Heroine of Her Own Story: A Conversation With ‘Mile End Kicks’ and ‘Roommates’ Filmmaker Chandler Levack

There are a few filmmakers that come to mind that can carry a generations voice forward, and effortlessly pick up on the next generations foils and fables. And one of those filmmakers carrying that torch is Chandler Levack. She has not one, but TWO films that released the same week, Mile End Kicks and Roommates. While both are coming of age comedies, yet serving different time periods, a specific time and place to be more on the nose: one about the millennial indie-music zeitgeist and the other about Gen Zs desperate need of connection in college, respectfully - their thematic anchors are similar.

While there are many emotional layers and questions and unfinished journeys for the main characters/underdogs in both films, there’s an additional layer at play for audiences – participation. Two films where you can’t help but yell at the screen, ‘No boy is worth that!’ or ‘What happened to [insert character’s name]?!’ and be equally satisfied by both the unknown and footnote answers.  

Chandler Levack spoke with Script about how Mile End Kicks was a decade-long process and how it explores the underdog spirit and nostalgia of a specific generation, being inspired by filmmakers like Richard Linklater, and films like Reality Bites and Almost Famous. She also discusses her approach to directing Roommates, penned by scribes Jimmy Fowlie and Ceara O’Sullivan, under Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison banner, using War of the Roses as inspiration, collaborating with a diverse cast of comedy greats, and the joy of utilizing the narrator device. Plus, she shares the importance for writers and filmmakers to settle into your vulnerability and risk-taking in your storytelling.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Diving into Mile End Kicks, how did that story initially take shape, while also essentially writing what you know?

Chandler Levack: This movie took me about a decade to make. I started writing the script in 2015, at that time I was 27. I shot the film when I was 37, [laughs] now I'm almost 40 - it's been a very interesting journey over the years, sort of abandoning it and picking it back up and still really wanting to get it made.

I made a whole other movie first because I couldn't get this film made, and then kind of came back to it with my producer, Matt Miller, who's for an entire decade, has just been cheering me on and really trying to make it happen. I'm really grateful for that.

I think the impetus for it was just to kind of write a version of the movies that I really have always loved, like hangout movies and rom coms and Richard Linklater films and music movies like Almost Famous. It was a joy to be like, 'Oh, how do I take all these films that I really love… and put them in a blender?'

Sadie: One of the things I really enjoyed about this film is how quickly you set your character Grace off on her journey – essentially her own hero’s journey. And she’s falling, not entirely gracefully, but she’s checking off some rather big and emotional life moments. There were certainly a lot of time where you’re yelling at the screen, ‘No boy is worth that!

Chandler: In some ways, she's sort of a portrait of my younger self, and so, I think everyone is a little bit of a disaster when they're in their early 20s - and we all forget, and then you’re judging the character by our adult selves. [laughs] My first movie, I Like Movies, was kind of a little bit of a portrait of my adolescence, and then this is kind of like me in my 20s. So I think I'm learning with these movies to almost forgive past versions of myself or investigate flawed, complicated people that are dealing with a lot of trauma, and don't really have the tools to kind of heal themselves, or are looking for external sources of validation, or getting really obsessive about their own ambition as a way of, kind of avoiding really connecting with other people, and figuring out who they are.

Sadie: This world in Montreal, it's a very specific time and place, and how she maneuvers through it – it’s kind of like she has horse blinders on – which I think a lot of 20 something year olds go through. And then you hit your late thirties, and you’re like, ‘Oh, that was very stupid of me,’ or ‘the answer was there the whole time.’

Chandler: Yeah, it's interesting watching it in a theater with people, because I feel like sometimes people are reacting to it, like it's like a horror movie, [laughs] and they're screaming, like, 'No!' or 'Don't have sex with that guy, he has bed bugs!'

I think at that time, I was so desperate for any kind of sense that I belonged anywhere. And the more withholding somebody was, the more they would reject me… That was sort of my ideal for a while.

I'm interested in how to still make that person lovable and worthy of a movie. I think Barbie [Ferreira] plays the character with so much dignity and charisma and humor and she's so on the character’s side that, I think it does a lot to kind of help imbue the movie with a lot of realism. Because, at the end, I still want it to be like a rom com, and I still want you to root for her and have her be the right heroine of her own story.

Sadie: Let’s switch gears to your other film, Roommates. What attracted you as a director and really, a storyteller, to the script?

Chandler: I totally grew up on movies like Mean Girls and, of course, Happy Madison movies and crazy studio comedies - Step Brothers is one of my favorite films. [laughs] I was really excited about the idea of doing something that was really audacious and fun, and had so many set pieces to it. And I also thought it had this really vulnerable, emotional core to it.

And I guess I've been thinking a lot about this generation of people that are now going to college, and how they spent so much of their adolescence, because of the pandemic, on a computer. Making friends is really hard to do, and putting yourself out there, vulnerably. That period where you first go to college and you move away from everyone you've ever known, and try to reinvent yourself, it's a totally bizarre coming of age experience, and it's weird that not a lot of people make movies about that time in your life, because it's, in some ways, even more interesting than high school.

Jimmy [Fowlie] and Cera [O’Sullivan] are just really, really funny writers, but they also are very perceptive and have a lot of heart to their writing. And it was a lot of the dynamics with the family that I really loved, and her relationship with her brother. And then I just love how hard it goes at the end that there isn't usual beats that you would expect from a YA Netflix movie where they don't apologize to each other at the end. I think the ending is so funny and has such crazy twists and turns.

