Tapping into Feeling and Nostalgic Simplicity: A Conversation with ‘My Old Ass’ Writer-Director Megan Park

In this fresh coming-of-age story, an 18^th birthday mushroom trip brings free-spirited Elliott (Maisy Stella) face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). But when Elliott’s “old ass” starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn’t do, Elliott realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what’s becoming a transformative summer.

Go back in time with filmmaker Megan Park’s nostalgic and emotionally layered movie My Old Ass. A story that may seem quite simplistic on the page, it’s far from that. It carries humor, love, and the unimaginable all in one breadth – kind of like familiar growing pains from adolescence stepping into adulthood.

Megan Park recently spoke with Script about her journey to developing this particular story and the essence she wanted to capture, the filmmakers that inspire her, what was the trickiest part about breaking the story and character development, and what she would tell her younger filmmaker self, plus so much more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: One of the great things about this movie, at least for me, it was like this refreshing take on this type of storytelling, something that you probably see in a John Hughes movie from the 80s, thinking early 90s. But it's female-centric, and it's hilarious, and it's so grounded and emotional, and you just poke at every emotional core. What was your journey to finding and developing the story?

Megan Park: Well, first of all, thanks for even including my name in the same sentence as John Hughes, [laughs] that's quite the honor. I’m newish to writing and directing, and I feel like I'm, like, figuring myself out as a writer and a director. This has really only been something that I've been doing for about five years, maybe six now. But I think for me, I lead from a really emotional place. When I was writing my first script, The Fallout, it was the first movie I'd ever written, and it was sort of just born out of this disbelief. I'm Canadian, and I was a little bit older, I was living in America, and I was like, ‘Wait, so this is just what’s going down?’ I just couldn't stop thinking about how if I was a teenager right now, I would straight up be too scared to go to school every day. I could not do it in America. And I just couldn't stop thinking about that. And obviously, as all these shootings were happening, it just came out of me, almost in like this frustrated way.

And I kind of thought about these characters and Vada was a lot of parts of myself, and it kind of just came out of that emotional place. And the same with My Old Ass, truthfully. I was home, it was during the pandemic. I just had my first baby, and I was sleeping in my childhood bedroom home visiting family, and was just feeling very nostalgic about Canada and sort of this idea that there's one night that as a nuclear family sleeps under the same roof together for the last time, but you don't necessarily know it's going to be that way - before you know it, somebody moves on or goes to college or whatever. And I was just feeling very nostalgic. And it wasn't necessarily this idea of talking to your younger-older self, or certainly not the mushrooms, that was the initial spark for me wanting to tell this story.

It was that feeling, and then again, thinking about I used to love making dance videos on like our VHS to Spice Girls when I was younger, and there was a time when we just did that for the last time and didn't know it, which ended up being sort of a story that Chad talks about in the script. But it was all those feelings that kind of started the story for me. I really wanted to explore this further. I've always loved movies like 13 Going on 30 and those kind of coming-of-age, classic ways to get into stories and themes like this. And I thought, 'Gosh, I'd love to sort of explore a younger and older version of themselves talking to each other.'

But I wanted to be in a headspace, certainly throughout the writing process and also definitely the directing, because The Fallout had been a very heavy movie, and heavy head space to be in, understandably. And this time I was like, I really want to try to do something that's a little lighter and surprises you with sort of the emotion throughout the journey. And so, the mushroom trip was kind of like the silly entry point into it that actually came much later into the process of developing this idea truthfully.

I think when I first took a meeting with LuckyChap, it was just a general meeting, our producers on the heels of Fallout, they were just kind of like, ‘What do you want to do next?’ And I was like, ‘I love really classic, Chris Columbus-esque coming-of-age films, John Hughes-esque, I want to do one that's about a younger and older version of a woman meeting each other.’ Once I kind of got into it, I came to it through the mushroom trip way, because I also was, like, that seems realistic. I know a lot of people do mushrooms, and it's definitely like a camping thing, and definitely something that I feel like 18-year-old Canadians would do on a camping trip so that all kind of came later in the process.

I've realized that for me, I've never done an outline for anything in my life. I don't know necessarily the ending when I start the beginning, and I kind of start with the characters and the emotion and go from there.

Sadie: Going off of that in terms of the character development, Elliot versus older Elliot, mapping out their journey, especially when they meet and not giving away too much to the audience. What was that process like writing that out?

