Buddy movie fosters real friendship between stars
Shia Labeouf is trying to show how different he is from his co-star in “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” Zack Gottsagen.
“Hey, Zack,” Labeouf says. “Are you a good opera singer?”
“Yes!” Gottsagen replies with a smile.
“Hey, Zack. Are you a good scuba diver?”
“Yes!” Gottsagen responds, just as quickly, just as brightly.
Labeouf shakes his head in awe. Like the 33-yearold It introduces you to this brave man, this beautiful man. Labeouf, Gottsagen is an actor. He’s one year Labeouf ’s senior and he has Down syndrome. Truth be told, he can’t sing a lick of opera and isn’t much for scuba diving. But that’s never stopped Gottsagen.
“No matter what you ask him, he’s good at it. He was raised a special, magical kid. There’s no self-doubt in him,” Labeouf says. “You ask me if I’m a good actor and I’ll tell you I’m (expletive).”
‘Let’s do it together!’
Six years ago, Gottsagen met Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz at an acting workshop for disabled people in Santa Monica, California. They
immediately noticed Gottsagen, who, while playing the villain in a Western, would take off his glasses and put down his drink with an air of danger before saying his line.
Gottsagen told them he wanted to be a movie star.
“We had to have a really frank conversation about how there aren’t many opportunities for people with Down syndrome to act in movies that go into theaters. He kind of got really emotional and he just said, ‘Well, let’s do it together then!’ ” Schwartz recalls. “It was his idea. It was a great idea.”
Schwartz and Nilson had only toiled on the peripheries of Hollywood, doing commercials and short films. But they researched how to write a screenplay.
They put together a script about a wrestling-obsessed young man with Down syndrome who breaks out of his assisted living home and embarks on a “Huck Finn”like adventure across North Carolina’s Outer Banks and joins up with a destitute crab fisherman running from his debtors (Labeouf ).
‘Follow your heart’
It took extreme effort to make it a reality. Nilson and Schwartz went broke and became homeless in the process. For a spell, Nilson lived in a tent without much food. “For better or worse, we went a little bit crazy getting that promise we made to Zack to happen,” Nilson says.
But with Gottsagen starring, the filmmakers scraped together some money and began attracting an enviable cast drawn to the project’s goodheartedness. The film co-stars Dakota Johnson, John Hawkes, Bruce Dern and Thomas Haden Church. After it premiered at SXSW in March, “The Peanut
Butter Falcon,” which opens locally Aug. 23, won the audience award. Reviews have been excellent. Gottsagen’s dream has come true.
“I hope some people could have the opportunity to go for their dreams,” Gottsagen says alongside Labeouf. “Follow your heart and maybe someday you can be a movie star.”
What’s striking about Gottsagen is how he’s taken his good fortune in stride. Having long loved movies (he counts “Grease” as his favorite) and studied acting since childhood, Gottsagen is remarkably comfortable in the spotlight.
‘What was lacking’
It’s those around Gottsagen whose lives have changed, particularly Labeouf ’s.
The intense actor, who has been known to battle selfdestructive tendencies, didn’t know what exactly he was getting into when he got off an airplane in Georgia a month before shooting and hopped into the back of a pickup. Nilson and Schwartz sat in the front, Gottsagen and Labeouf in the back, holding each other as the truck swerved.
They quickly became close, spending their evenings watching wrestling and their days on 12-hour shoots across the Georgia countryside, swimming in rivers, dancing on railroad tracks and having watermelon fights. Like their characters, there was nothing “cheeseball,” just honesty and tenderness and equality between them.
“I was quite unintelligible to myself before I met him. He had more self-awareness coming into this picture than I do,” Labeouf says. “Walking out, I’ve adopted a lot of his self-love and his confidence. It’s leading to self-love, which is leading to an ability to receive love, which is what was lacking in my life. And I would run to alcohol. I just hated myself.”
‘I love you’
In the middle of production in 2017, Labeouf was arrested for public drunkenness. Labeouf has since gotten sober, and he credits Gottsagen with his turnaround.
“He knows about my pain intimately. We’d be sitting there watching wrestling every night. He’d be eating ice cream. I’d be drinking gin. I’d tell him, ‘You gotta stop eating all that ice cream.’ He’d say, ‘You gotta stop drinking that gin,’ ” Labeouf says. “This man’s a year older than me. He’s been acting longer than me and he’s healthier than I am. He has more friends than I have, has longer-lasting, loving relationships.”
At that, Labeouf begins to tear up. Gottsagen leans his head against his co-star and wraps his arm around him. They tell each other “I love you.”
‘This beautiful man’
Gottsagen is by any measure exceptional.
Census figures have shown 19 percent of the U.S. population has a disability, but representation has lagged in movies. According to a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, just 2.5 percent of characters in the 100 most popular movies of 2017 were depicted with a disability. And those roles are usually played by actors without one.
“The only way to get past that stigma is to actually give him an opportunity to unveil his humanity,” Labeouf says of Gottsagen. “I think that’s what the movie does. Our trade secret is heart. You’re watching two people connect, and it enlarges your humanity. It introduces you to this brave man, this beautiful man.”