<\/p>\n
Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar<\/em><\/a>, Will & Harper<\/a><\/em>, <\/em>and Strays<\/em><\/a>. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. <\/em>But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the pickleball comedy The Dink.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\nProduced and headlined by Jake Johnson, The Dink <\/em>focuses on a washed-up junior tennis pro, Dusty “The Hammer” Boyd. With his glory days long behind him, this middle-aged goofball works as a tennis coach to bored rich kids at the tennis club run by his tough-as-nails father, Chuck, played by Ed Harris. The only thing they seem to have in common is a love of tennis and a hatred of pickleball. But when an injury pushes Dusty to try out the fastest-growing sport in America, he unexpectedly befriends Candace (Mary Steenburgen), a recent divorcee looking for new friends and new hobbies. <\/p>\n\n SEE ALSO:<\/span>\n \n ‘The Dink’ review: Apple’s pickleball movie is a laugh-out-loud crowd-pleaser<\/span>\n <\/svg>\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\nAn underdog story about pickleball becomes one of friendship and evolving identity, which keeps The Dink <\/em>in line with Greenbaum’s other heralded films, both narrative and documentary. <\/p>\nAhead of The Dink<\/em>‘s debut on Apple TV, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with Greenbaum in a video call to talk about this hilarious movie, how it connects to his broader filmography, and the intense comedy prowess of Ed Harris. <\/p>\nMashable: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, Strays, <\/em>and The Dink <\/em>all focus on tight-knit friendships. What draws you to this recurring theme in your work across documentaries and narrative films?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJosh Greenbaum<\/strong>: I was fortunate enough to have some really meaningful friendships in my life. My best friend from childhood is still like my best friend now. And we’re lucky enough that we live in the same city, even though we’re both from across the coast.\u00a0<\/p>\nI think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\nThat’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\nI explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. 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Produced and headlined by Jake Johnson, The Dink <\/em>focuses on a washed-up junior tennis pro, Dusty “The Hammer” Boyd. With his glory days long behind him, this middle-aged goofball works as a tennis coach to bored rich kids at the tennis club run by his tough-as-nails father, Chuck, played by Ed Harris. The only thing they seem to have in common is a love of tennis and a hatred of pickleball. But when an injury pushes Dusty to try out the fastest-growing sport in America, he unexpectedly befriends Candace (Mary Steenburgen), a recent divorcee looking for new friends and new hobbies. <\/p>\n\n SEE ALSO:<\/span>\n \n ‘The Dink’ review: Apple’s pickleball movie is a laugh-out-loud crowd-pleaser<\/span>\n <\/svg>\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\nAn underdog story about pickleball becomes one of friendship and evolving identity, which keeps The Dink <\/em>in line with Greenbaum’s other heralded films, both narrative and documentary. <\/p>\nAhead of The Dink<\/em>‘s debut on Apple TV, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with Greenbaum in a video call to talk about this hilarious movie, how it connects to his broader filmography, and the intense comedy prowess of Ed Harris. <\/p>\nMashable: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, Strays, <\/em>and The Dink <\/em>all focus on tight-knit friendships. What draws you to this recurring theme in your work across documentaries and narrative films?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJosh Greenbaum<\/strong>: I was fortunate enough to have some really meaningful friendships in my life. My best friend from childhood is still like my best friend now. And we’re lucky enough that we live in the same city, even though we’re both from across the coast.\u00a0<\/p>\nI think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\nThat’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\nI explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
An underdog story about pickleball becomes one of friendship and evolving identity, which keeps The Dink <\/em>in line with Greenbaum’s other heralded films, both narrative and documentary. <\/p>\nAhead of The Dink<\/em>‘s debut on Apple TV, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with Greenbaum in a video call to talk about this hilarious movie, how it connects to his broader filmography, and the intense comedy prowess of Ed Harris. <\/p>\nMashable: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, Strays, <\/em>and The Dink <\/em>all focus on tight-knit friendships. What draws you to this recurring theme in your work across documentaries and narrative films?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJosh Greenbaum<\/strong>: I was fortunate enough to have some really meaningful friendships in my life. My best friend from childhood is still like my best friend now. And we’re lucky enough that we live in the same city, even though we’re both from across the coast.