The Brothers Solomon

SYNOPSIS

The Brothers Solomon tells the hilarious story of Dean and John Solomon (Will Forte and Will Arnett), two good-hearted but romantically-challenged brothers. When they find out their dying father’s only regret is that he never had a grandchild, the brothers set out to find someone to have a baby with. But after spending their formative years being home- schooled by their father in a remote arctic location, their social skills prove to be somewhat lacking and their attempts at fatherhood go hysterically and disastrously wrong. A riotous and heart warming comedy, The Brothers Solomon pairs funnymen Will Arnett (“Arrested Development”) and “Saturday Night Live’s” Will Forte as the not-sodynamic duo of John and Dean Solomon. Directed by Bob Odenkirk (Let’s Go to Prison, “Mr. Show”) from an original screenplay by Will Forte, the film also stars Chi McBride (Roll Bounce; I, Robot;), Kristen Wiig (“Saturday Night Live”) and Malin Akerman (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle). The film is produced by Tom Werner (“3rd Rock from the Sun,” “That ’70s Show”) and Matt Berenson (Daddy Day Care) and the executive producers are Caryn Mandabach and Paddy Cullen. The production designer is John Paino, the director of photography is Tim Suhrstedt, ASC, the costume designer is Melina Root, the editor is Tracy Wadmore-Smith and the music is by John Swihart.

The Brothers Solomon follows the hapless quest of brothers John (Will Arnett) and Dean Solomon (Will Forte) to find a woman — any woman — willing to bear their child and fulfill the wish of their dying father (Lee Majors). After a few dating disasters, it looks as if the brothers may beat the odds and find what they’re looking for when Dean meets a woman eager to have his baby. Unfortunately, she is flattened by a passing bus right before his eyes.

Undeterred, the single-minded brothers change tactics, ditching conventional dating to try their luck with, in short succession, a street hooker, an adoption agency and finally, the Craigslist website. Their online ad quickly attracts a response from Janine (Kristen Wiig), who agrees to be a surrogate mother for their child — for a hefty fee. Janine’s pining ex, James (Chi McBride), is none too thrilled about her decision, but a trip to the fertility clinic ensues and before long Janine is with child.

As the pregnancy progresses and the brothers embark on an ill-advised self-study course in parenting, Janine finally begins to warm to the brothers’ earnest enthusiasm. Even James, with whom she is now reunited, can’t help but laugh at their antics. Perhaps they will make decent dads after all.

But as the birth date looms, Janine gets cold feet and vanishes. For the first time, the brothers’ tireless optimism flags and it occurs to them that – despite the double Ph.D.s they each earned during their home schooling days in the North Pole – they might be losers after all. But rather than give up, the tenacious siblings decide to do everything within their power to find Janine and fulfill their father's wish.

The Brothers Solomon has been rated R for language and sexual content.

ABOUT THE STORY

“What do you say we get the hell out of here and I go put a baby in you?” — Dean Solomon, The Brothers Solomon

The concept for The Brothers Solomon was born nearly a decade ago when Will Forte was just starting to get noticed for the comedic writing talent that would later earn him an Emmy® nomination. That’s also when Forte began a 10-year working relationship with executive producer Tom Werner, co-founder of the Carsey-Werner Company.

In 1996, Forte joined the creative writing team for the critically acclaimed series “3rd Rock From the Sun” and then quickly segued into a writing slot on “That ’70s Show” — both of which were executive produced by Carsey-Werner. While writing for “That ’70s Show,” Forte joined L.A.’s improv comedy troupe The Groundlings and was soon discovered by “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels, who asked him to join the cast of that show. Carsey-Werner agreed to let him go, but not without him leaving behind the script which would evolve into The Brothers Solomon.

“We had a deal for Will to write a feature based on characters he created for a pilot that was never made,” recalls producer Matt Berenson, who ran Carsey-Werner Films at the time. “They were fresh, funny characters. We just needed to work with Will to hatch a movie idea that we could plug them into.”

