Kris Rey’s newest feature film, I Used to Go Here, is an utterly charming and hilarious comedy that seems to have captured a moment in contemporary millennial life that hasn’t been done yet on film. While so many films that attempt to tackle the uneasiness and confusion of 30-somethings through drama or caricature, I Used to Go Here takes a much more realistic route. Heavy with ill-placed nostalgia, and deference to the Zoomer generation who seem to maybe have their shit together a little bit better, the characters here are multidimensional and robust. With this film we see Rey’s exponential growth as a filmmaker, from her indie background of mumblecore films to this recent Lonely Island produced high-concept comedy. There’s a pleasure in I Used to Go Here that can only come from a writer/director who is not only writing about what they know, but are having fun doing so — and found a group of people to have fun putting it on film.
Speaking on the phone a few hours before she was to moderate a Q&A at a drive-in movie theater for the Chicago premiere of a friend’s feature, Rey and I had the chance to discuss her growth as a filmmaker into more scripted work, gender politics, and screen representation, defying genre to tell a story, and hooking up with a production team known for far sillier comedies than her own.
FC: So how does it feel to finally have this movie out?
KR: It feels amazing [laughter]. I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time and I was afraid for a second there, I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen. So I’m very happy.
FC: What was it like to have it premiere at a drive-in, as opposed to a normal theatrical one?
KR: It was… well… listen, I really would have loved it to play a sold out screening at South By Southwest with 500 people. I think it would have been amazing, with all my cast there able to get up on stage. I’m really sad that that didn’t happen. But, I never expected in a million years that the movie would play at a drive-in theater and I think it’s really, really cool! [laughter] It’s not what I expected, but it was great. And, you know, right now it felt like a communal experience. And I haven’t had a communal experience in a very long time. Outside of the fact that I was at a drive-in with my movie, it was really amazing to be surrounded by a lot of people, everybody in their own little bubbles, safely experiencing the same thing. It was really beautiful.
FC: I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend that, but I have been going to the drive-in quite a bit this summer. It’s been an interesting kind of throwback experience to when I was a kid. Did you grow up going to drive-ins at all?
KR: Never. I never went to a drive-in before, maybe, a month ago? I went down to Memphis, Tennessee to visit my parents and my kids and I went to a drive-in theater there. But I really had such a blast. Have you been to the one down in Pilsen [a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago], where they screened my movie at?
FC: No. But I’ve been wanting to go there.
KR: They deliver stuff to your car. They have incredible tacos! You can order a Modelo and get some tacos…it’s so chill. I was like, “I want to do this…constantly.”
FC: So you were speaking of wishing your cast was there for the premiere, and I just want to talk a little bit about Gillian Jacobs. She was absolutely perfect for this role. I watched the film as a screener to review it, and then I went to the Music Box to watch it again on the screen…
KR: Whoa! Cool!
FC: And the more I watch it, the more I love her in it. The more she disappears into the role. I was wondering how that casting came about? Did you have her in mind?
KR: I didn’t. I don’t typically write with anyone in mind. I met with a bunch of different actors, and I met with Gillian and we just hit it off and she just seemed, like, so cool. I guess I mean cool like, she just seems like someone I’d be friends with. She’s very much herself. She’s very authentic and nice, and excited. And a good actor. I was already a fan of her work, It was just very easy for me to see her in the role. And she was great. It’s nice to hear a lot of people responding to her performance, that’s really good. She just embodied that character so very well.
FC: I absolutely agree. And I really loved the character as well. It’s one of those things where once you see her in it you’re like, “Well, who else could have done this?”
KR: Oh I know, yeah.
FC: Not that she’s typecast at all, but you can see the connection between her as a person and her as a character very much. I really liked the character, Kate, a whole lot. I really identified with her, which was great as someone who isn’t female identifying…
KR: Oh, that’s cool.
FC: I think that there’s a bit of…not a stigma, but people always talk about, “How do men identify with female protagonists? How do women identify with male protagonists?” I think you did so much with the character. She is deeply, and inherently, female…
KR: Yeah.
