Rage, Rockwell, and Why Subtlety Was Never the Point: A Conversation with ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Writer Matthew Robinson

Some films arrive with careful hands. They ease you into their arguments, guide you gently toward reflection, and trust that you will meet them halfway. And then there are films that feel like they have been pacing outside for years, waiting for the door to open so they can finally unload everything they have been holding in.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die belongs firmly in the second category.

From its first moments, the film carries the velocity of something written in a state of agitation. Not chaos for chaos’ sake, but a kind of deliberate overload. A collision of satire, sci-fi, social panic, and absurdist humor that mirrors the overstimulated world it is critiquing. The story begins in a Los Angeles diner, that most American of communal spaces, where a stranger from the future interrupts the ordinary rhythms of coffee refills and small talk to announce that humanity is on borrowed time. What follows is a six-block odyssey that feels at once intimate and apocalyptic, ridiculous and deadly serious.

At the center of it all is the writing.

Matthew Robinson’s screenplay does not tiptoe around its ideas. It lunges at them. Structurally, it plays like a pressure cooker. A ticking clock narrative fused with character vignettes that spiral outward before snapping back to the central mission. Tonally, it walks a high wire between fury and farce. The jokes land hard, sometimes uncomfortably so, because they are rooted in something raw. Beneath the monologues and manic exchanges is a persistent question about what we have normalized, what we scroll past, and what it is costing us.

What makes the script especially compelling is its refusal to dilute itself. There is an unapologetic bluntness to the dialogue, a willingness to let characters speak in absolutes, to rant, to accuse, to unravel. Yet for all its volume, the writing is not careless. It is tightly engineered. The rhythm of the ensemble, the layering of backstories, the way humor undercuts dread and then gives way to it again, all of it suggests a writer who understands genre deeply enough to bend it without breaking it.

The film’s energy is undeniably amplified by Gore Verbinski’s direction and Sam Rockwell’s feral performance. But the pulse begins on the page. You can feel that this story started from a place of frustration, even desperation, and then slowly found its shape. It is not a screenplay interested in soothing anyone. It is interested in provoking a response.

When I finished watching Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, what stayed with me was not just the spectacle, but the sense that someone had written this because they could not not write it. Because the questions it asks would not stay quiet.

I spoke with writer Matthew Robinson about building a film out of rage, structuring chaos, loving genre fiercely, and why subtlety was never really the goal.

Rahul Menon: When you first started writing Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, did you know immediately that this would be a story built around chaos, comedy, and panic, or did the tone reveal itself as you kept writing?

Matthew Robinson: The impetus for writing the story definitely started from a place of frustration, anger, fear and confusion with the way things felt like they were exponentially getting worse in America and maybe the world, so the tone was pretty clear to me from the jump. The “What the fuck are we doing?” vibe just permeated throughout the writing process and was easy to tap into.

Rahul: The film has such an irresistible hook, a man from the future walks into a diner and recruits a group of strangers to save the world across just a few city blocks. What was it about the diner setting that felt like the perfect pressure cooker for this story?

Matthew: I love diners. Like a lot. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and diner life was always a core part of reality for me. I grew up near the Norm’s on Pico, which is gone now, and ate there throughout my life. I still spend a lot of time in diners, reading, sometimes writing, not well though, but often just people watching and drinking coffee. The main idea came from seeing the transition in spaces like diners, which were once a sea of people either quietly thinking, reading the newspaper or talking to each other and had now entirely transitioned to an endless sea of faces on phones and thinking “there’s just no way this is an improvement.”

Rahul: You have mentioned the script began as several smaller ideas that you eventually fused together. When did you realize those fragments could become one cohesive narrative, and what was the hardest part about making them feel like they belonged in the same universe?

Matthew: The smaller ideas all had the same technology theme and came from the same frustrated place artistically, but I was not interested in trying to figure out how to make an anthology movie or TV show. I liked the challenge of trying to fit them all into the same story. Also, I liked thematically using lots of little, short burst stories in a movie about our shrinking attention spans.

There is something fitting about Robinson describing the process as frustration first, structure second. The film’s chaos never feels accidental. It feels curated around a central anxiety about distraction and decay. The diner becomes more than a setting. It becomes a snapshot of cultural erosion. From there, the story fractures and reforms, like a brain trying to hold too many tabs open at once.

