In 'Ezra,' a Struggling Comedian Bonds with his Autistic Son

Summary

Podcast Summary: "In 'Ezra,' a Struggling Comedian Bonds with his Autistic Son"

Podcast: All Of It (WNYC)
Host: Koosha Navadar (in for Alison Stewart)
Guests: Tony Goldwyn (Director), Tony Spiridakis (Screenwriter)
Air Date: May 31, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode of "All Of It" explores the making and meaning behind the new film "Ezra," a deeply personal story of parenting a neurodivergent child, written by Tony Spiridakis and directed by his longtime friend Tony Goldwyn. Inspired by Spiridakis’ real-life experience raising his autistic son, the film centers on Max (Bobby Cannavale), a stand-up comedian navigating messy co-parenting, personal failings, and the societal challenges of raising his autistic son, Ezra. With the film premiering in theaters, the conversation dives into themes of representation, family dynamics, authentic casting, and the messy, heartfelt realities of life on and off the spectrum.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Inspiration & Origins of the Film

• Personal Roots:

  • Spiridakis’ own journey with his son Dimitri’s autism diagnosis (03:24)
    • Quote: “My son Dimitri was three years old, he stopped making eye contact...we went to the doctor, and my wife and I were told that our son was on the spectrum...I had no clue what autism was.” — Tony Spiridakis ([03:24])
  • The impact of negative judgment and shame around his son's behaviors led Spiridakis to want to explore this in a film, focusing not only on the autistic child, but the family’s experience (04:58).
    • Quote: “You don’t want your son to be sort of criminalized, right, because he’s autistic, so he has no filter.” — Tony Spiridakis ([05:14])

• Shaping the Story:

  • Goldwyn, a friend of Spiridakis for 40+ years, saw the script evolve over time and, after reading a revised draft, felt it had finally “cracked” what it needed to become a compelling film they could make together (06:25-07:44).
    • Quote: “I read it and it just hit me really hard. I felt that Tony had somehow cracked certain things in terms of the way he was structuring the script. That really worked. And I felt, oh, this is a movie now.” — Tony Goldwyn ([06:56])

Representation & Challenging Stereotypes

• Critique of Autism Portrayals:
  • Spiridakis notes the overemphasis on autistic “superpowers” or savant abilities in media, which can minimize the full, messy reality and ripple effect on families (08:05).
    • Quote: “There has to be a sort of...superpower attributable to this thing called autism. And I just felt that was...like it minimized it somehow.” — Tony Spiridakis ([08:09])
  • The film focuses on the dynamics between family members, especially parents, and how the experience of autism alters their lives collectively (09:18).

Family Dynamics – Making “the Big Salad”

• Portraying Parental Imperfection:

  • Spiridakis uses his father’s saying about making “the biggest salad” (making a mess) to show how parents make mistakes despite their best intentions (09:18).
    • Quote: “Parents are going to make a mess. They don’t get up in the morning and say, ‘how am I going to make a salad out of my kid’s life?’ They try to do the right thing.” — Tony Spiridakis ([09:23])

• On-Screen Parental Conflict:

  • The film dramatizes the tension between Max and Jenna’s parenting philosophies — particularly regarding special education and medication for Ezra. Spiridakis emphasizes that both perspectives are valid, and navigating these differences is a universal parental experience, but can be extra fraught in the context of neurodivergence (16:45-18:36).
    • Quote: “It’s fraught with all this tension because if one parent thinks you should do this to take care of this child, and the other thinks the other way...it’s just...cause I’ve seen it cause so much disruption in so many marriages.” — Tony Spiridakis ([17:49])

Casting a Neurodivergent Actor

• Real Representation:

  • Goldwyn and Spiridakis were committed from the start to casting a neurodivergent child as Ezra, recognizing its necessity for both representation and authenticity (10:39).
  • The casting process was extensive and included experts and advisors from the autism community, eventually leading to finding William Fitzgerald just weeks before shooting (12:41-13:50).

