by Dov Kornits
“The whole movie is true, and it is a super personal story for me. It’s been pretty amazing being able to share my internal life in this way with so many thousands of people,” James Morosini tells us from LA about his film I Love My Dad, which sees him play a troubled young man who blocks his undependable father, played by Patton Oswalt, on social media and mobile phone. In order to get around the block, his father assumes the identity of a desirable young woman online, and mayhem ensues.
“To me, the importance was metaphorical truth over literal truth, and so it was important that all the feelings felt accurate to me and that also my job as a filmmaker is to make as entertaining a movie as I possibly can, and so that was paramount over the literality of all of it,” he adds the obligatory disclaimer.
Was filmmaking always the dream?
“Yeah, I’ve always made films and I’ve always wanted to be an actor since I was a little kid. My uncle was Christopher Reeve, and so I always looked up to him and then I was always making little videos… I think that was part of what attracted me to the profession in the first place, seeing him as a completely different person on screen and then knowing him personally; that felt like magic to me and made me experience such wonder, and it just made me want to give other people that experience of wonder. And so that’s what I’ve been chasing since I was a little kid.”
We imagine that you would have been part of the generation that was using their parents’ VHS cameras…
“Yeah, I was using my dad’s VHS camera. He would make home videos with it and then I would use it to shoot action figures and put together little stories. And then it became my cell phone camera and then I took some video classes in high school. After that, I started doing theater and making shorts, and then I went to USC and did a lot of plays, a lot of shorts and stuff. Did my first feature [Threesomething (2018)] right after that. And here we are.”
How long did it take to get I Love My Dad up?
“It probably took around a year from the moment I finished the script until we were actually making it. It was a matter of finding the actor to play Chuck, building the cast around Patton [Oswalt], and then figuring out what our production strategy was, because we made it in the height of Covid; that presented a whole host of other challenges.”
The mobile technology and social media aspect of the film would have been logistic positive during Covid, in a way…
“In a way, it was, yeah. I mean it almost felt like the perfect movie to make during Covid, because so much of it was oriented around isolation and people talking to each other digitally, so from a production standpoint that was helpful.”
With Patton cast as Chuck [the cast also includes Amy Landecker, Rachel Dratch and Lil Rel Howery], were you always going to play Franklin?
“I’d wanted to do it for a long time. Patton supported the decision, certainly. I wanted to make sure that it was the right fit, and so I decided to screen test myself opposite him so that I could run it by the entire team and make sure that it was the right decision. Because we saw a lot of great actors for the role, and it was ultimately a team decision about how we were going to make the film.”
The film premiered at South by Southwest [SXSW], was that exciting for you, and is that where Magnolia bought the film?
“They bought the film after South by Southwest. We won the Grand Jury and Audience awards. I’ve been a fan of so many of the films coming out of that festival since I was a lot younger, and there’s a certain irreverence to a lot of the films that they program. They push boundaries with the stories that they support, and they take risks in the stories that they program. I can’t think of a better festival to have premiered this film, because the audiences are just razor sharp and they have great senses of humour and big hearts, and so it was really the perfect place to share this film.”
The film was released in cinemas in the US, with a release window. Was that important for you?
“Yeah, it was. Audiences have been really vocal during the movie, yelling at the screen and I think part of the experience of watching this film, is watching it with other people so you can collectively make noise and talk about how insane what you’re seeing is. It was really important to me that this film was seen in that context.”
When you were writing I Love My Dad, did you see it as a comedy? What do you think is the film’s genre, if you had to slot it in one?
“I saw it as a comedic thriller… almost. For Franklin’s part of the story, he’s really falling in love, but it’s all within the context of Chuck’s elaborate ruse that he’s trying to keep up, and there’s something kind of thrillery about that, even though it’s funny. He’s running out of time, the stakes are super high… I didn’t see it as any particular genre necessarily, I just wanted to make a film that was as compelling and emotional as I could possibly make it.”
I Love My Dad is opening the Sydney Underground Film Festival on September 8, 2022
