Writer and director Mike White has built a career out of the eccentric neurosis that has been part of his persona since childhood. The 47-year-old filmmaker has a unique voice which can be seen and heard in HBO’s “Enlightened,” 2000’s indie sensation “Chuck and Buck, the screenplay for “The School of Rock” and just this month in a film he both wrote and directed entitled “Brad’s Status.”
In the latter, Ben Stiller plays Brad a middle-aged man going through a mid-life crisis as he tours his son (Austin Abrams) around prospective colleges in “Brad’s Status.” Narrating the film, Brad overthinks his status in life in comparison to those he went to college with. Stiller’s neuroticism fits perfectly for the role, in which he tries to pinpoint the exact moment where it all went downwards for him. His overthinking of life and exhausting pondering is superficial as he neglects the fact that he has lived a life of privilege.
The relationship he has with his son is complicated. There seems to be love for each other, but also an emotional distance that might categorically be blamed on Brad’s selfish motives. There are some fascinating conversations between father and son here, in which the onion layers are peeled and we start to understand Brad a little more.
It’s an unpredictable film, but that should come as no surprise since it comes from White’s deepest personal struggles with his own dad. We sat down at TIFF to talk to White about how much of himself is in the screenplay, his own neurotic traits. why he loves narration and the existential angst of his work.
First of all congratulations on the movie, this is one of your best screenplays.
Thank you.
How did this begin? What brought you to “Brad’s Status”?
I just wanted to write something about status, I realized I spent a lot of time thinking about it in the world, you know with romance, family, relationships or whatever, talking about your sense of the world, it seems that it wasn’t explored at the movies in a way that was relatable to me. The internal monologues I find myself doing sometimes and, I think others do, I just thought it might be interesting to get into that.
It’s an honest meditation on happiness, facing up to the mirror and this is also one of Ben Stiller’s best roles.
I had heard that Ben was curious about it. I thought he would be a kind of urban ambitious guy. I also thought that at the beginning of the movie there might be moments that make you feel like it’s familiar Ben Stiller and then to kind of subvert it with this kind of balanced melancholy, like his character doesn’t go to places where you expect him to go. I was kind of excited and I knew he can do this and he’s such a great performer and to show his more soulful side.
I thought this would be another Ben Stiller humiliation movie.
The thing about this movie is that it’s a little bit more emotional or a little bit more soulful but also not that sort of mainstream comedy. I mean I just thought that there was something here in trying to find the wrinkles in him and that was something fun to do.
How did you find Austin Abrams?
His audition was so perfect, I thought he seemed really sane and at the same time there was something odd about him and an honesty that I think he perfectly captured. His character is very intuitive when living with his parents and everything he does is to avoid confrontation with them. He doesn’t want to get into it, he just says let’s survive until college, there’s this withholding monosyllabic quality and it just felt very honest. Some people auditioned and I felt like how he was playing it flat, inherently withholding everything, so that at the end when he does open up it feels revelatory, was how the character was supposed to be shown on-screen.
Did you bring any personal touches to the screenplay?
Yeah, I don’t have kids. My father was very ambitious and I think there is a tackling of the public persona and how respect that comes from the public sphere matters to them. That was my dad and that is also me. I guess I was drawing from that stuff, my dad is as monomaniacal and manic-depressive as Brad.
Brad is clearly having a midlife crisis and an existential questioning of self-worth, is that something you have been going through as well?
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing it, you feel vulnerable in your sense of self-worth and getting caught up in people’s reactions. I try to think that I’ve gained some wisdom over the years and I’m not so caught up in each triggering moment but I realized I still do that, it’s definitely something that is embarrassing to me. Sometimes I’ll be looking up some kind of review and feeling either prideful or ashamed, it’s very human. The fact that it makes me embarrassed, I thought well maybe there’s something to write about here because I think a lot of people do that and yet it’s something that they kind of want to disown about themselves.
The existential angst in the film I found was very similar to “Enlightened.” I’m just wondering if that was done on purpose, the way “Enlightened” and “Brad’s Status” have these narrative similarities.
Well, I do think other things I’ve written like “The Good Girl” are existential, there is a desire for me to explore what’s important and what’s meaningful and if someone is having a crisis of meaning. I am trying to find things that are valuable and I do find those are the things that, for better or worse, I do grapple personally with instead of situational comedy. I tend to write existential comedy that isn’t very funny.
The narration is another similarity I found to “Enlightened.” Did you always know that Brad was going to narrate the movie in this way?
I was trying to explore how to write it with voiceover since so much of it is about how he feels about himself, it’s just something that I couldn’t tell the story without voiceover. You know, there’s a lot of people that say voiceover is a crutch but, for me especially, in the stories that I’m trying to tell and trying to get into the character’s minds, I wouldn’t be able to touch on the things that I want to talk about if I didn’t use it
What’s next for you?
I’m going to write a limited series for Amazon that I’m excited about, it’ll be a half hour show. The whole show is about a couple on honeymoon and it’ll be something different but it’ll still be me and everything I do.
“Brad’s Status” is now playing.