• On-Set Support & Process:

  • The film brought in autistic associate producer Alex Plank and trained the cast and crew thoroughly; set environments were adapted to support William’s needs, but the process ultimately mirrored the normal variability of working with any actor (14:39-16:09).
    • Quote: “Every actor, it’s like, what do you need to do your best work? What environment do you need to feel safe to create?...William is William. And when things are not, when he’s stressed out, he’s like, ‘I’m done.’” — Tony Goldwyn ([15:28])
    • William Fitzgerald’s performance: natural, present, and often “way ahead of me in direction...He’s so bright...after about three words, he’s like, ‘yeah, I got it, Tony. Just let me do it.’” — Tony Goldwyn ([16:09])

Intergenerational Dynamics & Breaking Patterns

• Exploring Fathers and Sons:
  • Robert De Niro plays Max’s father, Stan. The film examines how parental trauma and personality ripple down generations. Both Max and Stan struggle with anger, paranoia, and defensiveness, which shape Max and Ezra’s relationship (19:54-21:29).
    • Quote: “I wanted to show two men trying to be examples...They wanted to be good fathers, but they had their own issues...The answer for both of them that they sort of find out by trying to help this child is... nobody’s really thinking about you that way. The dog wasn’t trying to bite you.” — Tony Spiridakis ([20:17])

Crafting Complex, Authentic Characters

• Bobby Cannavale as Max:

  • Goldwyn and Cannavale collaborated to portray Max as both an unapologetically flawed parent and an advocate propelled by relentless love and fear.

    • Quote: “He’s unapologetic in his bad behavior...and yet everything is coming from his heart and driven by this intense, passionate love for this kid combined with...his own paranoia...so we talked about that duality...both can exist at the same time.” — Tony Goldwyn ([21:53])

  • Cannavale’s real-life fatherhood and love of comedy informed the character’s raw humor and vulnerability (23:28-25:34).

    • Quote: “Bobby brought himself and so many fantastic ideas...that was a very big unknown, the comedy part...let’s just find what the story is for the character and let the humor and comedy...work on that.” — Tony Spiridakis ([24:44])

Real-Life Reception

• Dimitri’s Reaction:
  • Dimitri saw the film and gave it his blessing, especially appreciating William Fitzgerald’s performance:
    • Quote: “He goes, ‘that William kid, he’s great, dad. He’s great. Kitchen’s closed.’” — Tony Spiridakis ([25:43])

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “I try to make a joke out of something. I try to hide how scared I am. Like most people, say something witty and get the laugh.”
  — Tony Spiridakis (TED Talk) ([04:14])
• “If I can do this for my friend, like, get his story on screen, what a cool thing. What a cool adventure to embark on together. And it has been.”
  — Tony Goldwyn ([07:25])
• “We made a commitment — let’s find a kid on the autism spectrum... It just seemed critically necessary, both in terms of representation and... what that might yield us artistically.”
  — Tony Goldwyn ([10:42])
• “The original title of the script was ‘Inappropriate Behavior.’”
  — Tony Goldwyn ([23:02])
• “Everyone was fighting because we loved him. We weren’t fighting necessarily with each other.”
  — Tony Spiridakis ([19:32])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:24 – Spiridakis’ TED Talk clip about discovering his son's autism.
• 06:25 – Goldwyn describes their friendship and how he came to want to direct the film.
• 08:05 – Spiridakis critiques typical portrayals of autism in media.
• 10:39 – Discussion on importance of casting a neurodivergent child and finding William Fitzgerald.
• 14:39 – Steps the team took to create a supportive film set for William Fitzgerald.
• 16:45 – Spiridakis examines parental disagreement and the marital consequences of raising an autistic child.
• 20:17 – Intergenerational dynamics of fatherhood explored via De Niro’s Stan and Cannavale’s Max.
• 21:53 – Goldwyn’s insights on the complexity of the Max character.
• 25:43 – Dimitri’s review of the film.

