Y2K Sci-Fi Comedy Director Interview

If you grew up in the 1990s, you remember the scare that was Y2K. It was the fear that, because technology hadn’t allowed for four digits when using years, the switch from 1999 to 2000 would screw up everything, everywhere. It never happened but, what if it did? And, what if instead of a few computers getting shut down, those computers instead decided to kill us?

That’s the idea of Y2K, the new sci-fi comedy from co-writer and director Kyle Mooney. Most of us know Mooney from his time on Saturday Night Live but here, in his directorial debut, he has an A-list young cast including Snow White‘s Rachel Zegler, It: Chapter One’s Jaeden Martell, and Deadpool 2‘s Julian Dennison as teenagers just out partying on New Year’s Eve 1999, until everything goes wrong. Oh, and Fred Durst is in it, as himself.

Y2K is in theaters now and io9 sat down over video chat to talk with Mooney all about it. We discussed trying to convince cool young actors that the 1990s weren’t lame. We asked about some of the nerdier aspects of the film such as its custom action figures and funny Legend of Zelda references. We also dove into the fact a video store is a main location in the film and how that got worked out. Plus, having never spoken to Mooney before, we had to ask about one of our favorite SNL skits ever that makes some very odd references to the Pixar movie Soul. Read about all that and more.

Germain Lussier, io9: I was born in 1980. So this movie spoke directly to me and some of my experiences which I’m sure, as the co-writer and director, was the same for you. What is it like though bringing in actors—a lot of whom weren’t even born yet in 1999—and convincing them this stuff is cool? Do you come off as uncool explaining to them what Chumbawumba was?

Kyle Mooney: I’m sure I constantly come off uncool to them.

io9: [Laughs]

Mooney: Yeah, I mean we gave them some sort of ins into the culture. We made playlists for everybody. We sent a list of movies of the era, mainly I think to Julian and Jaden. But it was sort of on the actors to decide how much time they wanted to invest in learning about that era. And some I feel like invested more time and some didn’t. I will say like, speaking of like kind of uncoolness, one of our actors and I don’t want to throw this person under the bus, but said specifically something to the effect of “’90s music sucks.”

io9: And they were incorrect.

Mooney: [Laughs]

io9: I like that the movie starts as kind of a normal, Can’t Hardly Wait, very teen comedy and then we take the right turn into the sci-fi horror. Talk about that balance, because obviously that was your idea from the beginning—but I’m wondering if there was ever going to be more of a reveal?

Mooney: Yeah, like you said, it was there from the initial pitch of the idea with my friend Evan [Winter], who I made it with. I think we definitely wanted it to feel as grounded and real to the era as possible in that first act. And, like you said, we’re really pulling from those teen movies of the era like Can’t Hardly Wait, 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s All That, etc. I think the transitions, we were always conscious of them and they could be a little scary. There was a lot of talk of “Is there anything we need to do aesthetically to ease us in there?” But ultimately it just came down to what felt right in exploration and I do think it was really helped by, obviously, the artisans. Everybody had our back and knew that was a challenging component. But also the actors playing everything as real as possible, reacting as real as possible, trying to make this feel like “Oh shit. This is actually happening.” But yeah, I feel like a lot of it was just, I hate to say it, but luck. It’s just like “Okay. This is working,” you know what I mean? Hopefully. But yeah, it was something we talked about a lot and just sort of like tried to do our best to make it as smooth as possible.

io9: Yeah. Absolutely. Now, I want to ask a couple of specific nerdy deep-cut questions. Like, for example, there’s a thematic throughline with custom action figures and as someone who did that growing up, I related. Where did that idea come from and then, obviously the offshoot of that is why do they make That ’70s Show figures?

Mooney: Well, now I’ve got to know. You customized action figures?

io9: I tried to. I used to read Wizard and there were great ones in there so I remember I tried to take a RoboCop and make him into the Valiant Comics character X-O Manowar but it did not work. So I used to do that kind of stuff a little bit.

Mooney: I have a RoboCop figure. I wonder, is it from the late ’80s?

io9: Yeah, it had the one helmet that came off.

