Few films can say they’ve accurately encapsulated crucial topics about mental health, family, and what it’s like to be a clueless 20-something who’s just attempting to navigate life. Nevertheless, The Year of Spectacular Men, somehow implicitly and explicitly discusses depression and often painful realism of what it’s like to be a single, jobless millennial.
Crafted by a team of family creators, Madelyn (Maddie) Deutch (who plays Izzy Klein), Zoey Deutch (who plays Sabrina Klein) and their mom Lea Thompson (who also plays the role of mom in the film), worked together to produce a film about a woman’s introspective approach to defining her identity.
While the title of the family’s film might seem indicative of a quintessential romantic film, where the woman finds and falls in love with her person, the production highlights some necessary realism about breakups, loneliness and terrible sex (which is universally an under-discussed cinematic topic and needs to change ASAP). Still, The Year of Spectacular Men features a spectacular family that, at times, parallels many aspects of Maddie’s, Zoey’s and Lea’s life. Currently writing a plethora of other films and television shows, including mini-series Texas Rising, Maddie worked to compose, write and co-star in The Year of Spectacular Men. Zoey, who previously starred in Everybody Wants Some!! and Why Him?, co-produced and co-starred in The Year of Spectacular Men. Meanwhile, Lea—who has been in the industry for 40 years and played Lorraine Baines in Back to The Future—acted in and directed the film, which makes this her feature film directorial debut.
This multi-faceted family filled us in on what it was like to play an on-set family while simultaneously working with their family.
Her Campus: The Year of Spectacular Men focuses on Izzy as she tries to find herself in her 20s and find her perfect career. Did you find that any of you learned something about your own personal identity while were working on this film?
Lea: I learned a lot about myself. My kids really inspired me, first of all, to direct this project. And then, I just learned a lot about how to make this movie and how to make it for four years and get it out. I could kind of feel myself culminating, where I feel like I can all of a sudden do things that I didn’t think I could.
Maddie: I feel like I can’t say I learned anything about myself because I wrote the script, so I feel like that was just all my learning on a hundred pages of paper.
HC: The film touches on sensitive topics about mental health, from Izzy's bout of depression to the sister's father's suicide. Since this movie is both family-made and centers around the on-screen family, do you believe that this movie will help open up healthy dialogues about mental health in certain viewers' families?
Maddie: I think that’s a lofty goal to put on any piece of writing, but absolutely I hope that it illuminates the fact that mental health is definitely something in this country that people don’t like to talk about and we need to deal with it. If my and Zoey’s characters can be a small part of encouraging people to be more open about it and not keep secrets from one another, I would be really honored that somebody took that from the film.
HC: Definitely, and I think that’s the goal of a lot of films—getting that broader reach out there [about mental health] to families and individuals as well. And do you think this movie will help destigmatize depression and mental health in a way?
Zoey: From a viewer’s standpoint, I think anytime you talk about something and anytime something real is reflected in art, it helps destigmatize it. So, yes.
Lea: I really feel strongly about where this movie is at and how families should tell others the truth about things, and that’s what I really love about that part of the story. I think that it’s such a special thing that this is a moldable view. As a young woman’s point-of-view from a writing standpoint, this story was never told. When I was playing a young woman, I always had to just do lines and stories written by men, which usually just included their fantasy of how women should act. This is really special because Maddie was 23 when she wrote it and it’s very unusual at that time.
Maddie: Thank you so much also for mentioning the mental health aspect of the film and also the depression. People seem to really leap-frog over the fact that Izzy really struggled with depression, so as the writer, I really appreciate that you mentioned it and that you touched on it.
HC: Thank you. I think definitely, especially with what’s been happening in the news and pop culture news within the last few weeks, watching your film and seeing those scenes of mental health and Izzy’s bouts of depression—and she’s just feeling lost while she’s finding herself—it really resonates with the viewers.
Maddie: Thank you for saying that.
Zoey: I agree. It feels like it’s so current, and it’s so honest. I make a lot of smaller, independent movies, but I think independent movies tend to be very niche. Those movies can be pretty refreshing and so relatable. It’s such an honest portrayal of a millennial experience, and Maddie did such a beautiful job of executing it.
HC: In the movie, Izzy tries different professional careers to try to find her dream job. Do you all have any advice for someone who's in their 20s and struggling with rejection within their desired industry, or who's trying to figure out their perfect career path?
