Rob Taylor. Photo Courtesy of Rob Taylor.
Filmmakers Rob Taylor and Nic Costa chatted about their “Raging Midlife” movie.
The film stars Paula Abdul, Walter Koenig, Eddie Griffin, and Emily Sweet, among others. It was directed by Rob Taylor from a screenplay co-written by Taylor and Nic Costa.
The synopsis is: Two fanboys are on a quest to recover a cherished 80s wrestling tank top worn by their idol, “Raging Abraham Lincoln,” after a grieving daughter outbids them to satisfy her father’s dying wish.
These guys will stop at nothing to reclaim Raging Abe’s tank top they lost as children – so help them, Mary Todd!
The movie will be released in theaters and On Demand on March 14th, 2025 via Level 33 Entertainment.
“With ‘Raging Midlife,’ we were trying to be charming, fun and different,” the filmmakers concurred.
“Rob and I wrote the first iteration of the screenplay back in 2003,” Costa said. “Back then, I was a room service attendant at a local hotel. Rob actually had this loose concept for an idea.”
“I certainly did,” Taylor admitted. “I just knew I wanted it to be a quest movie where these guys or nerds were after something. I didn’t know what though. That concept has evolved over the years.”
“The movie needed a little update,” Costa said. “We had our sophomore humor, and some of jokes when we were 22 years old didn’t land.”
Casting Paula Abdul as Mary Todd
On casting Paula Abdul as Mary Todd, Taylor said, “We wanted a celebrity in that role, so that took some doing.”
“We had approached Paula, and we wanted someone who had a callback to the ‘80s. We had written an entirely different screenplay in 2003 about softball and boozeball and I remember at the end of it, I wrote a little bit that ‘Paula Abdul climbs up on this house and starts singing ‘Forever Your Girl’.”
Costa continued, “Rob asked me, ‘why are you writing the impossible?’ I told him that if I didn’t write the impossible, it would never become possible.”
“Cut to 2019 and 2020, we were trying to figure out who was going to play this Mary Todd character, and we instantly thought about Paula Abdul,” Costa said. “We did our very best… we made the call, and she was interested. She wanted some adjustments to her character, and she wanted her part to have meaning and flair.
“I hunkered myself up in a cabin for a weekend, and I re-wrote the whole script to make sure that her scenes had everything she wanted. We brought it back to her, and she agreed to do it because she found it great. Honestly, her suggestions made the story so much better,” Costa elaborated.
“I’ve been listening to her music ever since I was a child,” Costa admitted. “Honestly, when she came on set, I was nervous, and it was delightful to see her almost as nervous as we were because this is one of the first films that she has made where she is not really just playing Paula Abdul or a caricature of herself. She really wanted to do a good job.”
“Paula was very sweet, and she was really nice to everybody, She was accommodating and just lovely to have on set,” Taylor added.
Working with Eddie Griffin
“Eddie was great,” Taylor exclaimed. “He was prepared and had all of his lines memorized… he was just ready to go, and he was also ready to improv, which I encouraged.”
“Eddie knocked it out of the park; we got some jokes in there that weren’t in the script, and he was very professional,” Taylor added.
Working with Walter Koenig
“We’ve known Walter for a long time because he was in our last film,” Taylor said.
“So, at this point, we were friends, and we showed him our script, and he thought it was hilarious. Walter rolled in and he was great. His wife, Judy Levitt, was in the movie as well, but unfortunately, she passed one year after we shot it,” Taylor explained.
“This was their last project together, and we have a dedication to her at the end of the movie,” Taylor added.
Lessons learned from this screenplay
“It evolved so much over time,” Taylor noted. “It taught us what elements are needed to tell a successful story. It taught us how to better accommodate our audience, and also to maintain our artistic integrity.”
“As you grow older, you get more and more layers,” Costa said. “As the script evolved, the comedy became more layered and so did the story. It has heart.”
Closing thoughts on the movie
For fans and viewers, Taylor remarked about the film, “We want our audience to get a good laugh, and to have 90 minutes of a good time. That is literally it. We wanted to make a movie that is fun and we didn’t want to go deep or change the world. We just want people to escape this reality.”
“We hope people can laugh with us, or they can laugh at us,” Costa concluded.
To learn more about “Raging Midlife,” follow the movie on its Instagram page.