Aziz Ansari delivered DoorDash as research for his new film Good Fortune — and found it both tough, and a little dystopian.
In Good Fortune, which he wrote and directed in his feature debut, Ansari plays a struggling gig worker named Arj who sleeps in his car and does short-term gigs including food deliveries. Thanks to a “budget guardian angel” named Gabriel, played by Keanu Reeves, Arj ends up switching lives with Jeff, a wealthy tech bro played by Seth Rogen.
Keke Palmer, meanwhile, plays Elena, a woman Arj tries to romance, even if it distracts her from trying to unionize the hardware chain where she works.
“I went and did DoorDash and I talked to people that did that stuff,” Ansari tells MovieMaker. “I I interviewed people who slept in their cars. I talked to a guy who tried to unionize his Home Depot to help me write Keke’s character. And that stuff is your best friend, because you don’t need to live the experience if you do the research, and do a version of living whatever you’re trying to figure out.”
Ansari said he was inspired by filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky, who did deep dives into wrestling and ballet before making The Wrestler and Black Swan.
Ansari wanted Good Fortune to ring true for people who’ve worked in the gig economy.
“You want someone who’s dealt with this stuff not to watch it and roll their eyes, but instead to watch and go, ‘Whoa. How’d they know that?” he says.
Good Fortune captures the dispiriting feeling of doing a good job with no recognition, and always feeling behind. What did Ansari learn on the job?
“Well, of course, everybody knows it’s not fun,” he says. “But it is a bit dystopian in terms of, you know, so much of your time you’re not even getting paid. You’re waiting for gigs and driving around town. You’re losing money on gas. You have a car that’s maybe a little bit older, and it’s getting beat up doing all this driving all around L.A. and that’s a cost, and you do a delivery and someone might not tip you at all. Or the order’s not ready. There’s so many things that are going wrong.”
“It’s also strange how people sometimes, [customers are ]like, ‘Don’t say anything, just ring the bell and leave.’ It just seems kind of weird.”
Aziz Ansari on the ‘Dystopian’ Aspects of the Gig Economy He Addresses in Good Fortune
But some elements are even darker, he says — like realizing that you may soon be replaced by a machine.
“There’s now these little robots going around L.A. doing the same thing, and the even darker thing is, if you read up on this, these companies are watching how these drivers are driving, just so they can program it in to a self-driving car eventually,” Ansari says.
Ansari’s life, of course, is closer to that of Jeff, a wealthy entrepreneur who lives in the Hollywood Hills. Ansari, who recently moved to London, jokes: “I did all the Jeff research, yeah.”
Did Ansari get any personal satisfaction from doing a tough delivery job?
“I did it for a couple hours, and I was like, this is hard, and I have so much more empathy for these people than I did, and I’m going to tip them even harder than I used to. And I think Seth said the same thing to me: So many of the conveniences in our lives are built on the hardships of other people. And I don’t know what the answer is to that. It’s but it’s tough. It’s a tough thing.”
Good Fortune is in theaters Thursday, from Lionsgate.
Main image: Keanu Reeves as Gabriel, Seth Rogen as Jeff, and Aziz Ansari as Ari in Good Fortune. Photo by Eddy Chen, courtesy of Lionsgate.