Based on a screenplay by legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jules Feiffer, Bernard and Huey is an award-winning comedy about two old friends who reconnect after 25 years apart, and the women who complicate their lives. Director Dan Mirvish has made the film with an amazing cast that includes David Koechner, Oscar-winner Jim Rash, Sasha Alexander, Eka Darville, Richard Kind, Lauren Miller Rogen, Nancy Travis, Bellamy Young and Mae Whitman.
Nobody writes like Jules!
– Stan Lee
Feiffer is a god. He’s one of the true geniuses in the business. [Mirvish and Feiffer] are a perfect match. I think that’s a fantastic idea!
– Bill Plympton
Jules Feiffer is an inspiration.
– Art Spiegelman
Simply magnificent!
– Tom Percival, BBC Radio
As you might hope for a film with a script from the great Jules Feiffer, Dan Mirvish’s Bernard and Huey bristles with anxious, circuitous, hilarious talk. Feiffer, Rash and Koechner is a potent combination.
– Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice/LA Weekly [Rotten Tomatoes “Fresh”]
Devoted Feifferites, not to mention fans of Mr. Rash and Mr. Koechner, who get to flex their muscles nicely here, will be well sated.
– Glenn Kenney, The New York Times [Rotten Tomatoes “Fresh”]
Very very good…. It’s hilarious, heart-breaking, and sneakily wise. For most of the time I was in Park City, Bernard and Huey was my favorite film I had seen at either festival. It’s that good.
– Michael Dunaway, Paste Magazine
Synopsis:
Directed by Slamdance Film Festival co-founder Dan Mirvish (BETWEEN US) from a long-lost script by Oscar/Pulitzer-winning cartoonist and screenwriter Jules Feiffer (Mike Nichols’ CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, Robert Altman’s POPEYE) based on characters that date back to 1957, BERNARD AND HUEY is the story of roguish Huey (David Koechner, ANCHORMAN) and nebbishy Bernard (Oscar-winner Jim Rash, THE WAY WAY BACK), who are unlikely collegiate friends in late 1980s New York. Years later, a bedraggled Huey crashes at Bernard’s upscale bachelor pad. As the two reconnect, Bernard falls in love with Huey’s estranged daughter Zelda (Mae Whitman, GOOD GIRLS), an aspiring graphic novelist who’s got a seductive new creative partner, Conrad (Eka Darville, JESSICA JONES). Huey slowly gets his mojo back and tries to seduce the various women in Bernard’s life, including his off-again girlfriend Roz (Sasha Alexander, RIZZOLI & ISLES) and colleague, Mona (Nancy Travis, SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER), while reconnecting with his ex-wife (Bellamy Young, SCANDAL) and brother (Richard Kind, ARGO). As Bernard and Huey return to their old ways, at least one of them finds himself in danger of marrying a woman old enough to be his wife. An award-winning film that’s screened at over 25 festivals in 5 continents, BERNARD AND HUEY is a particularly timely story of two men behaving badly, and the smart women who rein them in.
Short Synopsis:
BERNARD AND HUEY is a timely story of two men behaving badly, and the smart women who rein them in. Roguish Huey and nebbishy Bernard are unlikely college friends in late 1980’s New York. Decades later, a bedraggled Huey gets his mojo back with the women in Bernard’s life, while Bernard awkwardly falls in love with Huey’s 25-year-old cartoonist daughter, and it becomes clear how much growing up the two men still need to do.
Project History:
Bernard and Huey is a film based on a screenplay by living legend Jules Feiffer. Pulitzer, Oscar, Obie and WGA Lifetime Achievement award winning Feiffer is perhaps best known for his eponymous comic strip he had in The Village Voice for 40 years. But Feiffer is equally regarded as a playwright, novelist and screenwriter. In that last capacity, his script Carnal Knowledge was directed by Mike Nichols in 1971. It starred Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candace Bergen and garnered an Oscar for Ann- Margaret. The same year, Alan Arkin directed Elliot Gould in Feiffer’s Little Murders, equally well-regarded. In 1980, Feiffer wrote Popeye for director Robert Altman and producer Robert Evans. Feiffer’s short animated film Munro, won an Oscar in 1961.