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Tone and Language

The conversation is candid, warm, and laced with self-aware humor as the guests reflect on their mistakes, growth, and the love that drives family—mirroring the authentic, unvarnished spirit of the film itself.

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This summary is designed to offer a thorough, engaging guide for listeners and those interested in the intersection of film, neurodiversity, and the lived experiences behind creative work.

Transcript

[Tony Spiridakis]

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[Tony Goldwyn]

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[Koosha Navadar]

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[Tony Spiridakis]

Listener support WNYC Studios.

[Koosha Navadar]

You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Koosha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. The new film Ezra is a highly personal look at parenting a neurodivergent child. It's based on screenwriter Tony Spiridakis own experiences grappling with his son's autism diagnosis. In the movie, Bobby Cannavale stars as Max, a standup comedian searching for his next big break. He's co parenting his son Ezra with his soon to be ex wife Jenna, who is played by Bobby's real wife Rose Byrne. Their son is struggling in school and the administrators recommend a school for kids with special needs and some medication. Jenna wants to follow the new plan, but Max disagrees. So instead of talking it out, Max does something pretty impulsive. He kidnaps his own son in the middle of the night and takes him on a road trip. Ezra is directed by Tony Goldwyn, who you might know from the Scandal series and also stars in Law and Order. The film premieres in theaters today and I am joined in studio right across the stable right now by the two Tonys, director Tony Goldwyn and screenwriter Tony Spiridakis. Well, welcome, both of you.

[Tony Goldwyn]

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

[Koosha Navadar]

So for this, we're gonna go with Tony G. And Tony S. So folks listening right now know what's going on. So, Tony S, you gave a ted talk in 2013 about your relationship with your son and with his autism diagnosis. That was over a decade ago. I want to start off just by playing a clip from that talk. Here it is.

[Tony Spiridakis (TED Talk Clip)]

When my son Dimitri was three years old, he stopped making eye contact. He pretty much stopped speaking. In fact, he started communicating mostly by grunting and growling. So we went to the doctor, and my wife and I were told that our son was on the spectrum. Now, this was 15 years ago. So I had nodded my head and pretended that I knew what she was saying, but I had no clue what autism was. And when she said the word spectrum, my mind just flashed to my son. Space traveling to a galaxy far, far away. And then I heard Rod Serling in my head say, your son is traveling to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of the mind. He's going to be taking a journey, a wondrous journey to a wondrous world called autism. I heard this doctor telling me my son was going to be living in the Twilight Zone, and I wasn't happy about it. But that's what I do. I try to make a joke out of something. I try to hide how scared I am. Like most people, say something witty and get the laugh.

[Koosha Navadar]

It was a beautiful talk. What made you decide you wanted to speak about your son in this public forum and when did you know that you were ready to write this movie?

[Tony Spiridakis]

Thank you for playing that. Because I saw how my son would do things that were. Because he was autistic. And then there was a certain amount of negative judgment of his behaviors. Right. And that bothered me. And then I thought that that was something that I should explore and talk about because there's shame, right? That comes with that. And you don't want your son to be sort of criminalized, right, because he's autistic, so he has no filter. So he'll say, you're a terrible teacher, or, why are you doing this stupid thing? And it seems like he's being belligerent and he's really autistic and in his own world. But learning the social norms and cues I thought was a fantastic thing to explore in a film, you know, and let other people see somebody, you know, getting into trouble. And in. In my instance with this film, it ended up being that the father was Way worse. His inappropriate behaviors were sort of the thing. And. And that. I did that because that's kind of what it was like, you know, I would go into and defend him and advocate for him, and I was completely inappropriate at times. And because I was too hot, I came in too hot. Yeah.

[Koosha Navadar]

You know, Tony G. When did you know that this was the next movie you wanted to direct?

