{"id":130701,"date":"2025-09-09T07:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/130701\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T07:55:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:55:11","slug":"good-fortune-being-mortal-keanu-reeves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/130701\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Good Fortune,’ ‘Being Mortal,’ Keanu Reeves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aziz Ansari<\/a>\u2018s feature directing debut, \u201cGood Fortune<\/a>,\u201d wasn\u2019t meant to be his first effort as a filmmaker: That would\u2019ve been \u201cBeing Mortal,\u201d called off mid-shoot in 2022 amid accusations of misconduct against Bill Murray<\/a>. So it was inevitable that alongside the TIFF<\/a> premiere of \u201cGood Fortune<\/a>,\u201d a comedy starring Keanu Reeves and \u201cBeing Mortal\u201d star Seth Rogen, he\u2019d have to address the canceled film<\/a>. And it turns out, they share thematic DNA.<\/p>\n

The South Carolina-born Indian-American actor, writer, director, and stand-up comedian is known by audiences worldwide as serial entrepreneur Tom \u201cTreat Yo Self\u201d Haverford on NBC\u2019s \u201cParks and Recreation,\u201d and as the more somber, lovelorn Dev Shah on the Netflix hit series \u201cMaster of None.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Unidentified'\"<\/a> \"Cofounded<\/a> <\/p>\n

Could \u201cGood Fortune\u201d and his should-have-been debut \u201cBeing Mortal\u201d have swapped titles? After all, in the TIFF premiere, Keanu Reeves plays Gabriel, the Angel of Texting and Driving \u2014 in L.A., yes, the City of Angels, where in this comedy, angels exist \u2014 and finds himself demoted to human by his angel boss (Sandra Oh).\u00a0Thus, he becomes mortal. \u201cWhoa!\u201d Ansari told IndieWire in Toronto. \u201cI gotta process that,\u201d when asked.<\/p>\n

When the news of \u201cBeing Mortal\u2019s\u201d cancellation broke in April 2022, Ansari said he got a deluge of \u201cI\u2019m sooo sorry\u201d texts. He recalled thinking, \u201cI can\u2019t deal with this. I don\u2019t wanna be in this woe-is-me moment.\u201d Ansari said he then called Seth Rogen, also a star of \u201cBeing Mortal.\u201d He told Rogen, \u201cHey, I know you\u2019re free and were supposed to work today. If you wanna make this day less shitty for me, can you read this script [for \u2018Good Fortune\u2019]? He said, yeah, and he called me in two hours and said, \u2018I\u2019m in, let\u2019s do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how \u201cGood Fortune\u201d began. Ansari had a basic version of the story ready, where he plays Arj, a down-on-his-luck documentary film editor living out of his car and forced to participate in the gig economy as a Taskrabbiter and home-improvement store worker. Through the latter, Arj meets a union organizer (Keke Palmer, also a \u201cBeing Mortal\u201d star), whom he begins dating. Through the former, Arj meets Jeff (Seth Rogen), a venture-capitalist angel investor in tech companies. When Gabriel (Reeves) intervenes because he can\u2019t help but take pity on Arj\u2019s lost soul, Gabriel decides to swap Arj and Jeff\u2019s lives. There you have it, a \u201cPrince and the Pauper\u201d-esque fable, touched by an angel, with a rebellious and playful streak of working-class consciousness.<\/p>\n

