You’re Not Anyone

Winnie Code considers Andrew DeYoung’s debut feature film “Friendship.”

By Winnie CodeAugust 8, 2025

• Film

• Gender & Sexuality

Oh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile
De-doh-n-doh-de-doh
And here I am
The only living boy in New York

WHAT AM I talking about? It’s 1969 and Art Garfunkel is ditching Paul Simon so he can be fourth-billed on a movie that Simon himself was written out of, based on a book about being iconically, paradoxically stuck. While Garfunkel is on set in a remote part of Sonora, Mexico, Simon is forced to write the duo’s next, and last, album for Columbia, alone, and it’s called Bridge over Troubled Water. “The Only Living Boy in New York” is a conduit for Garfunkel’s rebuff and, later, the soundtrack for a series of Honda Accord commercials. The film in question, Mike Nichols’s Catch-22, makes little impact critically or commercially. Worse, it represents the kill shot for the already fractured relationship of perhaps the greatest vocal group in history.

In April, I attended two screenings of writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s debut feature, Friendship (2024). The first was the marquee event at the second annual Los Angeles Festival of Movies. I looked around Vidiots and saw familiar faces of comedians. But unlike at the signature screening of last year’s LAFM, Rap World, these comedians are not ones I know or have shared bills with; these comedians all own real estate. (I mean, I hope. God, I hope.) My second screening of Friendship took place in an office building around the corner from the old Barneys New York building (RIP). The bathroom was accessible by a key that was attached to a wooden stick, that was, in my memory, 50 feet long. I thought of being 11, seeing a still from The Last Temptation of Christ, and learning in that moment that Jesus had to drag his own cross. Our humiliation.

At the Aidy Bryant–hosted Q and A that followed the Vidiots screening, DeYoung acknowledged that the theater was populated mostly by friends, many of whom had nagged him for a spot on the comp list. The other was in a room full of, literally, critics. Yet the levels of enthusiasm in the two spaces were shockingly even. I’m not saying that if there had been a clap-o-meter present at both, they would have given identical readings. What I’m saying is Andrew DeYoung’s friends are right. Friendship is deeply funny. Any fears that Tim Robinson’s comic intensity, which flourishes in sketch format on his enormously successful Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave (2019–23), would wear thin over 101 minutes were assuaged with the picture’s remarkably fluid tone. The secret seems to be this: Tim Robinson can be Tim Robinson; everyone else: please be normal.

Robinson plays Craig, a suburban dad and frantic turncoat normie married to Tami (Kate Mara), a breast cancer survivor/florist who wants only for a bigger car and, surely, to have sex with her ex-boyfriend. Their teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer) is overwhelmed by the financial pressures of having two girlfriends. Neither wife nor son wants to see “the new Marvel” with Craig despite his incessant asking during an early scene. This awkward attempt at connection conveys the famous feeling of being lonely with people. His life isn’t bad, but no one pays him any mind at home or at his white-collar job where he and his co-workers make people more addicted to their phones.

One day, Austin (Paul Rudd) moves in across the street. Austin is the bad boy of local news, a weatherman with swoopy hair and passable anarchist slang. Where Craig’s house looks like it was furnished by a long-deceased aunt, Austin’s was more likely decorated by going into Design Within Reach and saying “One of everything!” He invites Craig in—and the sun shines on Craig for the first time in the movie, or maybe ever. He’s so captivated that he gets a nosebleed. Things are going great. And it’s not just the Austin Show—Austin listens to Craig’s advice too. Nights become exploratory rather than about sitting in his armchair; life is expansive. Then, inevitably, comes a group hang, which Craig absolutely biffs, as any viewer of ITYSL could have predicted. Austin, wearing a ren faire fit, breaks up with him. Craig is devastated. How can he possibly return to sad armchair life? How could you?

Try as Craig might to move on, neither co-workers nor family members can match his freak. His life spirals: his wife leaves him after he loses her in the sewer; he gets fired. His ugly house grows bare, and that is actually worse than before. But the truth is, nothing ever hurts as deeply as Austin’s rejection, and nothing will stop him from trying to win his friend back. The world could crumble, as Craig’s does, and all would be well as long as Austin smiles upon him once more.

What I’m about to say is a compliment: Tim Robinson knows how to play a guy whose personality should have been bred out of existence. His reactions to normal human situations are, essentially, diagonal. Craig’s always wearing a mud-colored puffer jacket that makes someone who seems like a scared turtle also look like one. He’s the abandonee, and not even the Paul Simon. Brutal. He continually references his Costco-esque clothier of choice, “Ocean View Dining.” Though he lives just across the street, Craig is in an aesthetic universe light years away from Austin’s. The latter’s house is full of iconic furnishings, from midcentury to simply Italian. He has a Mario Bellini sectional and a pleated Noguchi lamp; the big light is never on. He special-ordered an ancient artifact, the first tool used by man (also a key prop in an episode of 555 directed by DeYoung). Craig is enamored, and why wouldn’t he be? This is the life any rebellious 11-year-old would dream of, exploring tunnels and foraging for mushrooms. More importantly, Austin gives Craig something that Craig has never felt: attention. People are very critical of attention-seeking behavior, because people love to forget that attention absolutely rips. And it’s deeply normal to want something that rips. But there’s a lesson you learn either from the painful ending of a first love or by being served a therapist account (citation impossible) on your Instagram discover page: you can’t convince someone to love you. Maybe Craig should be more addicted to his phone!

