How ‘Y2K’ Director Kyle Mooney Made a New Year’s Eve Classic

On the set of “Y2K,” co-writer, director and star Kyle Mooney had something of a malfunction himself.

“We were staying at a hotel in Jersey and my wife was there, and she texted me something like, ‘What do you want for dinner? Do you want Thai or Indian?’ And I told her, ‘I actually can’t make a decision right now, so you have to make the decision. That was the thing that should be so obvious that was surprising to me is like, Damn, I’ve got to answer so many questions,” Mooney said.

Mooney said that he came up for the idea for “Y2K,” which had a brief theatrical run via A24 and is now available to rent or buy digitally (and makes for a hell of a New Year’s Eve watch), on New Year’s Day, 2019.

“I just had the small seed of an idea of like, let’s do a movie about teenagers going to a party and Y2k actually happens. And I pitched it to my friend Evan [Winter, co-writer and producer] and we started working on it and pretty immediately we had the building blocks for what what the movie is. But I think we were just really excited to put this time period on screen, because you don’t get to see it a ton, and it is pretty specific,” Mooney said. Mooney had been “minorly obsessed” with the Y2K phenomenon – the idea that, at the stroke of midnight, all of the computers in the world would cease functioning, plunging society into chaos – and that the conceit had “stuck in the recesses of my mind.”

Soon, the movie emerged – “Y2K” would follow a group of high schoolers (led by Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler and Julian Dennison), who are attending a party when all hell breaks loose. Instead of computers merely shutting down, in Mooney’s mind, computers would form new organisms – janky little creatures, cobbled together from CD players and microwaves, who are out to kill and enslave humanity. What’s lovely about the movie too is that for the first 30 minutes or so, it plays like a charming comedy, before mutating wildy.

“We loved the idea of it feeling like somewhat of an quote, unquote iconic coming-of-age teen movie, and then turning into something completely different,” Mooney said. To that point, his touchstones for “Y2K” ran the gamut – everything from John Hughes classics to late 1990’s, early 2000’s movies like “American Pie,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “10 Things I Hate About You.” “’Dazed and Confused’ with something we talked about a lot. And that’s especially interesting because that came out in the mid ‘90s, but it’s reflecting an era 20 years prior,” Mooney said. When the movie takes its big turn, they were heavily inspired by Robert Rodriguez’s “The Faculty.” When we brought up “Virus,” a truly forgotten Jamie Lee Curtis sci-fi movie from 1999 where she’s trapped on a boat with these crunchy little robo-creatures, Mooney confirmed that they also looked at that.

“We wanted it to feel like a movie you would have seen in the theater in 1998 or 1999. I have such fond memories of seeing ‘Men in Black’ or ‘Independence Day’ and we tried to evoke that however we could,” Mooney said.

Aiding Mooney on his quest were some heavy hitters, led by cinematographer Bill Pope, who in 1999 had a little movie called “The Matrix” opening. He was perfect for “Y2K,” having shot shiny teen movie “Clueless” and Sam Raimi’s gonzo “Darkman” and “Army of Darkness.”

“I feel corny saying it but I do think it’s true – wherever you end up, that’s the way it was supposed to be, it was meant to be,” Mooney said. It was destined, in some way or another. And I think that if Bill Pope hadn’t been involved, I just don’t think we would have had a movie. Everybody was so psyched to work with him. He’s such a master of his craft. And he was there to answer any questions anyone had, we had. It’s just that you’re in good hands all of a sudden.” And while Mooney and Pope didn’t get to shoot on film, there was an attempt to replicate the look of the period with real intention. Mooney said that they talked a lot about the vaguely post-apocalyptic Red Hot Chili Peppers video for “Scar Tissue,” also released in 1999 but not shot by Pope. Pope did, in fact, shoot the videos for Janet Jackson’s “Nasty,” the Bangles’ “In Your Room” and Metallica’s “One.”

Another key collaborator was the team from Wētā Workshop, the New Zealand-based studio behind Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings,” the more recent “Planet of the Apes” films and countless more. “I think the awesome thing about Wētā that I don’t get to experience all the time is that they are such great artisans and artists and makers of stuff that we told them essentially what we want – electronics connecting in weird ways to make these monstrous robots. And what they came back with, in terms of the concept art, round one was almost pretty much exactly what we dreamed of, if not more,” Mooney said. “I feel like it’s rare when you’re making something where somebody, fully understands what’s in your brain and takes it to another level.”

Perhaps more difficult than bringing cobbled-together robot monsters was cluing the young cast into the particulars and peculiarities of 1999. (Martell was born in 2003; Zegler in 2001.) Mooney said that they made playlists for the actors and gave them a list of movies to watch. “But a lot of it was on them to decide how much they wanted to investigate or not,” Mooney said. Sometimes they would ask questions – how to pronounce something, for instance, but sometimes it was straight up, What is this? (One real headscratcher that had to be explained involved a line of dialogue about Tipper Gore.) “The hope was that they were timeless to some degree. I think that they already had a base level of like, Okay, this is not too far from this person I know but now I’m saying some hyper-specific 1999 reference,” Mooney said.

Mooney and his collaborators consulted Urban Dictionary to make sure what the kids were saying were even a part of the vernacular in 1999. “It was just funny hearing them coming out of the kids mouths,” Mooney said.

Another tricky aspect of the movie was making sure the emotional bedrock of “Y2K” was still there while people are getting murdered and assimilated and Fred Durst (playing himself) becomes one of the main characters.

“It was just something we were conscious of from moment one, because we knew that there was going to be this harsh transition almost from one movie to another movie. And I’d like to think that by encouraging to keep it grounded, keep it real, we want this to actually feel like the way it felt like living in this era and what it felt like to be high schooler and trying to carry that over throughout the ridiculous shit that happens,” Mooney said. ”We were just always thoughtful of it and putting the puzzle together in the edit and see how this stuff best flows together.” To that end, there was a test-and-adjust period, with things like a fight between the main characters at a party having to be calibrated differently. He also admits that there was a lot of stuff in post-production that required additional configuration, including the “robot logic” and some voice over. “Some genuine writing had to be done after the fact,” Mooney admitted.

As 2024 comes to a close, Mooney also looked back on another highlight of the year. Mooney costarred in Jerry Seinfeld’s brilliantly bizarre Pop-Tart movie “Unfrosted” as, for some reason, Snap, of Snap, Crackle and Pop, the mascots for Rice Krispies. One of the funniest scenes of the year involved the characters at a funeral, with Mooney saying, of a temporary tattoo (delivered to a grieving widow), “It’s not permanent, it just lasts a couple of days.” Mooney said, at the premiere, “Jerry said something like, ‘That was the perfect delivery.’” Because it was.

And now, “Y2K” is getting the perfect delivery, into your home, just in time for New Year’s Eve. Watch it in your baggiest jeans. Hacky sack optional.

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