My Old Ass director wanted to make an authentic Gen Z film

Generation Z can be particularly hard to please, but 38-year-old Megan Park may have cracked the code.

The director behind “The Fallout” tackled a new coming-of-age story in “My Old Ass,” a story that took her back to her roots in Canada on Lake Joseph.

The film follows Elliott (Maisy Stella) as she tries to cherish her last summer before heading off to college, but happens to encounter her 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza. Park’s second film focuses Generation Z in a way that feels authentic to the times, something she missed as a young actress.

“I was an on-camera actor for years as a teenager, telling stories that didn’t always seem authentic to what my generation experienced, wore or said, and no one ever asked me for my opinion. Park told TheWrap. She wanted to change that when she took her place in the director’s chair, Park added. “Just opening the door to ask people’s opinions, I think, is step one.”

Park’s directorial debut, “The Fallout,” tackled a story that has become more relevant to the Gen Z narrative, but one that many had avoided: school shootings. When asked what sparked her interest in storytelling for young people, Park said that at her core, she just wants to tell a human story.

“When I try to write younger characters or stories for this generation, I don’t necessarily try to put that first. I just try to write a human story first,” Park said. “Talking to real Gen Zers – they hate that line,” she said, laughing, as her leading man Stella interjected, “I hated that.”

Stella, now 20, complimented Park on her receptiveness to Generation Z’s point of view, trying to understand it rather than caricature it. The rising star, best known for her role in “Nashville” and her viral 2012 cover song “Call Your Girlfriend,” said Park encouraged collaboration on set — especially when discussing the characters’ fluid expressions of gender and sexuality.

“It felt very exciting as actors,” Stella told TheWrap. “Getting the room you (Park) probably didn’t get.”

Park made it clear that while the film explores queerness as a theme, it wasn’t the central message of “My Old Ass” — just as for many Gen Zers it’s just part of their identity.

“I think coming out stories are really important, but this wasn’t that story,” Park said. “In ‘Fallout,’ it was like, when you talk about going to high school in America as Gen Z, school shootings and being afraid of going to school are organically part of that conversation. And it felt kind of the same around the strange conversations with this movie.

In ‘My Old Ass’ Elliott spends her last summer at home on a lake in Canada. After Elliott does festive shrooms with two of her best friends in high school, she meets her older self. Elliott tries to take her older self’s advice to heart, while acknowledging that she will make mistakes along the way. Dealing with crushes and leaving her childhood behind, Elliott takes an emotional and funny journey out of adolescence.

The film taps into Gen Z nostalgia and even features “Dance Moms” star Maddie Ziegler dancing and singing Stella in one scene. In her second mushroom trip in the film, Elliott lives out every girl’s 2000s fantasy of becoming Justin Bieber’s “One Less Lonely Girl.” The director put a twist on the iconic moment from Bieber’s ‘My World Tour’ and turned the gender dynamic on its head.

“It was originally written as another series that we couldn’t get the rights to, and so I went to Maisy and I thought, ‘What’s that defining moment from your childhood or teenage years?’” Park said.

“It was a gut reaction,” Stella said. “’One Less Lonely Girl’ was super important to me. I was the main audience for that. I had a literal pillow with (Bieber’s) face on it and a speech bubble that said, ‘Sweet dreams. Corn.’ So that was me, it was actually a bit much.”

“My Old Ass” is available now in select theaters and debuts nationwide on Friday, September 27.