The pilot, entitled “Dos Hermanos,” was the script that first landed Forte the job at Carsey-Werner, recalls the writer-actor. “It was about the adventures of two brothers named John and Dean Solomon who were very similar to the brothers in this movie. There was nothing Spanish about them; ‘Dos Hermanos’ just sounded more exotic than ‘Two Brothers.’ Carsey-Werner asked me to develop it into a feature-length script, which I agreed to do.”

The producers thought director Bob Odenkirk (Let’s Go to Prison, “Mr. Show”) would be a natural fit to helm the production because, like Forte and Will Arnett, he had done both stand-up and sketch comedy himself. Odenkirk’s vision for the material clinched the deal.

“The script has an absurdist side to it as well as a very dry side,” says Odenkirk. “Will Forte is a very funny writer on the order of Steve Martin. I liked the sweet nature of it and I had these ideas about defining the characters more by their positive, upbeat natures than by their stupidity. The producers liked my take on it and I immediately signed on.”

Forte and Arnett were both thrilled to learn Odenkirk had agreed to direct The Brothers Solmon. “Bob Odenkirk has been at the focal point of the comedy world for a long time and I am a huge fan,” says Forte. “I had a hard time talking to him at first because I had so much respect for him that it made me nervous to even be around him.”

Arnett adds, “Bob is an incredibly collaborative director, probably from years of working as a writer on SNL and a writer and actor on ‘Mr. Show,’ and he understands what it takes to make a scene. I was really happy he signed on.”

The close bond between the brothers Solomon is the heart and soul of the movie. And it’s the quirkiness of the relationship and the ways the brothers express their affection for each other that are the source of much of the movie’s hilarity.

“The brothers are a little odd and could almost be taken as creepy if you saw them out of context,” Forte says. “But there’s always a method to their madness, and because of their innocence, these are guys you want to give a second chance to over and over and over again. There is a real earnestness to everything they do; they have an unbridled optimism and they approach everything with that outlook.”

Producer Matt Berenson agrees. “The brothers are really defined by their positivity and their enthusiasm as much as they are by their cluelessness,” he says. “It’s the combination of those things that makes them who they are. They always think things are going well, even when they’re not, and there’s something sweet about that which makes you root for them and care about them. In the end, you fall in love with them because of their innocence.”

The brothers inherited their optimism from their dad, according to Forte. “Their father was an extremely positive person,” he says. “He lived his life for his sons because their mom died when they were very young. He told them very early on that he wanted them to have everything they wanted in life, and then he went about getting that for them — even when it meant moving with them to the Arctic because they wanted to live where Santa Claus lives.”

That’s one reason the brothers had a very non-traditional education, explains Forte. “Their father wanted to make sure they were the best and the brightest, so they were home- schooled through their doctorates. They both have double Ph.D.s in glacial core sampling and plate tectonics.”

“When I read the script I remember thinking the brothers were social retards,” says director Bob Odenkirk. “They were raised in a science lab at the North Pole, and they’ve only recently been introduced to the world and society so they’re just not very good at interacting with other people. They do things completely wrong. For example, they take girls out on first dates and ask right away if they can impregnate them — and interestingly enough one girl agrees to it! Their father taught them to never quit, to never give up. You can’t help but see them as idiots, but their genuineness of spirit elevates them.”

ABOUT THE CASTING
“What is your return policy?” — Dean Solomon

In addition to writing The Brothers Solomon, Will Forte plays Dean Solomon, the younger of the two brothers. “I definitely had myself in mind to play the role of Dean,” says Forte. As for the role of John, Forte says he had a specific idea of what kind of actor would play the character, but he had no idea who Will Arnett was when he first wrote the script. “When I met Will years later, it just hit me like a ton of bricks that he is who I had been envisioning the whole time!”

It was Arnett’s wife, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Amy Poehler, who first introduced the two Wills. “Will Forte told me he was working on this script and that he was thinking about me for one of the characters and I said I would read it,” remembers Arnett. “I thought it was brilliant, hilarious and kind of oddly poignant, so I signed on.”

