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Speaking Your Story: 1on1 with Matthew Teague (OUR FRIEND)

January 25, 2021 by Steve Norton 2 Comments

It’s always difficult to share your own story of pain. But if that story can encourage another who’s struggling, it may be worth the challenge. 

After enduring tremendous suffering throughout his wife Nicole’s battle with cancer, journalist Matthew Teague opted to pour his soul into writing about his experience. After Nicole’s passing, Teague’s piece would eventually become his celebrated Esquire article, The Friend, which highlights the amazing impact that their beloved family friend Dane had on them during this painful season of life. While the process of exploring his grief in this way was an incredibly difficult process, he also admits that it was somewhat cathartic as well.

“I would say [it was] both [difficult and cathartic],” Teague recalls. “It wasn’t easy. It’s very emotional and sometimes a physical thing, but very cathartic at the same time. I mean, that’s sort of the way with all grief. It’s not fun. It’s not easy but you’ve got to work your way through it.” 
When he first began sharing his heart through his writing, Teague had initially intended to speak about his journey with his wife. However, as the title suggests, eventually the article took a pivot to focus more on the incredible love shown to him by his dear friend during his time of struggle. Asked when he knew his story was really about Dane, Teague contends that the idea originally stemmed from his editor.

“I was talking with my editor at Esquire who knew Nicole had died and he’d heard me talk about my friend Dane before,” he remembers. “I’d never put all those together in my mind as a story but I was telling him how ill prepared I had [been] to care for someone right up to facing death, because we so rarely talk about it as a culture. When we do talk about it, we [often] do it euphemistically. We don’t necessarily talk about it in a very direct and honest way. And he said, ‘Why don’t you do that?’ And I said, ‘Because I’m a mess’. I feel like I was just flailing [as I] struggled throughout the whole process. Every story needs a hero and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you write about your friend, Dane?’ And that all sort of clicked into place that it was a story about three people and that’s when I knew I’d be writing about him.” 

Now, with the release of the new film Our Friend, Teague has the opportunity to share his story onscreen. Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Our Friend recounts Teague’s real-life journey during the death of his wife. After his wife, Nicole (Dakota Johnson) has been diagnosed with cancer, Matthew (played by Casey Affleck) struggles to balance meeting her needs and raising their daughters. Seeking to help, close friend to the family Dane (Jason Segel) offers to move in for a short stay to help Matthew get back on his feet. However, as time marches forward, his temporary gesture extends into an indefinite living arrangement at great personal cost to Dane. 

With this in mind, if there’s one particular thing that he wants people to know about his dear friend, Teague points to Dane as a model of self-sacrifice.

“I think Dane tends to sacrifice,” he enlightens. “Faith is a big part of my life and I would say that the center of that faith is sacrificial love. I think that’s exemplified by what Dane did and continues today to be a true friend to someone—to be a true neighbor to someone—is to be sacrificially loving.”

Although there are many who have walked away from their spiritual beliefs during times of suffering, Teague argues that his faith helped provided a bedrock of hope for him in the most difficult of circumstances.

“[Nicole’s passing] didn’t throw [my faith] on the rocks,” he expounds. “It was sort of the lifeline that held on to, more than anything. Faith gives us a hope for something on the other side of that veil of mortality. It gives my daughters a hope that they’ll see their mom again, and that she’s in a place of great joy now. Without that, facing oblivion would be a lot harder, I would think.” 

When the opportunity came to bring his story to life, Teague was thrilled to know that Casey Affleck had signed on to portray him within the film. While he has incredible respect for Affleck’s ability to immerse himself into any character, he also appreciated the fact that the actor did not try to ‘become’ him onscreen.

“Casey is just a fantastic actor,” Teague beams. “He could represent anyone. It’s deliberate on his part—and I’m happy for it to be—that he didn’t try to imitate me [by] talking like me or walking like me or any of that. I’m not Winston Churchill, right? ‘Oh, Matt holds his teacup just that way or whatever.’ Nobody’s going to know that sort of thing. What he focused on was exactly what I hoped he would which is to deliver the spirit of the [story] more than to try to pretend to be me.” 

