Recently, Wyatt Russell became the proud owner of a garden. The plot occupies the northern edge of his drought-tolerant side yard, surrounded by a chain-link fence and head-high hedges. The garden has shrubs and bushes, cedar chips and flowers. It’s a young man’s successful attempt at landscaping. It’s not done yet, either. “This was, like, a mud pit a month ago. I didn’t finish it, but this was all going to be decomposed granite patio,” Russell says.

We’re seated on either side of a fire pit, outside the unpretentious bungalow on a Silver Lake hill that Russell shares with his girlfriend, actress Meredith Hagner. Russell has a languorous surfer’s drawl: He sounds a lot like the stoners and layabouts he’s made his stock and trade in his short film career. But he’s more attentive than those characters — and, in all likelihood, a far more impressive amateur gardener. He recently laid the soil and the plants together with Hagner. Hence his concern for the yard: This was a couple’s project. [More at Source]

The bond of male friendship is examined – and tested – in Folk Hero & Funny Guy, a short and sweet dramedy from multi-hyphenate Jeff Grace, who writes and directs. We meet comedian Paul (Alex Karpovsky) at the end of a tired stand-up routine in a beer-stained comedy club. Meanwhile, Paul’s childhood friend Jason (Wyatt Russell) has built a successful career for himself as a folk music star. Inspired over the course of a drunken reunion, Jason gets the idea to take Paul on tour with him. We had the opportunity to speak with Russell about the film, and one can read the full conversation below.

How did this all come together? 

I came back from doing a film and I just read this movie that I thought was really good. And it had a musical element to it which is something I’d wanting to do. Because I play guitar, and it’s an important thing in my life. For myself. I’ve never done it for anybody else. Or played it for anybody else in a way of going ‘I want this to be a career.’ It was always sort of private but [the movie] was the first time I was like, ‘You know, this could be a cool thing for me to do and challenge myself to be able to play live and sing live.’ You know, there’s no hiding. That appealed to me a lot, so when I met Jeff [Grace], the director, I met someone who totally understood what they had written, had lived with it, and I knew that the movie was in good hands and that whatever performance came out of it was going to be in good hands so it was an easy decision after that. [More at Source]