Hello again, Art. Oh, I do not hear you. Let's see. It doesn't show that you have any audio coming through on your end. And I'm not sure why. Double check my settings. Yes, OK. KJ, here's David. Are you with me, Art? It's David. Yeah, I'm here. Oh, well, hey, David. How you doing? I'm good. How are you, KJ? I'm good. Oh, my gosh. I mean, are you kidding? I get to start my morning off talking with you, Mr. David Arquette. Life is good. Have you had enough coffee? Are you ready for my energy?
I have and I'm ready. All right. So we are talking with David Arquette and the movie that we're here to talk about. I am just so intrigued with this for so many reasons. It is called The Good Half. And what a cast. You, David, Nick Jonas, Brittany Snow, Matt Walsh, Elizabeth Shue. I mean, it just goes on and on. Alexandra Shipp.
Can you talk, first off, what it was like to be able to kind of, it sounds like you're a bit of the comedic relief here in this movie that is kind of surrounded by some more difficult topics like death and planning funerals. Yeah, it is. It is. I am. I'm sort of the cringe-worthy comedic, I'm the stepfather named Rick. And Nick Jonas' character, Wren, comes back to Cleveland, his hometown, and unfortunately he has to bury his mother and
his sisters, played by Brittany Snow. But I don't really, as their stepfather, I don't really take their feelings into consideration too much when planning it. So it leads to some uncomfortable moments. And yeah, Rick was a funny character to play because he's like this narcissistic character. So I'd have all these moments where we'd ad lib something and I, in my head, would think, oh, that's funny. But I would think, oh, my character wouldn't think that's funny.
He'd be annoyed by it. So I'd have these reactions that weren't my natural instinct. I mean, was it difficult for you there in Hollywood to find inspiration playing a narcissist? No, absolutely not. I was always fascinated by narcissism. And you have to have a certain amount of it just to be an actor. I mean, in general, just to have the confidence to stand up in front of camera or in front of an audience and sort of own the performance. So you have to balance it. But in Hollywood,
there tends to be a ton of them. And some of them don't understand the balance element of it. So I was obsessed so much that I once mentioned to a therapist, I was like, I'm really interested in narcissism and narcissist. Do you have any narcissistic clients? And he said, no. Do you want to know why? I said, why? And he said, they don't need me. That really told me everything I needed to know about narcissism. So in dealing with family dynamics, I've
been doing this a long time. And a lot of my followers were with me, actually, when my parents were passing away. And I made a lot of jokes on the air about the process you go through in planning a funeral I think if you're not laughing about it, I don't
know how you get through it. Did you find when you were creating this film that there was, I mean, there has to be a balance of like, this is serious, we're dealing with death, but also sometimes this is just utterly ridiculous and you had to kind of portray a little bit of both, right? Absolutely. I lost both my parents too and that whole process is just so heart-wrenching,
but there is a lot of Humor in it. I mean even the awkwardness of someone saying are you doing when it's like the worst day of your life? I mean those moments happen all the time and it also triggers like the extremes and everyone's personality if someone's a controller Then they want to just control everything. It's the most uncontrollable situation ever so it peaks everyone's sort of trigger points and And you kind of have
to find these ways of laughing at it. But the director, Robert Schwartzman, has a really wonderful way of balancing it. It was written by a guy named Ben who took from his own personal experience of losing his mother and sort of noted down all of these moments and having to deal with his stepfather and all this stuff. So I think it was really cathartic for him to sort of experience that and write it down and have this film made. and sort of go through that process.
We are talking with David Arquette. The film is The Good Half, and we're doing this as a Fathom event. So we've got tomorrow and then the 25th. And I did look at, we're here in Indianapolis. There are like four or five theaters that this opportunity to see the good half. And then also there's a Q&A with Nick Jonas and some of the other cast and crew. So I wanna make sure that we are getting those tickets if you wanna come see the movie.
And then I would imagine, David, are we gonna get a digital release on this as well? Yeah, I'm sure they'll have a digital release. But hopefully if enough people go out, it could stay in theaters longer. So really kind of the film you want to see with a big group because there is like laughing and there's emotional moments and it really, I don't know, hopefully could be healing
in a way. I mean, I've found like in losing people and the director does a really wonderful job of like flashing back on some really beautiful memories. And it is really about, I don't know, the most healing aspect to it that I found was when you can reach a point of gratitude of having these people in your life to start with, even though it may have been a short time. I mean, that really has brought me the most healing and remembering their memories and keeping those
memories alive. And then for me, in losing my parents, to continue to live my life so that they'd be proud. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, and there are moments, I think, for everyone where you're like, man, I wish I could call my dad. I wish I could call my mom and tell them that. But you live it as if you could, right? Totally. But I had this one experience when I was my second child, my son was born. I was looking at him and I was thinking, oh,
I wish my mom and dad got to meet him. And I had this overwhelming feeling that they were right with me at that moment. They were watching him as well. Absolutely. I know that feeling, too. David, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I'm so excited that we could talk about the good half and know that you've got a lot of fans out there. And people wanted me to talk with you about about Buffy, because I actually have a cat named Buffy that's sitting in the room watching, watching me
talk with you. You've had an incredible career. Do you look back on some of those things you've done, Buffy and Scream, and kind of take it all in and be in awe of yourself and the things that you have done? I'm not sure I'm in awe of that, but I also have a cow named Buffy. And from Buffy specifically, I met so many of my wonderful friends You know, Paul Rubens, Luke Perry, I just loved him. He helped me, you know, put in a good
word for me to get that role. But, you know, getting to know Paul Rubens was just such an, and we just lost him recently a year ago. So it was just a real gift for me just in my life. So that's what I usually do is just lean back on gratitude again. I love it. Thank you so much, David. We'll let you go today. And again, the good half, go see it either tomorrow or Thursday so that we can keep it running in theaters. Cause it sounds like a movie that we all
could really use right now. David, have a great day. Thank you, you too.