Released: March 9, 2019 (SXSW), August 9, 2019 (United States)

Director: Tyler Nilson & Michael Schwartz

Screenplay: Tyler Nilson & Michael Schwartz

Stars:  Shia LaBeouf (Tyler), Zack Gottsagen (Zak), Dakota Johnson (Eleanor), Bruce Dern (Carl), Jon Bernthal (Mark), Thomas Haden Church (Clint / The Salt Water Redneck), John Hawkes (Duncan), Yelawolf (Ratboy), Jake “The Snake” Roberts (Sam), Mick Foley (Jacob, the referee of Zak wrestling match), Wayne Dehart (Jasper John)

Plot:  Zak runs away from a care home to make his dream of becoming a wrestler come true. Early on he teams up with a troubled outcast named Taylor who is on the run.  Together they find the family they both need.

How did this movie do:
Budget: $6 million
Box office: $23 million

• According to an interview Shia LaBeouf did with Collider, Ben Foster was originally cast as Tyler but dropped out last minute to spend time with his pregnant wife, actress Laura Prepon, and their child. Foster then called LaBeouf and offered him the role and to take his place in the movie.

• The movie came about because the directors met Zack Gottsagen at a camp for disabled and non-disabled people and he expressed his desire to be a movie star. So the directors wrote the script around him and Zack’s hopes and dreams that bled into the script and people they knew who would allow them to film for free and without permits.
  
  
• Written like a Mark Twain style journey.
  • Zak is on a physical journey
  • Tyler is on a mental journey
  • Zak chooses a baptism by water
  • Tyler chooses a baptism by fire
  • It was suggested by executives that Tyler not be in the backseat of the car at the end of the movie, indicating that Tyler did not survive. The directors immediately dismissed the idea

• On July 30, 2019, the Ruderman Family Foundation honored this movie with its Seal of Authentic Representation for accurate depictions of people with disabilities.
  
  
• Zack Gottsagen ad-libbed the answer “party” when he was asked for the first time by Tyler what rule number one is.
  
  
• It became a sleeper hit, becoming the highest grossing independent film of 2019.
  
  
• Two former professional wrestlers appear in the movie, Jake Roberts aka Jake the Snake, and Mick Foley who wrestled under the monikers Mankind, Cactus Jack and Dude Love.
  
  
• Although the film received no Academy Award nominations, the two stars appeared together at the Academy Awards show. Gottsagen became the first individual with Down syndrome to present an Academy Award when he and LaBeouf announced the Best Live Action Short Film on February 9, 2020.
  
  
• While filming on location in Savannah, GA, Shia LaBeouf was arrested on public drunkenness charges in the early morning hours of 7/8/17.
  
  
• One of Bruce Dern’s earliest roles was in Marnie (1964), opposite Dakota Johnson’s grandmother, Tippi Hedren. He also appeared in Smile (1975) and Mulholland Falls (1996) with Johnson’s mother Melanie Griffith and in Django Unchained (2012) with Johnson’s father Don Johnson.
  
  
• Shia LaBeouf and Jon Bernthal previously starred together in Fury (2014)
  
  
• Shia LaBeouf appeared in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), in which Harrison Ford plays his father. Ford played the love interest of Dakota Johnson’s mother, Melanie Griffith, in Working Girl (1988). In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Ford’s father is played by Sean Connery, who played the love interest of Johnson’s grandmother, Tippi Hedren, in Marnie (1964).
  
  
• In the scene where Zak, Tyler, and Eleanor jump off the oil rig on the rope, the respective actors were the ones who swung on the rope; no stunt doubles were used.