Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates a Q&A with director and actor Alex Winter for Adulthood.

Adulthood is a dark comedy starring Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario as siblings who uncover a grisly secret about their parents and spiral into chaotic cover-ups.

In this interview, get to know Winter, the ’80s icon, the filmmaker, and actor, as he revisits his most classic films and discusses indie filmmaking, the collaboration of Adulthood, and reuniting with Keanu Reeves.

In cinema, family secrets tend not to stay buried for long, and that’s certainly the case for Alex Winter’s Adulthood. The comedy neo-noir follows Kaya Scodelario and Josh Gad as Meg and Noah, two siblings who stumble onto a grisly discovery while sorting through their childhood home. What starts as damage control spirals into a full-blown cover-up, pulling in a wild supporting cast of characters, including a resentful nurse, a nosey detective, and a sword-wielding estranged cousin as the siblings desperately try to keep the past buried. That intriguing premise, paired with irreverent humor, has the perfect director in Winter. Written by Michael M.B. Galvin, Adulthood balances sibling banter with the chaos unleashed when Meg and Noah make their discovery. It also stars Anthony Carrigan, Billie Lourd, and Ingunn Omholt. Following Collider’s screening of Adulthood, Steve Weintraub sat down with Winter for a Q&A. Winter opens up about reuniting with Bill & Ted co-star Keanu Reeves for Broadway in Waiting for Godot, the “bananas” process of moviemaking, and the tight schedule the crew had to work with for Adulthood. Winter also reflects on his career and explains how he stole a star from James Gunn’s Superman set.
‘Waiting for Godot’ Reunites ‘Bill & Ted’s Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter

The play offers a more authentic look into their 40-year friendship.

Image via Jamie Lloyd Co. 

COLLIDER: We spoke at TIFF, and you were in rehearsals. You were getting ready to do the play, [Waiting for Godot]. What has it been like? I think you’ve been performing for a week or so. ALEX WINTER: This is show number eight. It feels really good. It’s a really intense show physically, emotionally, mentally, so it takes a lot out of you, but in a gratifying way. I usually go home and go to bed, but it’s great to be here. It’s kind of a nice way to decompress. Yeah, it’s a lot. When Keanu [Reeves] and I show up at the theater early, we’re always super energized, like, “Hey, hey!” and we’re talking and all that stuff. By the end of the night, it’s a lot. [Laughs] It’s pretty crazy. I wasn’t going to bring this up, but you and Keanu have been friends now for, what, 30 years? WINTER: Almost 40. 1987. It’s pretty crazy to go from the whole history of Bill & Ted to you guys being on Broadway. It’s amazing. WINTER: It is, don’t get me wrong. It is kind of an amazing dream, especially with Jamie Lloyd. The team that is behind this is so unbelievably top of their game. That is incredible for both of us. But on the other side of it, we both come from theater, we’re both more like these guys than we are like Bill and Ted. There are aspects of it that are more of actually who we are, personality-wise, than the two very lovable goofball, So-Cal dudes we play. So there’s an aspect of this more like our friendship, where it’s just more like how I’m used to being with him, doing this show, in that way, and that’s been fun. It’s been fun to take that back into an acting arena.
Alex Winter Pulls the Curtain Back on How “Bananas” Moviemaking Is

“As Kubrick said, ‘It’s War and Peace on a bumper car ride.’”