Mooney: Yep. Um, yeah. Where it came from as a concept was wanting this sort of shared interest between [Martell and Dennison’s characters] Eli and Danny and one that Danny is maybe over a little bit. Just a way of cementing these characters, who they are, and where they’re at when we’re meeting them. And I collect toys a little bit. I love action figures of the era. I never did that specifically but it just seemed like a fun way to, one, create this shared interest, but also like do something reference-y of the time—and it felt like, yeah, just a cool thing that people would be into. And making the dioramas felt like, again, just a neat thing to see like what their version of Seinfeld is or Home Improvement or whatever. And then in terms of landing on That ’70s Show I think… I don’t want to say “random” but something at the time that felt like “Oh, this seems like a pretty hyper-specific reference that would be silly to play around with.”

io9: I also noticed at the end of the film the LLC is the “Ocarina Incident,” which is obviously a specific reference to a joke in the movie [note: Danny pees in Eli’s soda when they’re playing The Ocarina of Time]. But I’m wondering, is the “Ocarina Incident” based on anything real, and were you and Evan Zelda fans?

Mooney: Definitely a Zelda fan and I’ve got to give credit to Evan because I think he fought for that to be the name of the LLC. You know the closest thing that happened… I never—I believe—had my soda pissed in. And I never did the pissing so it could have happened unbeknownst to me! But I do remember one time when I was a kid, my brother was drinking a Diet Coke or something like that and I sprayed some aerosol in it. Like a spray potpourri-type situation.

io9: Yeah, of course.

Mooney: Yeah. And he tasted it and was like, “Oh my god. Did you spray that in there?” And he got kind of pissed at me and we called poison control and uh, they pretty much said that he was going to be okay. But I felt incredibly guilty at the moment. So that’s probably the closest link to something like that.

io9: Gotcha. Yeah, I just pictured the little green “Ick” sticker that we’d had stuff on stuff at the time.

Mooney: Yes. Yes. Yes.

io9: Another thing that hit me right in the feels was I worked in a video store from 1994 to 2000, so I loved seeing your character working at the video store. Obviously that’s a big production design task but how much input did you have specifically on what movies would be featured? What would be on the shelves? Tell me a little bit about designing the video store.

Mooney: Yeah, that was a really fun component and credit to our production designer Jason Singleton. A lot of it, like so much of this movie—pitching on wardrobe and other components—was winding references and trying to find photos of people’s bedrooms, etc. But yeah, collecting photos of video stores was so fun and it sort of immediately, for me at least, takes you there and feels familiar. And Evan is essentially in Eugene, Oregon, I’m from San Diego. But what you see on screen, hopefully, it feels like it could be anywhere. I feel like that could be in San Diego and I’m sure he would say it feels like that could be in Oregon. And, I mean, I don’t know what the video store you worked at, what the porn section was like, but that was a pretty elusive area.

io9: We had beads that hid it and you could hear people going in and out.

Mooney: Yeah. And I was young when I first noticed it but there was something incredibly mysterious about it. At some point it became very obvious what it was and you’d sort of watch who’s coming in and out. But in terms of what we see inside the store—the posters, the cutouts—I think we were sort of given a list of movies from a studio that were fair game and we sort of picked from there. There were some pie-in-the-sky things that we wanted to get in there but I think we were really psyched with what we ended up with. I know we got a Mystery Men in there. We got Patch Adams. A movie I love that nobody ever really talks about, Heart and Souls with Robert Downey Jr— which I don’t think is streaming anywhere or anything like that—but that was a movie I watched over and over again. So we got a Heart and Souls poster in there.

io9: Yeah, that’s a deep cut. And out of all the movies they could have rented and watched, why Junior?

Mooney: I think initially in the script it was something else. It was something weirder that [my character] Garrett is recommending. Something trippier. I want to say maybe for a while it was Time Masters, which is this René Laloux animated movie. But it evolved and eventually, I don’t know, something about Junior really tickled us. We watched scenes from it and it’s just a really funny movie and it feels like a movie that you would have just rented. It feels like a rentable movie

io9: Totally. You’re like “Oh it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, how can it be bad?”

