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Roundtable Interview With Adam Scott And Director Stu Zicherman On A.C.O.D.

While divorce may not be something typically associated with comedy, that didn't stop writer/director Stu Zicherman from creating the movie A.C.O.D., detailing the after effects of divorce on a grown man - played by none other than Adam Scott. Together, these two brought laughs into the life of a man who years later discovers his childhood "therapist" was only using him for research, writing a book that predicted his future outcome. Scott's character brags how he'd defied every one of the author's predictions, becoming independent and successful, but starts to realize that might only be on the outside.

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Because of the film, we asked both Stu and Adam if they are A.C.O.D.:

Stu Zicherman: Yup.

Adam Scott: Yeah, luckily my experience being an A.C.O.D. was a very healthy and happy one. My parents split up when I was very little, but for my siblings and I it was an incredibly healthy childhood. We never saw any arguments or anything like that. It was an amicable, lovely situation. I wouldn’t have been able to write this script, mainly because I’m not a writer, but also because I did not have that experience. Of course I went through my life hearing stories of horrible divorces and family situations, but reading this felt like the perfectly tuned version of that – the divorce movie to end all divorce movies. Yeah, Stu and I had wildly different experiences with divorce in our lives.

Stu Zicherman: The important thing to me in talking to Adam, who had such a different experience, is that he understood it. It was always a balance, and in the edit to, finding a balance – our character isn’t suffering from cancer, our character wasn’t beaten. His problem is that his parents got divorced, and there’s always a moment where the audience can say, “Get over it, dude.” You lose your audience. That was a lesson I feel I learned from Flirting With Disaster, because the journey of that character is just finding out who his parents are. He’s going out of control trying to figure it out. Carter, in A.C.O.D., is trying to break his parents up, busting up his brother’s wedding – he’s doing a lot of things that aren’t likable. The important thing is that he understood the quest and tried to control these people, maintaining sanity in his family, and that’s something he understood.

Touching on Adam’s casting, we asked if the actor’s straight-laced manner was something Stu was specifically looking for:

Stu Zicherman: I’ve been being sent a lot of new scripts and I’ve been talking to people about new movies, a lot of single-character male journey movies, and I’m really kind of tired of the portrayal of the adult man in America – the 30s, late 40s male. I go see the movies, I love them, but the guys that talk like, “Pussy, fucking, looking,” pot smoking – it’s funny, and I’ll buy a ticket, but it’s not my experience of being an adult. The people I know that are struggling with their demons and trying to be successful, we’re just not like that, and it’s really a huge reason I wanted Adam to play the lead in this movie because even in movies where he’s being ridiculous, like Step Brothers, he’s still being the adult. He’s a real adult. He brings a certain, I’ve been using the word cynicism, to his life, that I think is real. That’s what I feel like it is to be a man in America today. I like this character. This character is not a boy, he’s a man, he just realizes he hasn’t gotten over this shit from being a boy.

Hearing this, I asked Stu if he crafted the part of Carter specifically for Adam from the start, or if the character came first and then Stu’s interest in Adam followed:

Adam Scott: It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?

Stu Zicherman: Yeah, from the first time I saw Party Down I was like, “This guy should have a lead in a movie, and I would love it to be my movie.” He hasn’t had that many chances to play a lead in a movie, so when you enter into a partnership together, we stand to benefit if we can do it well. I don’t think that men in movies need to be stupid anymore. I was just meeting on a movie that I’m probably going to write, and I was like, “I’ll write this movie, but I’m going to completely overhaul the lead character, because what guy goes to Costco to buy a wedding ring?” It’s just, no. If we can’t afford a Tiffany’s ring, we start calling around to people. We don’t go to Costco, right?

Ending the interview, we of course asked both Adam and Stu what future projects they’re currently working on:

Stu Zicherman: This sounds ridiculous every time I say this, but I’m actually writing a movie with Steve Martin. It’s a Disney movie called Magic Camp. I’m also working on Season 2 of The Americans, the FX show, and writing another movie that I’m trying to make.

Adam Scott: I’m shooting Parks and Recreation right now, I’m in The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty which comes out this Christmas, and I’m also in Hot Tub Time Machine 2. I’m from the future, which is pretty much all I can say about it.

I’d like to thank Adam Scott and Stu Zicherman for taking time out of their schedules to talk, and be sure to catch A.C.O.D., which is out now!