DAD & STEP-DAD: New Trailer Hearkens an Upcoming Digital Release

Not since wandering into Kevin Smith’s Clerks in an Oshawa multiplex in 1994 have I immediately glommed on to a micro-budget comedy as something that can be watched over and over again. Tynan DeLong’s Dad & Step-Dad is a small, but significant, revelation on the power of improv and DIY filmmaking. How performance and clever editing can run with a (deceptively) simple concept to an entertaining whole.

 

DAD & STEP-DAD, A Comically Ingenious Portrait of Paternal One-Upmanship, Announces Long-Awaited Digital Release & Drops New Trailer

 

Tynan DeLong’s Breakout Feature Directorial Debut Arrives on VOD Worldwide Friday, March 22, 2024, Presented by NoBudge

 

A year after a packed premiere in New York at the Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park and a week of sold-out screenings at Spectacle theater, DAD & STEP-DAD finally announces their long-awaited arrival to digital platforms worldwide on Friday, March 22 and releases a new theatrical trailer into the world. 

 

Presented by NoBudge, the film is the wildly buzzy feature directorial debut from Brooklyn-based artist Tynan DeLong, a prolific shorts filmmaker and frequent actor. A word-of-mouth sensation across the indie film scene since its Brooklyn launch, DAD & STEP-DAD, which DeLong co-wrote with the film’s titular dads, Colin Burgess (Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater) and Anthony Oberbeck (Shrill), went on to have a string of celebrated screenings across North America, including a six-city tour of Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, and will finally be available globally next month. 

 

A comedy about family, communication, insecurity, and the fragility of the male ego, the film follows Jim and Dave, a dad and a step-dad, as they struggle with bonding during a weekend upstate with Branson, the son they share. DAD & STEP-DAD first began as a series of improvised shorts created by DeLong, Burgess, and Oberbeck in 2018, allowing the trio years to hone their characters and comedic sensibility before growing the project to feature-length. Inspired by cinéma vérité documentaries, ASMR, and Japanese environmental music, the formally and tonally unique character-driven slow-burn was shot in four days during the summer of 2021 with a production budget of $18,000 and is entirely improvised, based on a robust outline and several rehearsals.

 

With rising profiles in the indie film scene, Colin Burgess and Anthony Oberbeck have grown extensive acting resumes —with recent roles in breakout comedies such as Free Time, Inspector Ike, and The Civil Dead—  and spent years behind the cameras as writers and editors on comedy videos for Comedy Central, Adult Swim, and IFC. Brooklyn-based comedian and writer Clare O'Kane (Saturday Night Live) and frequent theater actor Brian Fiddyment round out the film’s intimate cast and modern take on the nuclear family. DAD & STEP-DAD is produced by Graham Mason (Inspector Ike, India Donaldson’s Sundance break-out Good One) and Sarah Wilson (Nicole, Scary Car). 

 

Already named one of “The Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)” by Esquire, DAD & STEP-DAD became an instant cult comedy hit and screened as part of the inaugural New/Next Film Fest in Baltimore, programmed by veteran curator and taste-maker Eric Allen Hatch, where Paste praised it as, “a movie made for next to nothing by a group of filmmaking friends, Dad & Step-Dad is the closest thing in body and spirit to the kind of DIY cinema that put New/Next’s forerunner, the Maryland Film Festival, on the map some 15 years ago.”

 

With this release, NoBudge, the premiere streaming platform for young and emerging filmmakers launched by filmmaker Kentucker Audley in 2018 —and where 15 of DeLong’s short films can currently be found— makes its first move into the realm of distribution. On December 22, 2023, DAD & STEP-DAD had its streaming premiere on NoBudge, where it is available to watch online across the U.S. Called “One of the best places to sample what’s happening in low-budget cinema worldwide" by The New York Times, NoBudge will announce more exciting distribution and release details in 2024.   

 

“I've been a huge fan of this creative team for a while and DeLong's debut feature could not better represent these brilliant comedy minds perfectly in their element,” said Audley on the film. “If you've been following NoBudge, these are already household names, and I'm really excited to finally introduce the film to the wider world.”

 

DAD & STEP-DAD will be available on Apple TV, Amazon, and Vimeo worldwide Friday, March 22.