By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent
As the father of 7-year-old twins, actor Danny Pudi knows the loss of freedom when little ones enter your life.
“We don’t have family near us so if we want to go see a movie or go out to dinner with friends, we need to schedule a babysitter at least two weeks in advance,” Pudi told AsAmNews about him and his real-life wife, Bridget Showalter. ” I think the idea of being able to hang onto your independence while having kids is something very real to me and my friends.”
Pudi, 40, plays Jeff Panaras in the new adult comedy, Babysplitters. Jeff and his movie wife , Sarah (Emily Chang), aren’t in agreement on having children. Sarah wants kids, Jeff isn’t so sure.
Their friends Taylor (Maiara Walsh) and Don (Eddie Alfano) can relate. Together the foursome plots a plan to share a baby and split the time. They see it as the best of both worlds-having the love of a child while maintaining their independence as a couple.
The outlandish plot goes from a sense of reality to the outrageous and back to reality again.
“A lot of my complaints, concerns, and hesitations about the potential effect of kids on adult life made it into the early scenes that play out between both Jeff and Sarah, and the full foursome including Don and Taylor,” said director/writer Sam Friedlander to AsAmNews.
“Many of the early discussions that happen between Jeff and Sarah have snippets of dialog from actual conversations (aka: arguments) I had with my wife earlier in our relationship.”
The cast is a lot more diverse than most. Friedlander says he wrote Chang’s character,Sarah, as Asian from the beginning because he’s heard from friends about the pressure in Asian families to have children. He cast Pudi as Jeff because Pudi was just right for the part. Maiara is actually half-Brazilian, “so she identifies as Brazilian American and Latina,” said Friedlander, who also said having a diverse cast made sense.
“The fears, trials, and tribulations of deciding to have kids, and then parenting them, is as universal as you can get. It’s a discussion in every culture and for people of every background,” he said.
As the plot evolves, the couples realize executing their plan is a lot more complicated than they imagined. Efforts to get out of one dilemma lead to another. Each shift in plot becomes another humorous situation.
“In the movie, my character is trying to create the perfect situation to raise a child. I can relate to that,” said Pudi. “Sometimes I wish we could have two other adults around ready to love and care for our kids while my wife and I go for a walk together!”
Friedlander began writing this film when he was childless. His wife became pregnant when he began prepping for shooting.
“The 2 months of prep, 6 weeks of shooting, and 5 months of post overlapped almost exactly with the pregnancy, he said. “About a week after we locked picture, my wife gave birth to our son, Noah. I did most of post-production as a new dad, with a whole different perspective, which was such a serendipitous and perfect way to do it. I got to creatively shape the movie as a non-parent, an expecting parent, and an actual parent.”
Babysplitters plays Wednesday at CAAMFEST in Oakland.
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I dont think I could write this script now, becase now my feelings about everything are so different. It was a fun pairing with Danny, because when we first talked about the script and his connection to it, he came at it form the other direction — he recognized a previous version of himself in the character of Jeff, but now as a father he obviously brought that perspective to it as well. For example, when it came to the actual birth scene, I just kind of let Danny do his thing. He’d been though it with his wife and I never had. It was nice to have that authenticity for shooting those scenes.
