Filmmaker Spotlight: Megan Park

By Morgan Roberts

There is always something quite intriguing about the work of an actor turned director. From Rebecca Hall to Anna Kendrick, Kasi Lemmons to Joan Chen, Melanie Mayron to Ida Lupino, we have long witnessed actors move from in front of the camera to behind it. For Megan Park, it became no surprise to see that shift. While Park has had been a working actor since 2003, her big breakout came with the ABC Family show “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Around and after the run of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” Park made a number of independent films like “What If” and “Charlie Bartlett” - a personal favorite - and appeared on shows such as “The Newsroom,” “The Neighbors,” and “Jane the Virgin.” In the late 2010s, Park begin writing and directing releasing two short films “Lucy in My Eyes” and “A Beautiful Future: Goodnight” in 2017 and 2018, respectively. She was also working in music videos, directing Billie Eilish’s “Watch” and Alina Baraz’s “Buzzin.”

Her writing and directing really took off with 2021’s “The Fallout,” a film about teenagers who survived a school shooting. The film premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival with Park winning the Brightcove Illumination Award and the film winning both the Narrative Feature Competition Audience Award and the Narrative Feature Competition Grand Jury Award. Park did not suffer a sophomore slump with her second film, “My Old Ass” which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Park would find herself nominated through a number of organizations including the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and the Film Independent Spirit Awards - to name a few. With Park already working on her next project, I wanted to highlight her films as we look forward to her continued work behind the camera.

The Fallout (2021)

When audiences first meet Vada Cavell (Jenna Ortega), she is a happy, healthy teenager. She has her best friend Nick (Will Ropp) and is a protective older sister to Amelia (Lumi Pollack). But all of that changes after a student opens first at the school, forcing her and classmates Mia (Maddie Ziegler) and Quinton (Niles Fitch) to hide in a bathroom stall during the ordeal. Following the event, Vada becomes withdrawn, frozen in a fight, flight, or freeze response after what she has experienced. She does, however, begin to grow close to Maddie, a popular schoolmate and dancer. After their shared experience, the unlikely pair grow close but it makes sense. Mia and Quinton are the two other people to be in the same place as Vada as their lives were forever changed.

Jenna Ortega in “The Fallout” | Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema

U.S. audiences are far too familiar with the reality of school shootings. The Washington Post has been tracking school shootings since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. At time of writing, there have been 428 school shootings, with more than 394,000 students experiencing gun violence at school since April 1999. Generations have been defined by gun violence in their schools. Over the last 26 years, Americans have witnessed countless of lives lost and forever scarred by school shootings. Park, a Canadian, takes a different approach than filmmakers like Brady Corbet with the opening of his movie, “Vox Lux,” or Vadim Perelman with “The Life Before Her Eyes.” Park’s approach is more rooted in the humanness of trauma. She is clearly more interested in the ripple effects of trauma. Park never shows the events, opting to stay with Vada, Maddie, and Quinton in the bathroom stall. Audience members can create far worse of a scenario of circumstances than Park could ever show. A majority of the film focuses on the aftermath - or fallout, if you will - which seems to be the forgotten element of school shootings. After the news vans and public gawking leave, survivors are left with immeasurable trauma.

Maddie Ziegler and Jenna Ortega in “The Fallout” | Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema

Park takes on the challenge of the more internal experience of the freeze response to trauma. Vada has mood swings and isolates herself from her family and friends, but gravitates towards the people who were there in that moment. It is difficult to balance internalized struggles with a storytelling medium that is visual like cinema. Ortega is the right actor to strike that balance. There are subtleties to her work which provide deep insight into where Vada is. It is evident following the shooting that she is trying to numb herself, and in that state, we see the cracks. We get glimpses of the deep wells of pain, guilt, anxiety. But together, Park and Ortega never betray Vada’s experience. So often, the cinematic version of trauma is loud, with big emotions. And while that can be someone’s experience, it does not encapsulate all experiences. There are moments when Vada has an outburst or breaks down, but there are just as any instances the audience sits with her in her growing fear, in her inability to move forward. These are some of the most human moments the audience gets with Vada because it shies away from public and pop culture expectations of trauma. It is a shift in understanding we will see later in films such as Ally Pankiw’s “I Used to Be Funny” or Brittany Snow’s “Parachute.” With “The Fallout,” Park led the charge in that shift of understanding what it means to survive trauma.