[Tony Goldwyn]

About three years ago now. Tony and I have been friends, best friends, for over 40 years. So I, you know, kind of lived through Tony's trials with Dimitri and with his family and his marriage. And I had read several drafts of this script that he was writing about it because he'd said, I knew he really wanted to express his amazing son through this movie and their relationship, but I hadn't really thought about directing it, and I hadn't read a draft in quite a while. And almost three years ago, Tony called me and he said, would you take a look at this? I've reworked the script, and just as a friend. Cause we share each other's work all the time. And I read it, and it just hit me really hard. I felt that Tony had somehow cracked certain things in terms of the way he was structuring the script. That really worked. And I felt, oh, this is a movie now. This works. And I think we need to do it together. So, yeah, we just started. Then it was like, okay. And I thought, what an amazing thing to do for our friendship. You know, to myself, I was like, wow, if I can do this for my friend, like, get his story on screen, what a cool thing. What a cool adventure to embark on together. And it has been.

[Koosha Navadar]

That idea of cracking something in the script, I think, is really poignant, because you think about representations of autism in film and television across history. There's so many. So many of them. And, Tony S for you. What do you think the maybe biggest mistakes or misconceptions have been with how before we might have seen autism displayed in film and movie?

[Tony Spiridakis]

I think. I think the world that takes that on in television and film or books or whatever it is, there has to be a sort of. I mean, I hate to say it, but almost like a superpower attributable to this thing called autism. And I just felt that was. Sometimes that just felt like it minimized it somehow, like, so there are special. Absolutely. There are special talents that autistic people have. Absolutely. But it seemed like, you know, those were the representations that we saw. So and so is a brilliant doctor, or so and so can tell you what planes crashed in what year and. And. And all these great things that are absolutely part of being a savant in that spectrum world. But there was something about. I think what I wanted to do is, was to show the family as a unit associated with autism. Right? Not just so much. It was just the autistic person. It was the autistic person and the ripple effect that it had on a family. And I felt like it was as much for the parents as it was for the autistic child.

[Koosha Navadar]

And what were you trying to do in the script in that sense? What were you trying to show from the parents perspective?

[Tony Spiridakis]

As my father said in Greek, that I could make the biggest salad. And he meant by that to say that I would make a big mess. And what I wanted to show was that parents are going to make a mess. They don't get up in the morning and say, how am I going to make a salad out of my kid's life? How am I going to make a mess? They try to do the right thing. But I wanted to write a movie about some father who does so many wrong things and that in the end, he just has every good intention in the world, but he's himself somehow in that world of magical spectrumness. I think he's clearly that. And I think his anger issues and his feeling of paranoia that people are always out to get him comes from his father. And I felt like that was a very amazing way to look at a child who's autistic and see that child as the unifying event in the lives of all the adults.

[Koosha Navadar]

Let's talk about that child for a second. And if you're just tuning in, we're talking about the new movie Ezra, which premieres in theaters today. We're talking with Tony Goldwyn, the director, and Tony Spiridakis, who's the screenwriter. I want to talk about Ezra. So, Tony G. Why was it important to cast a neurodivergent child in this role? And how did you land on William Fitzgerald?

[Tony Goldwyn]

Well, you know, from the first minute we decided to do this together, Tony and I committed to having a neurodiverse kid play Ezra. And to find someone on the autism spectrum to do it. It's hard to even put into words why. It just seemed critically necessary, both in terms of representation and.

[Tony Spiridakis]

And.