It meant a lot to me to be part of that tradition, because SNL was definitely my childhood, and the chance to work with Adam [Sandler] and Sadie [Sandler] and be part of this Happy Madison legacy of comedy movies, I mean, what an honor.

Sadie: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. And the casting on this film is just top notch. It felt like a series of generations passing the torch to the next generation, like Sadie Sandler and the others. And they’re all so great at carrying out the heavy emotional beats and the humor.

Chandler: It was so fun to cast this movie. I had two really brilliant casting directors, Mary Vernieu, who's a legend in the industry, who cast everything from Euphoria to Silver Linings Playbook to Requiem for a Dream - an absolute icon, and couldn't have been more of a dream to work with. And same with her assistant, Sydney Shircliff.

Every day I felt like it was just an embarrassment of riches. People I've idolized my entire life who were showing up on set to play. And it was really extraordinary to get to work with all of them. There's such a huge range of dynamic talent. And you're right, I think it's very intergenerational, and I love that. It’s very largely female driven, and you have insanely iconic comedians like Janeane Garofalo and also Carol Kane who is such a legend, but then you also have Ivy Wolk and Sarah Sherman and Storm Reid is great.

And I think that Sadie and Chloe really, really ground the movie. And it's ultimately a two hander with them, and their chemistry was so special. Chloe is so fearless as an actor… when you're working with actors like that, you're just constantly in awe of their talent. And Sadie too, that scene where she returns from spring break and she's crying in the dorm --

Sadie: Devastating.

Chandler: -- very floored by her acting. This was my first time working within that system. And I think there's just such a reverence, also for Adam, and when you think about all the great actors who've appeared in Happy Madison movies before this one. I think people really love and respect his sense of comedy, and are just really excited that they get to appear in one of his films.

Sadie: It feels like a big family affair. Another great device used in this film is the narrator, which is such great framework for not only the narrative but also carrying multiple timelines. How were you juggling that, and how much was changed or added to in post?

Chandler: I really love those devices in movies, and to me, they feel very old school. A big model for this movie was War of the Roses. When I first talked to Adam about the movie, I wanted it to feel like War of the Roses, but in a dorm room. [laughs] And I think that's why we burned down everything at the end. [laughs] I was looking at The Princess Bride and that kind of device is so fun, and you don't really get to see it in movies anymore.

It's interesting because a lot of people who are reviewing it, they're like, 'It's the How I Met Your Mother device.' I'm like, 'No, it's not! It's War of the Roses.' [laughs]

We shot a lot of those scenes, and then I think Adam wanted options in the edit. It was just kind of, like playing around with them... some of the stuff kind of landed where it was scripted. And then other stuff we're like, 'it's actually, way funnier if you put it after this scene' it becomes this new meta textual layer that gives us a bigger laugh.

It was really fun to think about how that can add to the pathos or the comedy of it. And then when it does a fun fourth wall breaking... It's just a really fun device that movies don't really use anymore.

Sadie: As you are embarking on this really great career as a writer director, when did you know you had found your voice as both writer director and knowing when it to tap into that vulnerability?

Chandler: I think I still have questions every day about, is this my voice? And how do I get better at this? And what about this stuff in my films still feels authentic and is it really working? And then, what part am I slightly embarrassed about? When I think about all the ways that I wrote a scene or directed it, what's effective, what isn't - so I think it's still a process.

I think the stuff that makes you feel there’s little bit of an element of risk here, that is probably a really good sign that it's going to connect to people, and people are going to relate to it. Like in Mile End, the sort of quasi sex scene in the film felt very scary and risky to kind of conceive of, and because it was very personal. And the fact that when audiences watch it, that's always the thing that kind of lands the loudest. And I've had women, come up to me confidentially after being like, 'Oh my God. How do you know that this is what it's actually like?'

And it's interesting being in whatever, some version of the industry, and having agents send me scripts and just seeing how there's still so many conventional core ways that movies are conceiving of relationships and how protagonists are supposed to be and the right kind of character to root for. And I don't think that's realistic to how most people are going through their lives.

So, it is refreshing when you put out something that's vulnerable and you're scared to do it - that's the stuff that actually hits. It's not like you trying to sound like somebody other than yourself, but it is hard to figure out how to sound like yourself. When I was a young writer, so much of my writing was me parroting the writers and people that I just really idolized. And it took a while for me to kind of just be like, 'This is what I think and feel.' And it was always that stuff that people sort of connected with.

I think you just have to kind of come into your own truth a little bit, because I think that's the only way that things are really gonna go beyond... at least that's my own approach.

Sadie: I love that answer. As we get older, you’re evolving, and so is your voice – or hopefully you’re evolving.

Chandler: Writing is hard. For a long time, you're going to be like, ‘Why doesn't this feel as good as Francis Ha’ or something, [laughs] .... because that's the product of Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig making like, 20 movies before that.

And one thing that was really reassuring for me when I was making my first micro budget, I Like Movies, was just watching all the first features by filmmakers that I really love. And just kind of being like, OK, everyone starts at some point, and you're just making your first thing, it doesn't have to be the greatest thing you ever make.

The more I evolve as a filmmaker, I think having a body of work as a filmmaker is the most important thing... trying different things, and maybe some of it lands, maybe it doesn't, but it all kind of ideally goes towards creating your body of work. Eventually you're gonna see what kinds of themes and characters and ideas you're obsessed with. And that's the stuff that is gonna fuel you, ideally.

Catch Roommates on Netflix and Mile End Kicks now exclusively in Theaters.