'My Old Ass': Megan Park puts a quintessential Canadian cottage summer on screen with star Maisy Stella
"Why has nobody ever filmed a movie in Muskoka before?" Park said
Megan Park has brought the magic of a teenage Muskoka, Ont., summer to the screen with My Old Ass (now on Prime Video), starring fellow Canadian Maisy Stella, along with Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White and Maddie Ziegler.
"It was kind of like, why has this never been shot?" Park told Yahoo Canada. "Why has nobody ever filmed a movie in Muskoka before? It's so beautiful. ... [Maisy and I] grew up in small towns like 30 minutes away [from each other], I grew up in Lindsay, Ontario. She grew up in Oshawa."
"It was obviously a subtle nod to my childhood summers up there and going to camp up there and having so many fond memories. I also, truthfully, I really wanted to make a movie set in Canada about Canadians that was very Canadian, but also universal. That wasn't so specific that other people couldn't relate to it from other places, so that was very intentional. And then the fact that there were so many great Canadians also part of this project, it was really fun. And I loved being back in Canada making a movie, like what a dream."
"It was the coolest ever," Stella added. "I feel like, literally, the air of Canadian summer was very healing for me."
"Getting to film something literally two hours away from where I'm from and where my entire family lives, was so special and added such a layer to the message of this movie and the nostalgia and the emotions. It was a wild move on [Megan's] behalf, because it kind of made it a little too real, but it was very, very, very special. It was the best."
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What is 'My Old Ass' about?
It's the summer before Elliott (Stella) leaves her small town for university in Toronto and her priority is to spend as much time with her friends Ruthie (Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) as possible, and hook up with a girl she's had a crush on for a while.
On Elliott's 18th birthday, instead of spending the evening with her family, she has a birthday mushroom trip with her friends. It's at that moment that Elliott meets her 39-year-old self, literally, played by Plaza.
Initially frightened but then getting curious about her future, Older Elliott is careful to not spill too many details about her adult life, but Older Elliott has one warning for her younger self, don't fall in love with a boy named Chad.
At that point Elliott has no idea who Chad is, but meets him shortly after this conversation. Chad (White) is working on her family's cranberry farm that summer and while Elliott tries to avoid him, she can't help but lean into their attraction to each other.
In a particularly emotional moment, Older Elliott tells her younger self why she didn't want Elliott to fall in love with Chad, in a uniquely powerful coming-of-age story.
'It's not wrong. I wasn't wrong'
There's a really appealing nostalgic quality to My Old Ass that makes you feel like you're really in Ontario's cottage area. Much of that has to do with Park's decision to not have a lot of phones or technology in the film, apart from the cell phone Elliott uses to contact her older self.
"I'm even sad that we had to use as many phones as we did," Park said. "I wish it had been a landline or something, but the next project I'm doing there's literally no phones."
"That's what's also really special and nostalgic about Muskoka, it is one of the few places on earth that I think you could just put your phone down. You don't need a phone. I think everyone's a little burnt out on that and it also adds to the hopefully evergreen feeling of the movie. I think when you get into phone stuff and social media stuff, it really makes it very specific."
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Watch My Old Ass on Prime Video with a 30-day free trial, then $9.99/month
Additionally, Park's film doesn't use its coming-of-age setup as Elliott's coming out story. Instead, it shows the character exploring her sexuality, whatever that may be, without the confines of a specific label.
"[I was] raised in a way where labels were like, kind of like a foreign thing to me," Stella said. "I was genuinely raised in a family that there was never external pressure for me to know what I was or what I am."
"I know that's not everyone's experience, not everyone got that luxury of not feeling stressed and pressured. And the stress around sexuality didn't honestly come into my life until much later and I had this realization of like, I don't have to know. And if I think I know right now, then I do know right now, and if it changes, then it changes, and it's not wrong. I wasn't wrong. ... I think I am just very much a big believer in allowing for growth and change, and not holding yourself to anything. I was very proud of the way that it turned out and the way that [Megan] wrote it."
"We talked a lot about how coming out stories are really important, but this wasn't necessarily that," Park added. "It was a part of Elliott's journey and it was a conversation, but this wasn't the whole story for this film."
"We talked to a lot of people in the community. It is a really important thing to get right, so we took it very seriously."
'You forget about the fact that it's such a crazy idea'
If you're thinking the possibility of someone seeing and interacting with their older self is a very out there concept, you're correct, but through Park's writing the film is impressively feels so grounded. That's a significant part of what makes My Old Ass feel so special.
"The movies that I love are all human stories and character-based films, and I'm not like a sci-fi person," Park said. "And although this is a really high concept idea, I think we reference movies like 13 Going on 30 and Mrs. Doubtfire, these ideas that are really big, ... but the stories are so human and grounded at the core that you forget about the fact that it's such a crazy idea."
"So the north star was always authenticity and keeping the film grounded amidst kind of this wild idea. And that's honestly why mushrooms became the entry point. ... The mushroom thing kind of allowed you the freedom to be like, "Did she actually have that trip? Like, did that happen?'"
"Your choices are always just so correct," Stella added about Park. "I feel like every decision along the writing process was the right way to do it, but I love that it wasn't too obsessed over."