My Old Ass (2024)

With her second feature film, Park goes from drama to more of a dramedy, still in the coming-of-age genre. In “My Old Ass,” Elliott (Maisy Stella) is spending her last weeks of summer in her tiny Ontario town before heading off to Toronto for school. To celebrate her 18th birthday, Elliott and her best friends Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) decide to go camping and to take a shit ton (that is a unit of measurement) of mushrooms. While Ro and Ruthie are on their trips, Elliott does not think her drugs are working until her older self (Aubrey Plaza) appears. Excited to meet her old ass, Elliott asks what her life is like. Older Elliott decides not to give too much away, but does disclose that should Elliott meet someone named Chad (Percy Hynes White), she should stay away from him. That immediately becomes complicated when Chad begins working on Elliott’s family cranberry farm.

Percy Hynes White and Maisy Stella in “My Old Ass” | Prime

As a writer, Park captures banter so beautifully. It is something from older films that feels like a forgotten art form. We get these moments between Elliott and Older Elliott that feel so natural, especially when Older Elliott has a bit of an advantage of knowing Elliott better than she knows herself yet. Their interactions are minimal, but they are some of the most impactful scenes. We have that same natural dialogue with Elliott and her friends. As a filmmaker, Park seems quite interested in just inserting the audience into the story, and allowing them to sit with the reality of her characters, integrating the audience into being almost this watchful presence in the film. We see Elliott with Ro and Ruthie, and even though the film does not center on their friendship, their relationship with one another feels so integral to Elliott’s journey.

Then there is Chad. Chad… somehow Park crafted a man, let alone one named Chad, who is kind and sensitive and thoughtful and there is nothing wrong with him. When watching films by women, there is something different, usually, about the men in the film. They are more emotional, more nuanced, more layered. Park takes it one step further and crafts a truly wonderful person. With the warning earlier on in the film, and just existing as a human woman in the world, there is a hesitancy to trust Chad. He likes “Little Women,” he fixes boats, and he seems generally interested in those around him. Much like Elliott, the audience is looking for any clue as to why Older Elliott would tell her younger self to stay far away, and yet, he continues to be simply lovely. It feels truly rare in films to see men as caring and compassionate as Chad, and it elevates his dynamic with Elliott who has received an ominous warning without further context.

Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaze in “My Old Ass” | Photo by Shane Mahood

We later learn that Older Elliott told Elliott to stay because Chad dies. It is this soul crushing loss that Older Elliott seemingly hasn’t recovered from. It is one of the most stunningly human moments in a film from last year. I cannot imagine what it is like watching “My Old Ass” as a teenager or someone in their early 20s, contemporaries to Elliott. But as an audience member in their 30s, it was this turn in the film that completely caught me by surprise, and yet, it makes the most sense. Sure, there are moments in all of our lives that we regret, or wish we could do a little differently. And as we get older, there are certainly profound moments that we wonder the people we would be had we not endured that loss, that grief. “My Old Ass” was already a touching coming-of-age film, but this stunning revelation took this film to greater emotional depths. It is in this moment too that we get to see the beauty of being young. Elliott realizes that even though she will eventually lose Chad, the bravest, most profound thing she can do is love him for however long she gets to be with him. It challenges what we think of as safety. Our older self’s desire to stay away from harm, and our young self’s yearning to live life to the fullest. It remains a deeply human work of cinema that is stirring, funny, heartfelt, and simply lovely.

Looking Ahead

Park currently has a television series, currently titled “Sterling Point,” in development.  Little is known about the project, but we do know she will be reteaming with Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap and Amazon for the YA series. Park will be working with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage who will executive produce and co-showrun. Park is slated to not only write the series, but direct, executive produce, and serve as co-showrunner. Park first worked with LuckyChap and Amazon on “My Old Ass.”

Park has found a sweet spot with coming-of-age stories, crafting films which speak to the experiences of teens and young adults, while also capturing and validating that time for adult audiences. She speaks across generations without detracting from the truths and lives of her characters. Both of her feature films have about 90 minute runtimes, and she has always been able to pack an emotional punch with each movie. Venturing into television feels both natural and exciting to see what she can accomplish there. As an actor, she spent five seasons on a show. It will be interesting to see what she brings from that experience into her new series. Additionally, it is exciting to see her have the long-form storytelling of television as her project. There are obvious similarities in film and television, but television does have different advantages and challenges. The time commitment is one, and also the storytelling arcs differ. Given what she was able to accomplish with “My Old Ass” and the support given by LuckyChap and Amazon, I cannot wait to see what Park has in store for audiences.