'That was actually very similar,' Ausiello says of the scene. 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. They go to a couples counselor in hopes of mending what's broken. (Linda Källérus / Focus Features ) The couples therapy scene was 'perfectly depicted'īefore Kit's diagnosis, the couple finds themselves exchanging jabs and struggling to get along. Kit's parents really are like Michael's parents

After she died of cancer when he was a kid, Michael says he starting buying them for himself and it grew into a collection. 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.

In the movie, Kit is understandably shocked.'What is this, Michael?' he asks after noticeable silence. My actual collection is probably six or seven times what you saw,' he says. That was my personal collection that was used in the movie, and it only was a fraction of the overall collection. 'Not only did I have a room full of Smurfs, but those were my Smurfs in the scene. When Michael finally opens the door, Kit sees why he'd been nervous: Michael's apartment is decorated with Smurfs memorabilia. When Kit visits Michael's apartment for the first time in the movie, Michael is hesitant to let him in. 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.Īusiello, 50, opens up to about publicly grieving such private moments with his late husband and the significance of seeing their love story on the big screen.īen Aldridge stars as Kit Cowan and Jim Parsons as Michael Ausiello in director Michael Showalter’s SPOILER ALERT (Linda Källérus / Focus Features ) Yes, the Smurf scene really happened

'Spoiler Alert' starts on the day Cowan (played by Ben Aldridge) dies and flashes back to the first day he met Ausiello.

Parsons stars as Ausiello in the movie, and both serve as producers. 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. In the year leading up to his death, Ausiello sent updates to family and close friends via private Facebook posts. 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.Īusiello's husband, Kit Cowan, died in 2015 from rectal cancer.

Spoiler alert kit cowan