Jumping into why we’re actually here. I’ve said it to you before, but I really want to start with congratulations on the film. You never know when you’re making something how it’s going to turn out. The reviews have been very positive, and you also had an awesome premiere at TIFF. What has it been like for you with the reception to the film? WINTER: Great so far. It’s a very crazy time for independent movies, which is how this started. Now, thankfully, we’re working with Republic Pictures and Paramount, who have been amazing, but the movie was put together like a true independent, the way I’ve done almost everything, including most of my documentaries. It’s just a crazy time for movies. It’s harder to get films made. It’s harder to get films that are made out into the world. You go to film festivals, and many of those films will never get distributed, which is heartbreaking, no matter how great they are. So, I’m grateful that we have really good distribution. But it does take work to platform a movie like this. You don’t have a huge marketing budget. You don’t have a huge machine behind you to get it in front of folks. Thankfully, I’m used to doing this. I have my own production company, and we have a good team, and we’re out there kind of hustling, too. Republic and Paramount have been great. But you kind of can’t stop. You have to stay on top of it. So, it’s a long way to answer your question, but it means the reception will go largely better or worse, depending on how much work we put into it. You know what I mean? 100%. I think a lot of people probably know the difficulty in making movies right now, but I’m grateful that, as you said, Republic and Paramount are behind it. WINTER: Not only behind it, but marketing a film like this that is so tonally specific, and it’s very tonally specific, is not easy, and they’ve been amazing. Their marketing team has been great. The posters are great. The trailer was just a complete slam dunk as far as I was concerned, and that’s not easy to do a trailer for this movie that gets the tone across without giving the whole movie away, which they managed to do. I sent it to Josh [Gad] and Kaya [Scodelario], and they were blown away. So, we’re armed. We have what we need to get it out in front of folks. And the reviews have been really good, thankfully, so far, so that will help a lot.

Noah (Josh Gad) and Meg (Kaya Scodelario) standing in a hospital hallway in ‘Adulthood’Image via Republic Pictures

Jumping backwards, I know it’s a little generic, but how did this project first happen? Talk about the inception. WINTER: It’s not really generic at all in this case because I hadn’t made a narrative in many years; I was mostly making documentaries. I wanted to make a narrative, but I wanted to do it on my own terms, meaning I wanted to make my kind of film. I wanted to have creative control over it. And I wanted to make a movie-movie, meaning I didn’t want to make a TV show, and I wanted to make something that was kind of custom-designed, I guess. So, I sought out a script that was great but needed some work. I had a very specific idea of what I wanted to do thematically. And my producing partner, Russell Hollander, and I, and Scott Kroopf, we produced all three Bill & Ted movies, were sort of the trifecta that made this. I developed a script with Michael Galvin, a great writer, for some time, got it into a place I wanted, found cast, found money, mostly foreign pre-sales. It’s really fascinating how to make movies in this day and age, and I literally did it the way I would have made an indie movie in the ‘90s. You can still do that, but I am the primary producer of the film. I own the LLC. I actually produced this film, so it helped that I knew how to do that, because that was largely what I was doing for a very long time before I could just focus on directing. But we got it done. I’m really happy with it. We made it for a good price so that people aren’t losing money, and my DP’s amazing, so I feel like it looks really big for the price. Hopefully, we’ll get to do it again. A lot of people don’t realize that when you’re doing foreign pre-sales, the cast that you get each brings a certain dollar amount to foreign pre-sales. WINTER: It’s bananas. Bananas.

Alex Winter on stage with Steve Weintraub in a movie theater speaking at an Adulthood Q&A.Image via Trent Barboza

Here’s the thing that people don’t realize: the list that you’re working on on Monday, a month from now, might be a completely different list. WINTER: Also, the day you get it, on the Monday, it’s bananas, right? It’s not a perfect science. It’s so random. You’ll get these lists of names, and you’re like, “You’re telling me that,” I’m not going to name names, but “this person way the hell down here is only worth this? And this person you have a number one, who I’ve barely heard of, is worth this?” And they’re like, “Well, yes. According to…” Whatever. I’m telling you, the audience doesn’t feel that way, the human populace doesn’t feel that way. I don’t want to get into specifics, but we actually lost one of our actors to an injury, and so there was a point when I got another actor on board to replace them. I was in Canada in prep already, in Ottawa, and I literally couldn’t sleep because I was in Canada, I was looking at people in London, L.A. is where all the agents are, and so because of the time difference, I was literally either talking to London, prepping in Canada, or trying to get agents to get actors to read, and that meant I was up 24 hours a day for, like, six days. Because every time I got an actor to read the script, I’d have to call my foreign pre-sales person in London, run the numbers with them, they’d have to run it with all the other territories I had, by now, signed on to see if that person would work in Scandinavia, in Spain, in France, in Africa. If I got an okay, then I’d have to go back to the agent and say that they were either okay or, “I’m sorry, but I can’t make the numbers work with them.” That’s just how bananas making movies is. I actually think that more people should know about this because everyone thinks every choice and every movie is perfectly planned, and in actuality, from what I understand, making a movie is a fucking miracle. WINTER: It’s a miracle. As [Stanley] Kubrick said, “It’s War and Peace on a bumper car ride.” And that is 100% what it is. It’s like you’re literally trying to write War and Peace on a bumper car ride. But the thing about it that’s beautiful, that I love, and theater is somewhat like this in a different way, is I do like the happenstantial nature of it, in that you end up with these beautiful accidents, where if you’re attuned to the tone and sort of the vibe of the film, and you have the fluidity to kind of move with it, things usually end up substantially better than the way you planned or had in your mind. That’s almost always the case. It’s really rare I get to the other end and go, “God, these things, all because of this, this, and this, all got changed,” and not thinking that made the movie a 1,000 times better, because it almost always does. It’s crazy that way.
As a Director, Alex Winter Welcomes Collaborative Creativity

