It's easy to label Laggies as a film about arrested development. After all, director Lynn Shelton's latest feature does center on an adrift late 20-something (Keira Knightley) that escapes her family, relationship, and career issues by befriending a highschooler (Chloë Grace Moretz) and laying low for a week with her and her mildly curmudgeonly father (Sam Rockwell). But it's not a simple refusal of adulthood, Laggies actually addresses the growth that comes from figuring out what elements of the past need to be let go—shed like snakeskin—in order to move forward.

Laggies arrives in select Seattle theaters starting this Friday, October 24. We caught up with Shelton last month before the local premiere of Laggies and talked about the draw of the script, working with Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, and more.

Since you didn’t write the script this time around, what drew you to the story of Laggies?

It’s rare that a script written by somebody else draws me in in a personal enough way that makes me feel like a need to direct it or I want to direct it, and this one was one of those very rare exceptions. It really struck a chord with me on a lot of different levels. First of all, the tone of it and the voice of the writer I felt a very simpatico with and a real affinity for. I liked how it really combined drama and comedy in a very organic way, so that the humor came out of a character-based place instead of a contrived sort of way. And the characters felt very real to me. They kind of leapt off the page. I felt they weren’t really cardboard cut out facsimiles of people, but were real human beings.

And it was delightful to find a female-driven movie where the protagonist was allowed to be flawed and make mistakes. That’s rare. Females tend to be a little idealized and the rough edges are kind of smoothed off, it seems like. So it was really nice to see such a well-rounded and real-feeling character, specifically someone who is fumbling towards her own sense of identity, which is something that men seem to be allowed to do a lot in movies, but women not so much. Although lately, I feel there’s a cultural moment right now where women are allowed more. But at the time, when I first read the script, there were no movies I could think of where women had really been allowed that kind of quarter-life crisis. You know, “What the hell am I doing with my life?”

Yeah, it certainly doesn’t seem incongruous to your other work. It wasn’t like, “Oh, she’s a hired gun director now who’ll take any script.” Laggies seems like it fits in the canon.

My wheelhouse, for sure. The other things that’s funny is my very first film (We Go Way Back) was about a 23-year-old who is also going through a bit of a crisis. And she ends up encountering her actual 13-year-old self. And when I was developing that idea, there was a potential iteration of the film where it was not her real 13-year-old self, but maybe a proxy. And it was really funny, because I had just been thinking, “God, I wouldn’t mind going back to that kind of territory now that I actually have some experience under my belt, and a few films that I’ve made, and I know a little more about what I’m doing.” And they are very different films. But, it is kind of returning to some of the same territory.

One of the details I enjoyed in the film was the score by Ben Gibbard. How did he get involved with the film?

I was really lucky because he had acquired my email from a mutual friend and wrote me just few months before we started to put together Laggies essentially saying, “I really am a fan and would love to collaborate some day.” And so he kept coming into my head as I was working on the script and getting the cast put together. I kept thinking, “I wonder if he meant that he just wanted to…” he didn’t talk about collaborating, he said, “I would love to help musically.” And I wasn’t sure if he meant just giving me some songs or what. So I wrote him back and said, “Would you actually be interested in scoring? Have you ever composed before? Would you be interested in trying that if you haven’t?” And he said, “Yeah, I’ve never done it on a narrative work before.” He’d worked on About a Son, it’s a beautiful Kurt Cobain documentary, but he didn’t have to write to scenes and time it out. He had a little bit more freedom. So he was on board and I was really excited about getting an all-local team together. And for some reason it felt right… like when Kira’s character and her friends become friends, they’re in high school, and their senior year would have been the year the Postal Service album came out. So it would have been in their mix. I actually use a Postal Service song in the very beginning.

Right, "Such Great Heights" serves as the greeting to the movie.

Yeah, the prom scene. So it just felt like the right move. I went with my gut. And he was just delightful to work with. It was super, super fun. And then he wrote a song ("It's Never Too Late") for the end credits that just melts me every time I hear it. It’s so beautiful and the lyrics and just perfect. They’re exactly right balance of not too speaking to subtext but totally appropriate for the story.

So what projects are next on your horizon?

I have three projects that are of varying levels of scale and scope. One is probably about the same size as Laggies, several million dollars. One is probably less than a million, and one is like three times the size; somewhere between 10–20 million. And that’s more of a comedy caper. Different genres. And I’m totally impassioned about all of them. I just don’t know which one is going kind of hit first. But I want to make them all. And I’m open to other stuff that may come to me from the universe as well. It was really fun to work on a different scale, a bigger palette. And it wasn’t huge, but compared to the movies I’ve made in the past, it definitely was, and it was really fun. So I’m not scared of that. I’m not shying away from bigger budgets, but I also really, really like the smaller scale productions because it’s so intimate and sort of extra collaborative. And a little more chill, you know? So I hope to work on a variety of projects in the future.

Last thing, and I believe I mentioned this when I chatted with you about Touchy Feely, but I really do get a little laugh every time I’m watching your films and there are Seattle traffic interstitials between scenes. It’s my Lynn Shelton drinking game.

(Laughs) “There it is!” It’s like the Michael Bay helicopter in front of the sunset shot.

(Laughs) It’s a little more subtle

Just a tiny bit.

Laggies
Opens Oct 24, AMC Pacific Place 11, $7–$12