{"id":1182666,"date":"2025-12-04T07:17:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1182666"},"modified":"2025-12-04T07:25:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:25:47","slug":"aziz-ansari-things-ive-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/aziz-ansari-things-ive-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Aziz Ansari on Reading, Writing and Your New Best Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

 Aziz Ansari’s sharply funny directorial debut, Good Fortune<\/em>, wasn\u2019t supposed to be his debut. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had planned to adapt Dr. Atul Gawande\u2019s Being Mortal<\/em>, about coping with death, but the film was suspended when one of its stars, Bill Murray, was accused of misconduct. (Murray has said he kissed a female staff member, as a joke, while both wore Covid masks.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On what was supposed to be a shoot day for Being Mortal<\/em>, Ansari sent another script he\u2019d been working on to one of his Being Mortal <\/em>stars, Seth Rogen, who loved it \u2014 and signed up for what became Good Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film, which is now available on video on demand, stars Keanu Reeves as Gabriel, a lowly guardian angel tasked with keeping people from texting and driving. He ends up causing Ansari\u2019s character, Arj, a struggling delivery driver sleeping in his car, to switch lives with Rogen\u2019s character, Jeff, a spoiled tech bro. Keke Palmer, who was also to have starred in Good Fortune<\/em>, plays Elena, who is trying to unionize the hardware chain where she works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides writing and directing, Ansari is famed for his standup comedy, key part on NBC\u2019s Parks and Recreation<\/em>, and starring role on Netflix\u2019s Master of None, <\/em>which he co-created. For our latest edition of Things I\u2019ve Learned as a Moviemaker<\/a>, he told us about always being ready to pivot. Here is his moviemaking advice, as told to MovieMaker<\/em>.\u2014M.M. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aziz Ansari: Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Aziz
Keanu Reeves as Gabriel, Seth Rogen as Jeff, and Aziz Ansari as Ari in <\/em>Good Fortune. Photo Credit: Eddy Chen. Courtesy of Lionsgate.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

1. <\/strong>You\u2019ve just got to be writing all the time,<\/strong> and have so many things going at the same time, because movies are so hard to put together. Every movie is a miracle. I remember reading about Steven Spielberg when he made 1941<\/em>, and it didn\u2019t go well. And he said if you have something that doesn\u2019t go well, just immediately dive into the next thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. <\/strong>The most important thing is to just start directing.<\/strong> Directing is such a tough job to define. You have a script, and whether you\u2019ve written it or not, you basically see it in your head, and you\u2019re trying to share with a team of people what you see and how it should be executed. And the more you know that, the more you can articulate it. Ideally, you have a great team, and they collaborate with you and push it even further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.<\/strong> I cannot recommend enough to read<\/strong> Elia Kazan\u2019s A Life<\/em>. I read it while making Good Fortune<\/em>, and it was almost magical. Every time I was dealing with a problem, he was somehow talking about it. Like we were editing, and I\u2019d be reading his views on editing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Aziz Ansari as Ari and Keke Palmer as Elena in <\/em>Good Fortune. Lionsgate<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. <\/strong>For Being Mortal<\/em>, I read the book<\/a>, I became friends with Atul, I interviewed nurses and healthcare workers, people that worked at hospices, doctors, everyone. For this movie, I went and did DoorDash and interviewed people who slept in their cars. I talked to a guy who tried to unionize his Home Depot. That stuff is your best friend, because you don\u2019t need to live the experience if you do the research.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.<\/strong> Watch as many movies as you can.<\/strong> When I decided I was going to start directing, I thought: OK, who are the best directors alive? And it\u2019s, you know, Scorsese, Tarantino, PTA, whoever you want to say. What do those people have in common? They have an encyclopedic knowledge of film. And I realized that cannot be a coincidence. I immediately started trying to watch as many films as I could. There was a time when I really hadn\u2019t seen everything, but it doesn\u2019t take that long to start racking them up. If you\u2019re like, \u201cI\u2019m gonna watch one movie a day,\u201d even if you don\u2019t hit every day, you can still watch 300 movies in a year. You should really try to devour film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Fortune, written by, directing and starring Aziz Ansari, is now available on VOD from Lionsgate.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Main image: Keanu Reeves and Aziz Ansari in <\/em>Good Fortune. Lionsgate.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aziz Ansari’s sharply funny directorial debut, Good Fortune, wasn\u2019t supposed to be his debut. He had planned to adapt Dr.","protected":false},"author":1942,"featured_media":1182669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_comments":false,"cm_data":"","cpt_newsletter_id":0,"tpd_coauthor":[],"tpd_feed_delay":{"delay_type":"default"},"is_tpd_lists_single_post":false,"tpd_featured_posts_arr":"","tpd_franchise_content":"","hide_featured_img_single_post":false,"msn_featured_video":[],"_msn_custom_title":"","tpd_featured_video":[],"tpd_sponsored_post_logo":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_link":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_width":0,"tpd_sponsored_enable_nofollow":true,"tpd_disable_incontent_ads":false,"tpd_disable_right_rail_ads":false,"tpd_disable_after_content_ads":false,"tpd_disable_header_ads":false,"tpd_disable_sticky_footer_ads":false,"tpd_disable_video_ads":false,"tpd_disable_outbrain":false,"tpd_affiliate_disclaimer":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[40986],"tags":[],"coauthor":[],"feeds":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1182666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-things-ive-learned-as-a-moviemaker"},"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Aziz-Ansari-428x241.jpg","fimg_url_thumb":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Aziz-Ansari-428x241.jpg","fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Aziz-Ansari-788x444.jpg","author_name":"Aziz Ansari","author_avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ab4af84b92dc35e404bbd1890271fb6493e25c2ace344fe860abc866975a41be?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/author\/aziz-ansari\/","coauthors":[],"primary_category":{"term_id":40986,"name":"Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker","slug":"things-ive-learned-as-a-moviemaker","taxonomy":"category","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/category\/things-ive-learned-as-a-moviemaker\/"},"featured_img_medium":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Aziz-Ansari-788x444.jpg","post_categories":["Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1942"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1182669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182666"},{"taxonomy":"coauthor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthor?post=1182666"},{"taxonomy":"feeds","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feeds?post=1182666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}