“There’s still room to play and to have ideas.”

Alex Winter at TIFF 2025 for AdulthoodImage via Photagonist

I’m obsessed with talking about editing because it’s where it all comes together. So much is determined by what you omit or what you keep in, so talk a little about the editing process on this movie, and maybe some of the things that surprised you. WINTER: A lot. My editor [was] Sandy Pereira, who’s amazing, who Sarah Polley turned me on to, because I needed people up in Canada — we posted in Toronto — and Sandy was phenomenal. Mary Juric, who worked with Sandy, and the editing team, were just amazing. I have very specific ideas, and also the way I shoot, even if I have all the money in the world, I shoot an extremely low ratio. If you’re well prepped, I don’t like shooting that many takes. What about coverage? WINTER: I get lots of coverage. I get a lot of coverage, but I’m not getting a lot of takes of that coverage. I know what coverage I need. I’m cutting in my head kind of as I go. Sometimes I’d send this to Josh, like, “Sorry, I only need half of this take. You can do the whole scene if you feel like it, but from this angle, I only really need this.” Every time, they’re like, “Great!” [Laughs] You get out earlier, so they weren’t like, “No, we must have the full takes from 10 different angles.” It was like, “No, no, no, we’re good.” But I don’t usually shoot more than honestly, like, one and a half takes to two takes of any particular shot. But I prep like a son of a bitch. I’m assuming that’s assuming you got it in the take. Like, if you don’t get it, then… WINTER: Then we do nine, 10, 11, 12, whatever. If you hit a snag of some kind, you get 20 takes of whatever because you had a problem. But if you roll and they nail it, I move on or I get another version of it to get some ephemeral something, something. So maybe two or three takes, but it’s rare that I’m over three takes. So, for editorial, it’s pretty specific what we’re using, but there’s still room to play and to have ideas, and Sandy brought a lot to it. I really like working with editors, [and] I do this with DPs, too, but docs are really editorially driven, right? And when I’m making docs, I’m literally directing in edit. When I’m making a feature, it’s different, and I really give editorial time on their own. I know there’s a lot of directors who like to cut themselves, they’re their own DP and all of that, and that’s great. I have no issue with that. But for myself, film is a collaborative medium, and I like having someone else’s artistic mind on my stuff. So, with Sandy, I literally left her alone. I was like, “I know how I think this cuts together because it’s how I shot it,” but I’m not going to tell you that. Just go cut the movie, and when you’ve done a pass or two on it, then I’ll come into the edit room and we’ll get started, and I’ll make adjustments. But cut it however you think you would cut it with this material. Because you’re always going to find stuff that you didn’t expect, and you’re getting the benefit of their artistry, right? So that’s how we were. She cut for a while in Toronto before I ever went up or got involved.

Noah (Josh Gad) and Meg (Kaya Scodelario) carry a body in a tarp in ‘Adulthood’Image via Republic Pictures

