TORONTO — In introducing the Saturday night TIFF world premiere of “Good Fortune,” his feature debut as a writer-director, comedian Aziz Ansari told the audience the three words that are scary in Hollywood right now: original theatrical comedy. But the one word that is never scary is Keanu.
Speaking from the stage of the festival’s Roy Thomson Hall, Ansari recalled that his star Keanu Reeves broke his kneecap early in production.
“I found out he broke his kneecap and I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Ansari continued, Reeves himself standing onstage just a few feet away. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, what is Keanu going to say? Is he going to need some time off? Is he going to drop out of the movie?’”
“And you know what Keanu said?” Ansari added. “Nothing. He just kept showing up to work and never complained, not once,” Ansari said. “He worked through what surely must have been excruciating pain and delivered a hilarious, touching performance, and he is the soul of this movie.”
The film opens with Reeves standing atop L.A.’s iconic Griffith Observatory with a small pair of angel wings on his back. Reeves, in a change of pace from his recent action work in the “John Wick” movies, plays Gabriel, a low-level angel given the task of stopping people from texting and driving. That is until he sees Arj (Ansari), who is struggling to make ends meet while working both at a big-box hardware store and as a food delivery driver.
Hoping to show him the grass isn’t always greener, Gabriel switches Arj’s life with that of Jeff (Seth Rogen), an ultrarich tech investor whose days seem to largely consist of going back and forth between his sauna and his cold plunge.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Arj much prefers Jeff’s life to his own and is reluctant to switch back. The situation becomes more complicated for Gabriel as he loses his job as an angel and must learn the tribulations and joys of being human, while still trying to fix the problem with Arj and Jeff.
For all the film’s gentle humor and quietly humanist spirit, “Good Fortune” is also rife with a palpable anger at the income inequality that motivates its story, the reality that robots are replacing the work of humans and that the excesses of the few seem predicated on the deprivation of many.
Aziz Ansari, left, and Keanu Reeves in the movie “Good Fortune.”
(Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)
The day after the film’s premiere, 42-year-old Ansari is upbeat and dapper in a gray plaid coat, black turtleneck and black slacks as he sat down for an interview in Toronto to discuss the movie and all that led up to it. After the end of his Emmy-winning series “Master of None” in 2021, Ansari had begun shooting a feature called “Being Mortal” that was shut down in 2022 a few weeks into production over allegations of misconduct by its star Bill Murray. Then production of “Good Fortune,” Ansari’s pivot away from “Being Mortal,” was delayed by the Hollywood labor strikes of 2023. Seemingly at long last, Ansari’s debut opens Oct. 17.
When “Being Mortal” got shut down, did you feel like, “Am I ever going to get to make a movie?”
I didn’t feel that way. Steven Spielberg has this story of — what’s the movie he did? “1941.” That didn’t do well and he was like, just immediately throw yourself in another thing. And I really thought about that, and that’s what I did. I just immediately went into “Good Fortune.” I mean, I had a couple of days where I was like,“Oh, no” and it was also so shocking. I think your mind doesn’t process it because it’s not really sinking in that this is what’s really happening. It probably still a piece of me [in which] it hasn’t really sunk in. It was definitely disappointing, but part of me is like, this is what needed to happen. This is the movie that should be out first.
“Being Mortal,” it’s funny, but it’s heavy. The Atul Gawande book, it’s about end-of-life issues. So it’s like, “Oh, OK. It’s another heavy drama thing.” People may have just gotten pissed, like, “What’s this guy doing?” So “Good Fortune” is definitely, to me, if you like those first two seasons of “Master of None,” I feel like what you’d hope I’d do is kind of evolve that style into a feature film and raise the level of it by having Seth and Keanu and Keke [Palmer] and Sandra [Oh], and as a feature film rather than a show.
As sweet and funny as the movie is, there also is a real righteous anger behind it. Where does that come from?
I think I got it from when I was interviewing all these people about the subject matter in the film, when I was doing research to write the Arj character. That attitude seeps in there.
“It was definitely disappointing, but part of me is like, this is what needed to happen,” Ansari says of “Being Mortal,” his first attempt at directing a feature, one that ran into production troubles with its star, Bill Murray,
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
During the opening credits of the movie, you say the line “The American Dream is dead.”
But that’s a frustration a lot of people like that guy Arj feel.
But then, you are a very successful entertainer —
Oh, yeah. Me and Seth are Jeff, no question.
How do you reconcile that? Are you concerned some people might dismiss the movie out of hand for that simple reason?