Rahul: The structure feels like a kind of modern Canterbury Tales, with the group journey acting as a spine while the film dives into personal backstories along the way. As a writer, how did you balance the forward momentum of the mission with those bursts of character exploration?

Matthew: Yeah, Canterbury Tales was a conscious inspiration. I liked the writing process so much I would like to write more movies with that same spine. The balancing was probably the bulk of the work. The order was always clear to me, but how long they could be and how each story affected the tempo of the whole movie took years and years to get to a place I was happy with.

Rahul: One of the boldest creative swings is the opening monologue, which feels like the film throwing down a challenge to the audience right away. On the page, how did you approach writing something that long while still keeping it entertaining and propulsive?

Matthew: I wish I knew. I wrote that monologue in one sitting before lunch and the filmed version is exactly as it was on the page that day. It is a cliché, but it really did just pour out of me. I do remember making myself laugh a few times while writing it, which is always a good sign. I think when you are just focusing on entertaining yourself good things can sometimes happen.

Rahul: Sam Rockwell’s character feels like both a prophet and a lunatic, and the film smartly lets the audience sit in that uncertainty. When you were writing him, how did you find the right balance between charisma, menace, humor, and vulnerability?

Matthew: I had Sam Rockwell in my head while I was writing him. Don Rickles too. And then a hefty dose of Falstaff. Which is probably the most fun character you can write. He sort of wrote himself. The balance came naturally. It definitely fit the theme to have a character that just did not suffer fools in the slightest. Having him rushed for time really helped to make him fun to write, but he also really cares about what he is doing. He is genuinely trying to save a nightmare world that he has experienced and cares about.

If Rockwell’s performance feels like pure electricity, it is because Robinson wired the character that way from the beginning. A man out of time and out of patience. The film’s refusal to soften him becomes its own thesis. We are not dealing with gentle warnings anymore. We are dealing with sirens.

Rahul: The film is deeply funny, but it is also furious. Beneath the jokes, it feels like a scream of frustration at the way society has surrendered attention and imagination to algorithm driven culture. Did that anger come first, or did the comedy come first?

Matthew: Anger for sure. But the line between anger and comedy is very blurry for me.

Rahul: The movie tackles huge themes, AI, social media addiction, desensitization, even the normalization of horror. When you were writing, how did you decide what to include without the script collapsing under the weight of too many ideas?

Matthew: It felt like there was only room for three stories and the fourth being the spine that holds it all together. It was important to me to make the connection between our technology addictions and our desensitization to violence, especially violence towards children, who are also on the front lines of technology addictions, so all the stories had to be about that. I had other short ideas that did not make the cut, and it is because they were not about the crossroads between those two ideas.

Rahul: The film does not whisper its message. It practically shouts it. Were you ever tempted to make the social commentary subtler, or did you always want the writing to feel blunt and confrontational?

Matthew: The Man from the Future felt like he gave me license to not be subtle. He only has two hours. There is no time for subtlety. Also, he is exhausted. And really annoyed with everyone. So that character kind of became the soul of the movie. It is fun and relaxing to write in primary colors and absolutes sometimes.

There is a clarity in that answer that mirrors the film itself. Exhaustion. Annoyance. Urgency. Subtlety belongs to a world with time. This movie believes we have run out of it.

Rahul: The film includes controversial material that many writers would have been pressured to soften or remove. What gave you the conviction to stick with those choices, especially knowing it might make the script harder to get made?

Matthew: I just do not think the story works without that element. It was always the point to me. Many times, I was told by studios that if I cut the school shooting stuff, they would buy it. I wish I could say it was my moral convictions that made me say no, but honestly, I just do not really know what the movie is without that stuff. I just do not think there is a story there that is entertaining without it or that even structurally works.

Rahul: Gore Verbinski’s direction feels like someone returning with something to prove, visually aggressive, kinetic, and totally committed. What was it like watching a director like him take your screenplay and amplify its energy into something even more insane?

Matthew: I could never do what Gore does. His ability to turn a simple dialogue scene into an incredible set piece rife with visual jokes, character beats, emotion and foreshadowing is like watching a magician on stage. It made me happy I am a writer and not trying to compete in his world.

Rahul: The ensemble cast is stacked, and the film has this wild rhythm where everyone feels like they are locked into the same chaotic wavelength. As a screenwriter, how do you write an ensemble like that while still making sure each character feels distinct and memorable?