Were there certain scenes that were like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t think about that?” WINTER: Totally. Yeah. And I knew that would happen. And there were scenes like that that are really critical editorially that I knew I was going to get surprises out of. Can you be specific? WINTER: Yeah, I will, because there’s one specific scene, and it’ll be really obvious to you because you just saw the movie. There are two. There’s kind of a macro and micro one. The big one is the bridge scene, which I literally storyboarded that scene, shot for shot, like three years ago. It’s literally exactly my storyboards, but I didn’t give those to her in that way. So I was just like, “Go do this.” But by the time we shot that scene, Chris [Mably], who’s amazing, our DP, he’d added to our boards. He brought all these drones in, like he added all these other shots, so it was just a mass of shots and options. It’s a very critical scene. It’s the most critical scene in the film. So, that one and the dinner scene, which is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, with Bodie, which again, I boarded and had a really specific idea in mind for what I wanted to do. We did drive kind of back to my vision on that in some places because I just had a very specific idea, but she had centered Bodie in a way that I hadn’t expected, and she found some just incredible moments of Anthony [Carrigan]. Because of the budget we had, I think, 25 days to shoot the whole movie. We shot that scene with those poor little kids from, I want to say, 10:00 at night to four in the morning, and it’s a really complex scene, the way it’s shot. It’s really like a chess match, just like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And she had just this incredible way of finding extraordinary reactions and things, and just made a meal out of that scene, which was lovely. It helped that we had the cast we did because she had something to work with.
The Crew Had Less Than 30 Days to Film ‘Adulthood’

Winter talks deleted scenes and creative collaboration on set.

You only had 25 days. Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes? WINTER: No, funnily enough, I think I have one day that I didn’t need. There’s one big sequence that I cut. There was something we shot in one day, and both of those scenes ended up not in the movie. They were the only two scenes that ended up not in the movie. It was a scene that I’d always had an issue with in the script, and Michael and I used to debate it all the time, and it kept getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Eventually, I got to edit, and I was like, “That whole fucking thing is gone,” and we just ditched it. But it was a scene in a diner right before Megan goes to the bridge, when she has that panic attack and pulls off the road. It then used to cut to her going to, like, a Denny’s and having a breakdown in the Denny’s, and I always felt it was too on the nose, like we didn’t need the actress to externalize her breakdown; the whole movie is her breakdown, right? And it bothered me that it was so literal that she was going to literally go into a Denny’s and tell clients in the Denny’s that she’s having a breakdown. Kaya and I would struggle with it. I kept trimming her dialogue down and down, and there was like nothing there. We shot the whole sequence, and then I cut it all. The movie was like, “Ah, thank you.” Because she’s such a great actress, maybe with a different actress, I would have kept it, but Kaya is so incredibly gifted at just conveying so much without saying anything at all. That’s why that dinner scene is so good. That’s what I said to Sandy. I wanted the dinner scene to be off from Megan’s point of view, but she doesn’t say hardly anything. She’s just looking at everybody, and you just get where her head is at because Kaya is so talented. So, it depends on who your actors are, too.

Noah (Josh Gad) and Meg (Kaya Scodelario) looking shocked in ‘Adulthood’Image via Republic Pictures

I’m curious if you showed this to any friends or family, or people you trust for honest feedback, and how that feedback impacted the finished film? WINTER: Yeah, that’s what I did. We did several in rooms about this size, friends and family screenings. We did them at USC in their film division, because Scott is a tenured professor there. They were incredibly helpful. There are friends and family, but then there’s a WhatsApp thread that got started during the strike that’s all these writers and directors, and we formed this group called the Society of Writer-Directors. Actually, they get a thanks at the end of the movie. There are some pretty big heavy-hitter people in that group, and we’re all on a WhatsApp thread. We’re often talking about, like, “I’m going to shoot something in New York. Does anyone have a good babysitter?” It’s really mundane stuff. But I pulled some of those folks in, and other people whom I trusted, editors that I know, other people. It was really for pacing and tone and things like that. And yeah, I learned some things. I think cutting the diner scene came out of one of those, actually. It wasn’t something anyone said to me, but I was just sitting in the room, and I could just feel the movie die. It was just, “Oh, the movie’s dead. It’s just dead as a doornail.” I was like, “Okay, well, that’s gone. I don’t need that to happen to me again in the movie theater.”
Alex Winter Stole Anthony Carrigan from James Gunn’s ‘Superman’

With permission, of course.