Megan: That was the trickiest thing, because I didn't want this to be a genre, time travel, Butterfly Effect movie. And I felt like if people walked away asking too many questions about that, then we'd failed. It was always supposed to be a buy-in, just like we referenced 13 Going on 30 a lot, in the sense that she goes in the closet and magic dust falls on her head, and she wakes up and she's 30. But the buy-in, you love the characters, you love the story so much that you're like, 'Fuck it,' you're along for the ride, and you don't really ask questions. At least I didn't, and I love that movie. [laughs] So, I think that it was always important that it was really a buy in on loving this character and loving this journey more than anything.

And then I think it was a really delicate balance, through writing it, through filming it, but mostly honestly, through the edit, because I actually think I overwrote it - I gave away too much, probably in the script, just in not trusting maybe myself or the audience, or that it was going to work or not work. And so we actually ended up doing a lot of cutting and tweaking with that specific element in the editing process with the ADR, with the phone conversations…and now that we have this really solid structure we can go back and do fun things…all through the lens of levity always, but not opening up the door too much that you're like, 'Wait a second, how is this all working?' But enough so that you're along for the journey.

But it was definitely the hardest part was how do you not give away the giveaway, which I don't want to give away, of the big emotional punch, and how much do you know about older Elliot without wanting to know more and go down that rabbit hole.

Sadie: While tackling this from page to screen, was there a thematic North Star for you that you were following?

Megan: Oh, that's a good question. Selfishly, I think I was figuring out a little bit of my own grief about time passing. And so I feel like, in a weird way, I realized halfway through that this is older Elliot's movie, it's her message, it's her takeaway, it's her lesson that she learns from younger Elliot, which would seem obvious. But I think that I was just like in it, and just writing from the heart, and not trying to overthink anything that I didn't even realize that till halfway through.

My goal is always to not force anybody ever to feel something or think something, and if it happens, it happens. And that was very important to me in The Fallout too, it was such a heavy subject matter, it was like, how do you make something like that palatable? Because, if I see a movie about a high school shooting, I'm like, 'Fuck that, that's so dark. I don't want to see that shit.' It's so hard to watch. And so I really wanted to approach it in a way that was palatable.

And with this, it's the same way. I feel like time passing, especially as you become a new parent and become an old ass, per se, [laughs] become so triggering and so emotional and so sad, but also such a gift. And so, I feel like I was really trying to explore that for myself. So that was more of the North Star in a weird way - I didn't have this like, 'I hope the audience leaves with this takeaway, or I hope it makes them feel this.'

But I will say that it's been so wild to me, now - you know what's actually funny is a lot of people have been like, 'Were you worried that the audience would know?' and I was like, 'Fuck, maybe I need to worry more about the audience when I'm writing.' [laughs] I forget someone's gonna watch this one day or are gonna read this. When the writing process is so intimate for me and so therapeutic and probably my favorite part of the whole process, sometimes it's so vulnerable, I forget that it's going to be out into the world. And I'm not thinking about the audience at that phase. You start to have to think about that more when you're filming it, and then the edit and the business side of the whole thing.

But it's been such an incredible thing to hear people say things now seeing the movie be like, 'Oh my gosh, I got in my car and I called my mom, or I called my parents and apologized for what an asshole I was as a young person,’ and that's such a cherry on top of it for me. But I will say that as I'm actually writing I'm maybe blissfully or stupidly not thinking about that. [laughs] I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing, but it's always a surprise later, when other people are relating to it.

Sadie: When it came to production and directing, were there any unexpected happy surprises or challenges?

Megan: I mean, all of it - both. I just had a meeting with an executive the day, and he was like, ‘I met you three weeks before on a general before you started filming My Old Ass. And I was thinking, why is this girl down to even take a meeting with me? Isn't she losing her fucking mind? She's about to film movie in three weeks.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, should I have been?’ But I think for me, I spent so many years in front of the camera, and I feel really, really comfortable on a film set that it feels like a second home to me. I started acting professionally at 16. I spent seven years on a TV show every single day. And so, just the world of a set is very comforting and one of my favorite places to be on Earth -I love that. And as much as I love being in my bed, writing on my computer, like Final Draft is one home and a set is another home for me. [laughs]

But I definitely think that you can only prep to a certain degree, truthfully. It's not that I'm under prepped. I know exactly what I need, I know exactly what I want to get, not only in the edit, but to get the movie I want to make. But so much of the heavy lifting is done in the casting process. The casting process was long for this movie. And there's certain parts that are really important to me, but then there's certain elements I go into being like, ‘Honestly, who the fuck knows what's gonna happen?’ 

