On December 31, 1999, the world was on edge about a possible technological shutdown. Due to a programming bug that only allowed the last two digits of the year to update, people theorized that a society that relied on technology would fall into complete disarray when the date failed to change at the turn of the millennium. Much to people’s relief, the “Y2K Bug” caused minimal disruption. However, what if the widespread panic had been warranted? Kyle Mooney and Evan Winter imagine a possible doomsday scenario in their apocalyptic comedy, Y2K.
In the film, outcasts Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) are determined to end New Year’s Eve with a kiss from popular high school basketball star Laura (Rachel Zegler). But when the clock strikes midnight, the festivities quickly turn to mayhem as technology revolts, transforming into monstrous, humanoid killing machines. As the chaos unfolds, the characters embark on a wild, action-packed adventure to survive—narrowly escaping death and avoiding becoming slaves to the machines. Along the way, they receive help from unlikely sages, including Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst and video store clerk Garrett (played by Mooney).
Other familiar faces include ’90s icon Alicia Silverstone and music artist The Kid Laroi.
We sat down with Mooney and Winter to chat about all things Y2K.
Evan and Kyle, I’m so excited to chat with you after seeing the movie last week, and it brought back so much nostalgia for me. What first inspired the movie for you guys, and how did it go from idea to full script?
Kyle: Well, Evan and I went to college together, were good buddies, and loved movies. Evan’s a very talented writer, and filmmaker. I woke up on New Year’s Day 2019, after we threw a party that Evan attended, a little hungover, and just had the very specific seed of an idea: What if some teenagers went to a party and Y2K actually happened? I texted Evan, we started chatting about it, and then it was like, let’s write this thing, essentially.
Evan: It came together very naturally, and I would say, compared to other things I’ve tried to write, it came together very easily. After that initial text, we just sort of threw ideas back and forth, and I feel like we very quickly landed on, this is not a realistic Y2K. This is like technology coming alive and combining to form these creatures. We landed on all the basic elements, beats, and even characters, like the Breakfast Club-style cliques. All that stuff kind of came together into the DNA of it really early on.
And we just started writing. Kyle was still on SNL when we started writing it. We would talk through stuff. I would write some pages, send them over to him, and he would rewrite them. When he was back in town in LA, we’d meet up and write together. That was just kind of the process for about a year until the script was in pretty good shape.
Fred Durst plays a major role in the last half of the movie, and I read that you wrote him into the script before he had even signed on.
Evan: Fred was in the script from probably the first week. We wanted to have someone come in kind of when everything was at its lowest point and join the crew. We landed on him super early on and we talked about who else it could be. And for various reasons, no one from that era did the same thing for us. We just kind of took the leap and made him a really integral part of the movie. And then he was the first person we brought on board and we’re really lucky that he was down.
He brought Wes on as well. Was that a surprise?
Kyle: It was funny. He was just like, Can I get my friend Wes involved? Wes Borland?
You know, we did a decent amount of rewriting over the course of the production—not a ton, but a decent amount. When he pitched that idea, we had to ask ourselves, How can we insert him in a way that’s fun for us and potentially fun for the audience? And it worked out great. Seeing Wes in era-specific garb and being exactly who we remember from the music videos was pretty rad.
Evan: I remember, in the late ’90s, there was a very iconic Guitar World cover with Wes in that exact makeup look he has in the movie. It’s one of those images that has stayed stuck in my brain and really represents that period. Fred claims that Wes never reuses his looks—once he retires one from a tour, he’ll never bring it back. So we were really lucky that he brought it out of retirement for us.
Kyle, what was it like to take this film on as your directorial debut?
Kyle: I feel like I had Evan by my side the whole time because we essentially came up with this thing together, along with a team of incredibly talented crew members and actors. We had an awesome time. It was intimidating at times—I think the scale of this movie is intense, so that was new. But truly, bringing that era back to life and getting a chance to relive it was really special.
Evan, I saw that this is your first major studio film, but you have experience with directing music videos. This film is so steeped in the music and nostalgia of the time. How did your experience with that play into figuring out what the soundtrack might look like or integrating that into the storyline?
