By Bailey Pennick
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there’s always more we can learn about them as people. This year, we decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!
It’s hard not to think about how you would handle a situation differently with that oh so valuable hindsight. As the days and months turn to years, it’s easy to expand on these replays to full on daydreaming about time traveling to reconnect with yourself and straighten out your future. For Megan Park, this universal feeling pulled her into her latest project, the appropriately titled My Old Ass.
“I was fantasizing about something I think we all do, wondering what I would go back and tell my younger self if I had the chance,” the writer-director recalls about the beginnings of her sophomore feature. “After making The Fallout, which, being a movie about the aftermath of a high school shooting and PTSD, absolutely had to have the tone it did, I wanted to make a movie that left people feeling more uplifted and nostalgic. There are so many heavy things happening in the world. I wanted to transport people to the summers of their youth.”
My Old Ass is both heartbreaking and heartwarming, not just as a whole movie, but even within the same scenes. That double-sided feeling of the last summer at your childhood home radiates throughout the film. It’s a fragile and exciting thing to watch, and for Park to share to the world. She couldn’t be more excited that My Old Ass started at the 2024 Festival. “This was always my dream home for this film and honestly it feels surreal. I am just so grateful and hyped,” she says. “Sundance is so supportive of indie films & is so filmmaker friendly. I’m thrilled.”
Below read about how Park made the switch from acting to directing, why the vibe on the My Old Ass set was so important, and what she would go back and change about the production.
Why is filmmaking important to you? Why is it important to the world?
Filmmaking is therapeutic to me. I also take very seriously the idea that if you are given a platform to put something out into the world, what do you want it to say? How do you want people to feel? Both my films are so different in that regard but it was very important for me to make The Fallout and I was OK if it left people devastated because that’s the truth of that film, but there was also a lot of healing in that film.
It was very important for My Old Ass to put something out into the world that was joyful, therapeutic, and left people feeling healed but in a different way. I think filmmaking will always be important to the world because stories bring humans together. They seek to find the truth and connection. To immerse ourselves in a world we don’t understand will make us more empathetic as a society.
Tell us why and how you got into filmmaking?
I took a roundabout way and didn’t find my true path until just five-ish years ago. I acted for many years but always felt like something was missing for me. I come from a small town in Canada, not an industry family, and I didn’t know writing and directing was even an option for me. But I had been on a TV show for about seven years and I just felt like I needed something else. I secretly took a stab at writing a pilot about a girl trapped in a TV show (ha!) and it ended up being bought by a major studio, but never made. Through that I learned so much and it immediately made sense to me in a way acting never did, but I had this incredible gift of loving and understanding actors so well as well as a comfort of sets and crews. From there it happened quickly. The Fallout was my first feature I just wrote on spec. Now I’m addicted and I will never ever not be writing and directing. It’s my home. What it was all for.
Why does My Old Ass need to be told now?
I honestly never know why certain stories come to me at certain times, but this just felt like a dream, getting to give my younger self advice, I wanted to play out now at this phase in my life. Maybe because I’m a new mom? Maybe it’s because of all the dark shit happening in the world but I think stories that make people feel good and are heartfelt are always needed.
Describe who you want this film to reach?
I guess I wrote this film thinking it would be aimed more at young people, but it ended up really resonating with the “old asses” too, so I hope this film reaches a broad audience.
Your favorite part of making My Old Ass? Memories from the process?
Making this film felt like a dream. Truly. I remember in my first call with my producers at LuckyChap, they said “This movie is going to be so fun to film.” And they were not wrong. We were all living in cabins on connecting lakes in Muskoka and we would boat to each other’s places on weekends and evenings, or boat all together to dinners in town.
When Aubrey Plaza got into town, the first night, me and the DP picked her up for dinner on a paddle boat from her dock. Maisy and I were even living on the same property in different cabins for part of it and we’d come home from work and jump in the lake then BBQ dinner together, it was really special. On camera, it was even more magical.
Getting to film in such a beautiful place lent itself to be a really relaxed atmosphere and energy on set. I think the actors loved getting to actually be out on the boats, ripping around on the lake, and in the water. The fact that everyone bonded and was having the best summer ever really bled into the feeling of the film.
What was a big challenge you faced while making this film?
Time and the fact that half this movie takes place on boats. I won’t do that again. Half the time the follow boat didn’t have enough reception so I had no idea what was happening in the scenes. Luckily the actors are genius and the crew was incredible, and we pulled through but boats, they add a lot of time.
What is something that all filmmakers should keep in mind in order to become better cinematic storytellers?
Truth should always be the North Star. Whatever that truth is.
If you weren’t a filmmaker, what would you be doing?
I’d be super bummed, but I would probably find another avenue in storytelling. Maybe become an author (which is on my list anyway!)?
One thing people don’t know about me is _____
When I was seven, I dressed up as pioneer Laura Ingalls [Wilder] for an entire year of my life and made everyone call me Laura and even wore a nightcap to bed. Those were the days man.
What’s your favorite film that has come from the Sundance Institute or Festival?
That question should be illegal! Too many! But the first one that came to mind is Little Miss Sunshine.
Join actor and filmmaker Megan Park tonight to discuss balancing comedy and tragedy, redefining the coming of age genre, creating a visual style that enhances your tone, and getting powerful performances in our latest Sundance Collab Spotlight Event.
