Laura Dern and Will Arnett play a divorced couple whose relationship gets further upended by a stand-up comedy routine. Director Bradley Cooper joined a cinematographers union to be able to do a lot of the filming himself. Jason McDonald/Searchlight Pictures One year ago, when Bradley Cooper turned 50, he gathered with Jeremy Strong and a few other close friends (who will remain anonymous) at his West Village home to do a table-read workshop of his new film. It was an unconventional way to celebrate a milestone birthday, but as everyone who has known or worked with the actor turned director will report, once a creative idea takes hold, he's hard-pressed to put it down. In this case, the project was Is This Thing On?, an indie dramedy about a middle-aged couple facing a divorce, eventually starring Laura Dern and Will Arnett (he lent his part, ever so briefly, to Strong on the night of the table read). Related Stories TV Carol Burnett, Laura Dern on 'Palm Royale' Finale Twist and Secret Dinners With the Late Diane Ladd Anatomy of a Contender Making of 'Jay Kelly': Noah Baumbach's Crisis of Faith in Filmmaking The script started with Arnett, who had heard the fascinating origin story about U.K. comic John Bishop - he took the stage at an open mic night to avoid paying the bar's cover charge and discovered a knack for telling comedic stories about his divorce - and teamed up with Mark Chappell to write a version of the story. Cooper was in the middle of making Maestro when Arnett first mentioned the script. "I was just trying to survive [the shoot] and not even thinking about what I could make next, but I got this image of Will in that movie and couldn't get it out of my head," says Cooper. "So I asked him, 'Would you be open to me coming in and doing this with you?' It was like an itch that just got in me." Cooper and Arnett had worked together before, with small parts in the mid-aughts comedies The Rocker and The Comebacks, but they first met decades ago at Peter McManus Cafe in Manhattan. "I was going to meet my ex, Amy [Poehler], and I walked in and Bradley was there with Janeane Garofalo," says Arnett. "I didn't realize at the beginning what the objective of the evening was, and then it was like, 'Oh wait, I'm being vetted.' " The two became fast friends, even living together in Los Angeles' Venice neighborhood a few years later (right across from Dennis Hopper, no less), and by 2024 they'd become extremely close. Arnett as Alex, processing his divorce through stand-up. Shane Gillis, a friend of Cooper's, suggested Arnett go onstage for live sets, giving up 10 minutes of his own show in Austin. Arnett also performed sets at the Comedy Cellar, where parts of the movie are set. "I wound up going every night for six weeks," he says. Jason McDonald/Searchlight Pictures When they decided to partner on Is This Thing On?, Cooper knew he wanted to build a creative team of other close friends. He tapped Weston Middleton, a collaborator since he was Cooper's PA on 2009's All About Steve, to produce. He re-upped his partnership with Matthew Libatique, who was director of photography on all of Cooper's films (after an initial referral from Jennifer Lawrence, who'd worked with Libatique on mother!). Ozark's Peter Thorell joined as first AD by way of Arnett's SmartLess co-host Jason Bateman; Sean Hayes and his husband, Scott Icenogle, also appear in the film, a casting decision that came out of a hang session with Arnett and Cooper. "In the original script, stand-up comedy was the A story and the relationship was the B story, but the last thing I wanted to do was make a fictionalized version of what it's like to be a stand-up comic," says Cooper. "There are so many good documentaries about that already." He wanted to shift the story's perspective and put Arnett's fictional wife more front and center - and he knew he needed to lean on another old friend for that. "I was standing in Bradley's kitchen about a year before we actually made the movie, and he started describing this script of Will's that he'd read," says Dern. "He told me, 'The relationship should be the core of this movie, and we haven't found it yet, and we'd need you to join us to be able to find it.' " Dern said yes on the spot and spent the next months consulting with Cooper to build out her character, a former Olympic volleyball player who is struggling to find her own identity in marriage and motherhood. While Dern was fleshing out the relationship (and taking volleyball lessons), Arnett was working on stand-up. Cooper had asked comedian (and friend, of course) Shane Gillis for early notes, and Gillis suggested that Arnett start going onstage for live sets, eventually ceding 10 minutes of his own headlining show in Austin. Later, as they were scouting locations in New York, the manager of the Comedy Cellar persuaded Arnett to go onstage. "I knew I'd have to do a few sets to practice, but I wound up going up every night for six weeks, which I never coul