Carnal Knowledge is one of the pillars of the Golden Age of 70s film, and was a big influence on Dan Mirvish’s last film, Between Us, which starred Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs. During post-production on the film, Mirvish happened upon a biography of Feiffer that mentioned that he had several unproduced screenplays. Hmm, thought, Mirvish. With a track record like Feiffer’s, chances are they’re good! So Mirvish and producing partner Dana Altman (Robert’s grandson) tracked down Feiffer through his speaking bureau. Still very much alive and teaching in the Hamptons, Feiffer responded right away via email. Cryptically, he said he couldn’t find any scripts, but to try him again in four months. Four months later and another exchange of emails resulted in no new information: Not only couldn’t Feiffer find any unproduced screenplays, but it was still a mystery to Mirvish and Altman what they even were.
Completely coincidentally, Jules’ daughter Halley Feiffer had a film at Slamdance (the festival that Mirvish and Altman started) later that same year. Dan struck up a friendship with Halley and that renewed the exchanges with Jules. But still no luck finding any scripts. Thankfully, Mirvish’s old friend Kevin DiNovis, another Slamdance alumnus, vaguely remembered reading one of Feiffer’s screenplays in Scenario Magazine, back in the 90s!
Known in the last decade of the 20th Century as the definitive magazine for Hollywood screenwriters, Scenario was a quarterly publication that mostly reprinted the top produced screenplays at the time. Occasionally, they would also publish an unproduced screenplay, whose rights were still available. With the internet in its infancy, and a decade before “The Black List” made unproduced screenplays viral sensations, getting an unproduced screenplay published in Scenario was a very big deal in Hollywood. Feiffer’s script was actually in the inaugural issue of the magazine, making it an even hotter property.
That issue of Scenario was only available in two libraries in the entire United States, but fortunately one was in LA: The Academy Library, to be exact. Operating more like a monastery than a library, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences has strict rules to enter: No cameras, no cell phones, no pens. Mirvish adhered by the rules and finally got a chance to read the elusive script, Bernard and Huey. It was brilliant: Hilarious, poignant, dramatic and remarkably timeless. Even better, there was an accompanying interview with Feiffer that mentioned that he’d worked with an LA producer who’d tried to get the screenplay made in the mid 80s, first through Showtime, and then independently. But the name given in the article didn’t show up on IMDB or anyplace else.
Dan immediately contacted Jules again, who was thrilled to hear about the discovery of the script, but he warned that the version in Scenario might have been an edited one. Fortunately, Jules remembered the old LA producer – maybe he still had a copy of the final script? Turns out Scenario had spelled his name wrong. Michael Brandman – who still produces the Tom Selleck Jesse Stone TV movies for CBS – was still very much alive and kicking in LA. Dan spoke with him several times and he was thrilled to hear renewed interest in Bernard and Huey. Better still, after a week of searching his old files, he was able to find an original hard copy of the final script!
Dan scanned it in as a PDF as well as a character recognition file – so once again it could be edited in standard screenwriting software. Dan arranged a trip to visit Jules at his home in the Hamptons. Bringing bagels and lox (per daughter Halley’s recommendation), Dan spent a lovely afternoon with Jules and they decided then and there to launch production of Bernard and Huey.
Of course, anytime you’re dealing with a literary property that’s nearly 30 years old, you’ve got to make sure that all the rights are cleared and sorted out. That process alone would take another nine months. It didn’t help matters that Jules’ old agent was dead. His lawyer was dead. His lawyer’s old partner even more dead. And Jules’ old assistant? As he put it, “She is no longer among the counted.”
