Original-Cin Q&A: Two Michaels, Cera and Angarano, on Sacramento and Fatherhood
Life can change on a dime and that is exactly what happened while filming the new film, Sacramento. The road-comedy is directed by Michael Angarano, who also wrote the screenplay with Chris Smith. It stars Angarano, Michael Cera, Kristen Stewart and Maya Erskine.
The film which was originally conceived 10 years ago, centers around Rickey (Angarano) a free-spirited young man with a Peter Pan complex who convinces his control-freakish long-time friend Glenn (Cera) to take a break from his domestic life to embark on an impromptu road trip across California.
Bonnie Laufer spoke with Michael Angarano and Michael Cera about working on the film and the changes in their lives since the journey began.
Sacramento is in theatres Friday, April 11.
Michael Cera and Michael Angarano on the road to Sacramento
ORIGINAL-CIN: The film is about a road trip to Sacramento, but was there any thought to having it set somewhere else?
MICHAEL ANGARANO: That’s actually a good question, because we did think about different locations when we started to develop the script.
At one point, for a different iteration of this movie we were going to make it in Georgia because of the tax breaks in Georgia which I was ultimately okay with. Whatever, it takes to get the movie made. But at that point, I was like, why not just call the movie, Savannah?
Ultimately, over the course of time the location changed and I'm very glad that it was true to the script and that we shot exclusively in California.
O-C: This took a long time to get off the ground, around 10 years to be exact. From when you started to think about this script to when you actually started shooting it, how much had the original idea changed because your life had changed so much?
ANGARANO: Yes, there were a lot of changes. Chris Smith and I started writing it, as you said, about 10 years ago when we were both actors so we would revisit it every once in a while, in between jobs.
So, when I say it took 10 years to get made, Chris Smith and I are also big procrastinators, so there's probably about a few months of actual work that took place within those 10 years. (Laughs.)
There were dozens of drafts of the scripts that evolved and changed. We really carved it out from this big chunk of marble that we started with, which was literally just an idea of going on a road trip to Sacramento, which was born out of a joke between the two of us.
So it really fine-tuned itself and evolved and took shape I would say about a month or so before we started shooting. We finally hunkered down, did a revision that ended up being the version that exists. There were a couple of loose ends that we never we didn't tie up for a long time.
O-C: Michael C, You come on board to play this guy, Glenn, an old friend of Ricky. I'm not going to lie, he gave me a lot of anxiety. How did you find your way in to relate to him, because what he's going through is a lot.
MICHAEL CERA: To be honest, playing Glenn wasn’t a huge stretch for me. He’s not too far from things that I've struggled with in my life that I could take to the nth degree. His need to have control over things and over his life, over his space and over his world, it was just taken to a totally unhealthy level. I could just magnify those.
During COVID everybody felt this a little where you become so myopic about your home, and especially if you live with a partner, you have the dumbest arguments over the way the pantry is organized, and then that escalates to a toxic level of control. It’s an OCD thing, so it wasn't too hard to relate.
ANGARANO: Then also fatherhood just ratchets that up. People say it's like your heart is outside of your body. Suddenly the thing that you worry about the most means the most to you. You just always want to make sure they're safe and do the best you can. So we really stepped it up for both characters in this film.
O-C: Nothing bonds people more than a road trip. Once you guys got in that car together, did it amplify your friendship?
ANGARANO: Truth is, we think that it's not too dissimilar from our actual relationship.
I know we are kind of playing the extreme versions of these characters but we loved road tripping together. I’ll have to say, if you suffer from back or hip pain, the thought of laying down on a flatbed for eight hours every night can be daunting.
We were driving around the East side of L.A., listening to music, which is kind of what we do anyway. But it was really nice to have that time together in the car.
To be honest, all of our driving shots were done on the first day of shooting. So the first day was literally 10 hours of us hanging out in the car, and not even with microphones because it was just to get the footage. We were just catching up because we hadn't seen each other for over a year. So we were just shooting the shit, hanging out which was awesome.
O-C: There’s a hilarious scene when you both go to a wrestling gym. I think you have missed your calling. What was it like being in the ring together?
CERA: It was so much fun to do. When we first got there, because it's in the script, I had to slide into the ring. I had no idea what to do, so the guy who owned the place showed me how to do it. I was a bit nervous because I really didn’t know if I could do that. But after doing it, I loved it. Mike let me do whatever I wanted and that was so satisfying but also exhausting.
ANGARANO: I will say we did have a stunt coordinator to help us out, but we basically did that all of ourselves. It was very important that we had a sense of playfulness about it, kind of like what they used to do when they were 12 years old in their parents' basements.
O-C: Michael A. this whole experience really worked out not only professionally but personally. Maya Erskine who is also in the film became your wife and now you have two kids together. Michael C., you are also married with two kids and living a completely different life from when you started this film. How has becoming a father changed you as an actor and your choices?
CERA: It has changed everything for me. Being a parent changes all of your priorities and the way that you make decisions about everything you do. In our profession, we always have to go somewhere for a few months and make a new home for long periods of time.
It's a very transient kind of strange life, and that obviously really changes when you're carting your kids around, and you have to bring everything that kids need, or your partner’s at home while you're juggling these two kids.
This movie is a little nostalgic postcard for us, because it's amazing to see how our lives evolved over the course of getting it made. I came on to it about five years ago.
When I first came on to the project, there was no Maya. There were no children. Maya and Mike had no kids, and then by the time we're making the movie, they have this little family. So it's a crazy little ecosystem that we had around the project.
ANGARANO: Maya and I had met before we started the film, but once we actually started working together it turned into much more. So Michael’s right, and that is sort of how the story evolved. As we got older and our lives changed so did the essence of the film.
I don't think if we set out to write a movie about fatherhood or becoming a parent after having a kid, it would have been a different movie. It felt like art imitating life, or life imitating art and it all worked out better than I could have imagined.