{"id":980022,"date":"2025-10-07T14:09:47","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T18:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/?p=980022"},"modified":"2025-10-09T19:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T23:52:10","slug":"why-conan-obrien-is-deliberately-cast-against-type-in-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/why-conan-obrien-is-deliberately-cast-against-type-in-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Conan O&#8217;Brien Is Deliberately Cast Against Type in If I Had Legs I&#8217;d Kick You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Long before she became a filmmaker, Mary Bronstein developed an interest in therapy and what they call \u201cthe talking cure.\u201d Psychology is what she got her master\u2019s in prior to attending NYU\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts; and in her second feature as a writer-director, the cryptically titled <em>If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You<\/em>, Bronstein sets the story of her \u201cemotional avatar\u201d in a therapist\u2019s office. There Linda (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/rose-byrne\/\">Rose Byrne<\/a>) works as an absolutely burned-out psychoanalyst\u2014and a woman who is also utterly convinced her own therapist down the hall (Conan O\u2019Brien) despises her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a big proponent of therapy, I believe in therapy, I\u2019m in therapy,\u201d Bronstein smiles when we catch up with her ahead of <em>If I Had Legs<\/em>\u2019 premiere at Fantastic Fest. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been in and out of therapy since I was a young teenager. I\u2019ve had good therapists, I\u2019ve had bad therapists, I\u2019ve had every kind of therapist. And there\u2019s a part of therapy that doesn\u2019t help somebody like Linda, which is the part where there\u2019s boundaries, and there\u2019s a lack of human connection. It\u2019s a one-sided relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-cnx-video-embed\"><script id=\"61af5771f183410fade24954abb8ecc5\">\n(new Image()).src = 'https:\/\/capi.connatix.com\/tr\/si?token=6cc529b5-0e26-45aa-a63b-0ffed4b3437f&cid=1ffe12eb-eb53-11e9-b4d2-06948452ae1a';\n  cnx.cmd.push(function() {\n    cnx({\n      playerId: \"6cc529b5-0e26-45aa-a63b-0ffed4b3437f\"\n,      mediaId: \"9516744e-ebed-4b12-becf-890d8d9d7965\"\n    }).render(\"61af5771f183410fade24954abb8ecc5\");\n  });\n<\/script><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>The Linda that Bronstein refers to is Rose Byrne\u2019s central protagonist (and some might say her own self-actualizing antagonist) at the heart of <em>If I Had Legs<\/em>. In a performance that\u2019s been generating Oscar buzz for nearly a year since its earliest screenings at Sundance, Byrne is extraordinarily bitter, funny, and exasperated as a woman at the end of her rope\u2014including opposite another remarkably unexpected performance via the actor playing her curmudgeonly psychiatrist, Conan O\u2019Brien. He is a man who respects the boundaries of the therapeutic process: you don\u2019t hang out with your patients; you don\u2019t command your patients; you don\u2019t even necessarily like your patients. But in the case of the dynamic between himself and Linda, boundaries also become walls ready to crash on both their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s boundaries, and there\u2019s reasons for that, it\u2019s appropriate,\u201d Bronstein notes. \u201cBut when you\u2019re having someone like Linda in your office, begging you to tell her what to do, to not say a \u2018therapy thing,\u2019\u2026 that\u2019s the limitations of therapy. That woman needs a hug. She needs a hug so bad. And she\u2019s not going to get it from him.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a striking dynamic in a film that hits hard from a variety of angles. When we first chat with Bronstein, it is again at Austin\u2019s premier genre festival, a fest celebrated for its horror and suspense programming. And while we\u2019d hesitate to quantify <em>If I Had Legs <\/em>as any single specific genre, it was nonetheless the most intense and anxiety-inducing experience we had at that festival. A fact which makes Bronstein beam with visible pride since she admits to taking from the \u201ccinematic language of horror\u201d in <em>Legs<\/em>. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, she counts William Friedkin\u2019s psychologically-laden approach to <em>The Exorcist <\/em>as a formative movie-watching experience.