“My name is Paul Downs Colaizzo. I’m the writer and director of ‘Brittany Runs a Marathon.’ This is a movie about a woman in her 20s living in New York named Brittany, played by Jillian Bell, who tries to take control of her life. And the way she plans to do that is through running. This scene is her first attempt at actually hitting the pavement to go for a run.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “So I’m going to give you two examples of how this was a team effort to make this movie on a budget. In this scene, I wanted Brittany to be confronted with a warped version of her own image. We were originally planning to create this effect in post-production with special effects. But when we found out how much that was going to cost, it was no longer an option. So our prop master, Sean Dolan, very quickly figured out how to pull this off practically, creating what I think is one of the most visually memorable moments in the film.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “This next moment with Brittany at the refrigerator was a scene I was going to cut for time and money. But my assistant on the film, Kim Rosen, fought me on it. And when I saw what this moment meant to her, I kept it, and I’m very glad I did.” “Mmm. Oh, my God. Sea salt.” “So this character is Catherine, played by the understatedly charming Michaela Watkins. I wanted to create a juxtaposition between Brittany’s world and Catherine’s, which is why she’s really enjoying that green juice.” [CRYING] “She plays the woman who owns the apartment above Brittany, and Brittany has got the wrong idea about her.” [CRYING] “Hello? Hello in there? It’s Catherine.” “I wanted the audience to understand right off the bat that Catherine has good intentions.” “I think you’re me Moneybags Martha, in 3S.” “And that these two contrasting women have a lot in common, even if they don’t see it. So even though I put a wall between them, I have them both on the same side of the frame in order to keep them somewhat visually aligned.” “I don’t need your pity, so— thank you, though.” “No pity.” “Catherine’s world, as you can see in her clothes really, has a cooler, cleaner color palette than Brittany’s juvenile vibrancy, which you can see in Brittany’s apartment.” “You’ve got an Astoria apartment that you bought 20 years ago that you just, like, use as your photography studio. Zero pity?” “It’s nice to hear someone thinks my life is so idyllic.” “This is the very first moment in the film where things turn decidedly confrontational. Here, I wanted the camera to feel like it was infiltrating Brittany’s world in an aggressive way. Even though Catherine moves with grace, this is how it feels to Brittany.” “I’m broke. I’m fat. My liver’s shutting down or something. And I applied to rescue a dog from a kill shelter, and they told me that I couldn’t give the dog the kind of future it deserved.” “This is the first time that Brittany is being honest about how she views her own life.” “I am sure that you have a lot to offer.” “It’s a great example of a scene where the actress playing Brittany, Jillian Bell, brought to set a very different energy than the one I had in mind when I was writing it, and it surprised me. I understood Brittany to be angry at the world in this moment for not giving her what it seemingly gave everyone else so easily. But Jillian, from the very first take, was playing it in a way that said to me that Brittany had actually been trying to manifest a better life for herself these past few years, and she was baffled that this is where her efforts took her, with no idea how to get on a different path. And I was really moved by it, and I found it to be a more interesting choice than mine. So rather than direct her away from her instinct, I leaned into it.” “Well, I’ve got secrets. I’ve got things that I’m not going to tell my kids until they’re older. I was in rehab.” “For alcohol, or for, like, a sprained ankle?” “For, like, needle stuff.” “Heroin? Are you gloating about it?” “Part of the concept of this film is to take stock characters that you think you know and repeatedly upend your expectations about them. And here we do it with Catherine.” “I found what I thought was a group of real artists. We find validation in very unhealthy places sometimes, because life’s overwhelming.” “This movie was inspired by my roommate in my mid-20s. Her name is also Brittany. One of the big conversations we had that inspired her to start running took place late at night as the two of us talked about life sitting on our kitchen floor. I was hoping by staging the scene on Brittany’s kitchen floor I might be able to capture the spirit of that real-life moment in ways I couldn’t even consciously plan. And if not, it’d be a nice nod to my real-life friend.” [MUSIC PLAYING]