Name: Aziz Ansari on Directing His First Movie... and Casting Keanu Reeves
Uploaded: 2025-10-16T23:00:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Aziz Ansari on Directing His First Movie... and Casting Keanu Reeves' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Aziz Ansari on Directing His First Movie... and Casting Keanu Reeves' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-16. Transcript available.

yeah dude i stayed up watching the movie last night good fortune that's your it's
a new movie
yeah um dude the amount of turns that were that started to happen i'm about
like i guess maybe
45 minutes in the amount of turns that started to happen in the plot really
were making it heat up
oh well thank you yeah it's cool dude and keanu reeves he's like this like he
almost reminds me
of like a surfer dude that won best in show at westminster type of vibe you
know what i'm saying
yeah there's a little bit of uh california kind of um but he's very sweet like
a like a little pup
and his posture is so good it seems like he would win best in show like he
seems like he has very
good i never noticed his posture but you didn't no but you know i remember when
we first started
screening the movie as soon as he came up on screen i could tell there was
something like whoa this dude's
a movie star and it's not just that he's handsome there's something this other
you know there's this
other thing that he has and and he's so funny in the movie i mean he he just he
just kills and
and by the end of the movie when i've watched it with crowds like he's just
doing the smallest thing
and just getting huge laughs and um yeah but um you directed and wrote and you're
in it right you wrote
it too i wrote it dude that's awesome bro produced acted everything too much so
you have control issues
you think yeah a little bit but but in a positive way as well you know seth rogan's
in the movie and
he does his show the studio and we've talked about that about you know kind of
doing it because he does
everything on that and there's something that's kind of streamlined about it
you know to like oh i had
this idea this is how i'm gonna write it and i and you kind of have for me
whenever i'm writing
something i kind of have a you know an idea in my head of how i want it to
sound and look and everything
and directing is pretty much just conveying that to a group of people to
execute it yeah so if all
if it's all coming from one person and if you're one of the people acting it
does make things easier
in a sense mm-hmm yeah man that does make a lot of sense dude yeah and and you
know you have other
people like seth and keanu who you know they have iconic voices so when i'm
writing i have their voice
in the head and then when they're there they do it like even funnier than you
think they were going
to do it when you had in your head they add something or improvise and and um
you know the goal is really
you have like the version in your head and then you have this whole crew and
cast and and you kind
of convey your vision and then they take that and then they give you something
else that's something
from them and it becomes better than you thought how long would you guys to
shoot for um well it was a
little weird because we shot like one or two days and then the writer's strike
happened we have to stop
for a few months yeah and then we came back and um this sounds crazy when i'm
saying it out loud so we
came back after the writer's strike which was like i don't know seven months or
something it was a while
and were people pregnant and stuff like was it different no one got pregnant
but okay no everyone was
still the same but um oh thank god we we shot for like a couple days and then
keanu broke his knee
he broke his kneecap like on our like second or third day back what was he
doing
it i mean it sounds insane as i'm saying it out loud because this guy's done
all the matrix movies
all the john wick movies never got hurt yeah we filmed a scene in a cold plunge
and he was going
back to his dressing room he was all wrapped up in a robe and everything and he
like tripped on a rug and
fell on his knee and broke his kneecap oh yeah they got pictures of him in the
crutches here
on on perplexity uh no he broke his freaking kneecap and were you guys right
there could you hear it
no no i it was in his in his dressing room so i i just heard like someone on
the on the walk he's
like oh i'm keanu's down oh so he went through it alone yeah he fell down and
then they were like
he's hurt and then he came down he was ready to film right away his knee was
like bleeding right
crazy and we're like hey man maybe you should go to a doctor and he was like no
no no let's shoot
let he he loves he loves shooting he just wants to shoot but anyway we could
film most of his stuff
he had like a knee brace that we like edited out with vfx he didn't get that
stupid one with the
wheels on no he didn't have the wheel that was kind of mean to call it stupid
man people are