To portray Janine, the world-weary woman who agrees to carry the baby Solomon, the filmmakers tapped another “Saturday Night Live” cast member: Kristen Wiig. “Kristen is the funniest woman I’ve ever worked with,” declares Odenkirk. “She astounded me on this movie with her presence, her likeability and her ability to keep up with the Wills.”

Wiig says the script was one of the funniest she had ever read. “These two wacky brothers are best friends and they have a pretty impossible task to achieve and my character decides to help them do it,” she says. “It’s a heartwarming story, besides being hilarious. Will wrote these characters with such compassion. You just want to protect them and you can’t believe that they haven’t been hit by a car yet!

Actor Chi McBride rounds out the unusual baby-birthing foursome as James, Janine’s janitor boyfriend. “James is one of the angriest characters in one of the funniest ways I’ve ever read,” says producer Berenson. “He has a bit of an anger management problem but he’s so sweet underneath and when he’s not yelling, he’s crying. Chi McBride is an accomplished comic and dramatic actor, so he understands how to push a dramatic performance so that it’s funny. By the end of the movie, just being around the brothers makes James realize that things aren’t as bad as he thinks and he doesn’t need to be so angry all the time.”

McBride, who may be best known to television audiences for his starring role as high school principal Steven Harper on “Boston Public,” describes James as “a dude with a 150pound chip on his shoulder that he carries around like a badge of honor.”

“He has a really bad attitude about things and always feels victimized,” says McBride. “Janine is the only person he has any kind of social relationship with in the outside world because he’s isolated himself. The two of them have been together a while, but all his pent- up anger and paranoia have caused Janine to put the relationship on hold. When the Solomon brothers come along, that starts to change.”

McBride says he welcomed the chance to work with Forte and Arnett, and thoroughly enjoyed the comedians’ on-set antics. “The two Wills were at it all day during production,” he recalls. “If you went up to one of them and said something, they found a way to make it into a song or something. I’d say ‘Kiss my ass’ and within seconds they were over in the corner doing ‘Kiss My Ass: The Musical’!”

McBride, who started his career doing mostly comedic roles, notably a four-season stint on “The John Laroquette Show,” says he admires Arnett and Forte for their unflinching dedication to mining their roles for comic gold. “The guys that do really great comedy, like Jim Carrey, Will Farrell or Eddie Murphy, are the best at what they do because they really commit. That’s what it takes for comedy and not everybody’s willing to go there to make themselves look ridiculous. But the two Wills really understand that and they go in full force. That’s what I love about them.”

The filmmakers knew the part of Ed Solomon, the brothers’ father, was essential to the story, but it proved a difficult one to cast, says Berenson. “The role of the father anchors the film emotionally. If you didn’t care about him and you don’t understand how much the brothers care about him, then the whole movie would be diminished.”

“We were kicking around names for the father,” says Arnett, “and Lee Majors’ name came up and bells went off. He was rugged enough that audiences would believe he could take his sons to the Arctic to live. But we also wanted someone who people were familiar with, so Lee was the perfect man for the role.”

And of course, the filmmakers could already picture him hooked up to life-support systems on a hospital bed. “I think they remembered my opening scenes in ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ where I was lying unconscious with all of those tubes in me,” laughs Majors. “The hardest thing for me in this film, aside from pretending to lie in a coma for six weeks, was to stifle my laughs during the scenes while the two Wills spun around me. There were a lot of times when I just couldn’t hold back and would break up.”

But Majors gave as good as he got with his co-stars on the set. “We pulled a lot of pranks on each other,” he recalls. “One day during a scene where Will Arnett’s character thinks I’ve died and he tries to revive me with paddles, I had a fart machine under the covers. I let him get through most of the scene and then I kind of laid it on him and waited and waited until he finally lost it!”

Swedish-born model turned actress and singer Malin Akerman (“Entourage”) was cast as Tara, John and Dean’s sexy across-the-hall neighbor and the object of John’s desires.

