Opening in limited release in theaters on October 2nd is the new family sports drama ‘Last Shot‘, which was directed by Andy Palmer (‘Marshmallow‘).
The film stars Jaime Pressly (‘My Name Is Earl‘), Michael Rapaport (‘True Romance‘), Johnny Simmons (‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World‘), Laraine Newman (‘Saturday Night Live‘) former NBA star Baron Davis, and newcomer Dylan Friedman.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jaime Pressly, Dylan Friedman and director Andy Palmer about their work on ‘Last Shot’, their first reaction to the screenplay, Caden’s grief over his father’s death, Lexi’s struggles with being a mother, casting, and what it was like for Pressly to sing on screen.
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Moviefone: To begin with, Andy, can you talk about your first reaction to Todd M. Friedman’s screenplay and as a director what were some of the themes you wanted to explore with this movie?
Andy Palmer: I mean, Todd, he’s an incredible writer. I’ve gotten to edit some of the movies he’s written and I got to direct some movies that he’s written. This one being, when I read it, it was an incredible story with great characters, but it circumvents the norms of what you would normally see, this idea of a mom that abandoned her kid. The mom comes from a ton of affluence and the dad doesn’t. So, there was a certain fear that I had where I was like, how do I overcome these surface-level things? How do I have a kid that’s with a dad who’s an alcoholic and then his dad dies, and then he gets shipped off to this mansion and a private school and all these things that on the surface, it looks like this kid wins the lottery. Right? But in actuality, he’s a kid that’s dealing with a tremendous amount of trauma and no support base. So it was, how do I create these moments? Then for me, it was like, well then the mansion must be empty. He must go from being in this small house where him and his dad are constantly together, and no matter what, he has this support system, even if it’s a flawed support system, to going to this big empty house where he’s just always alone in it. When you first see him, he gets there and his mom’s not even there to meet him from the airport, it’s her assistant. Then he comes home from practice and it’s like, he has all the cool food in the world that any 13-year-old kid would want, but there’s nobody there. He’s just by himself. He’s watching a movie on his laptop. So, I had to dive deeper into these visuals and that excited me. I think Steven Spielberg said, “If you don’t go to work every day scared of what every scene is going to be, then what are you even doing there?” So, that certainly was ‘Last Shot’ for me. I just went in petrified every day and I was like, we’ll probably get a good movie out of that somehow.
MF: Jamie, can you talk about how Lexi is struggling with balancing her career and being a mother?
Jamie Pressly: I think the last thing you said is just about the only thing that I could relate to, which is having a career and trying to navigate the balancing act of being a mother to three boys in my real life and working. It’s tough, especially because nothing shoots in Hollywood anymore and we live there. So, always having to be away from them, it’s hard. With Lexi, she didn’t have any maternal instincts. She didn’t have any problem just sending money his whole life to pay for him while his dad raised him. She didn’t come from a great home, as far as her parents were concerned, it wasn’t very loving, so she didn’t really understand how to do that with her own child. So it was a hard thing for me to try to understand how this woman had no maternal instincts when I have so much of it. Right? It was tough, but I had to just shut my heart off and pull up a bunch of trauma. I’m 49 now, I’ve got loads of it. You know what I mean? You pull from back here and you put it up here, and that’s essentially what I did. Then imagining not having my boys, what my life would be like, and that’s a sad thing for me. I can’t even fathom the thought. I had to completely shut Jaime off, because Jaime would’ve never done to her son what Lexi did. I didn’t get into acting to play myself. I got into acting to play other characters, and I love playing characters and being able to dive in and figure them out. This was definitely a challenge and I loved it.
MF: Dylan, can you talk about the grief Caden is experiencing after his father’s death and his first reaction to being reunited with his mother?
Dylan Friedman: So, he doesn’t start off dealing with the death great, because that’s his whole world, right? Then obviously with his mom, she doesn’t care about him in the beginning, so it’s him against the world is his initial reaction. Then as the movie develops, he develops and then he can live more with what happened to his father and he can develop more of a relationship with his mother.
MF: Dylan, what was it like working with Michael Rapaport and Jaime Pressly and having them play your parents in this movie?
DF: I just learned so much from both, and they’re both really kind and really welcoming. So with the brief time I had with Michael, he just taught me a lot of things. Actually, we talked a lot about basketball, like the Knicks and the Cavs. Then with Jaime, we had all this time, we just have been really close and then we had some emotional scenes together, which just drained us, but we got through it and we did really good.