Grace (Billie Lourd) and Bodie (Anthony Carrigan) sitting in a diner in ‘Adulthood’Image via Republic Pictures

This world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in front of 2,000 people. How scared were you the night before or the hours leading up to that screening? WINTER: You know, this is a really jinxy, dumb thing to say, so I shouldn’t say it, because it just means the next time this happens to me, I’ll just throw up all night, but I don’t really get nervous about this kind of stuff. We have our opening for our show next week, and maybe I’m also a lunatic, but I’m not nervous about that either. I don’t know. I was so grateful that we were at that festival in that theater. I was so grateful that my cast flew in from all over, and they could see it with the audience at that festival. It was amazing. We were totally sold out. The audience was completely with us the whole time. It was an amazing screening. We have Paramount, we have Republic. Sometimes you take a movie to a festival and you have to sell it right at the festival. That’s terrifying. When the stakes are that high and you’ve been working for two years, that’s terrifying. I’m not that inhuman. But when there’s no stakes and it’s just the end of a long, enjoyable journey, and now you just get to share it with people, I don’t know, I was just happy that we were in the festival. I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Other than, I don’t like watching my own films. I was a little perturbed that I had to actually sit through the whole thing, but in the end, I was glad I did because the audience was so great. It was fun to watch them react to it all. I’ve seen so many people who present it, and then they just walk out to go get coffee. WINTER: I never, ever, ever, ever go to my premieres. Ever.

Kaya Scodelario in AdulthoodImage via Republic Pictures

How come you got roped into this? WINTER: Because it just felt wrong. Because my actors were there, and it felt like a crappy thing to do to them. I was like, I’m not going to not see the movie. I mean, they hadn’t seen the movie yet. So Josh and Kaya and Billie [Lourd] and Anthony and Sean [O.G. Simms], none of them had seen the movie, so it would have been a little goofy. In docs, no one cares. If I’m not mistaken, you and Anthony Carrigan became friends through Bill & Ted. WINTER: Yeah, he played the robot in Bill & Ted. I’m a huge, huge Anthony Carrigan fan, and Josh became a huge Anthony fan. In fact, he pulled him into Spaceballs after our film, and now he’s in Australia with Josh shooting Spaceballs. But Anthony is one of the most talented actors alive. I am not being hyperbolic. That is 100% how I feel. I will use him in everything I do, if I could be so lucky. I had to go to James Gunn personally and ask him to loan me Anthony because he was in the middle of shooting Superman. We structured the entire shoot around Anthony’s schedule, so Anthony is shot out in week one. We were doing his death scene on, like, day three. It was crazy. The actors were like, “Oh my God.” You always shoot out of sequence, but that’s like bananas out of sequence. So all of Anthony’s stuff was shot. The diner scene was the very first scene we shot, with him and Billie, and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. But yeah, I had to go to James and ask him to lend me Anthony because it was bang in the middle of his Superman schedule. How many of you guys realize when you’re shooting a movie, you could be shooting the very end on the first day of filming? WINTER: Everyone’s savvy now. Yeah, everyone knows. WINTER: We live in the age of the internet. Everyone knows how everything works now.
Get to Know Alex Winter

From favorite films and food to his very particular passion for coffee, get to know this ‘80s and ‘90s icon.

I want to do a completely random thing that I was going to start this interview off with. It’s called Get to Know Alex Winter. These are very, very stupid questions. WINTER: Great. I’m good at stupid questions. What’s your favorite thing to cook? WINTER: Indian food. Really? WINTER: Yes. Do you have a specific, one thing that is your favorite? WINTER: Goan chicken, which is loaded with coconut, but not sweet coconut. It’s incredible. But if you watch someone make it, you think it’s going to be dog food; it’s crazy looking ingredients — not that it’s Indian food, but just the specific dish is super gnarly. It’s very good. What is your favorite food? WINTER: Probably cooked Japanese food. My wife is Japanese, and she’s an incredible cook. She makes her own soba noodles and her own mochi. She’s, like, hardcore. We eat very good cooked Japanese food. I’ve got to be honest, it’s kind of a dick move not inviting me over yet. I do like Japanese food. We’re done. We’re over! WINTER: [Laughs] Okay, when I get home, we’ll make that happen. What is the last movie, TV show, or book that you’ve read that you would like to recommend? WINTER: Oh my God, I’ve been doing nothing but this play. I mean, I’m reading [Samuel] Beckett right now. I’m not even sure I can remember the last anything I’ve seen. Gosh, you know Norm Wilner, right? The critic? I just did a podcast with him, and I watched Los olvidados again because I was talking about Los olvidados, the [Luis] Buñuel film, so that’s probably the last thing I watched, which is one of my favorite movies in the world. So, I’ll say that. If someone has never seen your work as an actor, what’s the first thing you’d like them to watch and why? WINTER: I would say [Bill & Ted’s] Bogus Journey. Yeah, I would say Bogus Journey because it’s just such a strange, idiosyncratic kind of one-off thing… Wait, you were in the Bill & Ted movies? WINTER: Yeah, I know. People don’t realize that about me. I played the grandmother in that. [Laughs] Yeah, I’d say Bogus Journey. I just think that it was such a big swing on the part of the writers, and us to a degree. We had a little more, not say, because they had their own concept, but our own desires for what we wanted to do for a second film. I just love that movie so much. It’s by far my favorite of the three. I like all three, but if I have to watch one, that’s the one I would watch.

