melbet Kyle Mooney on Divorced-Dad Music

For years, Kyle Mooney has had a low-key fixation on Y2K because as a 15-year-old he found it such a letdown.

Then on Jan. 1, 2019, he awoke with the seed of an idea: a movie about teens at a New Year’s Eve party where, at midnight, a computer-coding glitch fills VCRs, remote-controlled cars, Tamagotchis and other electronics with blood lust. He texted his writer friend Evan Winter and within a week they had the building blocks of a horror-comedy overrun with retro vibes.

“Y2K,” now in theaters (and streaming as of Dec. 24), is Mooney’s directorial debut. But the hardest part for the “Saturday Night Live” veteran may have been relinquishing control over how to deliver a line with a punch.

“Do I want to try to convey to the actor, like, ‘Oh, I think this is a good approach,’ or do I want to just encourage them to interpret and take it their own way?” he said. “But ultimately, pretty much all the actors were down to mess around and try to get the best sound bite.” (In his review for The Times, Calum Marsh called Mooney “the film’s dopey MVP.”)

In a video call from Los Angeles, Mooney mused on his nostalgia for Bill LaBounty’s yacht rock, VH1’s “Bands Reunited” and Ludwig Bemelmans’s “Madeline.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

When I was in New York working on “Saturday Night Live,” it pretty much became an annual thing for my wife — then girlfriend — and I. We would go up to the Bronx, go hit up Arthur Avenue, get some red-sauce Italian, and then go to the botanical gardens, drink some spiked cider and admire the trains. It is incredibly cozy and sweet and it feels like such a specific tradition, and one that I had never experienced before.

Mr. Cuomo, an exceedingly careful political tactician, gave no immediate hints. As other prominent New York leaders pushed out statements and calls for Mr. Adams to resign, the former Democratic governor remained conspicuously mum.

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