What Happened to Nicky | "Vietnam" (304) with special guest Michael Angarano
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On today's episode of That Was Us, we're diving into Season 3, Episode 4, Vietnam. After watching his young brother Nicky get selected in the U.S. draft lottery for the Vietnam War, Jack makes a life-altering decision to enlist himself, forever changing the course of both of their lives.
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You guys, it's a very exciting day.
It is an exciting day. We have another guest.
Yes, we do. We have another guest. You might know him as Young Nicky. Yeah. But you may also know him from Lords of Dogtown. Yeah. You may know him from The Nick. Yeah. You may know him from Almost Famous. Oh, my goodness. Or you may know him from his brand new movie, Sacramento. Come on now. Michael Angarano. Angarano's here!
What's up, buddy?
Nice intro.
Nice intro.
Nice plug.
Leave it to Sully.
Buddy, I saw your movie. Let's just get straight to it. Yeah, let's get straight to that. You're going to make me blush. I'm already blushing. I'm already like... I'm going to make you blush. You have written a movie. You have starred in a movie.
Directed.
You have directed this movie. It is called Sacramento. It is starring yourself and Michael Cera and your wife, partner. My... Both. Wife and partner. Wife and partner. Yes. Maya Erskine. Yes. And Kristen Stewart. Yes. Yeah. And I saw the premiere about a week ago. Yeah. And the movie has not left my brain. It is a classic, like grounded in reality, heartfelt, straight up comedy, which nobody makes anymore. Very true. And you have to see this movie.
Thanks, man.
Can you give us that elevator pitch?
Please. It's two old friends, myself, Michael, Sarah, who go on an impromptu road trip from Los Angeles to Sacramento. That's it. That is literally... That's all you need to know. That's all you need to know. And it started as exactly that. We started writing it 10 years ago. And it's just funny because we're shooting this, doing this in Los Feliz adjacent area, east side. You know, this was the old stomping grounds 10 years ago. And I don't live around here anymore, but driving around here, I'm like, oh, yeah, we used to write in this coffee shop. We used to hang out at the Par 3 down the street. This is like where my friend Chris Smith and I, we wrote this 10 years ago and didn't start. When we wrote it, we didn't really know what it was going to become.
We wanted to make it eventually, but it started just as this impromptu road trip from Los Angeles to Sacramento. It started as like a joke. Hey, you want like a million signs around Los Angeles? Say I-5 North Sacramento. Yeah. So we just reverse engineered the story around that joke one day. We did a pilot together that didn't get picked up. So we were unemployed, hanging out, going to like the par three in the batting cages. And we, yeah, man, we just, you know, as we grew and evolved and matured as guys, like the story changed and evolved and kind of became what it is now. Which I don't want to spoil the movie. We're not going to spoil it. Yeah, don't spoil it. But that's sort of what, that's kind of how it grew.
Given the old school nature of what you're talking about selling the movie, how hard was it to get a theatrical distribution? Was it an easy pitch? What kind of hurdles did you have to go through in order to get it made?
I mean, so many. Yeah. So many. And I'm so happy that it's gotten a theatrical release and a pretty significant one. I mean, it's all over the country. It was only in a couple 200 theaters, but still it's like people all across the country and in Canada can go see it. So it was... It wasn't until I think I watched our notes screening, and we had a big notes screening when we were editing, where I realized how much a movie like this needs to be seen in a theater. Because it is a comedy. And it's not the same when you watch it alone in a room. Sure. And even it affected our editing process. It's like, oh, this actually plays, and it plays bigger.
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