Not only are you out in the elements in Canada, and you can only control so much literally, you know, you're working with actors who've never been in movies before, you're working with boats, all these elements that you can't control. And I think if you don't go into that with a level of ‘We have to just lean into what's working and not working in the moment and go with the flow to a degree,’ that's when shit gets crazy and out of control. Because it's actually comical [laughs] how little is in your control once you actually get to set.

I don't know who said this or where I read this, but it's so true, and that the movie is three completely different movies to a degree, it's the script, it's the experience on set and actual footage and dailies that you get, and then it's the edit. They're all so different and unique.

I didn't shot list either one of my movies. There was so much that was just out of our control that we didn't know in terms of what we were going to be dealing with, especially out on the water. Like half this movie was out on boats, so it was really unpredictable, and there was only so much prep that we could do. 

And with the actors, I really hated when I was an actor, at least - and every actor needs and wants something different, and I try to give them what they need and want - but I really hated over-rehearsing, especially for certain things that you want to feel fun and fresh. So I spent a lot of time just talking with the actors about the scenes, and especially the actors who had never been in movies before, it was like, 'This is what could go wrong when we're out in the boats, and this is what might happen, and this is how the plan is. But it also could end up being a, b, and c,' to kind of prep them for all different things that might happen, so it didn't throw them. And just doing a lot of talking about what you're hoping to get out of the scene, how it related to them personally. Would they actually say a line this way?

Doing all of that beforehand…and then when we get to set, there's so much more freedom within the constraints of we're losing light and it's fucking windy and everything's going wrong and whatever comes up on the day, you know, I think I'm probably more on the relaxed side once I get to set, because I am going in fully aware of every day is a different type of shit storm, and if you don't roll with it, you're just gonna drive yourself crazy.

Sadie: Making movies is all about putting out fires, right? And you just have to be prepared to have that fire extinguisher ready to go.

Megan: [laughs] And also, not taking yourself too seriously. I worked with so many directors when I was an actor who were just so egocentric and so obsessed with the hierarchy of a film set, like, traditionally how it used to be back in the day. And just trying so hard, thinking that everything they're doing is saving lives. And I'm like, 'Everyone needs to chill.' So that's sort of my general mentality. Like, this movie is important, but we're not saving someone's life, so let's all look at it through that perspective.

Sadie: What would you tell your younger filmmaker self if you could go back in time?

Megan: That's a good question, because I feel like I wish I'd made the transition from acting to writing and directing sooner, because I love it so much. But at the same time, I feel like it probably happened just in the way it was supposed to. No one in my family is in the industry. I didn't have a TV in my house. I didn't know that that was even a career option. But performing was something that I had seen people do, like going to the theater. And so that's kind of like my love for the arts just started with that, because it was really the only path to this for me, from where I came from.

I guess I would tell my younger self, you don't have to be a film school, elite cinephile, to make good movies, and you don't have to know everything about every department. I had so much insecurity. I don't know lenses. Sometimes I confuse a grip and a gaffer - like, all these different things where I was so embarrassed that I was like, ‘Wait, what? How does this all work again technically?’ I've never been in an edit before. But if you work with people who understand what you're trying to do and are collaborative and ego-free, and you stay ego free, you're going to learn so much, and you don't have to know that. What you do have to know is how to work with actors. You have to know how to cast the right people. There's certain things that you really do have to know how to do, or really follow your gut on that, and if you don't, again, that's why there's great casting directors who can help guide you in that process. But I think it's about collecting a team of people that do know what they're doing and being a team player.

And I would tell my younger self, you can step behind the camera without knowing how to turn on a fucking camera. [laughs] You can make a movie without knowing that, because I was really embarrassed about that at the beginning, that was very scary to me. And my DP still jokes, she's like, 'Megan, what camera did we shoot this movie on?' And I'm like, 'I forget.' [laughs] But you know what? She's great at it, and she knows what she's doing, and I know what shots I like, and she knows what shots I like. And when you find those relationships, you hold on to them. And I think that's when, hopefully, the magic happens. 

My Old Ass is in Select Theaters on September 13, 2024 and everywhere on September 27, 2024.