ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Snack Shack director Adam Rehmeier about the coming-of-age comedy movie. The filmmaker discussed how accurate the film is to his own teenage years and what he learned from his previous movie. Snack Shack is set to premiere in theaters on March 15, 2024.
“Nebraska City, summer of 1991 — Inseparable best friends AJ (Conor Sherry – Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Terminal List) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle — The Fabelmans) seize the opportunity to run the local pool’s rundown snack shack after their plan to gamble on dog races and sell home-brewed beer goes down the drain,” reads the movie’s synopsis. “Dreaming of striking it rich, things take an unexpected turn when they meet summer visitor Brooke (Mika Abdalla — Sex Appeal, SWAT), an effortlessly cool lifeguard who puts their big summer plans, and their friendship, at risk.”
Tyler Treese: Obviously, this film has an autobiographical nature. How important was it to film in Nebraska City? The locale itself is also almost like a star of the film.
Adam Rehmeier: You picked up on it big time, there. I mean, it’s a love letter to my community that I grew up in the most loving way possible. Truly. I’m just so happy that the producers trusted me because there’s not a tax incentive in Nebraska. That’s why Ohio or Georgia, places like that, everybody goes and shoots there. But honestly, there just wouldn’t have been that emotional connective tissue that would satisfy me. I mean, I couldn’t write this film about Nebraska City and not have it be a star in the movie in its own way.
It didn’t take any real convincing to them. The people that I was working with were keyed on it, and they saw the value in it right away. But in a world where there’s not a lot of value in that, most of the time, it was really cool to do that. The film benefits from having been shot in Nebraska City, 100%.
I talked to Gabe and Conor and they spoke about how they had two weeks in Nebraska to really just become friends. I feel like that chemistry really pays off in the finished product. What was the advantage of really getting them down there and letting them really bond?
The question and the answer are the same. I mean, getting them there and letting them just move freely about town. We got them bikes and they’re riding around and doing their biz, working in the Snack Shack, vibing with me. We’re not spending those two weeks looking at pages every day going like, “Let’s work this scene”. We didn’t do any of that. It was all about building core sense memory stuff. Conjuring that up, introducing them to the spaces that they were going to be in, then letting them absorb that. And I mean, we got Conor into his house early so he could sit in there and like absorb that and feel that. The boys were very intuitive and really made the most of their time there.
Two weeks … it’s enough for actors. We just built kind of a family with it and it just felt like a family affair. This film was made with so much love and we’re working with crew that has worked on my last film. Almost half the crew is people from Dinner in America, so there’s a shorthand. There’s real love and friendship there, and so these kids are seeing that too, and they’re a part of that, and they’re feeling how some of the crew feels about each other already and stuff. And so it was made in what I would consider optimal circumstances.
You assembled such an impressive young cast here, and I wanted to ask about Conor Sherry. Mika Abdalla told me this great story where he was actually allergic to the grass when he was doing the cutting the grass scene, and he’d put it up his nose to sneeze. What about him was perfect for playing the lead character here?
It’s weird because a lot of people, I think, would be really scared to be so all-in off an audition tape with somebody. They’d still want to see him and do chemistry reads and all of that type of thing with the cast. But in full transparency, the second I saw Conor’s audition tape, I knew that he was A.J. and nothing was going to change my mind. And nothing did change my mind. It was just a feeling. It was just the intuitive feeling. He just embodied what I was looking for. I could just see it instantly — the entirety of what it would be like to shoot with him and what it would look and feel like.
I didn’t want to change his hair, I didn’t want to change anything about him. He just was the thing. It’s as simple as that. I couldn’t express it any different. He was just already out of the box what I was looking for. Didn’t really have to do anything.
Yeah, he’s fantastic. I loved Gabe in the film as Moose. It was very fun, especially coming off The Fablemans, to see him play such an outgoing and extroverted character. He has always got a scheme going on. How did you know that he would be such a great fit for Moose here?
It’s funny because I don’t know if he told you this, but his agents really liked him for A.J. and they were pushing, pushing A.J. pretty hardcore. And then, when I actually met with Gabe, he was like, “I know my agents are pushing for A.J., but I love this Moose character.” And I was like, “Good, because I got an A.J. that I like and you’re perfect for Moose.” His disposition is just better set for Moose, especially getting to know Gabe and how funny he is.
Conor is extremely physical and, like, Jim Carrey physical. If he wants to fall down the steps, the way he uses his body, it’s great. It was fun to pull him back and have him super restrained as the straight man and have Moose being this force-of-nature thing. So I really like that dynamic of their physical design and how they look together. That works so much more for me and I honestly think, outside of Conor being so physical, it just worked. It just works. I couldn’t imagine it flip-flopped in any way, shape or form. [Laughs]. I couldn’t.
You mentioned working with a lot of the same crew from A Dinner in America. Were there any lessons learned during Dinner in America that were really applicable to this production that helped things go a bit more smoothly?
I think so. I mean, I cut out more in Dinner in America, so trying to get the script in a place where I wasn’t going to have big surprises in post, because what you’re aiming for is to maximize your days. If you have 30 days to do a film and you have 120 pages versus 110, with the 110 page version, you have more time to do it. So learning things like that, it was mostly being sure that the things that I had on the page were things that were going to stay in the film. Of course, with every movie, there’s pacing issues and things that you find out when you get to post. Even still, there was 20-30 minutes cut out of the film from the original rough cut to where it is now. Most of the things that I’ve learned along the way have to do with managing the script and to make your days.
Snack Shack is semi-autobiographical in nature. Is there a character you were most like in the film or did you spread yourself throughout multiple characters?
A.J. parallels my own kind of thing, even though he’s a different kid than I was. His dad was the town judge, and the mom is an auctioneer and he has a sister. The truthful things in the film are we ran the Snack Shack together. Me and my best friend, we would go gamble at the greyhound racing track. We would sink our money into this real beer operation that we were running. We were brewing beer with the intention of selling it and whatnot. It was really good. As Shane said, “Drinkable as f—.” It was very drinkable as f—.
And scattered throughout is an array of truths from my childhood. But yeah, I mirrored the A.J. character more after my own upbringing and reality. But that said, you have to have a growth character and you have to have a steadfast character when you’re doing this. I needed to make A.J. that because the summer is through his eyes. So it was super important to have him grow over the course and facilitate the coming-of-age aspect of this film.
