Having both found themselves alone in Chicago one afternoon, a consultant from New York and a writer from Los Angeles strike up a conversation on a park bench. While their acquaintance begins with innocuous small talk, the two are intrigued by each other, and, having no other plans, end up conversing (and conflicting) through the night and into the next morning. Anchored by Matt Dellapina’s and Kathleen McElfresh’s performances and featuring original music by Mike Kinsella, “Park Life” continues the tradition of the conversation film, celebrating the value of connection between people while also exploring the anxieties and concerns of millennials turning forty.

Director Statement

Depending on the minute, the day, the year, getting older can spark feelings good or bad or anything along the spectrum between. It’s bewildering. For children of the eighties and early nineties, a group to which I belong, the milestone of reaching middle age recently arrived and settled in. One of the more dispiriting markers in the life cycle, at least according to the cliché, middle age, I now know from experience, does possess some frightening characteristics. It’s not the front row seat to youth’s retreat that’s scary, though. The ever-widening distance between the people we’re already connected with – the friends we promise to see but never do, the phone calls we continually decline to answer, the dialogues we forego in favor of an emoji – that’s the dread. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that during the months of pandemic lockdowns, many people turned to the newfound tools of remote work to create new spaces to communicate socially. When forced into isolation, many realized it’s much less lonely to maintain connection, to talk.

“Park Life” is about millennials turning forty. It’s my contribution to a genre that I hold dear: the conversation film. Lastly, it’s a Chicago movie, and proudly so: inspired by and written in Chicago, produced in the city with a local crew, and featuring original music from one Chicago's most talented musicians.

Director Biography - Tyler Haney

Following the well-trodden path of independent filmmakers of yore, Tyler’s filmmaking career began in fits and starts. Spending time in both Wilmington, North Carolina and Chicago in the mid-2000’s, he wrote and directed a handful of shorts, lent a hand in the making of a half-dozen other films, and co-produced two live theatre shows. Through sojourns to the worlds of academia and business, he has continued writing in anticipation of his inevitable return to filmmaking. Communication between people (and, more commonly, the unwillingness to communicate) is front of mind in all of his work. He takes as influence any and all filmmakers willing to let their characters breathe and speak.

Tyler holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Dartmouth College, a Master’s degree in English from the University of Chicago, and also studied filmmaking at Blockbuster Video in Gulf Breeze, Florida. He lives in the north side of Chicago with his wife and daughter. “Park Life” is his first feature film.