\"GOOD\u2018Good Fortune\u2019\u00a9Lions Gate\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Empathy for the working class indeed feels like a far cry from Tom Haverford and Dev Shah. When asked about shifting from narratives about the middle class \u2014 Ansari co-created \u201cMaster of None\u201d with his longtime collaborator Alan Yang, also a producer on \u201cGood Fortune\u201d \u2014 and from TV to film, Ansari said, \u201c\u2019Master of None\u2019 was almost the perfect training ground to get ready to do this film. There was an episode on Season 2 called \u2018New York, I Love You\u2019 and another episode in Season 3, where the character played by Naomi Ackie [goes] through IVF. For both of those episodes, I had to do a lot of work interviewing people, trying to understand experiences that were not my own\u2026 I hope for people [who] like \u2018Master of None,\u2019 [that] this is kind of what they hoped I would do with a movie. It has a lot of the same DNA as \u2018Master.\u2019 It\u2019s about seeing things from other people\u2019s perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anasri said, \u201cSo for \u2018New York, I Love You,\u2019 there was a segment about a cab driver, a doorman, and a woman who was Deaf. This guy Stefano and I did a DoorDash ride-along, and then I took over his account and did stuff for a day. That fueled the whole segment with Seth [in \u2018Good Fortune\u2019], where he ends up doing DoorDash. I also spoke with this guy, Vincent, who tried to unionize a Home Depot in Philadelphia. He was so inspiring. The Elena character that Keke Palmer plays [is based on him]. So we interviewed a lot of people that did those kinds of gigs. That process is something that helped me tremendously in doing \u2018Good Fortune.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Ansari said the script\u2019s conceit about angels really began to hit home once he pulled off a casting coup with Keanu Reeves. That Ansari is himself an actor and a stand-up comedian helped him figure out the comedy of \u201cGood Fortune,\u201d plus the fact that he was back in the familiar mode of acting and directing in equal measure, as he had in \u201cMaster of None.\u201d (By contrast, in \u201cBeing Mortal,\u201d Ansari said he had a much smaller role.)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Being Mortal\u2019 is based on a book by Atul Gawande that\u2019s about life (and death) issues,\u201d said Ansari. \u201cIt was pretty heavy at times, and it was a heavy shoot. So I was excited to do something that was much more straightforward comedy. When Keanu\u2019s name first came up, I started watching all his films like \u2018Point Break\u2019 and \u2018Speed,\u2019 but I went back to the comedies he had done, like \u2018Bill and Ted\u2019s Excellent Adventure\u2019 and \u2018Parenthood\u2019 in particular. You kind of see little bits of his comedy power. He\u2019s very funny when he\u2019s playing a guy that\u2019s kind of naive, but at the same time so sweet. And that\u2019s Gabriel, right? He\u2019s so lovable. But he\u2019s kind of dumb. [Laughs]\u201c<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In thinking about Reeves while looking at the script, Ansari said he could \u201cjust imagine him having this bright-eyed wonder about the internet, him being this angel that gets thrown into the deep end of being a human and struggling in L.A., but having the attitude he does. I just had a feeling it would work\u2026 He\u2019s so great, he\u2019s the soul of the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the dating scenes between Arj (Ansari) and Elena (Ackie) are blocked brings to mind \u201cMaster of None\u2019s\u201d approach to the same, and Ansari agreed. He said while planning to shoot those romantic moments for \u201cGood Fortune\u201d that he and Alan Yang recognized this is their \u201cbread and butter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ansari also edited the film while he shot, which is a bold choice. \u201cThis notion of watching the rough cut is a nightmare. You\u2019re so scared. If you edit as you go along, you minimize that a little bit,\u201d Ansari said. \u201cYou just start feeling the rhythms of the movie, and you start understanding what\u2019s working camera-wise in terms of the cinematic language. \u2018Oh, these kinds of shots feel good,\u2019 or \u2018oh, let\u2019s stay in these singles a little bit longer.\u2019 Whatever it is, you just learn what your movie is, [and] you can kind of lean into things.\u201d Ansari credited his editor, Daniel Haworth, with whom he worked on \u201cMaster\u201d as well. Whenever Haworth was on set, Ansari would run in to take a look at the dailies and the evolving cut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMaster of None\u201d fans will be delighted to see the director\u2019s father (Shoukath Ansari) show up in special appearances, though Ansari\u2019s mother (Fatima Ansari) doesn\u2019t feature in \u201cGood Fortune\u201d as she did in that Netflix show. Ansari said that his mom hates acting, but it was a lot of fun having his dad around, because a lot of the story is about the need for family in a place like L.A. <\/p>\n

\"AzizAziz Ansari as Arj and Keanu Reeves as Gabriel in \u2018Good Fortune\u2019Eddy Chen\/Lionsgate<\/p>\n

\u201cParks and Rec\u201d fans will also notice Joe Mande, who played Morris for a few episodes on the NBC sitcom and served as a writer. In the film, Arj meets Joe\u2019s character while Taskrabbiting in line at a Cinnabon. The casting of secondary and tertiary characters feels very intentional in this film, adding to the groundedness of a movie as much about Los Angeles as it is set there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had an amazing cast director, Carmen Cuba. One role that was very fun to cast was Felipe [Felipe Garcia Martinez], who plays a dishwasher that Keanu works with,\u201d Ansari said. \u201cWe\u2019d been reading these people, and none of them really felt like the real guy that would be in the back of the kitchen with Keanu. So me and my producer Kelsey [Comeau] went down to his restaurant, and he came out, and we did some of the scenes.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added, \u201cThen I called Keanu and said, \u2018Hey, I have this idea for that character. Would it be cool if we used a real guy, because I think he would bring some authenticity to the role?\u2019 He said, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m down.\u2019 So we use Felipe, and he shows up, and he\u2019s the only person I met who doesn\u2019t know who Keanu Reeves is! Months after we wrapped, I went down to the restaurant, and I was like, \u2018Felipe!\u2019 He was there. And I was like, \u2018Did you tell all these people you\u2019re a movie star now?\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh yeah, he\u2019s been telling us all the time. He\u2019s telling us about Keanu and everything.\u2019 Yeah, Felipe\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Ansari were an angel, what would his department be? Ansari said, \u201cMaybe the Angel of Screenwriting Inspiration? I love to help writers out that are stuck in the jam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood Fortune\u201d premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Lionsgate\u00a0will release the film in theaters on Friday, October 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aziz Ansari\u2018s feature directing debut, \u201cGood Fortune,\u201d wasn\u2019t meant to be his first effort as a filmmaker: That…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[15892,49,48,361,75,28908,1554,15893,2977,15896],"class_list":{"0":"post-130701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-aziz-ansari","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-festivals","14":"tag-film","15":"tag-good-fortune","16":"tag-interviews","17":"tag-tiff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}