Image via Orion Pictures 

What is your favorite piece of Bill & Ted merch? WINTER: So much of it is pretty great, I have to say, and it’s still all out there. But the cereal, because it was made by [Ralston], the dog food company. And if you would eat the cereal, you’d be like, “This tastes like dog food,” and then you would realize that it was a dog food company. And in case you’re curious, the cereal tasted like dog food. But it was a trip to have your face on a cereal box. I’m fairly unflappable, because I’ve been in the business a long time, but I remember walking into the Ralph’s in Venice when I was living in Venice in the early ‘90s, at like two in the morning, and we were working on the Idiot Box or some craziness, and I was zoned out, and I looked up and my face was on a cereal box. I thought I was tripping. So, that’s my favorite Bill & Ted merch. You’ve directed a lot of music videos. If no one has seen any of the music videos you directed, what is the one you’d like them to watch? WINTER: You know, I did some big mainstream stuff like the Chili Peppers and Ice Cube and stuff like that. My favorites are the kind of more arcane ones, like I shot a video for Bomb the Bass that we shot in the jungle in Belize. That’s pretty great. I did a few videos for Helmet; I love all of those. I did three videos for Helmet. I shot this really crazy video for Bootsy Collins. I’d say the weirder ones are the ones I like because I had this weird aesthetic at one point where I was doing, like, 4,000 edits per video, like I was doing single-frame cuts. I didn’t realize until halfway through doing one. It was one of the Helmet videos. I think it was like 5,000 edits. Back in the day, Times Square used to have this thing called the Jumbotron, and they would show videos cast across Times Square. I remember walking down the street in Times Square and they were showing one of my videos; I think it was a video for a band called Foetus, and it had, like, 6,000 edits in it, which means it’s like a strobe effect. It’s very aggressive on the eyes. I was like, “People are going to have epileptic seizures! Why are they doing this?” I was three-quarters of the way through cutting that when I realized my editor, who is also one of my very dear friends in the world, was epileptic. We were cutting, and this was the third video we’d done, and he’d keep getting up and leaving the room and coming back, like, covered in sweat. After the third video, I was like, “Thom [Zimny], are you okay?” And he’s like, “No, I’m good. I’m good. I love these videos. They’re just a little hard.” I was like, “Why?” He goes, “Well, I’m epileptic, so I’m just constantly seizuring.” [Laughs] I’m just like, “Why didn’t you tell me?!” Thom went on to direct. He does all the Bruce Springsteen [videos]. He’s like a huge director now. He’s incredibly talented. He does all of the Bruce stuff. So, I didn’t kill. That’s crazy. WINTER: It was crazy, yeah. So you’ve also directed a bunch of docs. If someone has not seen any of your docs, what’s the one you want them to start with? WINTER: Oh, man, that’s so hard. I love them. They’re like my kids. I’d say probably Showbiz Kids, the one I did for HBO, which is like the most personal of my docs because it’s got a lot to do with my own background. It’s very sweet for a subject that can be kind of heavy. And Zappa, which is sort of the big opus one. It took us six years to make it, and I’m very proud of it. Also, you had access to everything. WINTER: We had access to everything. That’s why it took so long. We preserved a good chunk of it because it was rotting away. I could be wrong, but was that one of the most successful or most successful things on Kickstarter? WINTER: It was the most successful doc that was funded on Kickstarter ever, yeah. I think of any crowdfund. For people who have thought about doing crowdfunding and Kickstarter, what was your experience like with that, and do you recommend it? Is it something you would do again in the future? WINTER: I don’t know. We live in such a different era. I mean, everything moves so fast. I’m not sure you can do that anymore to that degree. We did a smaller one on the deep web and raised money for that. I think