FC: But her story is very universal.
KR: Yeah! That’s interesting because as you’re talking about that I’m realizing that what we’re given, mostly…Movies with female protagonists, typically what we’re given is a rom-com or a romance film. And I think it does become a little harder to relate if you’re not a straight woman. This movie is not that. She’s getting over a breakup, that’s in there, but it doesn’t feel like it’s in the same sort of romance kind of category. It’s coloring the story, but it isn’t the story. It’s really a person who’s going through personal growth. It doesn’t feel divisive to me in a way that I think other films with female characters can to men. I haven’t thought about it much, but I’ve had a lot of great responses from men. I think there is a universality to this particular movie. We’re usually not given such a three dimensional view of a woman, a woman that is not with a capital W, but an actual person.
FC: Absolutely. The highly gendered roles in Hollywood tend to stratify the audience. And when you get a two dimensional role you can’t plug into A, B, or C, and therefore you’re not going to identify with the character. With this character, I really identified with how nostalgic she is as a person. As the story goes, and she’s returning back to her college town she doesn’t really regress as much as she dives deeper into her nostalgia about things. And I liked that because it didn’t simplify her. She’s kind of starting her career, but having a mid-life crisis at the same time.
KR: [laughter] Yeah!
FC: I thought it was great. Were you trying to go for that feeling?
KR: I wasn’t really trying to go for anything, and I think the movie defies genre a little bit. But god, life does too, you know? We’re usually not going through life and being like, “Wow, I’m really coming of age right now!” [laughter] Things just happen to us at all different stages of our life, you know? And this is a unique moment that isn’t explored much in film. Maybe it isn’t explored much because it doesn’t happen that often, or maybe it’s not explored much because it hasn’t been explored much. But I dunno, being in your 30s not knowing what the hell you’re doing, thinking for a while that you did, realizing that you didn’t, and then wanting to turn things around doesn’t feel that crazy. It feels like it’s got to be a common enough experience. But it doesn’t fit into a box, I guess. So I wasn’t thinking of mid-life crisis, or coming of age, or any of that stuff. Really I was thinking, “This would be a really funny and cool story,” and then tried to tell it the best way that I could. Only in the marketing of the film have I come into a little bit of trouble where people are like, “Well…but what box do I check?” [laughter] I don’t know!
FC: That makes absolute sense because it does have elements of coming of age and generational things. I thought of it, not as a 1-to-1 comparison, but the same kind of atmosphere as something like Reality Bites…
KR: Reality Bites! That’s a good example.
FC: When I watched it I was thinking how it’s almost the perfect older millennial film in that it tackles these ideas of, not just adulthood, but personhood. What do you do when you realize you’ve gone all in on your career and who you are, and you might be a little too old to turn back? You’re not young enough to still have it all in front of you still.
KR: I feel that.
FC: I liked how you played with that, and how you said it’s not really one genre, because at one point the film turns into a college hijinks film. Almost an 80s/90s college comedy throwback. I was wondering if you were playing into that, having Kate team up with a bunch of Zoomers and try to sneak into the professor’s house?
KR: When I was writing the movie it just felt like that’s what should happen. [laughter] It wasn’t so thought out that way. I just thought this would be fun, and it is a regression in a way. Maybe not a regression…It’s her enjoying the time in your life where stakes are just lower. Being that age, being in your late teens and early 20s, you just feel a little like the rules don’t apply to you and you can get away with stuff. And in a way you can because people are like, “Oh, it’s just college kids.” Whereas if a bunch of people in their late-30s break into somebody’s house it’s just, uh, illegal. You’re going to go to jail for that. [laughter] But it doesn’t feel that way when you’re young, it feels like an adventure. You’re sneaking around. She’s only able to get to that place there. She would never do that back at home in Chicago. Being there in that sort of environment with those kids makes her feel that this is okay behavior. It’s something she’s willing to do, it just seems like fun, and exciting, and important. I just wanted to show her in that way.