Thankfully, everyone who is still alive has tremendous love and admiration for Jules and without hesitation all have been helping us clear the decks to make the movie.
Despite several attempts to get the movie made in the late 80s, the good news was that Jules had always retained the copyright to the script himself. The characters of Bernard and Huey had over the years been featured in Feiffer’s work in several different media, including his Village Voice cartoons, cartoons for Playboy magazine, a play, and a book. In each case, we’d gotten confirmation that Feiffer controls the underlying property and nobody else had any claims to it. Mirvish even sent a friend to the Library of Congress in Washington where Jules had donated his files in 2000. Buried in the archives was Jules’ original handwritten script to Bernard and Huey, including doodles, crossed out scenes, and margin notes to call his then very-much alive lawyer.
With the rights sorted out, Mirvish and team had a remarkably success Kickstarter campaign (raising nearly three times their goal). But as Mirvish says, “It’s called Kickstarter, not Kickfinisher.” The Kickstarter campaign was also the first time a fiction narrative feature has teamed up with a 501(c)3 ficscal sponsor – in this case, The Film Collaborative. Part of the campaign also included Mirvish’s invention of a lens system called The Mirvishscope, which in and of itself got press fro the film in various film and photography blogs. The scene in the movie with Zelda’s curtain of magnifying glasses came from the Kickstarter campaign: At one point while making our Mirvishscopes, we accidentally ordered 100 extra magnifying glasses of the wrong focal length. So we saved them to use on set, stringing them together in a curtain, in what wound up being one of the most vivid visual scenes in the movie.
Director’s Statement by Dan Mirvish
Only four people have had the privilege of directing a feature script written by the legendary Jules Feiffer: Alan Arkin, and the late Mike Nichols, Robert Altman and Alain Resnais. To be included in that list is a daunting prospect and one that I am truly honored to join. The fact that Jules has entrusted me with his hidden gem of a screenplay that embodies two of his most enduring characters is an even bigger honor. But I think Jules recognized that I share with him a similar world view and sense of humor. He also knows that as a producer/director, when I say I’m going to make a movie, I make it. We share a similar lack of patience for Hollywood’s traditional hurryup-and-wait approach that in this case left an amazing script languish in the Academy library for close to 30 years.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned – especially from my last film Between Us, which was an adaptation of an Off-Broadway play – it’s that if you’re going to direct a movie based on a pre-existing work, you’d better find a way to relate to it personally. With all the inevitable challenges of making the movie, you’ve got to have an emotional stake in the script or at some point you will get frustrated and abandon it. You need to make it your baby, as much as it was the original writer’s. Your cast and crew will see this, too: They don’t want to work for a director who’s just going through the motions.
Fortunately, Bernard and Huey is very much a film I can relate to. The main characters are middle-aged men wrestling with relationships, sex, fatherhood and friendship. Hey, that’s all my friends and me! I’ve heard similar versions of many of the conversations between Bernard and Huey, usually talking to my single friends.
When I first read the script, one of the things that struck me was just how timeless the dialogue and characters were. Originally set in the mid-1980s with flashbacks to 1960, Huey’s hipster Village jivetalk rang as true for its time as it does for Williamsburg or Silverlake hipsters now. Idioms from the 60s echoed again as ironic in the 80s and post-ironic in the 2010s. And as far as the characters themselves go, the story of a womanizer with a nebbish wingman goes back to Shakespeare and Chaucer, and certainly hasn’t changed no matter how many iterations of feminism and post-feminism we’ve had in the last century.
With that in mind, I had the idea to transform the script so that the bulk of the action takes place in our current time period, with flashbacks to the mid-1980s. Part of this was purely practical: If you’re making a low-budget movie, it’s very expensive to shoot a period piece, especially one where you’re required to recreate two different periods. This way, we just need to do a few scenes set in the 80s – much easier than recreating the 60s and the 80s.