\u00a0<\/p>\nI think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\nThat’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\nI explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Ahead of The Dink<\/em>‘s debut on Apple TV, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with Greenbaum in a video call to talk about this hilarious movie, how it connects to his broader filmography, and the intense comedy prowess of Ed Harris. <\/p>\nMashable: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, Strays, <\/em>and The Dink <\/em>all focus on tight-knit friendships. What draws you to this recurring theme in your work across documentaries and narrative films?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJosh Greenbaum<\/strong>: I was fortunate enough to have some really meaningful friendships in my life. My best friend from childhood is still like my best friend now. And we’re lucky enough that we live in the same city, even though we’re both from across the coast.\u00a0<\/p>\nI think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\nThat’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\nI explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Mashable: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, Strays, <\/em>and The Dink <\/em>all focus on tight-knit friendships. What draws you to this recurring theme in your work across documentaries and narrative films?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nJosh Greenbaum<\/strong>: I was fortunate enough to have some really meaningful friendships in my life. My best friend from childhood is still like my best friend now. And we’re lucky enough that we live in the same city, even though we’re both from across the coast.\u00a0<\/p>\nI think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\nThat’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\nI explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Josh Greenbaum<\/strong>: I was fortunate enough to have some really meaningful friendships in my life. My best friend from childhood is still like my best friend now. And we’re lucky enough that we live in the same city, even though we’re both from across the coast.\u00a0<\/p>\nI think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\nThat’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\nI explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I think there’s something very special in friendships, because it’s like all the things you need in a romantic relationship, without the baggage of what a romantic relationship brings. There’s an unconditional love that can come with it. Like, the way my friend and I look at each other and talk to each other, even back when we were in school, we could see the best version in each other. Which is very sweet, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n
That’s what a great friendship is \u2014\u00a0any good relationship. They force you to be the best version of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I explored that in Will & Harper<\/em>. I think [what] may be relevant to The Dink <\/em>was this idea of identity and what happens when you change your identity. What happens to the friendships that existed prior to that identity change? And what does that mean for my friendships and relationships?\u00a0<\/p>\nThe relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The relevancy to The Dink <\/em>is that there’s certainly lots of friendships and relationships. Obviously, Dusty has a very unique relationship with PJ (Aaron Chen). It’s a very odd, unique friendship, which I love. And he has a relationship with his father, which is not so much a friendship as a paternal one. But he forms this new friendship with, like, the least likely person, you know, a woman a few decades his senior \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWho he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Who he has previously cussed out publicly \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\nThey didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2014 and banned from the club. And he forges this relationship in, like, the last locale he ever would think he would be in, which is on a pickleball court. Dusty’s relationship with Mary Steenburgen, who plays Candace… I think that friendship and that relationship is probably, to your point, like one of these things that draws me into a film, where they’re kind of two lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They didn’t know each other prior. They’re both grappling with identity, right? With Dusty, he’s the Hammer, and he was this ex-pro junior pro tennis player that really never made it. And he’s still holding out on that, even though that’s clearly not serving him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Serving him” \u2014\u00a0good wordplay.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\nShe’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Thank you. I didn’t hear it until after you pointed it out. And then Candace is coming off of a divorce and grappling with, “Who am I? I was Mitch’s wife, and that’s all gone.”<\/p>\n
She’s trying all sorts of new hobbies to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. And these two lost souls find each other, and it gets more complicated as you see in the film. It’s not purely a friendship. There’s more that happens, which complicates things. But I guess I’m just drawn to that universal emotional relationship that friends provide us. They become our surrogate families as we become older, right? We leave the home that our our mom and dad were at, and we fill that void with friends. So, I guess to your point, you’re right. Barb and Star <\/em>and Will & Harpe<\/em>r and Strays<\/em> are all about friends becoming family. So I guess that’s without realizing it, it’s a theme that I very much like, and I’m drawn to.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nI appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I appreciate the details in your movies. Like Harper, even though she’s changed, still loves Natty Light. And here Candace has her hobbies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