[Tony Goldwyn]

What that might yield us artistically. I mean, like, it was so exciting to us, we didn't quite know what we'd be getting into because, you know, every autistic person has different and, you know, varied sensitivities. So you think, how are we going to find a kid who can be on a movie set and do. It's hard making movies. You know, it's a very adult world and it's hard for any child actor. But so. But we said just go for it. It seemed like a really exciting challenge. And then it was about finding an actor who could play this central title role in our film. And so the first step really was to involve the autism community in this search. So our casting directors, Carrie Barden and Paul Schnee, teamed up with two autism consultants, Elaine hall and Alex Plank. Alex is autistic and Elaine is an educator. She's also neurodiverse, but she has this theater company in LA called the Miracle Project, which is just an incredible group that does theater with autistic people. And they. They helped us. And. And we dug into their networks and we launched a nationwide search and saw about 100 kids. And, you know, the kids would read, you know, send us tapes of reading a couple of scenes. And then we did zoom callbacks and brought a couple of kids to New York to work with Bobby Canavale. And honestly, after a few months, we had not found our kid. We saw some amazing people and all so different from one another, but we hadn't found him. We were about three weeks away from shooting and we had not. We had Robert De Niro, we had our entire cast, but we didn't have an Ezra. And we knew we didn't know a movie without the right Ezra.

[Koosha Navadar]

I just saw the other Tony wipe.

[Tony Goldwyn]

His brow like it was intense. But, you know, I've done this for a while, and casting is one of these Alcantara chemical processes. You just have to have faith and you'll know it. You know, you just have to hang in there. And lo and behold, Carrie Barden, our casting director, called me, said, this tape just came in last night, and this kid lives in New Jersey. We were here in New York, and you gotta see it. And I watched William's tape and his mom had found the thing on a Facebook posting and thought, oh, what a fun thing for William to do. It was sort of a weekend project for them to do this audition. And, you know, they had, you know, as William says, he said, you know, we knew our chances were slim to none of getting it. And I saw him and I was like, we gotta meet this kid. And he came in, and the second I saw him, Bobby and Tony and I were in a casting office and I went out to meet William and his wonderful parents, Laura and Dave. And it was, first of all, A spitting image of Dimitri Spiridakis At 12 years old, Tony's son. Literally the same glasses, same curly hair. I was like, oh, my God.

[Koosha Navadar]

I had that thought too. Cause from the TED Talk and watching the movie, I saw that similarity as well.

[Tony Goldwyn]

They look so similar. They literally could be brothers. And so I ran into it, the room, and I said, tony, it's Dimitri out there. And then William came in, and he's just a natural actor. He is. Absolutely has that rare ability of great actors to just be himself at all times in front of the camera. He's completely unselfconscious, completely unintimidated by the very formidable actors he was working with. He's just a natural. He and Bobby hit it off immediately, and we just knew within 10 seconds we'd found our guy.

[Koosha Navadar]

You mentioned you didn't know what you were getting into and what you would have to do maybe on set to make sure that this kind of dynamic worked out well so that everybody was able to work together. What resources or support did you bring in to make sure that this kind of project would be safe and good for William?

[Tony Goldwyn]

Yeah, well, you know, the first person I talked to had said, who has an autistic child and is in the autism community. She said, you're really. You're taking a big risk here. You know. She said, I'm just telling you as someone who really. But great, but go for it, you know. So we had a lot of people in the community advising us. And Alex Plank, who I mentioned before, helping us cast, where Alex was an associate producer. Alex is autistic and was on set every day to help facilitate. And we had a. You know, we did a training for the entire cast and crew. We spent a lot of time talking to Laura and Dave, William's parents, and to William himself about what. What do you needed, you know, what was. So that we could anticipate. And what I found is it's like anybody, man, like every actor, it's like, what do you need to do your best work? What environment do you need to feel safe to create? Because every person has their sensitivities. It's just most of us are more able to kind of modify ourselves and therefore inhibit ourselves, to kind of get, you know, be professional, Whereas William is William. And when things are not, when he's stressed out, he's like, I'm done. So we just. It was about anticipating things, and he was incredible. And because he's so gifted, he actually worked much faster than most actors one works with. He just. He's ready to go at all times.

[Koosha Navadar]

In terms of, like, taking direction or taking direction.