Transforming Bernard and Huey to a current time period also makes the characters more my own age. So when Huey makes references to music, theater, or art from his and Bernard’s post-collegiate romps, I know those worlds, because they were my own. For example, instead of an obsession with jazz, Huey’s formative music would have been hardcore punk. For me, I knew these characters, and I know those cultural touchstones, because I lived that life in that era. The fact that I am about the same age now as Jules’ age when he wrote the original script made me very well suited to make the movie. Jules dusted off the old script, but with the exception of a couple of music and art references, it stayed virtually the same as before.
When it comes to actually shooting the film, fortunately the script lent itself to a very visual approach. Ironically, Carnal Knowledge was a big influence on the style I used in shooting Between Us. And to a certain extent, I’ve dipped back into those visual references for Bernard and Huey.
In general, we used techniques and elements of the canonic 70s films to shoot Bernard and Huey. Specifically, DP Todd Antonio Somodevilla and I explored frame-within- frame techniques, slow push-ins and dollying, optical zooms, and making the most of Panavision’s vintage Anamorphic Primo lenses on our Arri Alexa cameras for the contemporary scenes. One key thing for Bernard and Huey was to visually distinguish the contemporary scenes from those that take place in the mid-80s. Given the inevitable limitations in production design for those period scenes, we shot those scenes on Super16 Kodak film, using Panavision Arriflex cameras and the same Panavision Anamorphic Primo lenses.
In terms of sound, for my last few films I’ve successfully adopted Robert Altman’s technique of putting individual lavalier mics on each actor and recording those onto unique audio tracks. This allows the actors to overlap dialogue freely, resulting in much more realistic performances. It really frees up the actors to simply act, and it’s a subtle thing that makes a huge impact on the audience. It also guaranteed that there was no need for ADR (or dubbing) that is always a distraction (and an expensive addition to post-production). As Altman once told me, “Why let the boom guy – the lowest paid member of the crew – decide who to listen to? That’s the director’s job.” And by mic’ing actors on individual tracks, the director can make those decisions in the relative calm of post-production.
Most of the scenes in Bernard and Huey take place in New York interiors: Bernard’s apartment, his publishing office, and various bars and restaurants. There are only a few exterior scenes. Consequently, we shot the bulk of principal photography in the Los Angeles area. We shot over 14 days in LA (including the 2 days where we shot the Super16 film flashbacks). Huey’s apartment was in my garage in Culver City, California, using many of the same props I’ve had for 30 years. The New York subway scene was also shot in my California garage with all the actors huddled around a vertical pole and just bouncing around. The shot was inspired by the opening shot of Panic in Needle Park which was actually shot on a New York subway in 1971. We then shot exterior scenes in New York with just Jim, David and Mae. This is similar to what we did on Between Us, which was also partially set in New York, and the scenes cut together seamlessly.
Bios:
Director – Dan Mirvish
Dan Mirvish is a director, screenwriter, producer, author and inventor. His film, BERNARD AND HUEY – written by Oscar/Pulitzer-winner Jules Feiffer, has played in over 30 festivals in 5 continents and got a coast-to-coast theatrical release in the US. Dan’s film BETWEEN US was an award-winning feature starring David Harbour, Julia Stiles, Taye Diggs and Melissa George, played in 23 festivals in 7 countries, and got a 50+ city theatrical release plus Showtime, Starz, Netflix and sold to 144 countries, including Iran and North Korea. Dan was mentored by Robert Altman on his first film, OMAHA (THE MOVIE) which led him to co-founding the upstart Slamdance Film Festival that runs concurrent with Sundance. His film OPEN HOUSE led the Academy Awards to controversially rewrite their rules on the Best Original Musical category. Mirvish wrote the critically-acclaimed book THE CHEERFUL SUBVERSIVE’S GUIDE TO INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING for Focal Press/Routledge, and he co-wrote the best-selling novel I AM MARTIN EISENSTADT (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) based on the fake McCain advisor who took credit for Sarah Palin not knowing Africa was a continent.
