After 20 years of acting, ‘My Old Ass’ filmmaker Megan Park finds her groove behind the camera

Megan Park is just getting started as a filmmaker

After 20 years of acting, ‘My Old Ass’ filmmaker Megan Park finds her groove behind the cameraBy LINDSEY BAHRAP Film WriterThe Associated Press

Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It’s not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.

She didn’t set out to make a tearjerker with “My Old Ass,” now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.

Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on “My Old Ass,” she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn’t know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.

In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he’s quite cute.

At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, “The Fallout,” in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn’t even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie ’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.

“They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it,” Park said. “They’re just really even-keeled, good people, which makes them great producers. They treat everybody the same, which is the vibe that I like. There’s no ego, there’s no hierarchy.”

LuckyChap even empowered her to cast Stella first and to build it out around her. In a more traditional setting, she said, you have to start with the most famous person.

Park came to writing and directing after some 20 years of acting. The product of a small town in Canada (Lindsay, Ontario), she knew she loved the arts but had no connections to the industry. The only job she could imagine for herself was actor, she said. Luckily, she had some success at it, with roles in films (“Charlie Bartlett”) and television shows like “Life with Derek” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” (she was Grace, the conservative cheerleader). It was on that show that she met one of her dearest friends, Shailene Woodley, and started to realize that perhaps acting wasn’t quite her passion.

There wasn’t one “ah-ha” moment, but she does remember seeing how passionate Woodley was about getting the role “The Descendants,” which would prove to be her breakout.

“She really wanted that role and she knew that it was her role and she was just like fighting for it and working so hard and was so passionate. I remember thinking that’s so inspiring and so cool that she feels that way about this. And then I was like, ‘(expletive), I don’t feel that way about acting.’”

Instead, Park found that spark in writing, and eventually directing, starting with shorts and music videos for the likes of Billie Eilish, Gucci Mane and even her husband, singer-songwriter Tyler Hilton, before setting off to do a feature.

“I didn’t really know that writing and directing movies was a viable career. So I came about it a little bit backwards,” she said. “I feel so lucky that I had such an education of like 20 years on a film set before I was ever behind the camera, where I was really absorbing way more than I thought I was absorbing.”

As a filmmaker, Park said she has two aesthetic extremes inside of her. The first is “heartfelt, evergreen, nostalgic movies.” Think Chris Columbus, “Stepmom,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “My Girl,” she said. Her other passion is quiet, French, female-driven cinema. Céline Sciamma’s “Tomboy” is the only movie she has downloaded on her computer. On set, she likes to keep things calm, reminding those around her that they’re not “saving lives.”

“I genuinely think that’s an important mentality to have because people get so caught up in it. There’s always going to be a fire, there’s always going to be not enough time, but there’s always going to be a fix to the problem,” she said. “I try to just be clear with what I need, but also really flexible. I think the best directors are people who consider their role as not as the end-all, be-all genius behind the magic because you’re not. You’re the curator of creating an environment for creativity to thrive.”

She’s seen all the extremes as an actor: The energies that work, the ones that don’t and how all actors need different things from the director. And her actors appreciate that about her.

“I want every single movie for the rest of my life to be directed by a woman,” said Stella. “It was one of my favorite experiences. I was just constantly surrounded by female energy, which was very inspiring for me and very safe. It just felt very cozy and sweet and it was very easy to work in that environment.”

It’s been almost a year now since “My Old Ass” became one of the breakout films of the Sundance Film Festival, and almost three years since she started working on it, or, basically half of her nearly 5-year-old daughter’s life (she calls it “the Maisie movie”). With a new 4-month-old as well, she’s just started work on another film. But she’s still feeling the glow from “My Old Ass” and the effect it’s having on audiences.

“You don’t really get your hopes that high that people are going to feel anything, let alone how deeply they seem to be feeling the movie,” she said. “It’s been kind of surreal, honestly and really beautiful and hard to metabolize it all.”