Faxon added, “We try to always write what we know, and write people we know,” he said. “We try to draw from personal experience as much as we can.”

Pulling from their own lives, they said they delved into what makes people the way they are. Rash said, for example, that the character Betty’s monologue in the first few scenes of the film was inspired from the very long Christmas letters, received from family members, that re-cap everything that has been going on in the past year.

The first scene of the movie was also taken from one of Rash’s memories as an adolescent. In the film, Trent asks what Duncan thinks he is on a scale from one to ten. When Duncan says that he thinks that he is a ten, Trent says, “No, I think you are a three.”

“The scale thing actually happened to me when I was about fourteen,” said Rash, who shared his own memory of a trip to Michigan, where his stepfather told him he was a six.

Although a somewhat dark undertone, the scene presented a laughable moment, which was exactly what they said they set out to do for a film, considered to be a comedic drama. “In order for a comedy and drama to exist, a comedy needs to embrace its drama in the very beginning,” said Rash. “What I think that helps to do is for the comedy to earn substantial ending for your movie.”

And the balance, they said, of comedy and drama really begins in the writing. “We have always been drawn to characters that are flawed and complicated. Really when you get down to it, a lot of comedy is when they are dealing with difficult things from their past,” said Rash.