Short bio:
Mentored by Robert Altman, Dan cofounded the Slamdance Film Festival, and is an award-winning director and critically-acclaimed author. His film OPEN HOUSE led the Academy Awards to change their rules.
For more information on Dan, please visit his website at www.DanMirvish.com
Writer – Jules Feiffer
Jules Feiffer is perhaps best known for his eponymous comic strip he had in The Village Voice for 40 years, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for editorial cartooning. Feiffer is equally regarded as a playwright, novelist and screenwriter. In that last capacity, his script Carnal Knowledge was directed by Mike Nichols in 1971. It starred Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen and garnered an Oscar®-nomination for Ann-Margaret. The same year, Alan Arkin directed Elliott Gould in Feiffer’s critically-acclaimed film Little Murders. In 1980, Feiffer wrote Popeye for director Robert Altman and producer Robert Evans. Feiffer wrote the screenplay to 1989’s I Want to Go Home, directed by Alain Resnais and starring Gérard Depardieu. Feiffer’s short animated film Munro, won an Oscar® in 1961. Feiffer’s plays Little Murders and The White House Murder Case both won Obie and Outer Circle Critics Awards. His Broadway play Knock Knock was nominated for three Tonys in 1975. In 2004, Feiffer received the Writers Guild of America Lifetime Achievement award, and is also a recipient of the Nation Cartoonists Society’s Lifetime Achievement award.
Jules recently wrote and illustrated the best-selling graphic novels Kill My Mother (2014) and Cousin Joseph (2016) both for Liveright (WWNorton). The third graphic novel in that trilogy, The Ghost Script, just came out in Summer 2018.. Feiffer and Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party) recently adapted Jules’ book Man in the Ceiling into a musical play of the same name that premiered to rave reviews in May, 2017, at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York, directed by Jeffrey Seller (producer of Hamilton).
“From the beginning I was mesmerized. I saw Feiffer up on the screen in a way I hadn’t before. The cartoon characters seemed unexpectedly real to me, and it felt like a tribute to all my years of doing the strip in the Voice and later in Playboy. My work has been transformed, but it’s still me. This film gives me great joy.”
– Jules Feiffer, San Francisco Chronicle (interview)
“This is a representation of my cartoons into reality which almost nobody has ever successfully made work.”
– Jules Feiffer, on WBAI- FM, Pacifica Radio, Prairie Miller
Producer – Bernie Stern
Bernie Stern has been working in VFX and as a Producer since 2006. In the VFX world, Stern worked on a slew of big budget projects, from HBO’s Boardwalk Empire (where he was honored for his contribution to the winning of a Primetime Emmy) to Life of Pi, and most recently VFX producing on Heist and Precious Cargo for Grindstone/Oasis. As a producer, Stern has created various web / TV content such as The Kill Corporation (with over a million series-wide views) and branded media for Verizon, WalMart and Trulia.. In 2014, Stern’s feature, The Worst Year of My Life, enjoyed a limited theatrical run at The Arena Theater in Hollywood and now has VOD distribution on Hulu and Amazon Prime. In 2015, Stern produced the indie feature, Hunky Dory, which premiered at Slamdance 2016, which took home a Special Jury Prize and has gone on to two dozen festivals since; and produced Darin Scott’s new feature offering for Expression Entertainment, Deadly Mistake, which aired on Lifetime. Stern also executive produced Darya Zhuk’s 2018 Tribeca Institute feature Crystal Swan, shot in Belarus.
- Jim Rash – Bernard
Academy Award®-winner Jim Rash is an acclaimed actor, writer and director. He won an Oscar® for co-screenwriting Alexander Payne’s film The Descendants. As an actor, Jim is probably best known for starring as Dean Pelton in the long-running hit Community for NBC and Yahoo!. He also had recurring roles on such programs as That 70s Show and Reno 911. With his writing partner Nat Faxon, Jim wrote, directed and acted in the Sundance/Fox Searchlight hit The Way Way Back, starring Steve Carell. A Groundlings improv alum, Jim has also appeared in the Disney film Sky High and Captain America: Civil War. In high school, Jim even appeared in Jules Feiffer’s play, Feiffer’s People, which featured the characters of Bernard and Huey.