Evan: I’ll just say, as Kyle mentioned, we’ve been working on this together fully from day one. For so many things, it felt great to have someone I trust, someone with whom I could make all these decisions—from the writing phase to choosing what songs we wanted in specific moments. My background in music videos meant I was comfortable with smaller-scale shoots, so being on set and seeing it scale up felt like the same process but on a much bigger level. You have to come prepared, learn the same lessons, and apply them while trusting the incredible people around you to deliver.
Kyle: For the music, in terms of song curation, we talked about it from day one. We tried to spell out the era in every way we could. In our first draft, I’m sure we had needle drops scattered throughout.
Evan: Yeah, we wrote songs into the film—not all of which ended up being the final tracks for various reasons. There were a few songs, like “Faith,” that we had to lock in before the shoot because we needed them for specific scenes. For others, we knew they were going to be needle drops, but we could finalize them during post-production depending on whether we could clear or secure them. Music was a huge part of sequences like the porta-potty scene. For that one, we knew we wanted a middle-school dance song to set the tone.
I know that’s such an awesome scene. At times gross, but awesome. How did that come into the script?
Evan: I’ll say something that was really fun, and I think it speaks to the way Kyle’s brain works. For me, when I’m writing, I’m much more focused on structure—thinking about callbacks or symmetry. Kyle, on the other hand, is very strong at recognizing moments where we could create something iconic or memorable. Writing toward that was exciting. I remember when we were brainstorming how to get the characters out of that moment. There were a couple of different evolutions of that scene at various points, but you, Kyle, would plant a flag and say, Whatever we do here, let’s figure it out, but it should feel memorable and epic—like the movies we loved from that era. Those were the kinds of films where you’d go to the theater and be blown away by the spectacle, the music, or just something you hadn’t seen before.
Kyle: Yeah, I think we had a few variations on that moment. Essentially, it was some version of Eli and Rachel swinging over the city on a rope, with a romantic song from the era playing. But it became really fun when we landed on the porta-potty idea. It was such a great juxtaposition of all these elements coming together—the love story, the humor of the porta-potty, and Brian McKnight’s music. It ended up being a really fun combination for us.
It was fun seeing it in the theater because as soon as they got in the Porta Potty, you know what’s coming.
Evan: But then there’s also not any shit that comes out for a while. So maybe you’re like, where’s the sh*t?
Kyle: It’s building up tension, sh*t tension.
And you were talking about movies and stuff that inspired the film. A lot of people have drawn comparisons to Superbad. Having Jonah Hill as producer on the film – did he have any say in the scripting, or were there any other films that you pulled inspiration from?
Kyle: Yeah, I mean, in terms of the script, it was pretty close to where it ended up by the time Jonah’s company came on board. Superbad was definitely an inspiration—something we thought about and talked about. They got that, for sure, and I think that was appealing. But yeah, especially in terms of the first portion of the movie, we’ve talked about this so much—how that era was such a great time for teen comedies and coming-of-age movies. I mean, I’ve gotta look it up—Can’t Hardly Wait was probably 1998, I think. 10 Things I Hate About You is definitely 1999, as is She’s All That, I’m pretty sure.
Evan: I mean, even American Pie, which is… 1997, right? Or maybe that’s 1998 too. Just that genre of teen movies.
Kyle: Drive Me Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s another one—Whatever It Takes.
Evan: So we definitely drew on those in a major way and wanted it to feel like those smaller studio comedies from that period.
Kyle: But we also wanted it to feel grounded and real to our experience growing up. Some of those movies lean more comedy-forward or are broader in certain ways. So we definitely borrowed certain elements from them, but we also wanted to ask, Can we make this feel as authentic as possible to what life was like in 1999?
And speaking of movies, Kyle, you’re a video store clerk in the film. So your character of Garrett, was there anybody that kind of inspired him or was it just an amalgamation of people?
Kyle: I would say he’s an amalgamation. Evan always says he has buddies that he thinks were fully Garrett.