[Tony Goldwyn]

He's way ahead of me in direction. He's so bright that every time I started to give him direction, after about three words, he's like, yeah, I got it, Tony. Just let me do it. And so I had to be very succinct. And William also has adhd, so he's easily distracted. But he's so present. He would just nail it all the time. And then if he was getting overwhelmed or stressed, we would just take a break. But he had certain snacks and food issues that he needed accommodated, but that's all. So do a lot of movie stars. Yeah, totally.

[Koosha Navadar]

Are you talking about a movie star in this case as well?

[Tony Goldwyn]

We are now. Yeah, we are now.

[Koosha Navadar]

I want to talk about the salad that you brought up as well. Like from the parents perspective, how you can make a big salad. It's going to be a mess because Max and Jenna in the movie, the parents, they have very different ideas about what their son needs. You know, Jenna, on the one hand, is open to the idea of a school for kids with special needs and to medication, but Max is, like, completely vehemently opposed to it. Can you see both sides of the argument there? The film doesn't really seem to take a side.

[Tony Spiridakis]

I do see. I see both sides, and I think that. But it's one of the realities of being a married couple and then having something so tense come between you, you end the marriage, or one of you wants to end the marriage. In this case, Jenna ends the marriage. And I think the Max character's holding on. But here's what's constant. There are always going to be colleagues in the advocacy of their child. And that's the different thing for parents of autistic children. I think that's true of all parents. Right? It's obviously true of all parents. It's fraught with all this tension because if one parent thinks you should do this to take care of this child, and the other thinks the other way, it's really hard to. It's just. Cause I've seen it cause so much disruption in so many marriages between husband and wives of autistic children. I thought this was a great opportunity to explore what that terrible salad is at times. And this was a foundational element, you know, in my life. I thought it was really worth taking a look at. And the part about it that was kind of hard is like, you know, I was so wrong for a long time.

[Koosha Navadar]

Was there an element of your own relationship with Dimitri, your son, and the challenge there that you wanted to give to Max and Ezra's relationship.

[Tony Spiridakis]

100%, yeah. He was a constant positive force in all of that tension. I think that, again, everything we're saying about an autistic child would be true of a child. Right. But in. In the sense of what Dimitri was like, the more there was conflict around him, he seemed to be centered in a way. So when nobody was around, all of a sudden he'd be tapping my back if he saw me getting excited or angry. And so there was like this sort of calming effect that he had a desire to not have there be any of the storm or salad around him. And so he was very good. And I think the reason I wrote the film more than anything is because of his amazing spirit. You know, that spirit helped both my ex wife and me and my new partner. Right. Because we have Dimitri. And so it's something that just happened. Everyone was fighting, but we were all fighting because we loved him. We weren't fighting necessarily with each other.

[Koosha Navadar]

You know, where that comes through in the movie as well is with the generation above, with Robert De Niro's character, the fighting specifically because part of Max's relationship with Ezra seems to be directly a conversation with Max's relationship with his own father. Like I mentioned, played by Robert De Niro. What aspects of Max's relationship with his dad did you want to show trickled down to his relationship with then his son?

[Tony Spiridakis]

I wanted to show two men trying to be examples for their children. Two fathers who had so many issues that sidetracked them from being good fathers. They wanted to be good fathers, but they had their own issues of who's stealing from me, who's trying to put me down, who's telling me, who's trying to attack me. And the answer for both of them that they sort of find out by trying to help this child is nobody. Here's the real truth, Stan and Max, nobody's really thinking about you that way. The dog wasn't trying to bite you. You know, the guy who said his steak was undercooked, you didn't have to assault him and lose everything. And then all of those things like that Stan lost his wife and here's Max in that same position. It just seemed to me like a really great way to put a light on what should we do for Ezra. You know, we should probably let Ezra be Ezra and stop trying to beat somebody up about it.

[Koosha Navadar]

I hear so much of that in the direction that you wanted to see Bobby Cannavale take With his character. And Tony G, for you, I'm wondering, you know, you have this actor here who needs to give a performance that is funny and angry and hurtful and heartfelt. What's an aspect of Max's character that you, too, you and Bobby really talk through that you wanted to nail and get right and that you worked together on?