If you’re writing, you have to be able to write outside your own experience — for someone who’s like Arj, who doesn’t have the platform to tell these stories. When I did “Master of None,” we did an episode called “New York, I Love You.” And there was a segment about taxi drivers, a segment about a doorman and a segment about a woman who’s deaf. And doing that episode taught me a process of interviewing people and figuring out how to get these stories right when they’re not your experience. We did an episode in Season 3 about a woman going through IVF. I’d never done that or anything, and it had never been a part of my life. But I talked to all these people, and from the feedback I got, we got it right. And that’s what I did with this.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but for a movie coming out from a Hollywood studio, Seth gives a speech at the end that is politically radical, about how rich people can’t expect to have so much without others getting angry.
It’s kind of nuts. Some of the stuff that’s in there, I’m like, “Whoa, we really got away with something here.” Some of the stuff that’s in there, and the trailer kind of hides a little bit of that stuff, I think there are people that’d be like, “Oh, s—.”
At the premiere, there was big applause for the line, “F— AI.” Is that your feeling as well?
I’d rather say that I’m pro-human. I’m pro-people.
Keanu Reeves, left, Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari in the movie “Good Fortune.”
(Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)
The movie is very ambitious in combining the character stories and the attention to the notion of income inequality. Was it hard for you in balancing the characters and that theme? Was the work of that more when you were writing it or when you were editing what you’d shot?
It was both. And that’s the difference between a TV show and a movie. You have a different canvas. But it was a tough thing to do. And it was my first time doing it. I remember writing a second one while I was editing, and it was such a great help because you kind of see a few moves ahead. You’re like, “Oh, wait a second, I should get to this faster.” You kind of can see your mistakes a little bit in an earlier stage because you have more experience. This is another reason I really want to get into it again and start working on the next thing because I feel like I learned a lot from it.
That’s the thing that’s so interesting about doing stand-up and doing filmmaking. Stand-up, it’s so easy to “get to the gym,” right? If I really wanted to go to do stand-up tonight, I could do it. I could go find a club in Toronto and jump on a show. But If I wanted to go direct, that’s a big journey to get to the gym. So you have fewer opportunities to kind of get the reps in.
Shooting a movie is in L.A. has become such an economic and political issue for the city. Was that a consideration in making the movie in Los Angeles?
I wanted it to be in L.A., I felt like this movie had to be set in L.A. Jeff’s not going to be living in whatever place that gives you the tax credit. And L.A. really is the perfect backdrop for the story to me. And it was challenging, but you also get the benefit of working with some of the greatest technicians in the world in L.A. And I also just love being a part of the lineage of films that are set in L.A. I watched that documentary, “Los Angeles Plays itself,” and that was so fun to watch that and just see how every movie has its own L.A., whether it’s “Heat” or “Tangerine” or “Chinatown.”
And I feel like “Good Fortune” has its L.A., and it’s exciting to show some of these neighborhoods, to see people responding to seeing Eagle Rock or Los Feliz. Whenever I was writing the movie, I always thought about that taco place in Hollywood — it’s across the street from Jitlada. I always thought about that place. I thought there was something so cinematic, and it was a hard location to clear. And our guy [location manager] Jay Traynor, he made it happen. And finding Jeff’s house was so hard. But it all came together, and I loved showing Koreatown and that Gabriel works at a Korean barbecue restaurant. Just showing all these parts of L.A.
I want to be sure to ask you about working with Keanu. People are really responding to this role. And I’m having a hard time putting my finger on what that is about.
No, I’m feeling this. Even since [the premiere], I’m feeling it. I knew people would like him, but it’s hitting on another level.
Why do you think that is? What is the alchemy of Keanu in that role?
I was thinking about this when I was eating lunch. If you look at the roles he’s done that are comedic, whether it’s in “Bill & Ted” or in “Parenthood,” there’s this innocence, this sweetness and this kindness that’s in there. And then Gabriel, to me, is the progression of that. And it’s also that you have Keanu at 61, where when I first met him, I was like, “Hey, there’s something about you that people are responding to and who you are as a real person that I don’t think I’ve seen onscreen. And I think you can show some of that with Gabriel.”
It also has all of his comedy superpowers just dialed to the max. And we were just having so much fun. It just became playtime. We were coming up with bits all the time: Oh, he’s never used the internet before. Let’s just write a quick scene where he’s using the internet for the first time. What’s he gonna do? He’s gonna look at photos of baby elephants. It became such a fun joke bag. You could just make him do anything. And it was funny, the guy’s never done anything — if he takes a bite of a taco goes, “Wow!” It’s really the funniest character I’ve ever written for.