that's something people got to use but dude i saw some drunk lady and her
husband they were going
down broadway in nashville and uh i know the thing you're talking about it's
like a kind of like a
this thing yeah it's like a mini scooter and my friend broke his achilles tory's
achilles heel and
he had to use that for a while yeah it's like the x games of being crippled or
whatever yeah it's it's a
little weird yeah it seems a little silly but he didn't have one of those he
just had a big knee
brace but we had these scenes where he had like most of the stuff we could kind
of figure it out but
there's a couple of scenes where we needed him to dance there's a whole thing
where he starts dancing
cumbia and we're like kiana we can't shoot the cumbia stuff so we came back
after his leg healed and
shot a few more days but it was like a 30-day shoot oh wow it's fast that's a
lot of work
yeah that's not too much but it's not too little yeah yeah we just i just david
spade and i made a
movie and i can't talk about it anymore on here because we've talked about it a
lot but how many
days 23 days that's pretty tight it was i mean i don't know the script or
anything but 23 is you
know that's a lot of work but over 30 yeah we probably had a few days off in
between you know
but it was a lot it was like the fires that happens we had to move oh god one
scene that just
happens to be firing and you're like okay well this has to be part of it
because you've already set
up for the day and whatever the space is going to be so like one day it's crazy
winds the winds are
like 45 miles an hour i remember that i was in la during right right during the
fires yeah i remember
the day before there was a crazy winds i was like what's happening okay so we're
like talking about
kites we wrote that into the script like yeah we should get some kites you
wrote it in afterwards
yeah just to add like yeah maybe we'll get some kites after you know we like
threw in a line it's like
just trying to make things make sense you know because you just have you're
already set up
everybody's already driven there the people are there there's a lady standing
there with makeup you
know what i'm saying like people have washed their bodies and gotten in their
vehicles and gotten over
there people have put on deodorant people have put on clean panties and men's
panties or whatever
they're called under men's underwear put on their undergarments and they showed
up and it's a lot of
people yeah and it's crazy because you know you write these random things and
then all these people
get to work to do it and it's like some silly joke about a pillowcase or
whatever like oh which pillow
case do you want to use yeah sometimes it's something as dumb as that like all
these people will drive
to one place just so somebody can be like ricky's a bitch you're like okay that's
lunch you're like
that fucking took four hours god and ricky's not even a bitch anymore he's had
a surgery by the end of
the day you know what i'm saying so everything's changed it blows my mind that
you know because it's
like stand up and you you do these things and you're just on a mic and there's
people they're
listening but when you write a joke for a movie there's all these trucks
everybody's showed up it's
it's it really makes you pause for a second i don't know if you had this thing
where you're like
oh man this is a lot of hope this is worth it for these people oh yeah i
remember the first day
we got to do to set i was like holy shit i thought this had just been a bunch
of emails you know and
it was like all the emails that come together in real life like there was
trailers there was some
guy got electrocuted like yeah but it was like everything you know you were
like oh people are
acting or some guy practicing his things they're like firing an extra like all
the shit was going on
you know like some guys just like you know had bought the wrong peanut just all
the shit's happening
you know there's no coffee there was always no coffee when i got over there it's
fine but it was
just like it's fascinating to see it happen and it's one of those things that
has to like it's so
expensive to do that you have to get it done on that day it's like whatever
elements come if somebody
breaks their leg if somebody goes missing you have to for an hour you have to
like shoot around it just
all these little things that kind of go on you know i i was telling someone
people always ask me like
what's the difference between doing stand-up and doing a film to me doing stand-up
it's like
you're you're running around a track and you go hey i'm ready to go and then
you you go to all these
cities and you you run around the track and and you're done and a movie is like
you have to go to
these people and go hey i want to climb this mountain can you give me money to
climb this mountain
and they're like let me see your plan which is like your script and they're
like hmm well we can
give you this much oh that's not really enough supplies and then like well can