[Tony Goldwyn]

Well, it's that. It's. It's. It just comes naturally to Bobby, and it's why we cast him. He's unapologetic in his bad behavior. He doesn't, you know, he's not worried about being liked, and yet everything is coming from his heart. And driven by this intense, passionate love for this kid combined with, as Tony just mentioned, his own paranoia, moving through the world. He moves through the world in a state, in a crouch that people are. Everyone's trying to. Ready to attack him, or everyone's trying to crush his child, or, you know, the world is a dangerous place, and he's learned to walk through life with his fists up. So we talked about that, but it was, you know, it's both. And, you know, that in no way ever negates his passionate advocacy for his kid. So that's why we're with Max, even though we're thinking, what are you doing? Because he does a lot of really destructive things. You know, the original title of the script was Inappropriate Behavior. Oh.

[Koosha Navadar]

Which is the title of the TED Talk, just so viewers can understand or listeners can understand that.

[Tony Goldwyn]

Yeah. So, yeah. So we just talked about that duality. And I guess the only thing I encourage, Bobby is both can exist at the same time, you know, and we have to have both at all times.

[Koosha Navadar]

Did Bobby for you, Tony S. Did Bobby bring anything to the character that you hadn't seen in the words, but then you saw on the screen so much.

[Tony Spiridakis]

So much of what Tony just said, which was, you know, I wasn't necessarily. I mean, obviously it's inspired by things from your own life. So all of a sudden, seeing Bobby made me go, oh, my God, this is me.

[Koosha Navadar]

It's like.

[Tony Spiridakis]

And that. What he. The way he did it, you know, I thought, I can't believe this guy's getting away with this stuff. But then it's Bobby Cannavale being so much a father himself. I think it's just in him. It's in his DNA to make jokes about things. But, you know, fathers make jokes about things. Or like, you know, like the idea that Max wanted his kid to stay in a public school to learn how to fight. He meant fight like he didn't just mean have a tough spirit. He meant, like, I have somebody who's gonna bop me. I'm gonna bop him back. Like, this is a bad idea. And so I think that Bobby can do that. He was able to do that. And he brought so much love behind it and so much humor. And he has, like, this fascination with stand up comedy. He had it before, and when he read the script, and I had that same fascination. So he brought this perfect tone and pitch to the performative part of being a comedian. And he was like, don't worry about the jokes tone. Like, I talked to so and so. And it's about how I'm telling a story. I'm telling a story about how my life is going. Yeah. And that's enough. And he just. He settled me down and kind of helped me work on those. All those sets that were done. Bobby brought himself and so many fantastic ideas that it just made our lives so much easier because that was a very big unknown, the comedy part. And we were. We were like, oh, we're gonna just have to hire somebody to, you know, write this. Cause I don't write this. And Bobby was looking at us and saying, no, no, no, let's just find what the story is for the character and let the humor and comedy. Let me work on that. So that was what happened. It was great.

[Koosha Navadar]

Looking at the piece as a whole, I'm wondering, has Dimitri seen it yet?

[Tony Spiridakis]

Yes.

[Koosha Navadar]

And, you know, I'm looking at the clock. Got about 30 seconds left. But what does Dimitri think?

[Tony Spiridakis]

He goes, that William kid, He's great, dad. He's great. Kitchen's closed.

[Koosha Navadar]

Kitchen's closed. Well, unfortunately, this conversation has to come to a close. But it's been such a pleasure. We've been talking about Ezra, which premieres in theaters today. We've been talking to Tony Goldwyn, who's the director, and Tony Spiridakis, who's the screenwriter. Thank you both so much for hanging out.

[Tony Goldwyn]

Oh, thanks for having us.

[Tony Spiridakis]

Thank you so much. I' ma put you on, nephew. All right, unc.

[Tony Goldwyn]

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[Tony Spiridakis]

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