Writer-Director Paul Downs Colaizzo Talks the Long Road of ‘BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON’

Coming from the world of theater, Paul Downs Colaizzo makes his directorial debut with Brittany Runs a Marathon, a somewhat-inspired-by-a-true-story about an NYC party-girl reclaiming her life by strapping on sneaks and going jogging. Starring a very game Jillian Bell, Brittany Runs a Marathon is a fitness and lifestyle glow-up for the “Yass queen” generation that is both humorous and human, an aspect that Colaizzo found essential in his telling of the story. The writer-director discussed his motivation for directing for the first time, how he hopes to inspire audiences to become the best versions of themselves, the challenges of “learning the technical stuff” and Jillian Bell’s intense physical transformation.

“It’s a film that needed to be handled in a very mature and delicate and respectful and responsible way.”

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First of all, what’s the furthest distance you’ve ever run?

PDC: Oh god. Let’s say five miles?

Has making this movie inspired or prompted you at all to ever want to run a marathon?

PDC: No and for a number of reasons. I admire and respect all the people who run and I have no interest in it. Weirdly, I had to get double ankle surgery right after we filmed this. That was because I was in chronic ankle pain my whole life and it was standing on set and watching people run that made me want to get it fixed. So I got it fixed and now I’m not in pain anymore so maybe? But I’m not gonna bet the farm on it.

This movie speaks to the self-doubt and self-destructive tendencies that plague a lot of people and takes to task this idea that positive change is not a straight line. In terms of your growth and transformation as someone who’s gone from theater to film and from not only writing but also to directing, what is that up and down line look like for you?

PDC: This movie is my marathon. I never thought I would direct. I didn’t really know what directing was even. Even after doing stuff with plays and writing for television, I didn’t know what directing really was but I knew that stories could get ruined and I knew that this one mattered to me and I didn’t want it to get ruined. So I set out to protect a story and share a story that I wanted to be told to the world in a way that I wanted it to be told. It’s a film that needed to be handled in a very mature and delicate and respectful and responsible way. And that was what lead me to raise my hand and take this thing on as a director.

What was your biggest fear in regards to handing this off to someone else? What did you think that it might become?

PDC: I didn’t want us to ever laugh at this girl. I wanted us to love her and know her and identify with her and see ourselves in her. And I think it’s written in a very specific way where in the first ten minutes, we’re introduced to a character that we know how to watch. She’s a hot mess, fat sidekick, New York City party girl in her 20s and after ten minutes, we start to understand her pain and her vulnerabilities and we see her in a different way. The design of the film was when we started the movie you think “I know that girl”, then in the middle of the movie you think “Wait, I am that girl” and the hope is that by the end of the movie you go, “If I try hard, I can be that girl.” And I wanted that story. I didn’t want this to become a small, cute, funny story. I wanted it to be a hero’s journey about my friend. And then nudge an encouraging prompt from the audience to take whatever first step they need to take in their life to become whatever and whoever they dream of becoming.
In terms of this being your directorial debut, what was the most challenging aspect of stepping behind the camera that you had to overcome?

PDC: I would say really the technical stuff. We were fortunate to get great actors who were doing this as a labor of love so there was no difficulty on set. It was all love. I had to learn about lenses. Things I had never thought about in my life before. So the technical aspects of this were my big challenge and I read every book on that shit leading up to prep.

Jillian Bell is perfectly cast in this role and does a knockout job of delivering the human aspect in with the comedy. Just from a logistical standpoint, her physical transformation is significant. You see this a lot with male performances – the Christian Bales who pack on and lose 100 pounds for a role – but you don’t see this as much with female performers, which speaks to her dedication and willingness to do something that a lot of actresses would not feel comfortable doing.

PDC: My plan was, the movie is not about her losing weight and all will be good – that’s not what the movie is about. I didn’t want to get close to a message like that and wanted to stay as far from that as possible. When I met Jillian she was still doing Rough Night and my thought was, wherever Jillian is, and the character as a plot-point loses weight, that’ll be where we are. I didn’t ask her to lose any weight. We didn’t even have a discussion about it. I learned that in the lead-up to it, she was starting to run and starting to lose weight because she, on her own, as a dedicated, incredible team player and actress, decided that she wanted to go through essentially the exact body transformation as the character so that she could own the story. So she took it upon herself and lost around 40 pounds, the last 11 pounds of which while we were filming. And we only filmed for 28 days.

Did you have to shoot chronically in order to track that physical change?

PDC: When it became clear that she was losing weight and we were going to show this progression, we created a prosthetic that matched what Jillian’s weight was before she started training. There are four distant looks over the film which are all a mix of prosthetics, makeup, hair that can make her face look more round or oval and a bodysuit that, depending on the clothes, we would play with. We retold Jillian’s own transformation as Brittany’s transformation in the way that we had to to produce the same result. It’s an indie film so we were just running and gunning.

This movie is inspired by your real life friend Brittany – was there ever a point in creating this character where there was any tension caused by not wanting to offend her?

PDC: Brittany and I had known each other since college and we love each other and have a magical, honest, good friendship that’s supportive and inspiring and she’s the one who wanted me to direct the film. And her impetus to start running came from a conversation she and I had, so in a way we both sort of continue to inspire each other to grow. We were living together and she went on a run because she just wanted to take control of her life and see what she was able to do and that day I thought of the movie and started outlining the film. The other characters in the film are not based on anybody. Seth is kind of based on me, except I’m not a runner. But what ended up happening was what I outlined started happening to her in real life so I outlined that she got injured and couldn’t run, and then she got injured and couldn’t run. That was the biggest moment of tension between us, not any of the other stuff, because it was an honest explanation and a curiosity of how the world treats someone differently when they are a woman and their appearance changes. I’m not putting a value judgement on that, I’m just looking at it with interest and understanding. You see in a movie that they have the montage of somebody trying on a bunch of different clothes or the guy holds the subway door for her and there’s a funny song and you think “Yeah, things are going well.” In moments where it’s her existing in a world that judges her and acknowledges her based on her appearance, there is no music, it’s just what it is. So that was kind of fascinating and she was excited about me exploring stuff like that. The only time she got mad at me was the time that I got injured because she thought that I had magically done that.

What was her overall reaction to the film?

PDC: She loved it. She was really proud that she had a part in inspiring something that is respectful of women and addresses very personal but universal themes in a way where the main character’s humiliation isn’t the jury of the film. And she’s great. Her life is great.

In terms of your personal transition going from the world of theater to film, what’s been the biggest change up there?

PDC: Money. [Laughs] Not really because this is an indie film. But the real biggest change is your audience. Your ability to get your message is people is limited by ticket price and where the play is produced and who produced it and what theater it’s in. What’s really exciting about making a film like this that is accessible and entertaining and hopefully insightful is the people we would be able to reach. It’s not an escapist film. It’s a film that asks you to examine yourself and hopefully inspires you to do so and doing that on a broad level is the best way to do something like this.

What’s next from here? Do you plan on returning to theater or are you under the spell of filmmaking?

PDC: You know it’s so interesting because I really don’t know. I am looking at the road ahead, much like Brittany, and I don’t know what the next step will be. I’m interested in telling provocative, entertaining stories that provoke empathy in a way that is exciting and sometimes edgy but is more than just a story, it’s hopefully a story with relevance that offers some kind of identification and insight for the audience. I don’t know exactly what it will be, but I want it to look like that.

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