brad pitt climb
the mountain with the mountain with you can you can you get you know these
other famous can you know
and yeah and then if you're lucky enough to even get to start climbing the
mountain then people just
start throwing boulders like hey here's the writer's strike hey there's the
fires in la oh wait
keanu's broke his kneecap and it is a positive blood test you're like oh that's
rough it's it's
all just you're just trying to avoid all these different disasters and if you're
lucky you you you
make it to the top but it's it's so much harder to either so much more to to
that's out of your
control yeah stand-up is so in your control yeah there's something so pure and
beautiful about
stand-up i like doing both but there is something so pure and beautiful about
stand-up where it's just
literally a person talking in the microphone it it's kind of such a pure and
direct art form
and filmmaking there's so many other things that are out of your control and it's
a lot more complex
but it's rewarding in its own way i mean i i think about how you know i'll i'm
working on other
scripts now and i'll have some joke and it'll it'll be like whoa this will be
maybe years from
now before i'll see this joke play in a theater and hear a crowd of people
laugh and then a stand-up
joke you know you or i could think of something tonight and go to a comedy club
and try it and
hear get a laugh and that's so satisfying but there's also something crazy
about like i remember
i started writing good fortune like probably in the pandemic i started writing
it on and off
and there's jokes i wrote in and then years later it's like i'm in a theater in
burbank and keanu
reeves is saying the joke and you know a crowd full of people goes crazy and
they're both amazing but
in different ways yeah that's so wild dude well you know one one thing that was
great about uh good
fortune dude and and i haven't finished it but i really i like it and i'm
excited to see the end of
it it's not that long a movie by the way but i didn't get home last night so
probably 11 30 no i'm
just saying for people that are worried that oh yeah no no it's not it's an
hour and a half movie
um but it's good dude there were so many like start there started to be some
really good plot
changes for me that i really dug like right around the spot where i'm at um
where the you think it's
going to go one way and now it starts to change up and then i don't want to
give too much of it away
but one thing that was really amazing about it and my friend was watching with
me uh was that you felt
of how tough it is that first year or two in la you felt of like like when uh
your character is sleeping
in his car right or like when there's door dash delivery and just like the jobs
you get when you
first get to a big city to try to survive the parking tickets and how you lose
your car you just come out
of a place you barely had enough money to go get some avocados it was the one
thing you were
treating yourself to this week it was like two avocados i'm gonna cut those
bitches up and i'm
gonna eat those bitches right and then i'm gonna go to sleep right you were so
excited and you come
out and your fucking car has been towed because you didn't pay tickets all that
shit dude my friend
and i slept in the mcdonald's ball pit we would jump the fence and sleep in
that fucking ball pit
because it was like kind of some more space to lay out right like if you got
under the balls
there's hair in there there's coins under there but it is there's a little bit
more room for your body
than like because we tried to sleep in his car one night and it was just a
nightmare but going through
all of that yeah and there is the hair goes to the bottom which i don't
understand how that works
that's science but uh and yeah they should do a they should see what's in the
bottom of a lot of
these it's not good but yeah we we would jump over the fence and and sleep in
one that you know that
that closed at 10 we get in just get five five hours of sleep or something you
know oh my god i'm so
sorry i could relate no it was awesome it was fucking great stories one night
we're in there dude we're
talking shit to each other laughing and stuff and a fucking asian guy's on the
slide he's asleep
he's on the slide i feel like he's very very exposed no like in one of those
high slides where there was
room where you could kind of get uh you know it was encompassed he was in the
best spot oh my god yes he
was in one of the tubes oh damn that's better than the ball pit that's a pro
move yeah and even came
up to the window it was like a little hamster showing up pretty fucking dope
but dude that was
like but i forget you forget about all the pieces of the things and the moments
that like were so big
um and that was in la and that was in la and i think we all McDonald's in la uh
it's on wilshire
boulevard like wilshire and does that asian guy have a podcast now too i hope
he does i think it's
ronnie chang laughing
Thank you.