Matthew: I am not sure, but writing ensembles is absolutely my favorite thing to do. I love the puzzle of fitting all these different people together, balancing their voices in the dialogue, knowing when it has been too long since we heard from them, knowing when the audience wants more info about them. It is such a fun puzzle and the writing process feels purely instinctual. It is probably how sculpting feels. You are just chiseling away over and over and over again until it looks right to you.

By the time the film reaches its most unhinged stretches, what lingers is not just the spectacle, but the craft. The sculpting. The chiseling. For all its noise, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is carefully constructed chaos.

Rahul: You also co-wrote Love and Monsters, which remains one of the most emotionally satisfying apocalyptic films in recent years. Do you feel drawn to stories set in collapsing worlds, and what do you think that genre allows you to explore that more grounded storytelling does not?

Matthew: I think writing in genre gets you closer to what it feels like to be alive right now than consciously writing about the way the world actually is. So I guess it feels to me like there is an unprecedented breakdown in society and reality right now and it feels weird to write about anything else.

Rahul: Your filmography includes projects that move between high-concept, satire, comedy, and genre spectacle. What excites you most when you sit down to write, is it the big premise, the character journey, or the chance to take a swing that feels dangerous?

Matthew: I try to only write movies that I wish existed. The movies that I would stand in line in the rain to go see. Usually that is genre or sci-fi. But sometimes it is a small character story. Sometimes what I wish existed changes halfway through a script and then that script never gets finished. But I am always chasing that feeling of trying to make a movie exist that I wish existed.

Rahul: When audiences walk out of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, what do you hope stays with them the most? The laughs, the anxiety, the warning, or maybe the weird hope underneath all the noise?

Matthew: I hope it reminds them how much they love genre films and original science fiction ideas. I hope it makes them remember how much they love movies and especially seeing movies in the theaters.

For all its fury, Robinson keeps circling back to love. Love of genre. Love of original science fiction. Love of sitting in a dark room with strangers and feeling something together.

Rahul: Looking back now, what is one scene, idea, or line from the film that you still cannot believe actually made it to the screen exactly as you imagined it?

Matthew: “It’s a shame when they’re great and they get shot by their peers.” Every time I watch the movie that line makes me go, “Jesus dude…”

Rahul: You have worked across both studio systems and more unpredictable creative spaces. What has the industry taught you about protecting the weirdness of a script, especially when everyone around you wants to make it safer?

Matthew: Writing anything other than what YOU want to see on the screen is the kiss of death for your career. I really do believe that. Writing that does not come from a place of intention passion actually does not sell. At least it does not when I have foolishly tried it.

Rahul: As someone who clearly loves genre storytelling, which screenwriters and filmmakers have inspired you the most over the years, and whose work still makes you want to go back to the blank page and try harder?

Matthew: I love the same writer/directors that probably all genre writers love. The main drug I am always chasing is seeing a great genre film I have never seen before. Most recently, Nia DaCosta, Ryan Coogler and Lynne Ramsay have made me want to up my game.

Rahul: Finally, if you were actually trapped in that diner and forced onto this one-night six-block mission, which cast member would you want on your team first, and which one would you absolutely avoid teaming up with?

Matthew: I am taking Juno’s character Susan. Nothing is going to stop her from completing the mission. She has nothing left to lose. Scott I would probably leave behind. He is just not going to make it to the end.

Rahul: And just for fun, if you had to replace the film’s title with a completely different one, what would you call it?

Matthew: At one point I wrote the Mark and Janet story as a comedy TV pilot with the title “Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30”. I still think that is a pretty good title.

In the end, what Robinson articulates so plainly is something I felt while watching the film. Beneath the screaming monologues and the unapologetic bluntness, there is a writer who wants audiences to remember why they fell in love with movies in the first place.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is not clean. It is not tidy. It occasionally buckles under the weight of its own ideas. But it is alive.

When I called it a "blockbuster sized fever dream that actually gives a damn" in my review, I meant it. In a landscape increasingly dominated by safe choices and algorithm approved storytelling, Robinson and Verbinski have made something loud, confrontational, and deeply personal.

It might exhaust you. It might overwhelm you. It might even annoy you.

But it will not bore you.

And right now, that feels like its own small act of rebellion.