Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures
It might surprise people to learn, given the discourse surrounding the film, that the historic gay romantic comedy Bros was a straight guy’s idea.
Nicholas Stoller knows how to do a rom-com. Sure, his face maybe isn’t on the genre’s Mount Rushmore alongside Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers, and Garry Marshall. But an argument could be made that, in this modern era of the rom-com, perhaps it should be.
Stoller directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the 2008 film that famously starred Jason Segel as a man whose girlfriend (Kristen Bell) dumps him while he’s fully nude. He co-wrote and directed the spin-off Get Him to the Greek, which paired Russell Brand with Rose Byrne. Then there’s The Five-Year Engagement (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt have a…well, you read the title) and the two Neighbors films (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne navigate their relationship while fraternity and sorority students terrorize them). And his Netflix series Friends From College showed how love in a close-knit friend group gets more complicated as everyone gets older.