so there was a lot of big things that required logistical, like finding a house. And then, you know, a lot of it was we were going to destroy, you know, we were definitely putting holes in the wall. So it was a question of like, how much we had to pay to just repair the house at the end, getting the owner on board with that.

14:40Anne Thompson:So Kyle, you also seem to enjoy, you don't seem to mind showing yourself in the nude, I got to say. Not that any of us mind, I'm telling you. I think for us, it's partially just a comedy of the whole thing. I mean, I think there's also empathy you feel as a person watching. Everyone's biggest nightmare is being naked on stage in front of a room full of people. And I think people recognize that. And when you see compromising situations it's not presented in a sexy light you know what I mean it's it's always we sort of yeah it's for comedy and vulnerability I think people really see that and go like oh god that's I like you really feel a little bit and I think for us it's we you know it's a tool in the tool kit to say like great this is both funny and hilarious because of its awkwardness and also and also I think it's a way for you to be like yeah this guy really is out there you know what I mean, he's laying it all out.

15:39Anne Thompson:Well, you also put him through the ringer. I mean, he's staying in the house with his broken up wife. He's having one lover after another, and then they're all moving in. And you're still there making friends with them and making coffee for them. What is that? A lot of when we write, we're writing, you know, we just write. I think our approach to comedy is more situational. it's like it's centered around character but it's putting these characters in situations that we find to be you know uncomfortable but entertaining but funny at the same time and so half the time we're writing we're writing things that we want to see the other actor do especially when we're writing for each other so there's a fun dynamic when we're you know like when we're writing the fight scene or like and then you know kyle you're nate and he's naked and kyle's like oh man and or it's like then you know he falls down the stairs and i'm like oh okay here we go you know like because i'm like all right how are we going to do this and there's something you know because we did all our own stunts on this movie and because we you know we didn't really use any stunt we had a stunt coordinator but we didn't have any stunt doubles for the most part it was a lot of um anyway there's a lot of that there was a lot of like what can we write and how challenging is it going to be to make and i think for me it's you know it's really fun to perform those scenes just because of like from a comic standpoint and also from like how would you survive this you know what i mean and i think for those kind of scenarios stacking as many things up against the character as possible just makes for fun performing so you shot this in 35 um in montreal is that right so so why why 35 why was that important to you well i mean if we don't do it, it's going to go away.

17:26So we, that's part of it. I think Kyle and I care deeply about cinema and we care deeply about film and we care deeply about the heritage of kind of what the films that came before us that we're trying to sort of like be in conversation with. There was also something about this film that felt to us, like we were trying to capture a style of filmmaking of the past and, and, and make something that felt a bit more timeless and less contemporary. And the moment you, you shoot on film, you're looking at dailies that feel like they could have been shot, you know, any, it takes it out of time and place.

18:06And it's sort of just, it immediately imbues it with like the immediacy of whatever was happening with the, the emulsion and the, chemical process. And, you know, so that's the more sort of romantic version of why we made that choice. But then on a purely just practical level, it changes the process of filmmaking. It raises the bar for everyone on set. And there's a bit more importance placed on when you roll the camera. There's a bit, it's a bit more methodical process, and it's a bit more intentional. And I think when you're shooting, you know, in a limited number of days, and you don't have a big, you don't have all the money in the world and you don't have the unlimited schedule.

18:47You kind of want to approach it where everyone's like, all right, every take counts and we're going to rehearse a bit more so that we can get it in three takes instead of 15 takes. And so that, that became the process on this. And I found it to be like, it was challenging at times, but man, did people step up once the camera was rolling. So like it, to me, I would almost exclusively shoot film if I can. there's also something to the fact that like we can make perfect images now like we can make crystal clear 20k sharp images and there's this race to like perfection and and like it almost takes it away from the human nature of it like imperfection is what we love imperfection in film where cameras got bumped or there's stuff there or the light blows out are things that we love and and are enamored by and are human.

19:38They're errors. And I think in this race, to make everything so sharp and perfect, we are losing a little bit of the humanity. And I think film forces you to have a little of that imperfection because it just introduces the uncertainty, and the uncertainty is human. You know what I mean?

19:54Anne Thompson:I really commend you on this. It's a very, very funny movie. I saw it really late at night at Cannes when I was exhausted. And I just, at the Agnes Varda, you know? And I was really, I just laughed my head off. I was, we were rolling in the aisles, as my father would say. Yeah, that's sort of the, not that that's a question, but I was pleasantly surprised that, you know, when we premiered it at Cannes, like, you've got a room full of people speaking all these different languages, but somehow slapstick comedy really is the universal language. It's pretty wild to be reminded of that. Like we sort of knew it when we made the film, but to hear like the unison of just guttural laughter in that way was kind of a, it was one of the, you know, pure moments of joy in my life.

20:45Like I've never quite experienced anything like that. And to that point, we'd rather people be rolling in the aisles than on their couches. So, you know what I mean? We like the idea that they're in the theater, that you have that experience in the theater with other people in that sort of like format.

