Loop the loop
Cristin Milioti stars opposite Andy Samberg in the new comedy Palm Springs, which can be summed up as Groundhog Day meets Wedding Crashers. “It's one of those infinite time loop situations that you might have heard about,” his character tells hers in the trailer.
But ironically, Milioti hadn't heard much about those infinite time loop situations. “I've never seen Groundhog Day,” she admits. “I have not seen Edge of Tomorrow,” the 2014 science-fiction action movie with Emily Blunt and — “Is it a Tom Cruise movie?” Yes, I tell her, it's a Tom Cruise movie.
“I've only ever seen Russian Doll,” she says, naming the Netflix series about a cynical New Yorker who keeps dying on the night of her birthday party, and then coming back. “I loved Russian Doll! I thought it was brilliant.”
And yet, irony upon irony, Milioti may understand the concept of the time loop better than most of us. That's because her character in Palm Springs contacts a scientist to try to figure out her plight. He's played by Clifford V. Johnson, a real professor with a PHD in theoretical physics.
“I used to have a very lengthy monologue that took me days to memorize, I mean days and days, and so much research so that I would understand what I was saying,” she remembers. “It was a whole monologue that he helped us with that was about how this could be possible.”
Milioti not only had to memorize the dialogue but nail the choreography of creating a complicated sketch to accompany her exposition. They shot the scene and put it in the movie. “And then in friends and family screenings ... everyone who watched it was like, `I don't care.' It zapped the momentum.” So they took it out again.
“There was a two-week period where I was very well versed in quantum physics, and the Cauchy horizon, different types of black holes, and why there could be a rift in the time-space continuum, all this stuff.” She waits a beat. “Couldn't tell you now.”
Fair enough. In any case, Milioti has thoughts on the movie that extend beyond the esoterica of singularities and quantum space-time.
“I have always felt that this is a very Zen, existential comedy,” she says. “It's about how you can't ever run away from yourself. And I think a lot of us try to. It's a very human thing to try to run away from yourself and your problems, your culpability, your past, your anxiety, your depression, your concerns. It's this beautiful allegory for people who are trying to escape themselves and can't.”
The interview almost over, I decide to ask her about an oddity in Palm Springs — an out-of-place, out-of-time item. You'll know what I mean when you watch the movie. No one can figure it out.
“I do have an explanation, but I'll never share it. I don't even share it with people in my life. Because it ruins it! The ambiguity is actually what I love. So I don't want to share what it is that I think.”