There’s only so much directing you can do when you send your lead actor, who is holding several bags of goldfish, in water, on a roller coaster with a 35 mm camera strapped to the front. You just have to trust.

“Splitsville” director and actor Michael Angelo Covino knew he could count on his friend and cowriter Kyle Marvin to deliver on the performance side for their slapstick comedy about messy relationships and messy people that opens in theaters Friday. The two also made the wildly funny friendship movie “The Climb,” which they cowrote and co-starred in with Covino directing.

“He’s like a modern-day Charlie Chaplin,” Covino said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s just all intuitive slapstick. He has it in his bones.”

But there were a lot of other variables at

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