Olympic Dreams, starring and co-directed by Big Mouth creator, Nick Kroll, and Olympian Alexi Pappas and directed by Jeremy Teicher, hosted its premiere on February 12 at the IFC Center in New York City.
The film takes place in Pyeongchang, South Korea, during the 2018 Winter Olympics, making it the first fictional movie to be filmed inside the Olympic Village. The film follows Penelope (Alexi Pappas) a cross country skier, and Ezra (Nick Kroll) a volunteer dentist, on their journey to find love in the Olympic Village.
First of all, Alexi Pappas is so. freaking. cool. Not just anyone could pull off wearing Gucci slides with Champion socks to their movie premiere, but Alexi made it look like a combo straight out of NYFW. Alexi Pappas broke the national record for Greece for the 10,000 meters at the 2016 Olympics in Rio and is now casually acting and writing movies. NBD.
Pappas explained the inspiration behind the film to The Knockturnal. “The love story is inspired by my own experiences in Rio. A doctor like asked me out in the village, so there are real doctors there, but that did not blossom into what you see in the movie but it inspired the movie.” Pappas also wanted to write a film about the aftermath of the Olympics. “Every Olympian has this moment right after where they don’t know what’s next and there’s a little bit of almost like grief there, and so I wanted to put that on screen because so often we see the lead up to the competition and we never see what happens afterwards.”
Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher asked Nick Kroll to join the film two weeks before shooting. Olympics Dreams proves that Nick Kroll isn’t just “Mr. Funny Guy.” Comedian Nick Kroll discussed what it was like to work on a piece outside of the comedy genre. “When I’m doing comedy, I’m still trying to infuse it with some real dramatic pathos and when I’m doing a drama, I’m still looking to find funny moments because I think that real life has both, and I think both always benefit from the other. It was very fun, I was spending a lot of my time making Big Mouth, which is insane and big crazy jokes, and animated, and it was fun to be able to be on camera and act in a more naturalistic way…it was very fun to be able to improvise in a slightly more grounded way than just trying to find like what’s the biggest joke to play at any given moment.”
I’ve personally never been a big fan of the Olympics, especially the summer Olympics, since, you know, I have to devote my time to Bachelor in Paradise, but after seeing this movie I suddenly really want to go to the Olympic Village. Do you think that I can just go to hang out in the cafeteria and the game room? Maybe head over to the dentist’s office?
A key tip while watching the film: all of the interruptions are real! When people ask Ezra for directions? Those were all real encounters and not scripted. Now I want to go re-watch the movie with this new-found knowledge.
The only downside of the film? Now we have to wait four more years for the next Olympics. Kinda not fair. But in the meantime, if anyone is looking for me, I’ll just be over here starting an Alexi Pappas fan club.
Olympic Dreams is now playing in select theaters and available for streaming on Amazon Prime and Google Play.