MF: Jamie, what was your experience like working with Dylan on set?
JP: I was tough on him to get him to go to certain places that he needed to get because in real life, he’s never suffered any trauma, especially not what his character has. He’s got great parents, and a great family, and so it’s hard for a kid to understand trauma like what he was going through. In order to do that, I was very tough on him, but I think he ended up getting there and he did an incredible job. For instance, when we were doing the hallway scene, the second day of filming, we did that hallway scene where we’re arguing. Then after that, we did a scene that’s towards the end of the film, where we’re in his room sitting on his bed, and it’s the first time he calls her mom and she hugs him and they have that long, beautiful conversation and scene. In the hallway though, Dylan always has this little kind of grin on his face and I was like, “No, You’re not happy. You can’t be smiling.” But when I got on him, I went and I asked Andy, I was like, “Hey, do I have your permission?” He goes, “Go do your thing.” The camera was completely clean of me and just on him. To get him there, we kept running the camera, we didn’t cut. We kept running the camera, and I was literally yelling at him. I was like, “You’re angry, get mad at me.” I was really going all out, and finally he got there. But it took a minute because like I said, it’s hard for a kid to pull up something they’ve never been through, and so it took a while. I had to approach it in a different way and make him scared and mad. So, I had to scare him to get him there.
MF: Andy, can you talk about your casting process and how you work with the actors on set?
AP: First of all, I just try to cast the best humans possible, so that makes my job incredibly easy because when you cast Jaime Pressly in something, there’s a great story that Steven Soderbergh talks about, it’s like, “What am I going to teach Matt Damon about acting?” He’s like, “So it’s basically after a take, I go like this or I go like this.” That’s how I operate. If I cast correctly, then I don’t need to go crazy. We don’t really have time on an indie movie for it to be like, dive in. I remember working with Ty Simpkins and he had just come off ‘The Whale‘ right before, and he was shooting one scene for two weeks, and they’re diving into all these things. I have one day. Usually we’re doing three, four, five scenes a day. So I have to cast actors that are just going to nail stuff quickly. Then, if I make little adjustments, they adjust quickly and stuff like that. So that’s just the reality I live in as an indie director, and I just try to cast as best as humanly possible, and then that makes my job on set easier. But like we talked about, you look at Jaime, Michael Rapaport, Johnny Simmons, and Laraine Newman, I think that the actors that are traditionally in comedic roles are the best dramatic actors. Look at all these people that we cast in this movie that have bounced between drama and comedy. I think comedy is the hardest genre, and so if they can do that effectively, I think they can do drama effectively, and I think it comes through in this movie, for sure.
MF: Finally, Jamie, what was it like for you to sing on screen and can you talk about shooting that sequence with Johnny Simmons?
JP: Well, it was great. My mom’s a dance teacher and one of her best friends was a voice coach. For a long time, I lived in a two-story house and the bottom floor was my mom’s studio, and upstairs was Max’s voice coaching studio. So, I would go up and down and I would sing in between classes. I’ve sung my whole life, and I used to go sing with the original Pussycat Dolls before they were signed to Interscope, when it was just a play, and my song was ‘Fever’. So, I was excited to be able to sing. We couldn’t afford the song that Andy wanted, which was a Garth Brooks song. So, we needed a song, and I started humming and I came up with the little chorus that we sing in the film. Johnny plays the guitar beautifully and he came over to the Airbnb my producing partner and I were staying at, and I sang it for him, and then he found the chords, and we sang all night until we got it right. So, I was really happy to be able to finally sing a little song. I mean, I would’ve loved to have sang more, but hopefully I’ll get to do that in another project.
What is the plot of ‘Last Shot’?
12-year-old basketball prodigy Caden Issacs (Dylan Friedman) navigates the turbulent waters of grief and adolescence after the sudden death of his father, Darren (Michael Rapaport). Moving to Nashville to live with his estranged mother, Lexi (Jaime Pressly), a driven music executive, Caden struggles to find his place on a new elite basketball team while grappling with the high expectations of those around him. Through intense rivalries, newfound friendships, and the relentless pursuit of excellence, Caden learns to process his pain and rediscover his passion for the game.
Who is in the cast of ‘Last Shot’?
- Jaime Pressly as Lexi Issacs
- Dylan Friedman as Caden
- Michael Rapaport as Darren
- Johnny Simmons as Bobby
- Laraine Newman as Leann
- Baron Davis as Austin