This ‘spirit of the story’ is what truly sets Our Friend apart from other modern ‘love stories’. At a time when the term ‘friend’ is used almost carelessly, this film takes the time to truly explore the depth of the word’s meaning. Whereas most narratives tend to lean on romantic relationships as the emotional core of the story, Our Friend demonstrates the power of what it means to truly love one another.

“As a culture, we focus so much on a primary romantic relationship,” Teague suggests. “This film is one of few that I can think of that focuses the way it does on friendship. Usually the gossip magazines are not full of tabloid information about who’s best friends with who [or things] like that. But I feel like friendship deserves a bit more about attention. I think it was Tim Keller who said that ‘Friendship is our only really deep relationship that’s not [based] in some way on biological imperative.’ You know, it’s not the love of a parent for a child, a child for a parent or mates for each other. All of which are part of the DNA stream. Friendship is just a choice where you’re going along in life and you see someone and you say, ‘Hey, I like you. Let’s go together’. That’s an extraordinary thing. So, hopefully people will think a little bit more about it in the future.”

Since the events take place over many years, the film’s narrative naturally takes several jumps in time. Although, in one of the film’s more unique story-telling devices, Our Friend moves forward and backward in their journey, allowing the script to offer more moments of levity throughout its runtime. In doing so, Teague suggests that the film better encapsulates their experience of Nicole’s cancer battle.

“[The film] stretches all the way from when Dane and Nicole met in college, probably 20 years ago through the end of the cancer…,” he clarifies. “That’s the reason that it jumps around so much [chronologically]. To have just told [it] in a linear fashion from a woman who’s diagnosed with cancer through to death would just be a straight downward march and would not be interesting to anyone to ride along with. Brad Inglesby, our screenwriter, made the call to have it leap in time around in our lives. That actually more accurately represented our experience [in that] two years of illness, because there are moments of levity and there are moments of reminiscence of the old days and things like that. So, that’s why we structured it for evidence.” 

Friends for two decades, Dane had been considered a part of the Teague family for many years. However, as Nicole’s condition worsened and the everyday tasks became increasingly overwhelming, Dane stepped in to help keep the household running smoothly. For Teague, these small acts of kindness were the moments that reminded him how important his friend had become to the family.

“Long before the illness, we had been close for years and years and years,” he describes. “When [Dane] was in college, he would stay at our house, and sort of moved in half the time with us just because it was a shorter distance to get to school for him to get to class. So, I knew how brotherly our feelings were for a long time before that. But it became clear how much I needed him immediately during Nicole’s illness, when it was just those mundane, simple things. We had the absolute inability to do all the medical stuff and do things like washing dishes, run a load of laundry, get my girls to school on time, [et cetera]. I was falling behind and I just couldn’t keep up. You see some of that in the movie. So, he came in and did that.”

Despite the challenges of adapting one’s own journey for the big screen, Teague believes that the story hits on the right moments with the proper emotional beats.  

“The original story was more graphic and the ability to describe the physical insult of cancer and, maybe really any illness, but it also addressed the psychological and emotional impact,” he says. “Because it is a visual medium… we really couldn’t put some of the physical stuff [onscreen] or people would be throwing up in their popcorn. But we tried to lay out and deliver the emotional and psychological quality as best we could. So, I feel good about it. I feel like it’s a story that says everything that I could want to say and an hour and a half.” 

Though their family’s journey took the form of Nicole’s cancer, Teague recognizes that pain looks different for everyone. Especially given the social fallout of the current global pandemic, it is his hope that those who see the film will be encouraged to see that there is light on the other side of suffering.