FC: Kate is a really great character, and something that I’ve found by going back and watching some of your other films is that a lot of your protagonists seem to be women who are both really assured of themselves in the present, but very fearful of their future at the same time.
KR: Hmmm…interesting.
FC: I thought that Empire Builder played that almost for horror, or terror…
KR: Oh, yeah.
FC: And this one played it for comedy. It’s almost two sides of the same coin. Is that something that you see as a through-line through your characters?
KR: It does seem so, doesn’t it? [laughter] It’s not intentional, and as my body of work grows I do look back…Did you see my first movie, It Was Great But I Was Ready to Come Home? That one is also…It’s really tonally different, even different from Empire Builder, but made very similarly. It’s so different. You wouldn’t even recognize it next to I Used to Go Here, but it’s a really similar story. It’s about a woman who takes a trip with her best friend as a way to get over a breakup and then goes back home in the end. She goes back, gets on the train to her house in Chicago. And this movie does too. Empire Builder has her taking a train. It’s interesting that I keep telling these similar stories in different ways. [laughter] I don’t really know. Maybe it’ll take me a few more years to really figure it out, but that certainly is a story that I keep being interested in telling.
FC: How has it been going from doing stuff basically totally independent where you can play a little fast and loose…You’re infamous for having more improvisation in your early films. How has it been adjusting to a much more stringent film making style for these more recent films?
KR: I like it. It doesn’t feel stringent to me, it feels freeing to me, because I have a very strong blueprint and then I can vary from that. Whereas in my early films I didn’t have a blueprint at all and it felt very stressful for me to make sure I was saying what I wanted to say. And I feel much more relaxed knowing that it all works on the page, and it’s there at least — and I have a plan. I can get on set and we can change the plan, we can vary it, and we can adjust it. We can make it funnier, we can make it sadder, we can do whatever. If someone has an idea, let’s do it. I feel like I didn’t have enough structure in my earlier films and I spent a lot more time just stressing out in production. I love the way they turned out, I like the movies, but a lot of that is due to my editor of those films, David Lowery, who just made them really, really good. But I was sort of panicking a lot during those early movies. Obviously I’ve had a lot more experience since then, and that’s part of the reason why, but also it’s because I have a really good plan.
FC: That obviously makes sense, since you’re not having actors go with it, and you’re having to play relay with that.
KR: Exactly.
FC: How did you end up hooking up with Lonely Island for this one? Because this is a comedy, but it seems that their comedy is a lot more broad and goofy, and not to disparage what they do because I like what they do, but this doesn’t seem in their wheelhouse.
KR: I thought with Lonely Island, that these guys are so silly this is just not going to be a good match. And before I went to go meet with them, my agent actually scheduled the meeting. I called my agent and told him, “I don’t think I should go on this meeting.” He said, “Go meet with them. They’re producing other stuff now. You’re gonna really like them.” And I did. I met with Becky Sloviter. Who ran the production company at the time, and she was just incredible. And we’ve become really good friends. We had a really good meeting, and she totally got the script. I got complete autonomy and I didn’t feel the pressure from them to change anything. They were there if I needed guidance, but in general they were just a really supportive force. They liked what I was going to do and were happy with that, and didn’t try to have an influence beyond what I welcomed. So it was a great relationship.
FC: So one last question. It’s kind of an aside question that I ask everyone that I interview…What is something that you know to be 100% true that somebody else would disagree with you about?
KR: Oh…That is a difficult question. Hmmm…I don’t know! [laughter] This is tough. Something that I’m 100% sure on? Is there much?
FC: Something where you go, “This is how it is.” And someone then goes, “No, it’s not.”
KR: I’m going to say…shit. Why is this so tough? I guess I can’t skip this question, huh?
FC: [laughter] No, that’s fine. If you’re not 100% on anything that’s an answer in itself.
KR: [laughter] Great! I’ll take it!
I Used to Go Here is now available on VOD.