• David Koechner – Huey
David Koechner is probably best known for his recurring role as Todd Packer on NBC’s The Office and sportscaster Champ Kind from the hit films Anchorman and its sequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which have a combined global box office of over $250million. Recently, Koechner starred in Krampus, which was a winter hit for Universal as well as Paramount’s Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Indie audiences may remember Koechner as the gun lobbyist in the Spirit Award-winning Thank You for Smoking, and has been in some other smaller indies, garnering rave reviews in films like SXSW premiere Cheap Thrills, the Sundance film Dropping Out, and Slamdance premiere Dill Scallion. On the small screen, Koechner currently appears in CBS’s hit sitcom Superior Donuts, and was in Comedy Central’s Another Period, ABC’s The Goldbergs and he voices reoccurring characters on FOX’s American Dad and Netflix’s F is for Family and King Julien.
An alumnus of Chicago’s Second City Theater, Koechner got his first break as a cast member on Saturday Night Live and since has become an instantly recognizable face appearing in more than 140 films and television shows. Additional notable film credits include Waiting, Out Cold, Talladega Nights, Get Smart, Extract and A Haunted House. When not filming, Koechner performs live stand-up comedy across the country and creates original content videos for his YouTube channel, Full On Koechner. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with his wife and five children.
Mae Whitman – Zelda
Mae Whitman currently stars on NBC’s hit show Good Girls and was a Critics Choice nominee for her role as Amber Holt on the NBC’s hit show Parenthood and a Teen Choice Nominee for her lead role in the Lionsgate wide release movie, The DUFF. In television, she had a memorable recurring role as Ann on Arrested Development. Other recent feature work includes roles in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. As a child actress she played the President’s daughter in Independence Day and was in Robert Altman’s Gingerbread Man. An award-winning voice actress, Mae has been the voice of Tinker Bell in Disney Animation’s series of Tinker Bell movies, and she’s performed recurring roles in Family Guy and Teenage Mutant Turtles.
- Sasha Alexander – Roz
A People’s Choice Award-winner for her title role as Maura Isles on TNT’s hit show Rizzoli & Isles, Sasha Alexander is accomplished actress, producer and director. She has appeared as a recurring character on Showtime’s Shameless and was a regular cast member on NCIS, Dawson’s Creek, Presidio Med, and Wasteland. In features, Sasha performed in such big budget films as Yes Man with Jim Carrey, Mission Impossible III, He’s Just Not That Into You and the Spirit Award-winning indie Twin Falls Idaho. A graduate of USC film school, Sasha is also the daughter-in-law of Sophia Loren and the late producer, Carlo Ponti.
- Bellamy Young– Aggie
Bellamy Young won a Critics’ Choice TV Award for her role as First Lady Mellie Grant on ABC’s hit Peabody Award-winning show Scandal. She also recently appeared in Ava Duvernay’s hit Disney film A Wrinkle in Time. Elsewhere on television, Bellamy has had roles on Criminal Minds; Dirty, Sexy, Money; and Scrubs. On Broadway, Bellamy has appeared in Cy Coleman’s The Life and the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. She was also in the first run of Pulitzer-winning playwright Landford Wilson’s Book of Days. In features, Bellamy has appeared in big budget movies like Mission Impossible: III and We Were Soldiers, as well as award-winning indie films like Zoe Cassavetes’ Day out of Days, Katie Aselton’s Sundance hit The Freebie, and A Country Remedy, which Bellamy also produced.