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Friedkin\u2019s film, very well-played and reasoned men of science fail to help several women dealing with an expanding crisis. One imagines Linda, and her viewers, can relate. Whether it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/fantastic-fest\/\">Fantastic Fest<\/a>, Sundance, or when we catch up with Bronstein again on the eve of her film\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/new-york-film-festival\/\">New York Film Festival<\/a><em> <\/em>bow\u2014a kind of grand finale before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/a24\/\">A24<\/a> releases the movie to wide audiences this fall\u2014<em>If I Had Legs <\/em>has been shocking audiences as much with its tension as its humor. And the fact that Bronstein intentionally cast a famously funnyman to play a guy without an ounce of humor in his bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy superpower in life, if I have one at all, is I like to connect with people, and I like to make them feel comfortable,\u201d Conan O\u2019Brien confides. \u201cThat is something that I do habitually, all day long\u2026that\u2019s something that\u2019s in me. So one of the things that\u2019s been so fascinating about this experience is not being able to use any of that in this character. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m doing, and my attempts to even think I\u2019m trying to help, those attempts are laughable. I am someone who has a lot of tools in that particular chest, and I can\u2019t use any of them, because I don\u2019t have them in this part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was the fear of doing something so far out of his comfort zone as a performer\u2014in this case of a particularly dramatic variety\u2014that enticed O\u2019Brien in the role. Yet it was the earnestness of his humor that caused Bronstein to think of a childhood hero for the role in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been a fan of him and his original late night show since day one,\u201d Bronstein says of O\u2019Brien. \u201cI was a huge Letterman fan, so I was like, \u2018Who\u2019s this guy who\u2019s gonna take over the show?\u2019 And I watched the first episode and I was blown away. I couldn\u2019t believe the stuff he was doing. He was so loose [in this] no-adults-in-the-room comedy. It was like \u2018how is this on television?\u2019 So I always had this sense of him as a guy willing to take risks and not being precious with himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea to reach out to O\u2019Brien came to Bronstein after listening to the former late-night host interviewing his own idol, David Letterman, on the podcast <em>Conan O\u2019Brien Needs a Friend<\/em>. Here were two iconically funnymen having a decidedly unfunny, pensive conversation about the craft. And yet, even by the very nature of the podcast\u2019s name\u2014Conan O\u2019Brien <em>needs<\/em> a friend\u2014there is something pitifully human and melancholic to O\u2019Brien\u2019s humor that Bronstein knew she could use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe character is so buttoned-up, so repressed and so oppressed by his own patients\u2014and that\u2019s Conan,\u201d says Bronstein. \u201cIt\u2019s a part of him and a part of his humor from the get-go. When you think of some of the early comedy bits that would be on the show, it would involve stuff like someone threatening to shoot a puppy. That is <em>dark<\/em>. But it\u2019s funny. And that\u2019s a hard line to do, and if there\u2019s a self-deprecation in his humor, it\u2019s not false; it\u2019s very intelligently [used]; it\u2019s someone who understands human emotions.\u201d She ultimately surmises, \u201cConan\u2019s voice is so calming to me and familiar to me in that way. And if he told me to do something, I would listen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>O\u2019Brien deflects any such compliments with a smirk, but he is quick to return them. According to the newly dramatic thespian, he spent hours every day rehearsing with Bronstein. \u201cMary is incredibly tenacious,\u201d O\u2019Brien notes, \u201cand you feel that, and all my people-pleasing went into \u2018I want to make sure I please this <em>insanely <\/em>driven person with a vision.