Alison Brie rose to stardom acting in diametrically opposite television series with equally rabid fan followings, starring in Mad Men and Community simultaneously. From there, she somehow became even more widely known with big comedies like The Five-Year Engagement and Get Hard, along with more dramatic, acclaimed titles like GLOW and Promising Young Woman, but the huge star decided to step behind the screen and write her own character in the 2020 film Horse Girl.
That little masterpiece was co-written with and directed by Jeff Baena (Aubrey Plaza's husband and the man behind Life After Beth, Joshy, and The Little Hours). Now, they've teamed up again with Spin Me Round, a sometimes surreal comedy film co-written by Brie and Baena in which Brie plays Amber, the manager of an Olive Garden-style chain restaurant called Tuscan Grove, who is invited on an all-expenses-paid work trip to Tuscany with fellow Tuscan Grove employees. Brie spoke with MovieWeb about her desire to write her own characters, the empowering narrative of Spin Me Round, and more.
Alison Brie on Writing and Acting
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Brie has had an incredible career in a brief 15 years, but there was something about the freedom and creativity of writing her own scripts that appealed to her. Every actor is a bit of a writer in a sense (and some better than others), considering most of them do background research and character work in order to develop a richer personality for the part that may not come across on the page, but Brie decided to do more.
"Well, I think the original impetus to start writing something," said Brie, referring to Horse Girl, "comes from the fact that I had an idea in my mind for a long time in terms of exploring something around mental illness, because of my familial history with that. I also think I just wanted to write some different types of roles for myself to play, as superficial as that might sound." Brie plays a woman enduring the devastating effects of schizophrenia in Horse Girl, a very different role and film from the one she created for Spin Me Round.
Like many of Baena's films, Spin Me Round was intended to be semi-improvised, but Covid-19 and lockdowns hit before production on the film even began. Over the next year, instead of leaving the film as loosely improvised, Brie and Baena decided to write a more concrete script together over Zoom. "I think there was a desire in my downtime, not even about feeling like it was roles that I hadn't gotten a chance to play, but just a desire to make art. You know, as actors, sometimes you can feel pretty powerless in terms of, like, waiting for work to come your way, and so I think I wanted to create something just to be making something and to have an artistic outlet in my life."
Brie and Baena Reunite For Spin Me Round
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Both of Brie's scripts so far (until the release of Amazon's Somebody I Used to Know) have been written with Baena, who shares a similar sensibility with Brie, and a similar group of collaborators. She has starred in several of his films alongside a kind of comic repertory company of actors who work with them both. Molly Shannon, John C. Reilly, Dave Franco, Aubrey Plaza, and Debby Ryan all feature heavily in Baena and Brie's work, several of whom make up the ensemble cast of Spin Me Round, in addition to Tim Heidecker, Zach Woods, Allesandro Nivola, Lil Rel Howery, and Ben Sinclair.
Most of the very funny actors play Tuscan Grove employees who travel to Italy for cooking lessons, shacked up in a cheap hotel. There, Brie's character Amber is chosen by the restaurant's CEO Nick (Nivola) to accompany him on his luxurious yacht and at fancy parties as the two fall for each other, but not everything is what it seems. Baena's longevity with Brie and these other great actors creates a very warm and trusting environment, and it's clear how much Brie enjoys working with the filmmaker. "Jeff has been a wonderful collaborator, in that he's the same way," said Brie, referring to her creative compulsion. She elaborates:
I think he really exists as like a pure artist, you know, he doesn't like to work within genre, and he doesn't really prescribe to the tenets of the studio system of filmmaking. I think that there's something really pure about the way that he creates, and that has been really fulfilling for me, working with him and in a creative capacity. Because writing Horse Girl and writing this, we really get to be free to kind of explore where the story is going to go and letting to go to really unexpected places, and just kind of let our minds wander and see what happens.
The Empowering Spin Me Round and the Empowered Brie
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With Spin Me Round, they've created a funny, weird, but perceptive look at a working-class restaurant employee who is often subjected to the whims of the world around her. Like many people, she doesn't have the power to be anything but passive. Amber and her fellow Tuscan Grove employees go to Italy excitedly expecting magic, hoping something great will happen to them; it's a disappointment when it doesn't, but also when it does. Amber realizes that depending on external fulfillment (luxury, romance, money) is not the path to personal satisfaction and real contentment.
"I was really drawn to the self-empowerment story of Amber," said Brie. As in Horse Girl, she's created a non-cinematic, realistic woman who doesn't get sucked into the kind of fantasy wish-fulfillment narratives of films like Eat Pray Love or 50 Shades of Grey. "As a character, she's not super active as far as protagonists go. It really takes her most of the movie to begin to assert herself and try to take control over her own destiny. And I kind of liked that, because I feel like it's not something we see all the time, but it is a part of the human condition." Brie continues:
It certainly resonates with me in terms of, like, when I was younger and the way that I would sort of bend to the people around me or the circumstances around me, and Amber's kind of that way, she doesn't want to rock the boat. She's very polite, and because of that she is sort of stuck in her life. She's been a manager at this Italian restaurant chain for nine years. She really doesn't seem to have aspirations to do other things. It's like she hasn't even taken the time to ask herself that, she's a bit too much of a people pleaser.
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Over the course of the film, she goes on this trip hoping that she can continue to kind of not take action, but that amazing things are still going to happen to her. And as those things don't go the way she expects, she's sort of forced to take things into her own hands, even though that sort of has a disastrous effect. That also doesn't maybe go very well, but at least you see her shaking things up a little bit.
Spin Me Round has a really simple, brilliant ending that is surprisingly refreshing. Watching Amber make a decision that goes against the overused clichés of romantic movies creates a genuinely liberating moment that stands out so much from the rest of the rom-com pack. "At the end of the movie, I do think you're left with a sense that she is going to assert herself more, and give herself more of a voice," said Brie.
From IFC Films and AMC+, Spin Me Round is a Duplass Brothers Production and Limelight Production and will be in theaters, On Demand, and streaming on AMC+ on August 19th. The film is produced by Jeff Baena, Alison Brie, Mel Eslyn, Chris Parker, and Dylan Sellers.