Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst donned his turn-of-the-millennium apparel for the SXSW world premiere of “Y2K,” the Kyle Mooney-directed teen disaster comedy in which the rapper plays himself.
“Y2K” follows two high schoolers (Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison) who crash a New Year’s Eve party on the last night of 1999 when they realize that the projected computer apocalypse is actually happening before their eyes. Claudette Godfrey, president of SXSW Film and TV, introduced the film by joking that it was an honest depiction of what happened that night.
Then, in a post-screening Q&A when Godfrey asked Durst how he celebrated Y2K, he committed to the bit. “Dude, are you trolling me?” he asked. “This is the A24 24th year celebration of surviving Y2K. What the fuck is going on here? We’re all survivors, right?”
The other answers to Godfrey’s question were less illustrious, as stars Rachel Zegler, Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison and Lachlan Watson had not yet been born, Daniel Zolghadri was less than a year old and Mason Gooding was four.
Mooney and his co-writer Evan Winter were more conscious than their actors were in 1999 — but not by too much. “I was 13. That was probably the last year I watched the Dick Clark ball drop with my family before I started going to parties,” Winter said.
“I lived through 2012, so mass hysteria — I’m no stranger to that,” said Zegler, referring to the theory that the world would end on Dec. 21, 2012. “We all bought into 2012 and were all very disappointed that it didn’t happen for some reason.”
Mooney had the idea for “Y2K” five years ago. “On New Year’s Day 2019, after a night of celebrating with Evan and our friends, I texted Evan: ‘There should be a movie about two kids going to a party on Y2K and it goes bad.’ Some of the things you see on screen happen.”
“I woke up very hungover to this text,” Winter said.
“Congratulations!” said Mooney.
“It was kind of a fully formed idea in a single text,” Winter said, “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”
“And now my fam is here!” Mooney finished, smiling.
Watson’s character in the film is a huge Limp Bizkit fan who relishes the opportunity to meet their hero — which Watson says they were more than prepared for.
“Fred knows this: I genuinely think you hung the moon, so it was not that hard,” they said. “I used to listen to a lot of Limp Bizkit, and I never thought that would work out well for my career, and then I got this role. Kyle was like, ‘Hey, you should probably start listening to some Limp Bizkit.’ I was like, ‘Bestie, you don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.’”
When asked about a particularly disastrous (though somewhat romantic) scene that takes place in a porta-potty, Zegler said, “Let’s nip this in the bud: The fake shit was hot chocolate mixed with glycerin, so it smelled amazing. It was really confusing to shoot. Jaeden Martell here was covering my ear because I kept talking about how I didn’t want water in my ear, so Evan kept saying, ‘Get your hands over here! We can’t see her face!’ But the take that got used is Jaeden protecting my ear.”
Mooney said that the characters in “Y2K” were based on “folks we grew up with,” to which Winters added, “I grew up with a lot of white guys with dreads,” referencing the supporting role Mooney plays in the movie. “And I definitely grew up with Rachel Zegler,” Mooney said.
As the audience filed out of the Paramount Theater, Durst screamed out, “‘Y2K,’ motherfucker!” and posed for pictures with fans before wandering, draped in his neon tracksuit, off into the night.