- Richard Kind – Marty
A veteran of stage, TV and film, Richard Kind is known to many for his roles in TV, including such hits as Mad About You, Spin City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Scrubs and Gotham . On the big screen, Richard has been seen in such films as Oscar®-winner Argo, George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man. As a voice actor, Kind has been a regular in the award-winning Pixar films, including A Bug’s Life, Cars, Cars 2, Toy Story 3 and perhaps most memorably as Bing Bong in Inside Out. Richard is a graduate of Northwestern University and Chicago’s Second City Theater. He has appeared on Broadway in such productions as The Producers, Bounce and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.
- Nancy Travis – Mona
Star of stage, film and TV, Nancy is known for her roles in So I Married an Axe Murderer, Married to the Mob, Eight Men Out, Chaplin, The Vanishing, Destiny Turns on the Radio, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Air America, Internal Affairs, Three Men and a Little Lady and Fluke. On TV, she starred for six seasons on ABC’s hit sitcom Last Man Standing with Tim Allen. On stage, Nancy was a founding member of the Off Broadway company, Naked Angels, and has starred in such plays as Athol Fugard’s My Children, My Africa, Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and on Broadway in Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport. She is currently shooting the Netflix comedy The Kominsky Method, also starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin.
- Eka Darville – Conrad
Australian actor Eka Darville is most known in the US for his critically-acclaimed role on Netflix’s Marvel show Jessica Jones as Malcolm Ducasse, who also appeared on the companion series The Defenders. He is also known for his role as Scott Truman in Power Rangers RPM, and Pip in Master Pip, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012. Eka also appeared on The Vampire Diaries, its spinoff on the CW, The Originals, and in four episodes of the hit FOX-TV show, Empire.
- Lauren Miller Rogen – Stephanie
Lauren Miller Rogen wrote, produced and starred in the Focus Features film For a Good Time Call… in 2012 and made her directorial debut with her film Like Father, starring Kelsey Grammer and Kristen Bell for Netflix. As an actress, Lauren has appeared in such films as Superbad, Observe and Report, 50/50, and performs as a voice artist in the recent Sony animated hit, Sausage Party which was co-written by her husband, Seth Rogen. As a philanthropist, Lauren co-founded the organization Hilarity for Charity to raise awareness and funding for Alzheimer’s research.
• Jay Renshaw – Young Bernard
Jay Renshaw moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting after graduating high school in Indiana in 2010. Some of his recent television appearances include Ryan Murphy’s Feud, Criminal Minds, Mad Men, and CSI:NY. He’s trained in both dramatic and comedic acting, having studied at schools like The Groundlings, Margie Haber Studio, and iO West. When he isn’t acting, he enjoys sketch writing, cartooning, and studying wine as a certified sommelier.
On making the film: “Everyone I worked with was so talented and kind, but this was by far the weirdest Christian Mingle meet-up I’ve ever attended.”
• Jake O’Connor – Young Huey
Jake O’Connor began his career and training at a young age at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey before moving to Brooklyn and working Off-Broadway with the Roundabout Underground (The Dream of the Burning Boy and Suicide, Inc.) and Second Stage Uptown (Wildflower). His TV credits include Gossip Girl, Fringe, Rescue Me, and The Good Wife. Films include Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret.
“I am very excited to be involved with the film. Getting to know David and work on a role with him was a blast. The crew was fantastic, great atmosphere on set, thanks in large part to Dan’s thoughtful and engaged direction.”
• Shelby Fero – Young Mona
Emmy-winner Shelby Fero was born in the Bay Area, and is a writer, performer, and comedian living in Los Angeles, California. She began her career by contributing to humor websites such as Cracked.com, Funny or Die, and Rookie Magazine while still in high school. While at USC, she continued to regularly perform and write, leaving her sophomore year of college to accept a staff writing position for a new FX television show. Since then, she’s written for and/or appeared in numerous television and live shows, including @Midnight on Comedy Central, Girl Code on MTV, and won an Emmy for writing on Robot Chicken on Adult Swim.