Maddie: I feel like I don’t have any advice because I did a really crazy thing, which was write a movie about feeling rejected and not seen—and made a movie about it with my family, which is really not normal. Maybe the thing that I discovered through watching my friends is, and this sounds really silly, but it gets better. I think just having the physical understanding that being from the age of 22 to 25 just sucks, and you should just accept that it sucks and move on.
Once you’re out of that, I swear something just lifts, the clouds part a little bit and the sun might even come through, even if it’s just one really pathetic ray of sunshine, it shows that it’s just a little bit better. I don’t know why, but the bizarre alchemy is being in your early 20s. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t want to talk about it in movies because there is a certain mysteriousness about it. It feels mythological. Like, why do we all feel so rudderless? Honestly, it gets better—you just need to keep pushing. It sounds so stupid, but that’s the thing I’ve learned.
HC: Maddie, I know that you worked as an actress, writer and songwriter for this film. Were there any challenges or advantages to working as an actress, screenwriter and songwriter and performer all for the same production?
Maddie: Sure, there were a lot of advantages. For one thing, being an actor and writer on-set—it’s a little hard to compartmentalize and sort of bento-box your brain at first, but once you figure out that you have to pivot between two different parts of your way of thinking, then it’s fun. You’ll be in a scene with someone, and then something will happen and they’ll say, ‘Hey Maddie, can we side-bar over here real quick? I need to talk to the writer.’ And you’re like, ‘Hold on. Let me switch to this part of my brain.’ It’s really fun. It’s athletic in a sense, but it’s a challenge that I was so happy to be a part of.
Also, I scored the film. When I went in to do all the queue for the movie, I felt overwhelmed but prepared to bring the right tone to the film. I didn’t feel like I was guessing on what the tone was supposed to feel like. I felt that I knew the tone in my body because the tone was the film that I had written, the tone was the film that I had acted, and now the tone was the film that I was composing. That’s just something that’s the color and texture of being an artist, and when it can kind of bleed into those different areas it can be really singular, which I hope is what we did.
HC: Definitely. I think the scoring and the soundtrack really playing into a lot of the themes, which pushed the audiences’ emotions. And I think that’s most peoples’ hopes with their productions.
Maddie: Thank you so much. We going to make a Spotify playlist of ten of the songs from the film, and I think that’s going to come out at some point next week.
HC: Lea, your daughters are now around the same age as you, when you were in Back to The Future. Now that you're a formidable director and you've worked with your own family on The Year of Spectacular Men, do you think you and your daughters would ever rewrite the Back to The Future script to fit your own family?
Lea: I don’t think I could!
Maddie: No one is a better writer than Bob Gale, and Bob's a magnificent writer. It’s the perfect script; no one should ever try to tackle that script.
Lea: I hope someday to play the older version of one of my daughters in a movie. I think that would be really cool, and that way nobody would have to do age makeup. We’re just getting started, and we’ll figure out something else to write—or Maddie will.
Maddie: I was about to say, who’s planning on writing this? They tell me I’m the writer of the family, but they’re all really good writers. They just don’t want to sit down and do the work.
Lea: One of the things that I really got from this movie is that sometimes for women, to get things done, you have to take on a partner. You have to find a partner to work with. And that’s what we did here—we look to each other as partners. When one person had a weakness, another person had a strength, and that was really beautiful and fun. For all you young women out there, make sure you’re cool with making partners and know that you can succeed by taking partners.
As Lea noted, our success can only continue to flourish with the help of a supportive partner and overall support system. In an invigorating movie that focuses on evergreen themes like mental health, identity and family–which are especially conspicuous to millennials, The Year of Spectacular Men is an indispensable film that goes beyond discussing every 20-something’s identity crisis. Delving past the confusing younger years that everyone faces (BTW, if you’re in your 20s and you’re not confused about something in your life, you’re only lying to yourself), this film creates necessary commentary about mental health and sexuality, particularly within families.
Regardless of what your personal definition of what family might mean, continually discussing mental health is vital for those tumultuous years. After all, initiating an open-ended discussion about mental health with your trusted friends and family could be the “pathetic ray of sunshine” that breaks through the metaphorical cloudy weather and ultimately help you find or redefine a part of your identity. Even if a discussion (or multiple chats) doesn’t give you insight about your personal identity, talking about mental health could help you and your friends strengthen your mutual support for one another, which is never a negative attribute at any stage in your life.
It’s uplifting to see that, like the on-screen Klein family, Lea Thompson, and Zoey and Maddie Deutch are a supportive family—and we can’t wait to see what other productions they curate in the future (and how they'll continue to bolster each other to achieve their goal).