Says Teague, “My great hope is that people who are going through the hard times—[and there] are many, many, many magnitudes more now than when we started making this movie. There are so many people experiencing loss and I don’t [only] mean cancer. I mean the loss of employment, the loss of dear loved ones. My hope is that as people who have experienced that will watch this and, at least for a couple of hours, they’ll feel like [they’re] not the only one. In a world flooded with Instagram perfect images, my hope is that this will be a solace to people to realize that [life can be] hard and, if you can just hold on, there’s some joy coming on the other side.” 

Our Friend is available on VOD now.

To hear our conversation with Matthew Teague, click here.

Filed Under: Featured, Film, Reviews, TIFF, VOD Tagged With: Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Jason Segel, Matthew Teague, Our Friend, TIFF19

GIVEAWAY! Digital Copy of OUR FRIEND! (Canada Only)

January 22, 2021 by Steve Norton 1 Comment

Thanks to our friends at TARO PR, you can bring Our Friend home!

Start off your 2021 right by winning a copy of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s touching film, Our Friend. Starring Jason Segel, Dakota Johnson and Casey Affleck, Friend is a touching film about what it means to truly care for one another, especially in the darkest of circumstances.

Based on the Esquire article of the same name, Our Friend recounts the real-life journey of Matthew Teague during the death of his wife (who also serves as an executive producer on the film). After his wife, Nicole (Dakota Johnson) has been diagnosed with cancer, Matthew (played by Casey Affleck) struggles to balance meeting her needs and raising their daughters. Seeking to help, close friend to the family Dane (Jason Segal) offers to move in for a short stay to help Matthew get back on his feet. However, as time marches forward, his temporary gesture extends into an indefinite living arrangement at great personal cost to Dane. Steadfast in his commitment to their family, Dane never waives in his love of the Teagues and the lines between friendship and family begin to blur.

In order to enter, simply like/share this post on Facebook and/or Instagram and tell us who the name of the director of Our Friend!

Winners will receive a digital copy of Our Friend.

All entries must be received by 6:00pm on Sunday, January 24th, 2021.

Our Friend was released in theatres and VOD on January 22nd, 2021.

Special thanks to our friends at TARO PR!

Filed Under: Featured, Giveaways Tagged With: Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Jason Segel, Matthew Teague, Our Friend

The Spirit of the Story: 1on1 with Casey Affleck (OUR FRIEND)

January 22, 2021 by Steve Norton Leave a Comment

It’s fair to say that Casey Affleck understands that the soul of a story can say more than the sum of its parts.

Known for strong performances in such films as A Ghost Story, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Manchester By The Sea (for which he won Best Actor at the Academy Awards), Affleck frequently adds an emotional depth to his characters that helps their fictional stories feel authentic. However, with his latest film Our Friend, star Affleck had the opportunity to explore the real-life journey of writer Matthew Teague, a man whose life is turned upside-down due to a family tragedy. As thrilled as he was to work with the rest of the team behind the film, he recalls that he was also very excited about the soul of the story itself.

“Two things really appealed to me about this project,” he begins. “One was the people who were involved. I liked Gabriela [Cowperthwaite] as a director. I didn’t know Jason [Segel] or Dakota [Johnson] but I was interested in working with them and it turned out to be great. The other was just the spirit of the story, which has to do with sort of selflessness and being of service to others, showing up for people in our lives, even when it’s hardest. Somebody said that a great friend is somebody who shows up when you need them, even when being there is the last place in a world that they want to be. This is a story about me and Dakota, our family finding ourselves in a crisis and Jason Segal’s character showing up in just that way.”

After his wife, Nicole (Dakota Johnson) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Matthew Teague (Casey Affleck) struggles to balance meeting her needs and raising their daughters. Seeking to help, close friend to the family Dane (Jason Segal) offers to move in for a short stay to help Matthew get back on his feet. However, as time marches forward, the lines between friendship and family begin to blur as Dane’s temporary gesture extends into an indefinite living arrangement at great personal cost. 

