Leah McKendrick found herself lying in bed at the end of a long production day last year and realized she was posing. She couldn’t really be resting, just getting framed up to shoot again.
Such were the blurred lines between McKendrick – the rising-star screenwriter, actress, and now director – and Nellie, the character she dreamed up for her debut feature as a director, Scrambled. Nellie is a single 34-year-old millennial who opts (pretty much on a whim) to freeze her eggs. That decision launches her into a biological process as existential as it is hilarious, and parallels McKendrick’s complex feelings about her own egg-freezing experience. She recalled, “I don’t feel adult enough to be mixing my own meds and injecting myself without supervision, and to be doing something this expensive and serious – and when did I get so old?”
“I don’t feel adult enough to be mixing my own meds.” – Leah McKendrick
That story she set out to tell, in all its wackiness, strikes nerves much deeper, too. Nellie (and Leah) accept their own power to create life – power that neither woman really feels “qualified” to wield. There’s the loneliness in injecting themselves in a quiet apartment, in feeling like their problems aren’t as serious as the fertility struggles of peers. And, finally, they find strength in accepting love outside of sex and romantic relationships. That love comes from siblings, parents, friends, and sometimes total strangers who seem to accept Nellie exactly as she is.
These meditations on modern womanhood come packaged as a blockbuster comedy, with appearances from familiar faces along the way. Ego Nwodim is the best friend everybody (but especially Nellie) wants, Yvonne Strahovski pops in as that Midsommar-esque Instagram/vlogger mom you hate-follow (oh, is that just me?), and Clancy Brown is (probably?) every dad born in the Fifties or Sixties.
McKendrick credits the opportunity to direct such a cast, and write and star in her own film, partly to South by Southwest. That’s where #MeToo revenge horror MFA (for which McKendrick wrote the screenplay) debuted in 2017. “South By is like my origin story,” she said. “I was just making my short films and my webseries until then. I didn’t have any literary reps. I didn’t think I was going to have a life as a filmmaker. … South By put me on this new path of not only being taken seriously but taking myself seriously.”
Taking herself seriously means a new attitude around screenwriting. “Now I’m a spoiled asshole,” McKendrick jokes. “I pour my heart and soul into everything I write – everything. I feel that they are babies and I don’t want to have a million babies dying on shelves. I need confidence and a guarantee that we’re getting to the finish line. Some people are writers and they came here to write and they live and eat and breathe writing, and whatever happens after is the cherry on top. That’s not me. I came to make movies.”
As for a sequel? McKendrick doesn’t know what happens next for Nellie because she doesn’t know what happens next for herself. But that’s no problem. “I feel at peace because I made the movie I wanted to make. I did my best and spoke my truth.”
Narrative Feature Competition
Scrambled
Sat 11, 4pm, Alamo South Lamar
Mon 13, 11:30am, Alamo South Lamar
Thu 16, 8:45pm, Stateside Theatre
This article appears in March 10 • 2023.
