Why I Directed a Pregnancy Dramedy After a Career in Big Budget, World-Ending Movies

Like most folks in this business, I grew up obsessed with movies. That obsession reached its peak of exuberant absurdity on a Friday in late July of 1995. I was 16 years old and about to head off on a multi-week family vacation, which meant I wouldn’t be seeing a movie in the theater for two entire weeks. The horror.

To combat this injustice, my equally movie-obsessed friends and I came up with a plan for that weekend’s new releases: we’d see them all in one day. We saw The Net in the morning, then drove across town in my buddy’s Saturn to see Waterworld in the afternoon, and then finished the night with a late showing of Harmony Korine and Larry Clark’s Kids at the now-extinct Main Art Theater in Royal Oak, Michigan. The Net, Waterworld, and Kids in one day. Wrap your head around that cinematic hat trick.

Cut to three decades later and my writing career looks almost as eclectic as that Friday in July of ‘95. I’ve written romantic comedies, animated movies, action movies, R-rated comedies, two seasons of an old-school multi-camera sitcom (and a third season where we did live broadcasts), mystery shows, superhero movies… I even hosted a Japanese game show once, but that, as they say, is a story for another time.

But the last few years have been more of the “big” movies: monsters and supervillains wreak havoc, cities get destroyed, good guys save the world. And I love those movies, but there’s no shortage of them these days. What I wasn’t seeing as much anymore, and what I missed, were the movies about the universal experiences people go through and, more importantly, the people they go through them with.

The movies and filmmakers that made me want to do this in the first place: Cameron Crowe, John Hughes, Nora Ephron, Ivan Reitman, Rob Reiner, Chris Columbus, Amy Heckerling, Lawrence Kasdan…

So, somewhat selfishly, my co-writer (and wife) Ellie Knaus and I wrote one of those movies. Let’s Have Kids! is a comedy about two lifelong best friends who decide to get pregnant at the same time so they can navigate pregnancy and motherhood together, but find their friendship is tested when only one of them gets pregnant. The world isn’t on the line, but their world is, and that’s always felt like bigger stakes to me.

I’m not saying big movies don’t make me feel big feelings. I cried when I watched Logan. A hard, ugly cry. On an airplane. A concerned flight attendant asked me if I was okay.

But with Let’s Have Kids!, the first movie I’ve directed, I wanted to explore the ideas and experiences Ellie and I had been living through for the past several years. Marriage, family, parenthood, career, friendship… and how those are all constantly reacting to and working with (and sometimes against) each other. To say the movie is personal is an understatement: from the big ideas about the value of female friendship, all the way down to the way Max Greenfield’s character takes a bite out of an apple at an inopportune moment. (Ellie has told me, many times, that I “eat apples like an asshole”… and she’s not wrong.) But it’s not just personal to us.

Throughout the filmmaking process, so many people shared their own moving and hilarious stories about their relationships, friendships, and families. That’s the magic of movies about universal experiences: people see themselves in them. It’s why I love movies like this. I watch them and I feel seen.

I was working on a TV show recently, talking about movies between setups with an actor who will remain nameless (it was Vince Vaughn), and he said: “Human experience is still the best IP around.” Not only do I agree with him, but I’m reminded of my triple feature back in 1995. I honestly can’t tell you the plot of The Net (I remember a scene on a beach). Or Waterworld (jet skis and an upside-down tattoo map?). And what Iremember most about Kids was me and my friends talking to some older, much cooler indie girls about the movie, in the parking lot, afterward.

But that’s the point. The plot fades. The experience lasts. And the stories that capture those experiences and the feelings around them are the ones I’m most excited to tell. I hope someone watches Let’s Have Kids! and sees a bit of their own life in it. And, of course, I hope they remember who they watched it with.

Adam Sztykiel is a writer, producer and director whose screenwriting credits include Bad Monkey, Black Adam, Due Date and Scoob. Let’s Have Kids is now available on VOD.