Though the trio had never worked together before, the chemistry between Affleck, Johnson and Segel is something to behold. In virtually every scene, each of the film’s leads feels emotionally present, creating something truly special onscreen. 

“I had gotten close to working with Jason once on movie but [we] didn’t end up doing it,” Affleck recalls. “I really think he’s a great, great big talent and a sweet guy. Dakota has been sort of on my radar for a while because she’d been just doing really interesting choices that seemed unpredictable. She’ll be in 50 Shades of Gray, Peanut Butter Falcon and Suspiria. She’ll be popping up in places and just seemed like there’s an interesting person there.”

Often times, bringing an actual person to life onscreen can create an added pressure to ensure that you represent their life story and mannerisms authentically. Asked if there’s anything in particular that he wanted people to know about Matthew Teague, Affleck felt that his most important job was not to try to ‘impersonate’ him but instead to honour the power of his story onscreen.

“I don’t really have an agenda about what people know about Matt Teague,” says Affleck. “Matt’s a writer and a nice guy and he brought this story to the public. He wrote an article, brought that article to a screenwriter and he shepherded the whole project all the way through. I was there to just to play a role as an actor. I told Matt on the very first day that I met him that he should not expect to see the movie and feel like he was looking in a mirror or something. It would be different than he remembered. The events in the movie might some way not be exactly like he remembered, but we would all try very hard to make sure that the spirit of the story was communicated. So, I want people not necessarily to know something about Matt, but to know something about what this story says about all of us.” 

Furthermore, in any biographical project, Affleck also understands that the person onscreen is never a full realization of their actual character. 

“In the telling of a story, people are changed,” he explains. “You’re not doing an impersonation. You’re not trying to say this is exactly as someone else is. I believe that the person you see onscreen is a combination of the imagination of the writer, the director, the actor, and the editor, et cetera.” 

In an interesting way, the fact that the film is based on friendship seems almost countercultural. At a time when the term ‘friend’ is most often associated with Facebook connections, Our Friend highlights the meaning of the word in all its fullness. Even so, instead of changing his views on the expression, Affleck’s experience on the film has reinforced what he already believed a friend should be.

“I don’t think that it has new meaning for me,” he explains. “I think that being a part of this movie was a way to contribute to something that expressed what I already felt about friendship. So, it’s more that I got to bring something that I was already sort of carrying to the movie and share that. I think it’s a funny sounding word ‘friend’ but it’s such a beautiful idea. I’d love to have a longer conversation about how and why human beings form relationships and what purpose they serve and how we can serve that purpose. That’s interesting to me and I really do feel like I love the spirit of what this movie is, especially around that topic.” 

Having become increasingly selective in his projects over the course of his career, Affleck found a healthy spirit within this story that was hard to resist. With its emphasis on healing after suffering, he feels that Our Friend is particularly special in the way that it offers a sense of hope to the audience.

“I used to think that, after [working on] a movie, I would walk away and just leave it behind completely,” Affleck points out. “Sometimes it feels like that, but I think that when you put a lot of yourself into a movie, sometimes the movie puts a lot back in you. For that reason, I’ve become a lot more careful about the kinds of projects that I choose to be a part of. When I was younger, almost out of necessity, I just took whatever. Whoever would hire me, I would take that job because that’s how I made a living. It is still how I make my living and I have to work, but I try to be as careful as I can about the spirit of the movie and the spirit of the part. Something like this, I feel like I can live with. I liked the message of this. Even though that the movie is will break your heart, it will also it’ll repair your heart too and sort of fill you back up. I think then when people watch the movie, that’s the experience that they have. They leave feeling sort of emptied and refilled and I’m okay with that.” 

Our Friend is available on VOD on Friday, January 22, 2021.

To hear our conversation with Casey Affleck, click here.

