E8 FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
AT THE MOVIES
something,” O’Neill joked.
Bell was also focused on
her own weight-loss journey.
She began running — usu-
ally a couple of miles per day
and four at her maximum.
She lost 29 pounds before
filming and an additional 11
during the shoot. The expe-
rience, she said, helped to in-
form the character’s emo-
tional state.
“When I first read the
script, there were parts
where I was like, ‘I don’t
know why she’s struggling so
hard in this moment, or lash-
ing out at people,’ and then I
did it,” Bell said. “I started
getting mad at people who
weren’t experiencing the
same thing as me and didn’t
understand why I was hav-
ing trouble when people
were ordering chips and
salsa to the table.”
Because of the independ-
ent film’s tight production
schedule — it was shot in just
29 days — Bell was some-
times required to wear pros-
thetics and a body suit to
look bigger. She found the
constant shift in appearance
mentally challenging. With
the extra weight off, she no-
ticed crew members remark-
ing on how beautiful she
looked. When she had a
pooch, nobody commented
on her looks — or even
thought to compliment the
color of her dress.
The more weight she lost,
the more alone she felt. She
began looking at different
women, evaluating their
bodies and judging whether
she was bigger or smaller
than them. When she
wrapped the film, she was
skinnier than she’d ever
been, but she was unhappy.
“Everyone was asking:
‘Do you feel great now? Is
this the best you’ve ever
felt?’ Someone even said to
me, ‘This is the weight you
should be,’ and I thought,
‘Well, that’s damaging,’ ”
Bell remembered. “I was a
little bit lost, getting all of
these outside opinions when
I didn’t know who I wanted
to be. So I actually gained
weight. I was so in my head,
worrying about being in so-
cial situations where some-
one would comment on my
weight loss in a negative or
positive way. It just made me
feel better to be somewhere
in the middle.”
These were the types of
conversations Paul Downs
Colaizzo was hoping to in-
spire when he set out to
make “Brittany Runs a Mar-
athon.” The writer-director
began working on the
screenplay in 2011, when he
and O’Neill were roommates
in New York City.
The two had met at NYU,
where they were both thea-
ter students, and reunited in
their mid-20s to share an Up-
per West Side apartment.
Colaizzo, who began his ca-
reer as a playwright, was a
script associate on Broad-
way’s “Sister Act”; O’Neill
was the managing director
of a theater company.
In their downtime, the
friends would have a lot of
what Colaizzo described as
“big life talks,” discussing
how they hoped to attain
happiness and success.
That’s when O’Neill — who
felt like she was in a rut at her
job and had struggled with
her weight her whole life —
began running, and her
roomie noticed the positive
change.
“Brittany is instantly lov-
able — so smart and char-
ismatic — and I look at her
and all I see is potential,” Co-
laizzo said over the phone.
“But when we were younger,
I don’t think she saw a path
to fulfilling her potential. So,
as her friend, I wanted to en-
courage her to find her way
to that path. When she
started taking the first stepsto find it, I started writing it
too.”
One night, on the couch,
Colaizzo confessed to
O’Neill that he was writing a
movie about her. At first, be-
cause she was so obsessed
with running, she was only
concerned with what the
character’s marathon time
was. And she also didn’t fully
believe the film would ever
come to fruition. She’d been
the first to read all of Colaiz-
zo’s scripts over the years —
plenty of which had never
been turned into full-blown
projects.
“But when I gave her thescript, she went into her
room and I remember just
staring at her bedroom door,
waiting for her to finish,” he
recalled. “When she
emerged, she was crying,
and we just hugged each
other for a long time.”
By the end of their 2^1 ⁄ 2
years together as room-
mates, O’Neill had lost 80
pounds and found a
boyfriend who would be-
come her husband; Colaizzo
was the officiant at her wed-
ding. And though she recog-
nized it was tempting to view
her journey as a “thin-
equals-happy story,” O’Neillkept reminding Colaizzo
that she didn’t want the
movie to have that message.
“I wanted to paint an
honest picture of how the
world treats people of differ-
ent sizes,” the filmmaker
said. “The goal was to show a
woman’s journey to self-
agency and self-respect
while exploring the world
that she has no choice but to
do that in. It’s a story about a
woman finding her own dig-
nity, when an obstacle in do-
ing that in this world is that
men look at women differ-
ently if they look a certain
way.”
When she first came to
L.A. at 18, Bell was worried
she’d be asked to change her
look to get work as an ac-
tress. While that hasn’t been
her experience, she bristles
when she hears from female
peers who’ve been advised to
“get a nose job or maybe lose
20 pounds” by “some old
man.”
“You become your own
brand — and I hate that, but
you do in this industry — and
to be told that your company
needs to lose 35 pounds is
just ridiculousand so upset-
ting,” she said.
A former “Saturday
Night Live” writer, Bell has
mostly been known as a sup-
porting actress, turning in
strong comedic turns in
films like “22 Jump Street”
and “Rough Night.” Before
“Brittany Runs a Mara-
thon,” she’d never carried a
movie on her shoulders —
and she’d also never really
done dramatic work. (Paul
Thomas Anderson did cast
her in a small role in 2012’s
“The Master” after seeing
her on Comedy Central’s
“Workaholics,” but she said
she was on screen for “like 20
seconds, so that’s not really
enough of a taste.”) “I didn’t
know if I would enjoy being in
something that had drama-
tic elements. But I fell in lovewith doing a movie that
wasn’t a straight comedy. I
was terrified of it, but I loved
it. When I read this, I fell in
love with her — I fell in love
with you,” Bell said, looking
at O’Neill. “I wanted to see
this when I was a young girl. I
wanted this message out
there, and I wanted to be the
one to do it.”