The story is loosely based on DeYoung’s failure, some years ago on another project, to foster a successful bond with a co-worker after filming wrapped. The person Friendship is based on, he told the LAFM crowd, would “never guess it was about him.” DeYoung began writing in 2020 with Robinson in mind as Craig, and many reviews have lauded him for capturing the latter’s whiny and erratic comic voice. Yet even a cursory look through DeYoung’s oeuvre suggests this project is something much closer to an equal-parts melding of styles. Throughout his career, DeYoung has directed characters who long for social acceptance: the tweens of Pen15 (2019–21), the teens of A.P. Bio (2018–21), Dave of DAVE (2020–23). Most telling, though, are the several Kate Berlant/John Early projects where DeYoung learned how to maneuver around confident portrayals of absolutely no confidence. Where Berlant and Early are celebrated, largely, by the shes, theys, and gays, Tim Robinson is “a man other [straight] men have a crush on,” per Aidy Bryant—a parallel experience to that of her husband, comedian (etc.) Conner O’Malley, who, sure enough, shows up toward the end of Friendship.

You’re never ready for a Conner O’Malley character. He’s going to be intense. He’s going to lose his train of thought. And? He will invent an opinion that no person has ever held. The scene he plays opposite Robinson is the only one in Friendship, per DeYoung, that was unscripted, so the guys could simply do two-prov. (DeYoung admits that he’s not as funny as Robinson and O’Malley; this is like the scene in A League of Their Own when Geena Davis’s younger sister is upset that she’s not as pretty as Geena Davis. Welcome to the world, baby girl.) O’Malley makes Tim Robinson seem normal, which is only fair after he’s played opposite Kate Mara’s grounded Tami for so many scenes. Mara’s Tami is introspective, shy, but she’s challenging herself, taking an active role in her happiness. Somehow, DeYoung consistently manages to tonally blend the thoughtfulness of Tami and the absurdities of Craig, his unique drug trip, a fight club, and an a cappella cover of “My Boo.” If Tami was my friend, I would dream of killing Craig.

During the screenings, I wasn’t ever not laughing, which makes it all the stranger how obvious the fault lines of the original plot felt. Sure enough, DeYoung confirmed in a podcast interview this spring that the script was overhauled significantly from the one generated in 2020. In the draft presented to the film’s stars, Austin evaporates as soon as he dumps Craig. But Paul Rudd expressed that he’d like more to do. He, Paul Rudd, wanted more, and he, Paul Rudd, got more. And more is great! It’s a seismic change that results in a different kind of longing, the pain of being gray rocked, and an ending both happier and that much grimmer: one where Austin shows his own vulnerability and comes to appreciate Craig. Or maybe it’s toxic codependence: my ex-boyfriend picks my nose. When the Great Austin Inflation happened, Rudd’s character was given a secret; a wife, Bianca (Meredith Garretson); and, I was told by a woman in Burbank, a kid. And that’s great. But in the ultimate edit, there’s no kid, and Bianca’s role is a confusing blip. By the final cut, Bianca opens a door, walks down a hallway, and is rumored to have diarrhea. Low-key—the end. Similarly, the plot leads to confusion about Craig’s jerky co-workers. Craig sometimes expresses a desire to be left in peace, and then other times fantasizes about everybody needing him and saying thank you, hell yeah, we are loving Craig. These are things people, including me, certainly feel at different times in their life/year/week, but this movie is under two hours!

There are scenes and choices in Friendship that make my brain feel wide and bright just to witness. Good comedy should make you want to babble, should give you a million ideas, but should not make you think you have a better pitch. This was that. It’s true: the clap-o-meter maxing out while logic falls apart would make the Upright Citizens Brigade instructors give you a bad-job spanking. But I am not scared of them; I am scared of movies about someone not wanting to be my friend. Andrew DeYoung may not be as funny as Tim Robinson or Conner O’Malley, but he is emotionally stronger than I.

If you’ve endured the displeasure of having both romantic relationships and friendships end, you know that one is worse, and it’s not the one you sign paperwork about. In a romantic breakup, someone says “You’re not the one”; in a friend breakup, they say “You’re not anyone.” Maybe that’s why, in a backyard in Glendale not far from the Vidiots screening, several young (uncitable) women told me about how sad they found Friendship. Austin ends his friendship with Craig kindly, confidently, succinctly. And yes, that would destroy me. But my chief feeling after 101 minutes was envy. The friendship isn’t serving Austin, and he can tell. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze. He trusts his own judgment and doesn’t backslide when things get hard. Maybe one day I’ll be like that, but for now I’m still someone who takes four months to say “I liked the movie.”