20:59Anne Thompson:So how did Neon get involved? So Neon came on and they financed and produced the film with us. So we, when we, you know, we wrote the film for Topic as part of our first look deal, and very quickly cast brought on the actresses. And once we had our team, you know, our ensemble together, we shared it with Neon, who, you know, we know them pretty well and have had a good relationship and never worked with them over the years. But they they love the script and wanted to make the film. And so it was a pretty easy process. That's fantastic. So are you you've seen all these stories, many of them, you know, inspired by Naked Gun about the dearth of comedies, you know, the death of comedies.

21:44Anne Thompson:What's going on here? I think I think there's there's room for a lot more comedies. And I'm hoping that yours will be a success so that we will get more of them. I'm hoping ours will be a success too even if we don't get more of them it would just be nice to have a success just one it's funny because people say that and we always are like but no one just boycotted laughter there's not a general consensus that we're just not allowed to we're in the same place it's entirely box office driven and I think the dwindling when we tether a film's success to just the numbers at box office it's a hard thing because we've grown accustomed to watching comedies at home on, you know, like on streaming platforms.

22:30Right. And it's like, it's sort of a comfort food. It's like, you know, people do laundry, they throw on like an episode of Parks and Rec, or they throw on some comedy from the nineties that they love or the two thousands. And I think, you know, I think we're all susceptible to that. I think we all do that. And, um, what I think has been lost in that is that sort of like the foundation of why I became a filmmaker was because of watching comedies growing up was, was because of Farrelly brothers movies and going to see movies like the water boy and like, like, like, you know, like being a little kid going like, Oh, this is, this is, there's, you know, going to see Ace Ventura and movies like that.

23:07It's like, those were the films that I would look forward to and crave. And, and, and I don't think that I don't, I think that there's a disconnect between what maybe audiences want and what, what, what we're giving them. And so I think that there's like real room. I think Naked Gun, I love Naked Gun. I thought it was, I thought it was wide entertaining and just like, I think they knocked it out of the park with that film, but like that irreverent style comedy, it's really exciting to see that come back because, and I think on a holistic level, when you have a society that like has, you know, when we're going to theaters and watching comedies and laughing in communal spaces in that way.

23:43I think there's a, not to get too heady about it, but I think there's a therapeutic nature and quality to it where it's just, yeah, I think, I don't think there's anything better. So like my hope is that this unlocks something where a lot more, you know, comedies start getting made. It's funny to say this, but I also think that comedy is a little bit risky. Like I think, I think as an industry, as an industry, I think when we're in a place of sort of contraction trying to find what's safe in the box office doing comedy i think can for studios can feel a little dangerous and risky because it's a swing you know what i mean like you can blow up and make something terrible or you can hit it and i think it's part it's partially just um the fact that like people should be taking the risk of doing these comedies you know that's not a naked gun is not necessarily the easiest reboot to to put your weight behind but i think it's things like this that feel feel risky are the ones that make are that make great movies i don't think people realize how hard that is to do like to remake naked gun like that is like that's a feat i do to do it with that tone that's such a feat and it's like it's all you know you don't have

24:57Anne Thompson:liam neeson that's an impossible thing to do he had to fight with the studio to insist akiva Schaffer had that he couldn't cast comedians, that he had to cast straight people, as it were. Hard to imagine. So what is you what do you have coming up? You've got what happened to you were going to make a series called Falling in Love. Whatever happened to that? Oh, great question. Yeah, maybe someone will will we kind of the strikes happened. Actually, that's what happened. We were like about to go out with it and the strikes happened. And then when we came out of the strikes, we just went straight into making this.

25:29So maybe we'll I don't know, maybe we'll go try to make that again. That was a fun idea. We've spent a lot of this time since The Climb writing a ton of stuff and so I think we have plenty of movies in the hopper ready to go. It's about sort of just figuring out which one in which sequence and so we're excited for the success or hopeful success of this movie will enable us to sort of make those movies with our partners because I think we've got a lot to make.

25:58Anne Thompson:You've got plenty of material in your trunk. We're ready to go. We've written a couple of scripts that are set up. So that's nice, but not nothing that's been like Greenwood yet. All right. I'm looking forward. Thanks for coming on guys. It was fun to have you. Thank you, man. Nice talking to you. Thanks for having us. Always. Yeah. We'll see you again at Cannes. Absolutely.

26:18Anne Thompson:I want to welcome to Screen Talk, Ryan Heller, Executive VP of Film and Documentaries, and Michael Bloom, CEO of Topic Studios. Welcome, gentlemen. Hey, Anne. Great to see you. You should know, we just did an interview with Michael Covino and his co-writer and star. I love Splitsville. Splitsville makes me happy. How did you guys get involved with them? You have been supporting them for a long time at Topic Studios. Yeah, we have. We have. Want to take that one? We knew Mike as a producer and Kyle as a producer, but we really discovered him as a filmmaker with the short, The Climb, that was at Sundance back in, it must have been 2018.

27:02And we just immediately felt connected to him as a voice. And he pitched the feature version of The Climb, which we ended up developing with them and making very, very quickly. I think we were in production the August after they were at Sundance with The Shorts. So we managed to develop that script quickly, get into production, and we took that one to Cannes the following year.