By NINA METZ
“I think there’s always a point in young-ish adulthood where it’s like: ‘Wait, wait, wait — we’re buying houses now? OK, cool. Having kids on purpose? Got it.’ It can be a little unsettling when you look at your own trajectory and it’s like, well, what am doing? And if I’m not doing that, am I doing it wrong? I think that’s a sentiment I have faced — and I think people specifically in my generation have faced,” said McKenzie Chinn, whose debut film as a screenwriter and producer comes to the Chicago International Film Festival.
“Olympia” — about a visual artist with a depressing day job, a mother dying in the hospital and a boyfriend who wants to uproot their lives — stars Chinn as well, who is a longtime Chicago theater actor.
We talked about the locally shot film, which screens Monday, Tuesday and Oct 19. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: This is your first produced screenplay. How did it come about?
A: I actually wrote it while sitting at a day job!
I started writing with the idea that adulthood is quintessentially different from what it was even a generation before us. Before, you could reasonably assume that you would at some point get married, have a job for 30 years, have kids, buy a house — all these big markers of adulthood. But for our generation, we stopped doing these things at the same rate. Not only is it not as feasible, but it’s often not as desirable for our generation. So if those aren’t the rudiments for understanding ourselves as adults, then what is? How do we define what that is?
In the story, Olympia is a visual artist who is at a point in her career where she feels like she should have more to show for herself, but doesn’t — which I think is a fairly common experience for a lot people. But that’s just one element in her life that’s giving her pause.
So on top of feeling stalled in her career, she’s on the cusp of her 30th birthday, her mom’s sick and isn’t going to be around for much longer, her best friend is moving to New York to start a new job. And now her boyfriend — who she loves but has been noncommittal with — he’s about to move to California for a job and asks her to come with him, and she’s very undecided about making that big move in her own life.
Q: This is a Chicago project through and through. I loved the scenes of Olympia and her best friend Jemma on the riverwalk.
A: I know our director Greg Dixon really wanted, from the beginning, to make the film incredibly rooted in Chicago and make it an integral part of the world Olympia occupies. At the riverwalk, we got our permit for a certain location, and when we got there, there was a huge barge doing something and it was making the loudest sound you could imagine. We were like, are you kidding? Because if you lose that day, you’ve lost so much money. You still have to pay everybody! So the stakes are high.
We decided we would just have to shoot at another part of the riverwalk and there was a chance we might have been kicked out, but we had to take the chance.
What I love about shooting in Chicago, it’s kind of a cool thing to the people around you, so they’ll respect your space. Whereas in LA, everybody and their cousin is making a movie, and they truly do not care about your film set. You’re inconveniencing them. Whereas in Chicago, it’s still novel enough to be fun for people who aren’t involved.
Q: “Olympia” really stands out as a project that not only stars a black woman but also was written by one, too. Not enough films that are getting financing center around black women.
A: One of the things that I think I’ve learned is how important it is to be the custodian of our own stories. Because if you leave it to other people, they’re just going to get it wrong.
Like, Chicago I feel is so misrepresented in the media and the entertainment media because we latch on to the lore and the mythology, which most people think is about gangsters and violence. And sure, that’s one of the textures of Chicago. But you have to love this place in order to understand all of the other facets that make it what it is.
And as a black person and as a woman, when I see myself on screen, I’m mired in racial trauma or marginalized in some way. And while that certainly is a part of my racial history, I also hang out with my friends and I strive for success in my career and I fall in love — just like white characters — but we don’t get the luxury of having those experiences on screen as black people and people of color. So I feel really strongly about taking control of our own narrative so we can actually get it right.
Same for my generation. I think the media loves to talk about how entitled and whatever other negative adjectives folks like to use for millennials. And really, we’re dealing with a completely different set of circumstances than any generation before us, and we’ve adapted! And how we function is just an outgrowth of that adaptation.
“Olympia” screens at the Chicago International Film Festival. Go to www.chicagofilmfestival.com/film/olympia.