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That vision is again in service of a unique perspective on a woman\u2019s struggle in crisis. While the inability of O\u2019Brien\u2019s therapist to help, or even connect, with Byrne\u2019s Linda is a core facet of <em>I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You<\/em>, it is just one of the many simultaneous crises occurring at once in the film. Additionally, Linda is grappling with the fact that her husband (Christian Slater as a mostly disembodied voice over a telephone) is out of town on work while his and Linda\u2019s daughter is left to struggle with an undisclosed illness. We are told in the film by the child\u2019s physician (Bronstein herself in a cameo role) that it is not necessarily life-threatening, but there is still an overwhelming sense of oppression around Linda, a sensation heightened since we never see the daughter\u2019s face; we only hear her pleas for attention or help while observing a beleaguered Byrne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat was one of the first conceptual things I came up with,\u201d Bronstein says, \u201cand it\u2019s in the first draft of the script. It\u2019s a big swing to take, because I haven\u2019t seen it done in a movie, but my idea is\u2026 she can\u2019t see her daughter as anything in this moment but as an obligation, an obstacle, something that\u2019s made her life really hard. She can\u2019t see her for who she is, which is a little girl who needs her mom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is ambiguous whether the daughter\u2019s cries and screams are as constant as they feel in the movie, but in Linda\u2019s world there is only one truth. Well that, plus the ones inflicted by judging eyes from people like her child\u2019s pediatrician, Dr. Spring (Bronstein).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLinda\u2019s a woman who outside the story, say a couple years beforehand or maybe a couple years into the future, she\u2019s always a little bit of a chaos agent, always a little bit of a disaster,\u201d Bronstein considers. \u201cBut she\u2019s the woman you always want at your party, she\u2019s going to be the most fun, but when she\u2019s upset, she\u2019s going to be the most upset. She lives in extremes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once again Bronstein notes the film is not autobiographical, but she sees herself in Linda. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of me in it,\u201d Bronstein confides. During our first interview she even points to a piece of chewed gum that, like Linda, she\u2019s placed on the side of her mug of green tea. \u201cThat\u2019s Linda, that\u2019s me.\u201d It might be the reason she cast herself as one of Linda\u2019s chief antagonists: \u201cIt\u2019s me talking to myself, really. She\u2019s the part of me that\u2019s like &#8216;get the fuck out of bed and do the laundry.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet there is something universal about her experience. O\u2019Brien, for one, notes that in the growing distance between Linda and her off-screen husband, he saw his own experience during his famed <em>Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Says O\u2019Brien, \u201cI was on tour when my kids were really little, and my wife called me up in extremis about something, and I\u2019m on a tour bus, and people in the background are like <em>\u2018yee-haw!<\/em>\u2019 And she\u2019s just like, \u2018I\u2019m glad you\u2019re having fun!\u2019 And I\u2019m thinking I\u2019m doing a 30-city tour, I\u2019m working my ass off, but yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Depending on someone\u2019s perspective, an event can be trivial or existential, funny or abject dread-inducing. According to everyone who made the movie, <em>If I Had Legs<\/em> is all of those things at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSometimes, someone will show you an optical illusion, and they say stare at this, and immediately you see a rectangle,\u201d O\u2019Brien observes. \u201cBut if you keep staring, you see a triangle but then you see a rectangle. I feel that way about this film, which I think really speaks to what Mary\u2019s pulled off. I can see it as horror. I can also see it as straight drama, I can see it as comedy, and then I switch back again. It\u2019s why all my friends who have seen it so far have said afterward, \u2018I really need to talk to you about this.\u2019 And they get me to change my mind, but then their mind changes and my mind changes. It\u2019s a shapeshifter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You will take shape in limited release on Friday, Oct. 10 and nationwide on Oct. 24.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long before she became a filmmaker, Mary Bronstein developed an interest in therapy and what they call \u201cthe talking cure.\u201d Psychology is what she got her master\u2019s in prior to attending NYU\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts; and in her second feature as a writer-director, the cryptically titled If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":980023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"dog_exclude_from_homepage":false,"dog_do_not_display_featured_image":false,"dog_external_link":"","dog_product_price":0,"dog_product_button_label":"Buy 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