Neither Bell nor O’Neill
are running as much as they
used to. O’Neill has tendini-
tis that keeps her from
putting in too many miles,
but she still hits the gym
regularly and teaches a cir-
cuit training class there once
a week. She says people have
already been approaching
her and telling her that her
story has inspired them to
sign up for the marathon,
though she doesn’t think
that’s ultimately the mes-
sage of the film.
“I like that it could inspire
people to set a big goal and
believe they’re capable of
more than they think,” she
said. “I think a lot of people
think that when you try to
make a big change, it’s an act
of self-hatred or you’re try-
ing to run away from some-
thing. But it can be an act of
self-love, where you want
something more for your-
self.”
“It must be incredible for
you to feel like you’re inspir-
ing so many people,” Bell
said, turning to O’Neill. “I did
the film, and I was hoping it
would be therapeutic — that
I’d release my demons. I
would say I lost about 70%,
which I think is a high per-
centage of demons. The
‘You’re not good enough’ or
‘People won’t be attracted to
you if ... ’ or ‘Are you on the
end of the picture and your
arm looks the biggest’
demons. Now, I try to throw
those thoughts out the win-
dow. Why should I hold onto
that as the truth of who I
am?”JILLIAN BELLlost 29 pounds before filming “Brittany” and 11 more during the shoot. The experience helped inform her of her character’s emotional state, she said.
Photographs from Amazon StudiosThe actress and the inspiration
[O ’Neill, from E1]
BRITTANYO’Neill not only completed the 2014 New
York City Marathon, she did it in under four hours.and unsentimental, a pic-
ture with a laugh-out-loud
sense of humor that can be
as real as hell when it needs
to be.
Though Colaizzo has ne-
ver made a film before, he
is an award-winning play-
wright and he puts his
sharp, on-point dialogue at
the service of a story loosely
inspired by his best friend,
Brittany, a hard partier who
decided to change her life
by taking on the New York
Marathon.
Determined, he’s said, to
“take a stock character from
big American comedies, the
‘fat sidekick,’ and turn the
camera squarely in her di-
rection,” Colaizzo made a
brilliant choice when he
went with Bell in the role.
An actress whose devas-
tating comic delivery has
been the highlight of films
like “22 Jump Street” and
“Office Christmas Party,”
Bell so immersed herself in
the role that she lost weight
herself to mirror what her
character went through.
It’s a part that both ech-
oes Bell’s previous wildly
funny performances and
audaciously goes into an
entirely new and unexpect-
edly vulnerable direction.
It’s exactly 12:37 p.m. on
an average day in Astoria,
Queens, when we encounter
Brittany, looking like an un-
made bed and snoring away
in an actual unmade bed
as an alarm clock futilely
attempts to get her up.
Brittany does have a
part-time job working at a
little theater, but we quickly
see that she is someone
who lives for the nightlife,
up till dawn every chance
she gets and using her
stiletto wit to entertain her
pals and keep everyone else
at bay.Hung over and looking
for a compliant doctor to
write her a prescription for
Adderall, Brittany ends up
hearing some unpleasant,
unwelcome news.
If she doesn’t lose 45 to 55
pounds (“that’s the weight
of a Siberian husky,” she
cracks), the damage to her
health will be severe.
Brittany’s desire to “get a
teeny bit healthier” gets zerosympathy from her room-
mate and fellow party ani-
mal Gretchen (Alice Lee), a
young woman whose career
goal is to become a social
media influencer.
The person she feels
closest to is her brother-in-
law Demetrius (Lil Rel How-
ery), the man who raised her,
but he lives in Philadelphia,
too far away to help.
On the other hand, the
last person Brittany wants
to hear from is a neighbor
she calls Moneybags Martha
(her real name is Catherine)
because the woman has an
apartment in Manhattan as
well as her studio space in
Brittany’s building.
Catherine (engagingly
played by Michaela
Watkins) is a committed
runner who Brittany imagi-
nes has the kind of problem-
free life she can only dream
about.
But then, in one of the un-expectedly powerful scenes
that alternate with the film’s
comic moments, the two
women have an electric con-
frontation where all the pain
and resentment underpin-
ning Brittany’s life pours
out.
Almost against her will,
Brittany begins to run, liter-
ally one block at a time. She
joins Catherine’s running
club and bonds with Seth
(Micah Stock), an equally
out-of-shape gay father who
joined, he says, because he
started to hyperventilate
during the sack race at his
son’s preschool.
More or less on a whim,
this unlikely trio decides to
train for the New York
Marathon, an event so elite
that even getting permission
to enter is difficult.
Given this set-up, you
might think you could guess
the rest of Brittany’s story,
but the magical thing aboutthis film is that you really
cannot. The people she
meets and the way things
play out for her are not what
you would suspect.
For one thing, a random
job as a housesitter-dog-
walker connects her to the
arrogant, aimless Jern
(Utkarsh Ambudkar), no-
body’s idea of a person you
want to hang out with.
More to the point, Brit-
tany’s obstacles do not fade
away even as she sheds
pounds, and unlooked-for
issues of intimacy, trust
and belief in self come to the
fore.
With her great spirit, self-
awareness and sense of
humor, Brittany is a re-
markable person. Her battle
is not so much to lose weight
as to take control of her
life, and “Brittany Runs a
Marathon” ensures that
we’re rooting for her every
step of the way.A rewarding ‘Marathon’ to the finish line
[‘ Brittany,’from E1]
‘Brittany Runs
a Marathon’
Rated:R for language
throughout, sexuality and
some drug material
Running time: 1 hour,
44 minutes
Playing:ArcLight,
Hollywood; Landmark,
West Los Angeles