Will Ropp has something to confess to: He borrowed his friend’s password to log onto The Black List.
The actor-turned-director had already had the backing from production collective Act 4 Artists to make his feature film directorial debut, but he needed to find the right script.
“I tried to apply for a Black List account, but I was denied because I never made a movie,” Ropp tells me. “So I took [a friend’s] log-in and read about 100 Black List scripts.”
What he found was “Brian,” a John Hughes-like coming-of age comedy about a high schooler with anxiety issues who develops a crush on one of his teachers. It was written by “Late Night With Seth Meyers” writer Michael Scollins. “Then came the challenging part of cold calling Mike Scollins and convincing him to let a dude he’s never met and who’s never made a movie have control of his script,” Ropp says.
Ben Wang (“Karate Kid: Legends” and “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping”) stars in “Brian” in the titular role with Natalie Morales as his teacher. Brian’s parents are played by Randall Park and Edi Patterson. William H. Macy is his therapist. Rounding out the cast are Joshua Colley as Brian’s new best friend and Sam Song Li as his brother.
Ben Wang, Will Ropp and Joshua Colley on the set of “Brian.”
It’s not like Ropp didn’t have any experience behind the camera before “Brian.” While his acting credits include “The Way Back,” “The Greatest Beer Run Ever,” “Love, Victor” and “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” he marked his directing debut and began his partnership with Act 4 Artists in 2024 with the comedy short “Kodar: The Primordial God of Light and Ether.”
Not long after he and Scollins struck a deal, Meyers joined “Brian” as a producer. “Directing a film about teenagers is hard because they never let you do it when you’re a teenager (cowards!),” Meyers wrote me in an email. “Will clearly remembers what makes those years so hard and funny and formative and did a great job of capturing it from his cast. Also he had to work with Scollins which is, I can tell you from experience, NO PICNIC.”
“Brian” will have its world premiere during SXSW in Austin on Saturday, March 14.
While the film is a comedy at its core, it also tackles mental health issues, something that resonated with Ropp when he first read the script. “That line between comedy and tragedy is so fine. The comedy and tragedy is all mixed up in a smorgasbord,” he says. “I’ve always been an anxious person. I’m very high wired. I’ve had many panic attacks exactly Brian. I wanted to tell something that I feel so many people out there are going through. It shows that adolescence journey where everyone is just trying to figure out who they are.”
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