Some of the best stories are the simplest, and most of them (I would wager to say) came about more organically than we may imagine. Even the most outrageous stories might be based on memorable moments in the writer's own biography, on feelings and experiences that planted those first seeds of inspiration. This is true of The Peanut Butter Falcon, a 2019 flick about Zak (a young man with Down syndrome) who escapes from a retirement home in the hopes of living out his dream of becoming a pro-wrestler. Tyler has troubles of his own to run from when he finds the fresh fugitive hiding under a tarp on his boat and the two form a slow-growing friendship.
I had already seen the film twice when I learned that the entire project was built around the lead actor, Zack Gottsagen, and directed by his real-life friends Tyler Nilsen and Michael Schwartz (if you want to talk about artistic dedication, Nilsen had to live for months in a tent in the woods--with a new baby to boot--to keep the production financially afloat). Says Schwartz, "It came out naturally... even the storyline is like enjoying wrestling [because] Zack likes wrestling. The location is where Tyler grew up and we took the things that we knew really well and just put them... into the movie." I think one of the reasons that the film comes off as so honest and affecting is because it isn't overly contrived; the eventual friendship between movie Zak and Tyler, at the very least, is described as being more-or-less true to life, and many of the individual elements that make up the story are further proof that the axiom to 'write what you know' is a reasonably good one.
Funding for the film was reportedly harder to secure because of the directors' dedication to cast Zack in the lead role, but Nilsen was steadfast about making the film with his friend and did it his way, turning down millions of dollars with no guarantee of alternative funding to be had. I love that he valued his promises more than money, and that the very making of this film is a story of ideals winning out over greed and opportunism. Another thing I learned was that the library lent a helping hand in the making of The Peanut Butter Falcon!
Michael Schwartz: "We went to the library and checked out, like, how to write a movie. [background laughter] Really. Serious. That's what happened.
Tyler Nilsen: "It's true. I got a library card... and some late fees actually."
The information from the library even had a hand in the eventual story-line. When asked in the interview (below) if Zack knew how to swim, Schwartz explained that it was because they knew Zack was such a good swimmer that they wrote him in as a non-swimmer at the beginning of the story: "So when you're writing art (this is what they said in the books that we checked out from the library) things that were different in the end then they were in the beginning--so we knew Zack was a great swimmer and we knew we could get there, so we pretend he's a bad swimmer at the beginning, arc for that character growth."
It just goes to show that you never know what you can do with an ordinary library card and a little imagination! I knew I liked the movie from the start, but finding out the story behind the story was almost more satisfying than the film itself. In fact, it definitely was, and I'm even more excited to suggest the film now that I've learned a bit about its history. All of that love and dedication and loyalty to plain-old good storytelling showed. The film was one of the best examples of "art for art's own sake" that I've seen in a while; as directors Nilsen and Schwartz describe, the point was not to 'publicize a particular political cause or point of view', however noble. The point was to tell a great story.
"It has to do with what's in here, in your heart. You've got a good-guy heart... you're a hero."
– Shia LaBeouf as Tyler in The Peanut Butter Falcon
The Peanut Butter Falcon (both the film and the making-of) provide further proof that you can do anything you set your mind to. It isn't who you know or even what you know (though in that respect, the library can help to fill in the blanks!), it's the resilience of your dreams and the stubbornness of your progression toward them that will make those things into realities (good friends don't hurt either). As a recent Film and Television graduate told me, making movies really is all about making friends, forging those relationships, and then working on projects together (Good Will Hunting, Whiplash, and Reservoir Dogs, are just a few examples of movies essentially made by a bunch of friends who were still relatively green in the industry). The Peanut Butter Falcon was, in my opinion, one of the best movies of the last ten years. It was just the right mixture of everything: a little wild, a little sad, a little funny, a little scary, a little touching, a little romantic, a little quirky, and a whole lot of wonderful. I loved it.
To request The Peanut Butter Falcon from your local library, have your card number and PIN handy: https://www.essa.library.on.ca/client/en_US/essa/search/results?qu=the+peanut+butter+falcon&te=
You can also watch the interview I quoted from below: The Peanut Butter Falcon’s Ripple Effect – in the Disability Community and in Hollywood.
This one's by Victoria Murgante
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