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When Dave Franco read the script of Together, a comedic horror film about a codependent couple whose bodies begin to fuse, he was immediately on board \u2013 and not just for himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was blown away by all of these insane set-pieces that were like nothing I had ever seen before, and I turned to Alison and said I think we should do this one together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I read the script and was not at all insulted that Dave compared our relationship to that of the characters in the movie,\u201d says Alison Brie, Franco\u2019s partner of 15 years and wife of eight.<\/p>\n
In truth, she says, she wasn\u2019t at all insulted because she felt they were so different from the characters in the movie.<\/p>\n
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While hiking in the woods near their home, Millie and Tim become trapped in a strange cave that may or may not have mystical properties.Credit: Kismet<\/p>\n
Adds Franco, \u201cI think if we were struggling as much as they are, we would not have said yes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Franco plays Tim, a man in his mid-30s who still harbours a fantasy of making it big with his occasionally gigging band. Brie is Millie, a teacher who lands a new job in the country and thinks of it as the gateway to the next chapter in their lives \u2013 the cute house, the small community, the pitter-patter of little feet.<\/p>\n
He is, of course, terrified.<\/p>\n
After a walk in the woods near their new home goes awry, things get truly weird. Strange smells in the house. Sticky substances that seem to emerge whenever they are close to each other. An inability to leave each other\u2019s orbit for very long, or at all.<\/p>\n
Franco and Brie met at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It was, she jokes, \u201ca one-night stand that never ended\u201d. Though she felt their relationship was sufficiently different to the film\u2019s couple, Brie also appreciated that \u201cthe meta quality of us being in a long-term relationship would add a lot to the movie. For us as actors, there was a lot of work that we didn\u2019t have to do to have the theme [of codependency] be infused with that history that\u2019s already there.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Writer-director Michael Shanks offers his stars some instruction on set. The movie was made in the Dandenongs and at Docklands Studios Melbourne.Credit: Germain McMicking\/Kismet<\/p>\n
For writer-director Michael Shanks, though, there was nowhere to hide. Tim is, he readily admits, \u201c100 per cent\u201d him \u2013 or at least him as he was in his mid-20s when he first had the idea for what would become Together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in a relationship with my partner for over 16 years,\u201d he says. \u201cWe met at schoolies the week after high school \u2013 a friend\u2019s parents had a little shack an hour out of Melbourne, we went there and drank ourselves into oblivion for a week, and got awfully sunburnt.\u201d<\/p>\n
They have been together ever since, he continues, \u201cand there was a point where I realised we have all the same friends, we eat the same food, we listen to the same music, we breathe the same air, and I started to freak out. I was realising that, without her, I wasn\u2019t a complete person any more because we\u2019d been growing in the same direction so much that our lives had become intertwined.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just them, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy friendship group is a series of tragic monogamists, most of whom have been together since high school,\u201d Shanks says. \u201cSome of those relationships have thrived, and some you look at and go, \u2018I don\u2019t think you guys are still together because you love each other. I think you\u2019re just used to each other. You\u2019re so intertwined you can\u2019t extricate yourselves\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Shanks told his partner, Louey, about his idea, she was taken aback but also understanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said to me, \u2018I\u2019m a little upset you\u2019re writing this, but it\u2019s a good idea\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shanks wrote his first draft of the screenplay in 2019, when he was in his late 20s. The following year, Screen Australia funded a second draft, and in 2021 it funded a third.<\/p>\n
(Shanks was already on the agency\u2019s radar thanks to his YouTube channel, which had garnered more than 64 million views before going into hiatus; in 2016, the agency backed his self-made Lord of the Rings parody Wizard of Oz.)<\/p>\n
That timeline has become critically important in recent months, for reasons that Shanks finds painful to discuss.<\/p>\n
The film was shot in just 21 days in early 2024, with the star American couple setting up house in Melbourne. \u201cWe loved snagging that window seat at Napier Quarter,\u201d says Brie of the cosy Fitzroy wine bar they frequented. \u201cMelbourne makes us feel at home,\u201d adds Franco. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the few places we\u2019ve ever shot that we could actually imagine ourselves living in.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dave Franco and Alison Brie in Together.Credit: Germain McMicking\/Kismet<\/p>\n
For the rest of the year, Shanks did whatever VFX work he could manage himself, though the big set pieces were farmed out to Framestore. \u201dIt was amazing to work with real visual effects people,\u201d he says, somewhat modestly. He worked day and night and at weekends. \u201cAnd that was the way we managed to get it done in time to submit to Sundance.\u201d The film festival is the world\u2019s foremost showcase of indie cinema.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve been a film nerd my whole life, and you dream of going somewhere like Sundance,\u201d Shanks says. \u201cMaking the film was a dream. Getting into Sundance was the next dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Park City, Utah, where the festival has been held, is more than 2100 metres above sea level. It\u2019s not uncommon for visitors to contend with altitude sickness \u2013 and Shanks had it bad. He had a virus too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent two days leading up to the screening just vomiting, unable to keep food down. The day of the screening, I was in an emergency room and had a drip and oxygen \u2013 it was awful,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
Somehow, he forced himself into the 2000-seat cinema where he was due to introduce his film. \u201cAnd as soon as I walked into that room, the adrenaline hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only a very small group of people \u2013 producers and editors and a handful of crew \u2013 had yet seen Together. They thought it was \u201cquite good\u201d, but no one knew how it would play to an audience.<\/p>\n
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Brie plays a teacher who is ready for the relationship to move onto the logical next stage.Credit: Germain McMicking\/Kismet<\/p>\n
\u201dMy partner had flown over for it, and my mother had flown over to see a film she was almost certainly going to hate \u2013 it\u2019s sticky and gross, and it has some nasty moments, and she typically doesn\u2019t watch any film that doesn\u2019t star Judi Dench.\u201d <\/p>\n
Five minutes in, he got his first laugh. After another five minutes, the film\u2019s first scare landed too. \u201cAnd from then, they just reacted exactly the way we always hoped they would.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the after-party, he was mobbed by well-wishers while Louey was playing dice games with Brie and English actor Dan Stevens. Even his mum liked it \u2026 ish. \u201cShe came up and said, \u2018I thought that was quite good\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within hours, a bidding war broke out for the film, which cost about $US5 million to make. Two days later, distributor Neon landed it \u2013 reportedly paying $US17 million for worldwide rights, the biggest sale of the festival and one of the biggest in its history.<\/p>\n
And that, more or less, is when the trouble began.<\/p>\n
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