How Micro Budget, a Very DIY Comedy, Cast One of the Biggest Stars in the World

When Morgan Evans and Patrick Noth wrote Micro Budget, a sharp comedy about indie filmmaking, they knew they would be working with a micro budget — because they were determined to do the whole thing themselves. They also knew they would need some stars, and that one of them had to be huge.

Evans has worked for The Onion and directed for Broad City, among other shows, as well as co-writing Amazon Prime’s Merry Little Batman. But when he had several projects suddenly canceled, in a corporate cost-cutting measure that had nothing to do with their quality, he became determined to make something he and Noth could control.

Luckily, the pair had friendships going back to their days as students and then performers with The Upright Citizens Brigade in New York — a spawning ground of talent like Ghostbusters bad guy Neil Casey and Saturday Night Live star Bobby Moynihan, both of whom Evans and Noth enlisted for crucial roles in Micro Budget.

One casting led to another, and soon they had also drawn inSNL and Anchorman treasure Chris Parnell, as well as acclaimed comedian Maria Bamford.

Micro Budget, directed by Evans, premieres Saturday at the Calgary International Film Festival, one of MovieMaker‘s 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee.

The film stars Noth as a deluded first-time filmmaker named Terry who convinces his cast — including his much-put-upon, pregnant wife Erica (Emilea Wilson, the heart of the movie) — that he has convinced a major A-list star to appear in the very low-budget film. Terry promises this cameo will catapult his single-location disaster movie to success.

But that meant Evans and Noth had to actually cast a big name to play himself. And, somehow, they did.

Not to oversell it, but the person they landed — who will not be named here, to preserve the element of surprise — is one of the most recognizable people in the world. Watching the film, you’re impressed with all the actors — the terrific cast includes Nichole Sakura, Brandon Micheal Hall, Jordan Rock, Jon Gabrus, Mike Mitchell, Matt McCoy and Barney Miller himself, Hal Linden.

But then the A-lister shows up, and you wonder: How did they land him?

“We knew we needed a really big get at the very end, because Terry, the entire film, is teasing that there’s some sort of celebrity cameo about to take place,” Evans explains. He initially asked his then-representatives if they had any big names available, but none of the people potentially available felt big enough.

“I felt like, well, damn, we have Chris Parnell, we have Bobby Moynahan, we have Maria Bamford, we have Hal Linden. You know, these are some really big names. In my mind, it would be strange if somebody at that caliber of fame shows up in the end and is just playing themselves — that doesn’t work for me,” he says.

Evans’ fallback plan, if he couldn’t find an A-lister, was to have Terry book a celebrity impersonator, believing them to be the real celebrity. But then his producers came through in a huge way.

“Our producers, Rob Hatch-Miller and Puloma Basu, had just done a shoot with the manager of this A-list client, and reached out,” Evans recalls. “We got a call that said that we had sealed the deal. … I didn’t think we would get, like, one of the most famous people I’ve ever met.”

Morgan Evans on the Secret Weapon of Micro Budget

Given that Micro Budget really was micro budget, everybody in the cast was paid the SAG-AFTRA minimum, with everyone receiving the same pay under most-favored-nation status.

Did that include the A-lister?

“He got paid the exact same rate as everybody else on the movie,” Evans says. “He just loves comedy. … I
assume he read the whole script because he agreed to do the film. When he showed up, he knew his lines, was a total, total professional. I was very cognizant of trying to get him out of there as soon as humanly possible, to just be respectful of his time. So we just shot him out in two hours or something, pretty quick.”

One of the other stars of the movie is the gorgeous Malibu home — complete with ocean view — where almost all of Micro Budget takes place. The film-within-the-film features the core cast hanging out in the home, waiting for the end of the world.

Evans was able to lock down the location, he explains, because of his girlfriend, Savannah DiMarco, owner of Los Angele’s Sorella Collective. Her grandmother received the home in a divorce from DiMarco’s grandfather, recently departed Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall.

Marshall also made another huge contribution to Micro Budget before his passing last month at the age of 98. Evans was struggling to find an older actor who could play a very old-school agent in Micro Budget. He asked Marshall if he knew anyone who might be up for it.

“And I’ll never forget this — Peter Marshall calls to his wife on the phone, and he goes, ‘Laurie — who’s my best friend?’ And I hear her go, ‘Hal. Hal Linden.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, yeah, Hal Linden.’ And I was like, ‘Hal Linden is your best friend?'”

He called the sitcom legend and explained himself. Though Barney Miller ran from 1975-1982, it has since enjoyed a long run in syndication, making Linden a very familiar face.

“Hal is very old school in the best way,” Evans says. “He’s an absolute, consummate professional. Like, if you pick up a cup in a scene, he knows what hand he picked it up with, he turns the exact same way every single time.

“And so he wanted to do things in a very old-school way — I printed out the script, I got it bound. I went over to his apartment, I met with him and we had lunch, and I explained to him the entire movie, and then he took a beat to read it, and then he contacted us and showed up,” Evans recalls.

“And every time we looked at him on set, he would just be studying his lines. And then he improvised a bit in it, too. And the day we shot with him, he actually turned 94, which was incredible. And so he brought some of his family out and we had a birthday party for him with cake and stuff like that. So, so that was, like, a really good, really, really cool thing. “

Micro Budget is currently seeking distribution. The Calgary International Film Festival runs through September 29.

Main image: Brandon Micheal Hall, NIchole Sakura, Emilea Wilson, Jordan Rock in Micro Budget.