maybe a smaller one makes more sense today. I don’t know if we live in a world where you could raise your entire budget. We didn’t raise our budget, but we raised enough money to make a doc. But what happened to me on Zappa was, by the time I got into that Kickstarter and we raised over $1 million, I realized we had so much preservation work to do. I went to the crowdfunding folks, and I was like, “I can either make the doc with this or I can preserve Frank’s archive.” And they were like, “Please use the money to preserve the archive.” So that’s what we did. But I don’t think you could do that anymore. One of my last Get to Know Alex Winter questions: What’s your coffee order? WINTER: [Laughs] They’re telling us we have to wrap up, and you asked me a question I could spend an hour on. I’m a coffee fanatic. Like I roast my own beans. I have a drum roaster. I’m nuts. We might be ending on the right question. WINTER: This is a really long answer. I roast my own beans, so I’m very specific about what I roast and how I brew it. My family has gotten so spoiled because I have kids who are old enough to drink coffee now, and they won’t drink anything else. But I came to New York to do this play, and I’m not insane, so I didn’t bring a drum roaster to New York, but I have spent the last two months trying to figure out how to get decent beans. I can grind my beans even here in New York. I warned you. It’s my thing. But I did finally find decent coffee, but it was not easy. And most of the coffee I got was terrible. I know we’ve got to wrap, but what does decent coffee mean to you? Where are you getting your beans? WINTER: It’s a single origin, usually from some kind of fair trade farm, God knows where. Ethiopia is probably the best coffee in the world. Kenya has good coffee. Brazil has good coffee. Some places after that have okay coffee. So, for example, are you ordering online and it’s getting delivered? WINTER: Yeah. I got mine last night when I got home. I was like a child in the toy store. [Laughs] So you get the beans. How much are you grinding? Do you grind a select amount each day? WINTER: I do. Yes. Because it’s only me. My family’s back in L.A., so I have a Chemex and I grind enough for the Chemex. I’m telling you. I don’t know how Steve landed on this question, and maybe you’ll all think I’m bananas now, but coffee is my thing. Do you have one cup a day, two cups, three cups? WINTER: Yeah, that’s the thing, I’m not like a coffee addict, funnily enough. I just like my coffee to be good. So I have a few cups in the morning, and I’m done. And I’m doing a show, so the worst thing you can do if you’re doing a play with a lot of dialogue is to jam yourself with caffeine. That would fry your circuitry. You will not get out on stage and perform well. So, I’m done in the morning. What about when you have a matinee performance? WINTER: I’ve had my coffee for the day, but I’m done. It’s so fascinating. Again, I apologize, everyone, but is it like a small cup? Is it in a big cup? WINTER: Alright, so I drink fairly large cups of coffee. I have a cup about that big, but I brew it really strong. Do most people think that’s a fucking strong cup of coffee? WINTER: Yes. When we have guests over, they’re like, “This tastes really good. I’m good.” But my wife is ruined — everyone’s ruined because it is so much better than anything else. I don’t mean mine; I don’t grow these beans. It’s not like I’m doing anything great. I just know how to make it. Do you drink it black? WINTER: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Come on. To go through all that and pour a bunch of milk or sugar in it? That would be insanity. I go to Brazil every year for CCXP… WINTER: Coffee is so good in Brazil. Oh my God. I learned there to drink espresso because there is no filtered coffee there, it’s just espresso, and most people don’t add anything to it there. WINTER: Why would you? I agree. WINTER: It’s like putting something on a steak. Adulthood is now playing in select theatres and available on Digital.

Release Date

September 19, 2025

Director

Alex Winter

Writers

Michael M.B. Galvin

Producers

Lisa Wolofsky, Russell Hollander, Scott Kroopf, H.S. Naji, Michael Cho, Tim Lee