Apr 3, 2026 1:17pm PT

‘Fantasy Life’s’ Matthew Shear on His Directorial Debut and Drawing on His Experience as a New York City Manny

Payton Turkeltaub

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Payton Turkeltaub

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Matthew Shear’s “Fantasy Life” is, for all intents and purposes, his first real screenplay. “I had dabbled,” Shear says. “[But] I’d never completed anything.”

So it’s all the more impressive that the film, which expands to theaters nationwide Friday, is his debut feature as a writer, director and star.

A New York City-set spin on the classic romantic comedy formula, “Family Life” follows Sam (played by Shear), an anxious law school dropout who finds himself falling for Dianne (Amanda Peet), the mother of the children he begins babysitting. And while that dynamic already poses challenges to begin with, it becomes all the more complicated considering Dianne, an actress, is married, with a musician husband, David (Alessandro Nivola). David also happens to be the son of Sam’s psychiatrist, who puts him up for the job in the first place.