One of my favorite scenes in [Will & Harper<\/em>] was not just the the Natty Light, which started it all, but then later on, Harper buys her and Will these beer koozies that are little jackets. And the two of them proceed to make up characters for their beers and their jackets and talk to each other in character. Their love language is this comedy. That’s how they connect, and that’s how they will always connect. Regardless of anything else in the world, and certainly Harper’s transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Mashable Top Stories<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\nSimilarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Similarly, in The Dink<\/em>, you’ve got these tactile touch points, like when Dusty finally goes over to Candace’s house later on in the film. He’s learning about her, and she’s got this cookie jar that she made, and it is horrible. Nothing is right about it. It’s dented; it’s poorly painted.\u00a0<\/p>\nI love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I love that Candace is just like not ashamed of her hobbies, even if the results are not good.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\nThat philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
What I love about that whole scene is, she is a person who is embracing her flaws and doesn’t hide them, and [she] finds beauty in the flaws. She turns to that cookie jar \u2014 that’s a disaster \u2014\u00a0and she says, “It’s a diet cookie jar. It helps you eat less cookies, because you can’t fit that many cookies in it.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
That philosophy is so at odds with Ed Harris’ character in The Dink<\/em>, who is really holding on to this idea that, like, you strive for perfection. You are a winner when you win, and when you are a champion, you defeat everyone. That might sort of work in sports, but what happens when you don’t? What happens to the other 98% of people who don’t win Wimbledon or whatever it is? How do you deal with your failure? How do you deal with your flaws? Do you face them? Do you own them?\u00a0<\/p>\nI think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\nYou look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\nI think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\nBetter the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I think that’s what Candace shows Dusty in the film, is flaws are a part of you. And you should embrace them. You should look at what maybe they give you. What’s the positive spin on them?\u00a0<\/p>\n
You look in her house, and you’re like, “This is someone who’s trying to figure out who they are. Clearly, they’ve tried like a dozen different hobbies. They haven’t quite landed on one, but they like doing all of them.” And that’s also okay. Like, embracing the ambiguity of your identity and being like, we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and there’s never really an answer because you’re constantly evolving. She’s okay with that uncertainty. And I think Dusty, on the flip side, has been holding on to this identity probably for fear of, if he lets go of it, who is he? If he’s not the Hammer, this guy who was a junior tennis pro, who is he? And that’s scary to him.<\/p>\n
I think we all do that. We all kind of hold onto identities we maybe want to let go of, but we’re fearful of what might happen if we do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Better the devil you know, right? The Dink <\/em>also reflects with Candace’s hobbies \u2014including her love of country western music \u2014\u00a0a certain devil-may-care attitude in your film. Where it’s like, if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what anyone else thinks?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\nShe’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Yes, totally. That’s a great point. When I read Sean [Clements]’ script, part of what I loved about that whole country music storyline is that’s exactly my wife [and me]. My wife’s from Northern California, and I’m from upstate New York. And when I met her, I would get in my car and be like, “The weirdest thing happened, sweetie, but my car radio is on this, like, terrible country music station.” She’s like, “No, I turned it to that.”<\/p>\n
She’s like, “How dare you?”<\/strong><\/p>\nLuckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\nIn that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Luckily, she didn’t slap me the way Mary Steenburgen slaps Jake in the film. But yeah, what I love about that is my wife knows in L.A., it’s not cool to love country music. Although I will say it’s getting a little trendier at the moment, which is not a bad thing for our film. And look, there is great country music, and I love it. But what was so funny is my wife used to say, “The reason I like it is it tells a story.” And that’s in our film. When I read that line in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s exactly what my wife says.” Meanwhile, I’m listening to the esoteric lyrics of Radiohead. She’s like, “What does this mean?” And I was like, “I don’t really know.”<\/p>\n