Aziz Ansari on Directing His First Movie... and Casting Keanu Reeves

yeah dude i stayed up watching the movie last night good fortune that's your it's
a new movie
yeah um dude the amount of turns that were that started to happen i'm about
like i guess maybe
45 minutes in the amount of turns that started to happen in the plot really
were making it heat up
oh well thank you yeah it's cool dude and keanu reeves he's like this like he
almost reminds me
of like a surfer dude that won best in show at westminster type of vibe you
know what i'm saying
yeah there's a little bit of uh california kind of um but he's very sweet like
a like a little pup
and his posture is so good it seems like he would win best in show like he
seems like he has very
good i never noticed his posture but you didn't no but you know i remember when
we first started
screening the movie as soon as he came up on screen i could tell there was
something like whoa this dude's
a movie star and it's not just that he's handsome there's something this other
you know there's this
other thing that he has and and he's so funny in the movie i mean he he just he
just kills and
and by the end of the movie when i've watched it with crowds like he's just
doing the smallest thing
and just getting huge laughs and um yeah but um you directed and wrote and you're
in it right you wrote
it too i wrote it dude that's awesome bro produced acted everything too much so
you have control issues
you think yeah a little bit but but in a positive way as well you know seth rogan's
in the movie and
he does his show the studio and we've talked about that about you know kind of
doing it because he does
everything on that and there's something that's kind of streamlined about it
you know to like oh i had
this idea this is how i'm gonna write it and i and you kind of have for me
whenever i'm writing
something i kind of have a you know an idea in my head of how i want it to
sound and look and everything
and directing is pretty much just conveying that to a group of people to
execute it yeah so if all
if it's all coming from one person and if you're one of the people acting it
does make things easier
in a sense mm-hmm yeah man that does make a lot of sense dude yeah and and you
know you have other
people like seth and keanu who you know they have iconic voices so when i'm
writing i have their voice
in the head and then when they're there they do it like even funnier than you
think they were going
to do it when you had in your head they add something or improvise and and um
you know the goal is really
you have like the version in your head and then you have this whole crew and
cast and and you kind
of convey your vision and then they take that and then they give you something
else that's something
from them and it becomes better than you thought how long would you guys to
shoot for um well it was a
little weird because we shot like one or two days and then the writer's strike
happened we have to stop
for a few months yeah and then we came back and um this sounds crazy when i'm
saying it out loud so we
came back after the writer's strike which was like i don't know seven months or
something it was a while
and were people pregnant and stuff like was it different no one got pregnant
but okay no everyone was
still the same but um oh thank god we we shot for like a couple days and then
keanu broke his knee
he broke his kneecap like on our like second or third day back what was he
doing
it i mean it sounds insane as i'm saying it out loud because this guy's done
all the matrix movies
all the john wick movies never got hurt yeah we filmed a scene in a cold plunge
and he was going
back to his dressing room he was all wrapped up in a robe and everything and he
like tripped on a rug and
fell on his knee and broke his kneecap oh yeah they got pictures of him in the
crutches here
on on perplexity uh no he broke his freaking kneecap and were you guys right
there could you hear it
no no i it was in his in his dressing room so i i just heard like someone on
the on the walk he's
like oh i'm keanu's down oh so he went through it alone yeah he fell down and
then they were like
he's hurt and then he came down he was ready to film right away his knee was
like bleeding right
crazy and we're like hey man maybe you should go to a doctor and he was like no
no no let's shoot
let he he loves he loves shooting he just wants to shoot but anyway we could
film most of his stuff
he had like a knee brace that we like edited out with vfx he didn't get that
stupid one with the
wheels on no he didn't have the wheel that was kind of mean to call it stupid
man people are
that's something people got to use but dude i saw some drunk lady and her
husband they were going
down broadway in nashville and uh i know the thing you're talking about it's
like a kind of like a
this thing yeah it's like a mini scooter and my friend broke his achilles tory's
achilles heel and
he had to use that for a while yeah it's like the x games of being crippled or
whatever yeah it's it's a
little weird yeah it seems a little silly but he didn't have one of those he
just had a big knee
brace but we had these scenes where he had like most of the stuff we could kind
of figure it out but
there's a couple of scenes where we needed him to dance there's a whole thing
where he starts dancing
cumbia and we're like kiana we can't shoot the cumbia stuff so we came back
after his leg healed and
shot a few more days but it was like a 30-day shoot oh wow it's fast that's a
lot of work
yeah that's not too much but it's not too little yeah yeah we just i just david
spade and i made a
movie and i can't talk about it anymore on here because we've talked about it a
lot but how many
days 23 days that's pretty tight it was i mean i don't know the script or
anything but 23 is you
know that's a lot of work but over 30 yeah we probably had a few days off in
between you know
but it was a lot it was like the fires that happens we had to move oh god one
scene that just