Filed Under: Featured, Film, Film Festivals, Interviews, Reviews, TIFF, VOD Tagged With: Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Jason Segel, Matthew Teague, Our Friend

Our Friend: From Friend to Family

January 22, 2021 by Steve Norton Leave a Comment

Based on the Esquire article of the same name, Our Friend recounts the real-life journey of Matthew Teague (who also serves as an executive producer on the film). After his wife, Nicole (Dakota Johnson) has been diagnosed with cancer, Matthew (played by Casey Affleck) struggles to balance meeting her needs and raising their daughters. Seeking to help, their good friend Dane (Jason Segel) offers to move in for a short stay to help Matthew get back on his feet. However, as time marches forward, the lines between friendship and family begin to blur as his temporary gesture extends into an indefinite living arrangement at great personal cost to Dane.

Beautifully directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Blackfish), the film is often stunning in its broad cinematography yet balanced out by the intimate performances of its cast. Known for her experience in the documentary world, Cowperthwaite manages to translate her ability to tell true stories into her style that gives the film an authentic feel. Rather than scripting the narrative chronologically, Cowperthwaite plays with time, bouncing back and forth to different points of their family’s journey. In doing so, she allows the film to balance painful trauma with genuine humour in a way also mirrors the ups and downs of the tragedy of cancer.

Throughout the piece, stars Affleck, Johnson and Segel have excellent chemistry that reveals the complicated layers of their various family-friend relationships. While all three stars share screen time equally and shine in their own right, it’s Segel’s performance as the lovable yet lost Dane that holds the film together. Known for his comedic roots, Segel demonstrates a dramatic range, giving Dane a deep-seeded loneliness that lies underneath the laughter. 

As one might expect, Our Friend shows the value of relationships, especially during complicated circumstances. Despite his obvious romantic feelings toward Nicole (especially at the outset), Dane relentlessly demonstrates strong character and deep love for both her and her husband. As their lives change, Dane moves from old friend of Nicole to bromance with Matt and, eventually, to family member. While others outside their family do not entirely understand (or even mock) Dane’s involvement within the Teague household, his importance is never lost on Matthew, Nicole or their children. To them, he is more than a friend. He is family.

Furthermore, although Matthew, Dane and Nicole are all held in reverence by the script, none of them are purely angelic or saintly, with each revealing their own secrets and recklessness at various points within the film. While Matthew loves his wife and children, he finds himself torn away by an ever-growing writing career. Although he is loved and accepted by the Teagues, Dane struggles with a deep loneliness and feelings of low self-worth that threatens his mental health. What’s more, in addition to her illness, Nicole is also shown to struggle emotionally as she attempts to manage their home life with her husband frequently away. As a result of its willingness to flesh out its characters, Our Friend highlights the importance of relationships for all of them. While Dane by be the titular Friend, all three characters need each other to hold them up at various points in their lives.

Though, to be fair, it’s also to be too flippant with the term ‘friend’ here. Cowperthwaite’s film doesn’t use the term as casually as we do in our everyday vernacular. (Does anyone actually believe the term ‘Facebook friend’ has any real meaning other than one’s acquaintance anymore?) Instead, Our Friend ensures that the term is used in its most intimate, sacrificial form. Dane is not simply someone who you might grab a beer with after work but rather someone who genuinely gives all that he has out of dedication and love for Matthew and Nicole. To him, friendship is a spiritual experience of offering one’s self wherever needed, no matter the cost. In this way, Our Friend serves as a reminder of what it truly means to commit to one another as friends and the earth-shattering power that that may have on another. 

Traumatic, touching and hilarious at times, the film feels authentic in virtually every way. Featuring stylish direction, strong writing and an incredible cast, Our Friend grapples with the challenges of maintaining close relationships in the midst of real-life trials of illness and work commitments while shining a light on the healing nature of genuine friendship.

To hear our conversation with Matthew Teague, click here.

To hear our conversation with Casey Affleck, click here.

Our Friend is available on PVOD and in select theatres on Friday, January 22nd, 2021.

Filed Under: Featured, Film, Reviews Tagged With: cancer, Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Jason Segel, Matthew Teague, Our Friend

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