In that vein, The Dink<\/em> has been described as “the pickleball movie,” perhaps because of the popularity of the sport making a movie about it feel inevitable. But this doesn’t feel like a film cashing in on a trend. For one thing, pickleball isn’t treated like a punchline.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\nMy very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
If you’re gonna be the first movie set in the world of pickleball, you should embrace that you’re probably [going to be] called “the pickleball movie.” But I was excited [to have pickleball] as a backdrop. There’s a lot of great sports films, because they provide a really interesting backdrop to explore humanity and to explore universal human themes of underdogs and striving and identity and trying to be the best version of yourself, and how do you deal with failure? All these are things we can all relate to, even if we don’t play the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My very first film was a feature documentary called The Short Game<\/em>, in which I followed the best little kid golfers in the world. They’re like seven- and eight-year-olds, and very funny as they trained and competed in the world championships in junior golf.\u00a0<\/p>\nI wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I wasn’t a big golfer at all. But I knew that I could make the film speak to everyone, because it’s, like, little kids trying their best at this thing. And also, when you listen to a seven- and [an] eight-year-old, there’s a lot of wisdom you can gather from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[The Dink <\/em>being] set in the world of pickleball really just provides the backdrop for a very human story. But it also provides a lot of comedy [because] the reality right now is the tennis world is at war with the pickleball world. And that’s very funny.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
That PowerPoint presentation\u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I mean, getting Ed Harris to deliver a speech where he basically calls pickleball “a cancer on society” is a joy to watch. I remember giving him the direction. He has not really done any comedy before. He’s obviously an unbelievable actor, and I felt so lucky to have him in our cast. My only advice to him in terms of doing a comedy is, don’t play the comedy at all. Like, play it as though you’re in the world you’re in. This is very, very serious. The stakes cannot be higher. “So, if you can deliver that speech,” I remember saying to him, “the same way you delivered your incredible speech in Apollo 13<\/em>, it will crush comedically.”\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
And he did. He didn’t even need that advice from me.<\/p>\n
\n Jake Johnson and Ed Harris in “The Dink.”<\/span>\n Credit: Apple TV<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
How did it even come about that you guys were like, obviously Ed Harris?<\/strong><\/p>\nJake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\nEd Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\nI’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Jake Johnson and myself, and probably Sean the writer and Ben Stiller, our producer, were like, who would be the funniest, scary, [most] intimidating dad? Who is Jake Johnson’s dad, who doesn’t respect him for the choices?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ed Harris is the dream, but it’s like, [let’s look for] an Ed Harris type. You don’t think you’re going to get Ed Harris. And lo and behold! I want to say most likely Ben Stiller connected us, and then Jake Johnson and I drove to Ed’s house, where we did a read-through of the script. It was incredible. [Jake and I] were both very, very intimidated. On the drive over, I was like, “You’re nervous, right?” He’s like, “Incredibly.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’ve met Ed, and he’s lovely, but also he’s so big in my mind \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nThere’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
There’s an intensity to him that is sort of unrivaled with any other actor that I’ve worked with. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s an energy and intensity that you know he brings to his work that I love. But when you’re close to it, [it] can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\nThe Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Dink <\/em>premieres on Apple TV on July 24.<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/section><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mashable.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Josh Greenbaum has swiftly become a pillar in modern comedy, having helmed such hilarious offerings as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Will & Harper, and Strays. Next year, he’ll be at the helm of the long-anticipated sequel Spaceballs: The New One. But this week, comedy nerds can rally around his latest, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[93296,22367,21741,326583,496381,356915,22860,496383,312134,389755,496380,370344,22056,496382,306140],"class_list":["post-2515317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-fantastic-four","tag-film-trivia","tag-game-show","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-book","tag-jurassic-world","tag-magic-mike","tag-movie-quiz","tag-movie-titles","tag-pop-culture","tag-smurfs","tag-spider-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Josh-Greenbaum-on-how-The-Dink-connects-to-the-core.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515319,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515317\/revisions\/2515319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}