Mates for Life

Cinema has no shortage of romantic comedies. So when Katie Corwin and her best friend, Delaney Buffett, set out to cowrite and produce their debut feature film, they decided to focus on the hilarious ups, downs, and misadventures of a less-explored kind of relationship: lifelong pals.

“We wanted to make what we’re calling a ‘platonic comedy,’” explained Corwin. “Many films talk about navigating romantic relationships. But few movies talk about navigating friendships, where it’s not about staying together or breaking up, but finding the balance between holding someone too tightly and completely letting them go.”

Now streaming on Max and elsewhere, Adult Best Friends stars Corwin and Buffett as exaggerated versions of themselves, in circumstances inspired by their actual relationship. Buffett’s character is a sardonic thirtysomething single who can’t bear to grow up. She struggles with bitterness and jealousy when Corwin’s character, a responsible striver, becomes engaged to a handsome Mr. Nice Guy.

Over the course of a trip to their childhood beach town, the friends deal with issues like codependency and the anxieties around adult milestones, like marriage, to comic yet heartfelt effect. The movie lampoons modern relationship dynamics such as the infiltra-tion of therapy-speak into
everyday conversation, and the social awkwardness of over-sharing coworkers.

Making Adult Best Friends together felt like a full-circle moment for Corwin and Buffet, who first bonded as the “only girls in fifth grade” who loved the ’90s buddy comedy Tommy Boy. After graduating, Buffett and Corwin—an English major who developed her comedic craft with the BC improv group My Mother’s Fleabag—turned friendship into creative collaboration, working together on a web series and developing film and TV projects that never quite got off the ground. The idea for Adult Best Friends came together when Buffett was writing a speech for Corwin’s wedding. “She was kind of coming to terms with this idea that she would be technically demoted.”

Working without traditional financing from a movie studio, Corwin and Buffett funded the film largely on their own and leaned on support from friends like Star Trek actor Zachary Quinto, who costarred and served as executive producer. Adult Best Friends eventually premiered at the renowned Tribeca Film Festival, and Corwin was struck by how well the movie’s exploration of fragile adult relationships resonated across generations. “Older people would come up to us after screenings and say, ‘It’s so important to keep making the effort, or else you’ll turn around one day and realize how much you’ve lost.’”  

When it comes to nurturing relationships, Corwin believes the same rule applies to both friendships and filmmaking. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she said. “You may not hang out every day, but you can still call someone when you’re at the grocery store. That effort means a lot, and you’ll see the result.”