Evan: Well, I mean, not fully, because Garrett is singular. I grew up in Oregon, in a very laid-back, hippie town. So I knew a number of people who were these happy-go-lucky, white stoners with dreads. That was part of it. And I’m sure you’ve encountered people—or characters—you’ve done. I feel like you’ve played a couple of guys like that on SNL.
Kyle: Yeah, it’s all relatively in my wheelhouse. I spent some time watching YouTube videos of people at Phish concerts in the late ’90s and early 2000s, as well as jam band festivals and stuff like that. One of the fun parts of acting and writing is that while Evan and I are coming up with this during the writing process—before even knowing if the movie is going to be made—I get to start developing the character and perform it while we’re riffing. By the time we’re shooting, it’s pretty well-informed, you know what I mean? Like, I already sort of know how I want him to sound.
He’s kind of like a sage with lots of wisdom for the teenagers, and some of the actors in the film weren’t born until after 2000. Did you have fun explaining to them different things or different pieces from your childhood?
Evan: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny. There were varying levels of familiarity with the period among the kids in the cast. We didn’t want to overload them with too much information, but sometimes they would ask, What’s an Herbal Essences girl? or Who is Tipper Gore? None of them knew who Tipper Gore was. So giving them context for those things was important. I think the biggest piece of research was we gave them playlists for each of the characters: this is the kind of music your character would listen to. We kind of left it up to them from there.
Kyle: Didn’t we give Jaden and Julian maybe a list of movies to watch too?
Evan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gave them some stuff and then said, use this as part of your process to figure it out.
Kyle: It was really up to each actor to decide how much they wanted to immerse themselves in 1999 culture. Some did more than others, but you wouldn’t be able to tell because their performances are very strong. Hopefully, the characters are timeless in some way, allowing the actors to find their way into the roles, even if they didn’t know a ton about the era.
The cast is incredible. It’s such a high caliber cast. Were there any moments of ad libbing or changing the script on the spot and seeing how they adapted to it?
Evan: First, we’ve got to shout out Jess Kelly, our casting director, who did so much work to bring all this together. But yeah, I would say we didn’t do much ad-libbing. There were some alternate lines we would throw at them. Kyle and I, between takes, would be writing alts if we felt like we needed them.
Kyle: Yeah, I mean, when you’re making an indie movie with limited time and budget, you kind of have to stick to the script. It’s more of a cherry-on-top situation if you get to really mess around. But yeah, I think there are a few moments in there that were unscripted that I really love.
Evan: I feel like Julian has some moments, and June has…
Kyle: Fred has his moment at CJ’s death.
Evan: I feel like there are some fun moments throughout. There’s one that I’m sure no one will ever see. You know, when you’re in the edit, watching scenes a billion times, there are things that we hone in on that are really funny to us—like a background actor’s mannerism or something. But there’s something Fred does in one shot where Eli says something, and Fred shoots a “hang loose” gesture. He does a lot of little things like that, things he didn’t tell us he was going to do, or just aren’t scripted at all. Watching it a billion times, I really grab onto that stuff and find it really fun.
That’s awesome. And I have one more question to wrap things up. We are so reliant on technology today, even more than we were back then. We carry around computers in our pocket, basically. Is there a specific warning or message that you hope people take away from the film.
Evan: Computers stink.
Kyle: Let me think about that… I’m gonna say, on a macro level, taking a step back—I’m sure a lot of filmmakers say stuff like this—but we really wanted to make a movie like the ones we saw in that era, the ones that were exciting to see in theaters and felt like an event. So, ideally, people would watch it together and enjoy it as a group because it’s meant to be laughed at, have moments of scares, and it’s supposed to feel communal to some degree. You can’t always get that when you’re watching on your iPhone or whatever. That would be a fun thing—if people had to throw a party together when they watched it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like going full ’90s, when everyone was together and not on their phones.
Evan: Yeah, log off. There you go. Use that one instead of “computers stink.”
Featured Photo Credit: Courtesy of A24 | Nicole Rivelli