Mooney: Yeah, it’s like “It’s not Twins, it’s what they made several years later.” And also it’s one of those things like where—and I feel like a lot of this happens when you’re making stuff, and it’s an awesome thing to happen—that’s where we ended up, and I feel like now I can’t imagine it being anything else. It feels like so perfect and I feel so blessed that we ended up where we ended up.

io9: Yeah, awesome. Now I’ll get back to the movie but I have to ask you about an SNL sketch. It’s one of my favorites and again a deeper cut. Nick Jonas hosting in 2021. The amusement park where you have a doll of Joe Gardner from Soul. My wife and I watch it all the time so I’m just wondering, like, where did that idea come from? Why was it Joe Gardner? Whatever you can remember because I’m a huge fan and I just want to know as much as you can tell me about it.

Mooney: I love that sketch so much. It’s written by Heidi Gardner. She came up with the entire concept which is something that doesn’t happen a ton, where somebody truly just gives you this little gift and it’s like, “I’ve come up with this thing that I think you’d be really good at.” So shout out to Heidi for giving me the opportunity to do that. But I think, yeah, it’s funny because the character shares the same last name as her so I don’t know if she was making some connection. And I don’t know the name of it the name of that amusement park that they’re at, but it’s a place she went. So yeah, I guess she just really liked the idea of me being a cuck.

io9: Yeah I love it, and the specificity of it. Okay, thank you for indulging me there. A couple more Y2K things here. The creature design is super cool. Weta crushed it. But I definitely got some Akira vibes from it so I was wondering about your initial ideas and input on those?

Mooney: Yeah, I feel like Akira was probably a reference at some point. It’s something that Evan and I talked about from the very beginning and tried to, again, pull pieces from sci-fi of the era. But the thing about working with Weta, who I had never worked with and I think are pretty legendary in that space, is we told them generally what we were thinking. We really liked the idea of this mishmash of electronics and household appliances that were of the era but also even a little before because, you know, maybe you have an old vacuum cleaner in your closet. But they took it and ran with it and immediately everything they gave us, all of the concept art, was like pretty close to what it ended up being. I mean we certainly gave notes, but that is the difference of working with real pros where it’s like, “Oh, you don’t need a ton of direction from us because you get it and you’re gonna make something awesome.” But yeah, truly just fun again. I felt like a kid in a sandbox-type scenario where, like, “Oh shit, you guys are gonna make this thing that we just sort of were riffing on a few months ago into something really awesome.”

io9: Totally. And unfortunately, this is my last thing cause I could geek out with you all day but—the music in this. I feel like talking about the music is obvious but as someone who still listens to ’90s music like my parents still listened to doo-wop or something, I’m curious about your choices. Not only how do you settle on the choices in the film, but how do you settle on which songs are going to get a bit more play, like “Thong Song” or Chumbawumba?

Mooney: Yeah, well I feel like in an early iteration of the draft it was Danny saying something different than “Thong Song,” but sometimes it is, unfortunately, associated with what is clearable.

io9: Right, Of course.

Mooney: But “Thong Song” when we started thinking about that as an idea, it felt like “Okay, that’s great.” So evocative of the era. A classic song. A song that was ubiquitous and mostly everybody loved to some degree. And the iconography of the music video, it just really evokes 1999 to me. And sorry was there another song you mentioned?

io9: “Tub Thumping.”

Mooney: “Tub Thumping.” That was something that evolved over the course of making the movie. I don’t think it was actually in there as much when we were writing. I think that was another song initially in the script. But, for instance, it plays early on in the movie during this drunk montage. That was something that we definitely shot the kids singing the song but we weren’t necessarily intending on having it early in the movie. It feels now, in retrospect, kind of obvious. You want to set this up to some degree. But yeah, there were songs that we scripted from moment one that we wanted in there and some of them ended up in there. Obviously everything with Fred [Durst] that we were hoping for we were able to get. But it is just a guess and check, and sometimes you want something that is incredibly recognizable but sometimes you want something that either people haven’t heard, or they’re like, “Oh shit I haven’t thought about that one in a while.” You know what I mean?  So It’s just a full guttural thing, I think. This feels right or this doesn’t feel right.

Y2K is now in theaters everywhere.

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