Jonah here with a quick video you can listen to while you’re eating lunch or folding laundry.
If you are elsewhere in the world, get your tickets at www.busboysmovie.com
I wanted to talk a little bit about Busboys, which comes out in theaters today across the country.
It’s playing at Regals and AMCs — these are direct deals we made with the theaters ourselves. This movie is completely independent. It was financed, written, and is starring David Spade and Theo Von. They wrote it together over the course of a few years while they were touring, and really just became friends through the writing process. I feel very lucky to have gotten to work on this movie.
The way I describe getting this job: I was the only person who didn’t not get it. They had been talking to directors, trying to figure it out, and I think maybe I just stuck around. I had a great Zoom with David, then a great Zoom with Theo. And one day I spoke to one of our producers, Ezra, and said, “Let’s just start scouting.” And we started scouting — and the movie manifested itself.
So if you’re a filmmaker watching this: the way a movie gets made, in my opinion, is a start date and a scout date. If you start scouting, the movie happens. The money finds its way there. In this case, David and Theo went out of their own pockets and financed this film, which I think is incredibly cool.
They had a blast making it. Everyone did. But it’s clear this was something they wanted to do just for the joy of it — which is amazing. That’s what movies should be. A movie doesn’t need to be a business. Even though it’s called the film business, it’s honestly a pretty bad one. It’s not a reliable way for people to make money. So why not approach it from a place of fun and genuine excitement?
We shot this in January 2025 — slightly after the LA fires. LA was really hit hard, and so was the creative workforce. I felt very lucky to be able to hire such incredible people in front of and behind the camera. Everyone was genuinely stoked to have a job and to be there.
It was a hard shoot — it’s a comedy with gags, live animals, fire, and a rotating cast of comedians coming in every other day. Our most consistent cast was of course David and Theo, but you have new people arriving every week, sometimes every day. That’s some of the most fun, but it also means a lot of casting, deal-closing, and scheduling.
I mean, David has become a real mentor and a good friend. I’m a huge Emperor’s New Groove fan, as you all know, and a huge SNL fan — and I remember day one, calling action and looking at my monitor and just thinking: that’s David Spade on your screen. You feel like you’re already watching a movie, because he’s just that good. That natural. He has incredible range, and he’s so subtle and so quick — it’s something else to watch in real life.
For Theo, this was his first time acting in a feature film in this capacity, and he was really able to find his own voice — to lean into what makes him so incredible on his podcast and bring that into his character. He also wore a producer hat and had a really strong vision for what he wanted and how he wanted it to feel. I think as a result, Busboys is a genuinely unique movie in its tone and execution. I can’t point to anything that feels totally similar to it. It’s a comedy, obviously, but it just feels like its own thing.
I also got incredibly lucky with our crew. Our cinematographer Jeff Leeds Cohn — I’d been a fan after seeing his work on a film my friends Mary and Kareem made, and I literally walked up to him at the screening and said, “Hey, do you have plans in January?” Huge thanks to our producers Ezra, Rob, and Lucas — this was a hard movie to produce with so much happening in front of and behind the camera, and in comedy you have to maintain that energy on set that lets the funny actually happen.
And the cast — everyone who came in was cooperative, fun, and excited to be there. Shoutout to our incredible production designer Jen, and to Nathan Floody, our editor, who never lost his cool through what is genuinely a hard film to cut. Comedy timing is everything, and there are so many rounds of notes and feedback — he just always delivered.
This one was also personally special because I got to bring my girlfriend Molly to set for the first time. We had stunts, dogs, a possum, a deer — and an incredible comedic ensemble including Jay Farrow, Casey Rock, Ken Patterson, William Montgomery, Brecken Meyer, and Lindsay Normington, among others.
Look — this movie was made by a lot of creative forces, and if you have time this weekend, I would love for you to see it in theaters. It is an original, independent comedy. Not financed by a studio. Not distributed by a studio. We made direct deals with Regal, AMC, and various theaters ourselves. If you believe in independent cinema and you’re concerned about what’s happening with AI and mergers in this industry — this is a tangible way to support something different.
I hope people enjoy the film. It is a silly comedy — Rotten Tomatoes and I probably aren’t going to be best friends on this one — but I do hope audiences can escape the tough realities of everyday life, even just for a couple of hours.
Thank you for supporting my work. Tickets are linked below.
And if you’re in New York, come check out one of the director Q&As — I’ll be there.
xo,
Jonah
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