Daniel Robbins Talks Bad Shabbos at Miami Jewish Film Festival

Hi, I'm Allison with FlickDirect, and I'm here with Daniel Robbins, and we're talking about his film Bad Shabbos. Hello, sir. How are you? Great. How are you? I'm good. How do you feel to be here at the Miami Jewish Film Festival? Great. It's a packed audience, and they seem excited. The movie just started, but we'll find out in the Q&A if it went well.

We will. We'll have to wait and see for that. So you co-wrote this film, besides directing it, with Zach Wiener. Yes. So how did that conversation start, and how did the film evolve over time? The idea came from Adam Mitchell, our incredible producer who put everything together, where he heard about Zach Wiener's Friday night dinners that he has with his family on the Upper West Side.

And his mom has this tradition where sometimes if there's a new guest, because she invites all these different people over, she might prank them. So Adam heard about this, and then he thought, what would happen if one of those pranks ended up in someone dying? And they came to me with that idea, and I said, oh my God, that could be so funny, because I haven't seen a Shabbat.

I haven't seen a Shabbat portrayed authentically. And if we can get that energy right and what a family feels like, and then have this engine of a dead body movie, that would be a movie I would watch tonight, which is a good sign. Yes. And then all three of us outlined it, and all these pieces started falling into place of, oh, it could be a Jewish boy dating a non-Jewish girl.

Oh, what if it's a night that her parents are meeting his parents for the first time? And then it all clicked in this magical way. It was like the perfect storm, wasn't it? Yeah, and sometimes you have an idea that you think is good, but then it doesn't click in the outline. But thankfully, with Hashem's help, this one did. Here we are. Absolutely.

Are there any people in the film, any characters that are based on real-life human beings, your family, Zach's family? Not really. I mean, we all took maybe like a trade or two from different people. I think the dad is almost a combination of my dad and Zach's dad to some extent. But we tried to distance it and make the characters, I mean, the characters in the movie are just a lot crazier than the real-life ones.

But even Zach's mom thought that she recognized what Kira was doing and what she does, but Kira is just a much crazier version just for the sake of drama. Yes, absolutely. And she's incredible in the movie. She is. I want to talk about the cast. So did you ever think that Cliff Method Man Smith would one day be in a sweater vest and a yarmulke? No.

I didn't think he would be in the movie, let alone put on a costume. How did he get him to be in the movie? Because his – Adam, the casting director, has got the script to his agent, Brian Boone, who normally – agents at CAA, they – I mean, everyone's different. But he read the script. He did. And then he had the conviction of taste to like it and recommend it to Method Man.

Then Cliff Method Man Smith read it, and he just totally got why it was funny. And he was down to make this cool New York indie with the cast, and he just gave it his all. And everyone loved having him on set. And how did Kira come about for this? Same way? Kira, because, you know, with casting, you make a list of who you want first, and then you work your way down.

We assumed she'd say no. But she read the script and got what worked about it. Because, you know, she also directs, so she – and she's been acting since she's about 16. Yes, yes. So she knows good material, and she sees it. So she read it and was like, this will be great. I'd like to be part of it. And we also shot on the Upper West Side. So it was a little more convenient, too.

And then once she was in, she just gave her all to it. Like, she came up with all these different ideas. Every day on set, she would, you know, make sure we got things and have new ideas for different things and just was fully committed. It was encouraging. She was phenomenal. And I think it would have been a different film had it been a different actress playing her role.

Yeah, I don't even know who it could have been. Yeah. She was just perfect for it and great. So that was wonderful. Tell me a little bit about the rest of the cast, too. Because they're all great. I could go through each one for like five minutes. Really? Well, let's not do that. Give me some highlights. Like, who did something that surprised you? Well, you have the lead, John Bass.

Yes. Who I think it might be the most difficult role because he has to be a real person that the audience connects to. And then he also has to make every situation funny. And he would just walk on this tightrope to pull that off. And then Megan, his girlfriend, just had to be completely authentic and real. Yeah. And like the audience loves her so much that we think, OK, I would go through this misery with my family to be with this person.

And she pulls it off perfectly. And then Milana is hilarious as the sister. And that's her challenging role because it's the role of the woman who's kind of complete, like a little trying to hold back the action of the movie. And usually people don't connect to that role, but people walk out naming her as their favorite. And then Ashley Zuckerman is like, sorry, I'm going to keep going.

I'll stop. Yeah. We'll just stop it there. This film won audience award at Tribeca Film Festival. That was nice. 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. Were you expecting this kind of response to it? What kind of reaction have you gotten from audiences when you've been at these film festivals? The reaction? I mean, we thought it would be good because we do a lot of test screenings to get the film right.

But then once we screened it and people were just rolling laughter for the whole movie and then getting audience award for a comic. It was so nice because we didn't fully expect that. And also an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes for a comedy, you want to be below 90. If you're above 90, that means it's like a drama comedy and people won't actually laugh. Okay.

So I'm actually hoping we get like low 70s in the end because that's usually a good realm for my favorite comedies. Actually, my favorites are in like the 50s. Okay. But we'll see where we end up. I think 86 is a good number, I think. It's good for now. Okay. Yeah. Hopefully it goes down a little. I don't know. you Thank you.