'Spoiler Alert' is about love and loss, and it's based on this true story
Michael Ausiello, an entertainment journalist and founder of TVLine, has documented his partner's cancer journey three times now — first in Facebook posts, then in a book and now in a movie.
Ausiello's husband, Kit Cowan, died in 2015 from rectal cancer. In the year leading up to his death, Ausiello sent updates to family and close friends via private Facebook posts.
The blurbs become a book published two years later titled "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words." Ausiello's close friend actor Jim Parsons read the book and told him it should be a movie — so they teamed up for the tear-jerker romantic comedy "Spoiler Alert," which premieres Dec. 2.
Parsons stars as Ausiello in the movie, and both serve as producers. Michael Showalter directs.
"Spoiler Alert" starts on the day Cowan (played by Ben Aldridge) dies and flashes back to the first day he met Ausiello. Their love story unfolds from there, with a few stops including a coming out scene, their Christmas tradition, the wedges that separated them, the things that brought them back together and their wedding.
Ausiello, 50, opens up to TODAY.com about publicly grieving such private moments with his late husband and the significance of seeing their love story on the big screen.
'It gets easier': Ausiello on returning to this part of his life
Ausiello initially started sharing Kit's journey on Facebook as a way for him to process the sudden diagnosis and death.
“I wanted to share our experience going through the cancer journey with friends and family was it can be lonely going through something like this, and isolating," he says. "Every time we shared one of those Facebook posts, or one of those updates, the warm virtual hugs that we would get in response felt so good, and meant so much. And then, when I wrote the book, I felt that on just such a bigger scale."
One of the members of the private group receiving his posts was Rakesh Satyal, a colleague at Simon & Schuster publishing company. In 2015, he encouraged Ausiello to turn them into a book.
"When I wrote the book, I was at the start, and in the middle of, grieving his loss, which made it an emotionally torturous process," Ausiello recalls. "Writing a book is very lonely and isolating."
Ausiello says the movie's release has put his healing into perspective.
"It definitely gets easier," he says. "It gets easier because I've had some distance from Kit's death. The movie experience now comes several years after Kit has died. So I'm on the other end of that initial grief."
As a result, making the movie was "much more fun" than writing the book, he says.
"It's a collaborative experience," he continues. "I'm not alone. I'm with other people. And I'm with other people who I have enormous respect for and have admired for a long time. So just creatively, it's just extremely fulfilling."
Ausiello says Parsons is a trusted friend and "always made (him) feel like a partner on this journey."
'A version of my life': Ausiello on how the movie compares to the real thing
Ausiello says being on set did not make him feel like he was reliving his life.
"The movie is a version of my life story. It isn't my life. So that also makes it easier when I was on set every day. I was always aware that we were making a movie. I never felt like I was watching my life unfold again before my eyes," he says.
At the same time, some scenes "bore a very strong resemblance" to the real thing.
"So even though, yes, I knew we were making a movie, there absolutely were times where it took my breath away (with) how similar it felt the actual experience," he says.
A few scenes in particular, Ausiello says, were spot on.
Yes, the Smurf scene really happened
When Kit visits Michael's apartment for the first time in the movie, Michael is hesitant to let him in. When Michael finally opens the door, Kit sees why he'd been nervous: Michael's apartment is decorated with Smurfs memorabilia. Yes, Smurfs from the famous cartoon.
Ausiello says this is all entirely true.
"Not only did I have a room full of Smurfs, but those were my Smurfs in the scene. That was my personal collection that was used in the movie, and it only was a fraction of the overall collection. My actual collection is probably six or seven times what you saw," he says.
In the movie, Kit is understandably shocked."What is this, Michael?" he asks after noticeable silence.
Michael replies with a story about how his mom used to go shopping for house needs every week and, if he went, would reward him with one Smurf. After she died of cancer when he was a kid, Michael says he starting buying them for himself and it grew into a collection.
Kit's parents really are like Michael's parents
Ausiello's mother died of cancer and his dad died years before that. Cowan's parents, Bob and Marilyn Cowan, became "family," Ausiello says.
"I do keep in touch with them. I visit. I'm not there nearly as much as I used to be because Kit's not here. But I love Bob and Marilyn. They're my family ... I adore them and in many ways, I see them as two of the heroes in this story," he says.
He says they're "navigating and figuring out" what their relationship looks like now that the "person tethering all of us together" is gone.
The couples therapy scene was 'perfectly depicted'
Before Kit's diagnosis, the couple finds themselves exchanging jabs and struggling to get along. They go to a couples counselor in hopes of mending what's broken.
The scene ends with the counselor recommending they break up to allow time for them to work out the "resentment" they have for one another.
"That was actually very similar," Ausiello says of the scene. "Our therapist Tony, who inspired this character — who was our couples therapist, and is now still my individual therapist — would often say it was like the 'Kit and Mike Show' when we came in. We didn't really know it at the time, but the two of us together — it was like a comedy team. It was perfectly depicted in the movie."
The marriage proposal scene was 'very faithful' to the actual experience
At the time of Kit's diagnosis, Michael and Kit were on a break and living in separate apartments. But Michael was the first person Kit told when he found out, and they went to doctor's appointments together. The rectal cancer, initially confined to one area, spreads to Kit's brain.
After hearing this news, the couple has a conversation about the future, one that Ausiello says is similar to what really happened.
"After Kit learns that the cancer has spread to his brain, when we're in our backyard, we just put all our cards out on the table. (The characters) have an honest reckoning about our relationship that was very faithful to the actual experience, and also a pure joy to watch being shot. It felt almost like we were shooting a one-act play that night, because of the scene between Ben (Kit) and Jim (Michael), and Michael (Showalter, the director) just gave them so much space, so much breathing room to sort of find the little moments within that scene. It was one of my favorite nights on the set," he says.
One scene is modeled off a video Cowan took
After treatments and exhaustion, Kit finds himself with some energy one weekend, so Michael takes him to a beach in Ocean City, N.J. Bob and Marilyn join them.
Ausiello says the scene is modeled from a video he has of the real trip to Ocean City.
"When Kit is out on the deck, blowing the bubbles and sort of cheekily introducing the cast of characters around him — that was frame for frame, word for word almost exactly how it was in real life, mostly because I have it on video.
"I shared that video with our director, Michael Showalter. And he was like, 'Well, we're just going to do exactly that.' Now, we did exactly that because Ben looks so much like Kit. And particularly in that scene, he so brilliantly captured Kit's essence that that scene is just — it's so beautiful, and so poignant. And so, so true to the real life experience," Ausiello says.
'My heart is open': Ausiello on what's next
The film ends with Michael asking Kit, before he dies, what he should do next.
"You'll know," is Kit's reply in the movie.
Ausiello says he is "absolutely open to love again."
"Whether I will be lucky enough to find someone that I love as much as Kit, or half as much as I love Kit, I should be so lucky. But my heart is definitely open," he says.
The legacy of the movie
Ausiello reflects on the timing of the movie's release.
“I’m grateful the movie is coming out when it does feel like the LGBTQ+ community is under attack and our right to marry the person that we love are in jeopardy of being robbed, taken away from us,” Ausiello says.
“I am proud to be putting this story out into the world even though I never set out to make a message or to make a statement. I just wanted to tell an honest, authentic story. If (the movie) moves the needle a little bit, opens people’s eyes and puts a little bit more love out into the world, all the better."
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
