- #The peanut butter falcon how to#
- #The peanut butter falcon movie#
- #The peanut butter falcon professional#
- #The peanut butter falcon tv#
“I said, ‘Zack, I know you have Down syndrome. “I was sort of like, ‘I can’t sleep, I was worried about you.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, you must not understand, Tyler, you must not know, I have Down syndrome, I get along with everybody,’” Nilson said.
#The peanut butter falcon movie#
There’s a scene in the movie where Zak explains to Tyler, “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a Down syndrome person.” That’s exactly what Gottsagen said to Nilson one night, after Gottsagen went off to party with people he had just met. They chose to center the film around wrestling because Gottsagen loves it, and added lines they had already heard him say. While crafting the story and even the dialogue, Schwartz and Nilson kept coming back to Gottsagen and what he actually felt and would say. They’re also joined by Eleanor (played by Dakota Johnson), an employee at Zak’s home who finds herself helping Zak and Tyler on their quest. Along the way he meets Tyler (played by Shia LaBeouf), a small-time outlaw also on the run, who becomes an unlikely ally.
#The peanut butter falcon professional#
What they ended up with was a Mark Twain-esque road movie, in which Gottsagen’s character (named, fittingly, Zak) runs away from his assisted living facility to go after his dream of becoming a professional wrestler.
#The peanut butter falcon how to#
Schwartz and Nilson checked out books from the library about how to make movies, went on a road trip for inspiration, and spent hours talking with Gottsagen about his life and experiences.
So over the next year, the trio worked to craft a story that played to Gottsagen’s personality and strengths, and would allow him to stretch as an actor. “We just told him, here’s the here’s the impossibility factor, and Zack said let’s defeat the impossible by making it possible together,” Nilson told The Mighty.
#The peanut butter falcon tv#
A 2016 study by the Ruderman Family Foundation found that able-bodied actors play 95% of characters with disabilities in the top 10 TV shows. It’s challenging enough to get any movie made, and most movies featuring actors with Down syndrome relegate them to supporting roles. But they warned Gottsagen of the obstacles they were up against. Schwartz and Nilson, who had only directed short films until that point, were already considering stretching their creative juices into a feature-length film, and realized the opportunity they had. Schwartz and Nilson remained friends with Gottsagen after camp, and while talking one night about, as Nilson put it, “life and love and dreams and hopes and desires and goals and frustrations and the things that people get to talking about at night around the campfire,” Gottsagen revealed that his big dream was to be a movie star. “It was really fun watching actors go up against him, and Zack was making decisions that were phenomenal, like really, really mindful and present decisions that I hadn’t seen other actors do before,” Schwartz told The Mighty.Īs it turned out, acting wasn’t just a hobby for Gottsagen - he first began studying acting when he was 3 years old, he attended a performing arts high school, teaches acting, and even works in a movie theater.
The two had originally met Gottsagen while volunteering at a camp for actors with disabilities, where they worked with him on the 2012 short film “Bulletproof Jackson.” It was there that they first witnessed his strength as an actor. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.For filmmakers Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson, the inspiration for their new film “The Peanut Butter Falcon” came from one person: Zack Gottsagen, a 34-year-old actor with Down syndrome. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
0 kommentar(er)