happens to be firing and you're like okay well this has to be part of it
because you've already set
up for the day and whatever the space is going to be so like one day it's crazy
winds the winds are
like 45 miles an hour i remember that i was in la during right right during the
fires yeah i remember
the day before there was a crazy winds i was like what's happening okay so we're
like talking about
kites we wrote that into the script like yeah we should get some kites you
wrote it in afterwards
yeah just to add like yeah maybe we'll get some kites after you know we like
threw in a line it's like
just trying to make things make sense you know because you just have you're
already set up
everybody's already driven there the people are there there's a lady standing
there with makeup you
know what i'm saying like people have washed their bodies and gotten in their
vehicles and gotten over
there people have put on deodorant people have put on clean panties and men's
panties or whatever
they're called under men's underwear put on their undergarments and they showed
up and it's a lot of
people yeah and it's crazy because you know you write these random things and
then all these people
get to work to do it and it's like some silly joke about a pillowcase or
whatever like oh which pillow
case do you want to use yeah sometimes it's something as dumb as that like all
these people will drive
to one place just so somebody can be like ricky's a bitch you're like okay that's
lunch you're like
that fucking took four hours god and ricky's not even a bitch anymore he's had
a surgery by the end of
the day you know what i'm saying so everything's changed it blows my mind that
you know because it's
like stand up and you you do these things and you're just on a mic and there's
people they're
listening but when you write a joke for a movie there's all these trucks
everybody's showed up it's
it's it really makes you pause for a second i don't know if you had this thing
where you're like
oh man this is a lot of hope this is worth it for these people oh yeah i
remember the first day
we got to do to set i was like holy shit i thought this had just been a bunch
of emails you know and
it was like all the emails that come together in real life like there was
trailers there was some
guy got electrocuted like yeah but it was like everything you know you were
like oh people are
acting or some guy practicing his things they're like firing an extra like all
the shit was going on
you know like some guys just like you know had bought the wrong peanut just all
the shit's happening
you know there's no coffee there was always no coffee when i got over there it's
fine but it was
just like it's fascinating to see it happen and it's one of those things that
has to like it's so
expensive to do that you have to get it done on that day it's like whatever
elements come if somebody
breaks their leg if somebody goes missing you have to for an hour you have to
like shoot around it just
all these little things that kind of go on you know i i was telling someone
people always ask me like
what's the difference between doing stand-up and doing a film to me doing stand-up
it's like
you're you're running around a track and you go hey i'm ready to go and then
you you go to all these
cities and you you run around the track and and you're done and a movie is like
you have to go to
these people and go hey i want to climb this mountain can you give me money to
climb this mountain
and they're like let me see your plan which is like your script and they're
like hmm well we can
give you this much oh that's not really enough supplies and then like well can
brad pitt climb
the mountain with the mountain with you can you can you get you know these
other famous can you know
and yeah and then if you're lucky enough to even get to start climbing the
mountain then people just
start throwing boulders like hey here's the writer's strike hey there's the
fires in la oh wait
keanu's broke his kneecap and it is a positive blood test you're like oh that's
rough it's it's
all just you're just trying to avoid all these different disasters and if you're
lucky you you you
make it to the top but it's it's so much harder to either so much more to to
that's out of your
control yeah stand-up is so in your control yeah there's something so pure and
beautiful about
stand-up i like doing both but there is something so pure and beautiful about
stand-up where it's just
literally a person talking in the microphone it it's kind of such a pure and
direct art form
and filmmaking there's so many other things that are out of your control and it's
a lot more complex
but it's rewarding in its own way i mean i i think about how you know i'll i'm
working on other
scripts now and i'll have some joke and it'll it'll be like whoa this will be
maybe years from
now before i'll see this joke play in a theater and hear a crowd of people
laugh and then a stand-up
joke you know you or i could think of something tonight and go to a comedy club
and try it and
hear get a laugh and that's so satisfying but there's also something crazy
about like i remember
i started writing good fortune like probably in the pandemic i started writing
it on and off
and there's jokes i wrote in and then years later it's like i'm in a theater in
burbank and keanu
reeves is saying the joke and you know a crowd full of people goes crazy and
they're both amazing but
in different ways yeah that's so wild dude well you know one one thing that was
great about uh good
fortune dude and and i haven't finished it but i really i like it and i'm
excited to see the end of
it it's not that long a movie by the way but i didn't get home last night so
probably 11 30 no i'm
just saying for people that are worried that oh yeah no no it's not it's an
hour and a half movie
um but it's good dude there were so many like start there started to be some
really good plot
changes for me that i really dug like right around the spot where i'm at um
where the you think it's
going to go one way and 