“My character is a bit bitchy,” Akerman says of the role. “She is beautiful but shortsighted and the only thing on her mind is to marry a rich doctor and be taken care of. That’s why she has taken nursing training, which actually ends up saving the brothers’ father and ultimately saving Tara herself from her own shallow life.”

Akerman’s character gets hit on relentlessly by John — whether it’s an invitation to a romantic dinner for two in the hallway between their apartments or his blatant determination to “get their privates together.”

Akerman, too, found keeping a straight face during many of the scenes a nearly impossible challenge. “There were times when I had to force myself to think of the worst thing that’s happened to me to keep a straight face in my scenes with Will Arnett,” says the actress. “We had so much fun and the set was riddled with joke after joke. I kept telling Bob if they kept rolling after he yelled ‘cut’ he’d have a whole other movie!”

One of the smallest roles in the movie proved to be one of the most challenging for Odenkirk to direct — because he was in front of the camera. The director portrayed Jim Treacher, the head of the adoption agency the brothers visit during their desperate quest for a child. Odenkirk says it was the third time he had directed himself. “It’s not easy to do because you’re thinking about what it looks like through the lens, but you’re also supposed to be playing a character who is not aware he’s being filmed.”

ABOUT THE LOCATION

“Make a baby for dad on 3!” — John Solomon

The Brothers Solomon was shot in 32 days in multiple locations around Los Angeles, with the goal of making the film look as though it were shot in “Any City USA,” according to producer Matt Berenson.

In addition to shooting in numerous locations, the production also required the building of a set. Accomplishing both in the short shooting window proved to be the biggest challenge of the movie, executive producer Paddy Cullen says.

“One week we went to 12 different locations, she says. I’ve never moved so fast on a movie and it was hard for me at the beginning, but after a while we got into the rhythm thanks to Bob Odenkirk and his first assistant director, Van Hayden, who are both used to moving this quickly. Bob’s work on ‘Mr. Show’ helped because on cable shows you move a lot faster, and with all the small skits they do a lot more in one day than is typically done on a film.”

As it turned out, the breakneck pace actually had its advantages. “We found that the best comedy in the movie came when we were rushing,” Berenson says. “When the actors were forced to do something quickly, they seemed to be most inspired and crazy things started to happen. That’s probably because all three of them, Odenkirk, Forte and Arnett, come from a background that encouraged improvisation and they know how you can discover really amazing things. So it was a blessing in disguise.”

The production also had its smaller challenges. For example, at one point in the script, the brothers decide to find a doll on which to practice their parenting skills. In the scenes that follow, the doll takes some terrible abuse as the brothers cut their parenting teeth, including being dropped, drowned and burned by acid. Finding a commercial doll that could be used in those scenes proved an impossible task, Odenkirk says.

“Everything’s trademarked and because the brothers do some pretty horrendous things with the doll in their stupid attempts to become good fathers, no company would let us do that to their baby doll,” he says. “So we had to design our own doll. I found this baby face in a magazine that I loved and brought it in, and we designed a little doll based on that. It’s the best thing I’ve ever been a part of creating!”

Despite the various production challenges, the atmosphere on set was a very positive one; a fact that actress Malin Akerman (Tara) attributes in large part to Odenkirk’s directorial style. “He’s an amazing director because he’s delved into all the aspects of this business,” she says. “So when you finish a scene with Bob, he claps and laughs and yells ‘Woo-hoo!’ It’s like a celebration after every cut, and you feel so empowered and so good about yourself that you're able to go on. And even if it wasn’t the greatest take, he’ll still clap and say, ‘Okay, great. Now, let’s just try it this way.’ He really knows how to handle people, and I think that comes from his experience.”

Odenkirk himself is enthusiastic about the environment on set. “It’s just been fantastic. It was like being in a great comic room and finding edges and turns and corners and jokes and twists. It had a great energy and everybody was working together and appreciating each other’s contributions and working off each other. I think audiences are going to find it surprising and really likable and funny throughout. People these days enjoy risqué comedy, and there’s certainly loads of that. But I don’t think there are any movies in this arena that have as much heart as our film does.”