It’s been more than two years since Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut “Being Mortal” fell apart mid-production, suspended after misconduct allegations against Bill Murray led Searchlight Pictures to shut the film down. Half of it was already shot. Since then, Ansari has moved on — his new comedy “Good Fortune” is about to be released — but the experience of losing his first feature hasn’t left him. On a recent appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Ansari opened up about the collapse of “Being Mortal,” describing the experience as “heavy” yet still deeply meaningful.
Asked whether the wave of production setbacks — from strikes to a film vanishing mid-shoot — ever made him feel cursed, Ansari brushed it off. “Oh, that never happens,” he said with a laugh. “Here’s the thing people don’t realize — all these movies you see, the ones that make the news are the big ones, but most of the time, things fall apart quietly. Some actor drops out two weeks before, and then they have to spend another year getting financing. Every movie is a miracle. There’s nobody I know that’s had, ‘Oh yeah, we had the script, we got the people, we shot it, it was done, it was easy.’ Especially now, things fall apart all the time. I feel so blessed to have this movie come out and to have completed it. I don’t feel unlucky in the least bit.”
Still, “Being Mortal” stays with him. “I do think about ‘Being Mortal,’” he said. “It was such a different movie from ‘Good Fortune.’ It was a much different debut. I shot like half of it.” When asked if it leaned more dramatically, Ansari agreed. “It was heavy. It’s based on a book called ‘Being Mortal’ by Atul Gawande, who’s an incredible writer. It’s a nonfiction book about dealing with end-of-life issues — things you deal with when your parents are getting older, getting sick, putting them in retirement homes, and dealing with doctors. It’s heavy, but it can also be funny. There’s humor there, you know, in these really dark times.”
The idea, he said, was built around Murray from the start. “The idea for the movie was, oh, what if you took this book and made it into a narrative, and the guy was Bill Murray?” Ansari explained. “It wasn’t like, ‘What if there was a guy like him?’ It was, ‘What if it was Bill Murray?’ It was really trying to do an evolution of the stuff he was doing in ‘Lost in Translation,’ where he’s really funny but also very poignant.”
The project co-starred Seth Rogen and Keke Palmer, with Lowell Crawley, who shot “The Brutalist,” serving as cinematographer. “We were shooting on film — on 35,” Ansari said. “There was beautiful stuff in it, and there was really funny stuff, too.” He highlighted one small but memorable performance: “There was a woman from ‘Parks and Recreation,’ Helen, who played Ethel Beavers — she was in ‘Being Mortal’ as this cranky lady at the retirement home, and it was so funny.”
He recalled one sequence that captured the tone he was chasing — bittersweet, absurd, and deeply human. “There was a scene where Seth has to take Bill to all these different retirement homes to find out which one he’s going to go into — kind of shopping for the right one,” Ansari said. “There would always be something ridiculous happening at each place, and then one that’s just a little darker, a little sadder. I remember thinking, man, it’s so sad to think of someone like Bill being in one of these places. And then I thought, it’s sad to think of anybody being in one of these places. Bill — everybody knows him, and he has this light inside. But everybody has light inside them. The movie made me think about that a lot. And I hope we get to revisit it.”
When asked if “Being Mortal” could ever be salvaged, Ansari said, “People have talked to us about doing it. It’s a matter of schedules. We’ve got some busy people between Seth and Kiki and Bill and myself. But no, it was a much different thing. It might have been something where people would have said, ‘Oh man, this is too much of a leap for you.’ But I love ‘Being Mortal’ too. It was just a different thing — a little bit different genre, a little more dramatic.”
“It’s still there,” he laughed. “It’s on my computer. Some of it, yeah.” After everything, his voice softened: “The movie made me think about a lot, and I hope we get to revisit it.”
