‘Friendship’ Star and Director on Tackling Male Loneliness

Friendship, the new comedy starring Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson, begins its descent into skin-crawling derangement with a song, then a punch. Rudd’s Austin, a local news weatherman and consummate cool guy, has invited Robinson’s Craig, his new neighbor and the exact opposite, to hang with the fellas. They drink beers, chat about life, and even get vulnerable. One of Austin’s friends speaks candidly about watching his teenage daughter go through puberty, leading another to offer, in support, Ghost Town DJ’s, “My Boo,” which the group proceeds to sing in glorious a cappella sincerity. 

The next moment, the boys are wearing boxing gloves and sparring helmets. Craig and Austin square up for a playful bout. Austin lands a jab to Craig’s face, promises he won’t do it again, then does it again. Craig responds with a sucker punch that puts Austin on the ground and brings the night to a screeching halt. Craig’s attempt at an apology involves eating a bar of soap and bleating “I’m sawwwwy” with a delusional intensity that’s become Robinson’s signature. 

The first time I saw Friendship, this scene made me think of (yes, I admit it) a post: “Is the secret to happiness harmonizing with your boys?” someone wrote on X, accompanied by the great clip of the Eagles singing “Seven Bridges Road” a cappella backstage as a pre-gig warm-up. The Eagles, of course, are famously a band for whom harmonizing with the boys brought a certain amount of happiness, but never enough to quell inter-band animosity. The last show of their original run in 1980 ended with two members threatening to kick the other’s ass. 

Humans crave connection; connection requires vulnerability; vulnerability is often mistaken for weakness; and as Friendship writer-director Andrew DeYoung tells Rolling Stone during a joint Zoom call with Robinson, “Who wants to admit weakness? Who wants to admit you’re vulnerable, or that you made a mistake? It’s so hard. So many of us double down in all kinds of ways. We’re constantly trying to mask our own weaknesses and perform the people we want to be.” 

“I like guys that are struggling to connect,” adds Robinson, “guys that double down on things. I really am drawn to those types, probably because I’m more similar [to them] than I’d like to admit.” 

Just as on his celebrated sketch show I Think You Should Leave, Robinson shows his talent for doubling, tripling, even quadrupling down to outrageous extremes, while still tapping into what’s human and relatable about that compulsion. In Friendship, it all stems from the destabilizing sensation that accompanies a severed connection with another person. 

“We need connection as much as we need food,” DeYoung says. “It’s so deeply ingrained in our DNA. You see it all the time, especially in romantic contexts. When romantic partnerships fall apart, people go crazy, and it’s because their main source of connection is gone. That’s what I was trying to explore here, but especially in this male-to-male friendship context.”

Friendship arrives at a moment when male friendship and male loneliness are as much genuine crises as they are meme fodder. (I was, at first, mistakenly certain the aforementioned Eagles post was worded with the familiar template, “Is the cure for male loneliness harmonizing with your boys?”) The film’s marketing has leaned into this, from the tagline “Men shouldn’t have friends” (a paraphrased Craig quote) to the A24-branded hats stitched with “Male Friendship” on the front. Robinson, Rudd, co-star Eric Rahill, and DeYoung nominally discussed the film (while also joking about looking at porn on a Nintendo DS and Rudd’s IMDb STARmeter ranking) in a promo video filmed in a pitch-black room, because, as one social media caption quipped, “Men will only talk about their feelings if it’s in total darkness and shot on the camera from Dune 2.”

That’s not to say the film’s focus on the magic and mysteries male companionship is insincere. To make Craig’s descent into madness feel real, DeYoung had to ensure that what this character — complacent yet alienated, self-absorbed and oblivious to the real emotions and desires of those around him — saw in Austin and his friends was something wholly new: “These are different guys,” DeYoung says. “They exhibit a healthy masculinity [with the singing], but they’re still guys with the boxing. They’re vulnerable in ways he’s never experienced before, but also guys who still like cars.”

DeYoung also wrote the film from instinct, not while reading “What’s the Matter With Men?” trend pieces. “A lot of us have trouble connecting, going deep, and having real, meaningful relationships,” he says. 

Craig’s inability to forge a genuine connection with Austin isn’t a surprise considering everything else in his life. All of his links to the real world are frayed or contrived. His soulless job is designing apps to be more “habit forming,” not “addictive.” His wife Tami, a florist and cancer survivor played by Kate Mara, is drifting away, and Craig doesn’t realize it. He’s too preoccupied with seeing “the new Marvel,” or eating the “Seal Team 6 Meal,” 2,000-plus-calorie lunch special based on what the Navy SEALs ate after killing Osama bin Laden. For much of the film, Craig wears a ludicrously capacious beige puffer coat — a necessity, Robinson notes, because they shot the film in winter in New York, but also the perfect garment for a character whose narcissism insulates him from the rest of the world. 

“It was like a security blanket, because when I put it on, I felt like a loser,” Robinson cracks, adding: “I could pull myself into it like a turtle. I’d put up my shoulders and my head would basically go inside it.”

“He’s swallowed by it,” DeYoung adds, “and it’s the same color as an Amazon package.” 

Austin is just the first person to puncture that cocoon. His own insecurities and imperfections reveal themselves over the course of the film, but to Craig, he’s astoundingly real — curious, compassionate, fun, a part of the world, not apart from it. “You feel time expand when you meet someone that actually hits you in your soul,” DeYoung says.

Craig experiences that same temporal shift two other times in the film: When staring at a bouquet of Tami’s flowers, and while holding an ancient stone axe Austin has bought online. And, pointedly, all that happens when Craig licks a psychedelic toad in search of actualization is he sees himself ordering a sandwich.

“When that character sees this object made thousands and thousands of years ago, by someone just like him, hopefully that makes him feel so small that there’s awe,” DeYoung says. “That’s how I feel when I encounter these objects. You break out of constantly thinking about yourself all the time. When you’re like, ‘Wow, I’m part of this history that causes me to feel almost high.’”

In its way, Friendship does offer a solution to these questions about men, friendship, and loneliness, though it’s hardly so prescribed. Rudd even gives voice to it in an extended version of that “men will only talk about their feelings if it’s in total darkness” promo video that played after the screening I attended. Half-jokingly asked how lonely men in this country can go about making new friends, Rudd offers the genuine reply: “Let those friendships form from a foundation of shared empathy and humor, and not shared anger and aggression.”