With ChaChaRealSmooth, Cooper Raiff parlays his childhood memories of attending bar and bat mitzvahs into a bittersweet romantic comedy.
The 25-year-old actor, director, writer, and producer has already won awards at Sundance for his sophomore film starring Dakota Johnson—and he’s just getting started.Cooper Raiff insists he has no skills when it comes to getting a party started.
Creating charming characters at various stages of self-discovery became Raiff’s modus operandi long before he burst onto the scene as a multi-hyphenate filmmaker at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Born in Dallas, Raiff—who had always liked acting and writing, but never wanted to direct—made a lengthy amateur film with two friends during the spring break of his sophomore year at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
With an intimate yet sprawling story that features characters from multiple generations, Raiff worked collaboratively with Johnson and Burghardt, in particular, to ensure they were telling a narrative that felt grounded and not exploitative. “The script was just bare-bones until the actors came in,” Raiff says. For instance, “Lola was not written like that. There was a certain thing that was written, and then Vanessa came in, and [we were] constantly trying to keep up with her.
Johnson played a pivotal role at all stages of the creative process, helping to craft the character of Domino and even convincing Raiff to act in his own movie again by reassuring him that she and Donnelly would have his back behind the camera. Having watched a handful of Johnson’s previous films, Raiff was acutely aware of her strengths as a performer.
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