Peggy Sweeney-McDonald has been named managing director of the Louisiana International Film Festival. She recently moved back to her hometown of Baton Rouge after living in Los Angeles for 18 years.
Sweeney-McDonald was the owner of Superstar Events-L.A., a meeting and event company producing memorable red carpet, non-profit and corporate events across the country. She is the creator of Meanwhile, Back at Café Du Monde… Life Stories About Food, the hit festive live food monologue show and the author of the best-selling coffee table book by Pelican Publishing. She has been a presenter at The Louisiana Book Festival, The Faulkner Society Words & Music Conference, The California Culinary Historians, The Louisiana Restaurant Association, Women of Infinite Possibilities, Passions of the Palate and the Chili Pepper Extravaganza.
Sweeney-McDonald is a member of Screen Actors Guild and has worked in film, television and commercials. She has written two Louisiana based television pilots and one is a semi-finalist in Randy Becker’s NextTV Entertainment Screenwriting Contest.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More