Hit ’em with the Ella McCay.
Photo-Illustration: Disney, Vulture
There is a methodology to the Ella McCay challenge. Your left leg must be suspended midair, crossing over your right leg. Your right hand has to be adjusting your left shoe while your left arm lingers in the air. Your gaze should be fixed just above your left shoe, as if to suggest to someone that you’re able to put on a shoe without looking too hard or that you’ve just put your shoe on. And, most crucially, you must not be looking at the camera in the photo. Ella McCay doesn’t look at the camera, so neither should you. If you’ve done all that, you’re in business. That’s the Ella McCay challenge. Who is Ella McCay?
In legendary American comedy writer-director James L. Brooks’s film, out December 12, Emma Mackey (confusing) stars as Ella McCay. She is not real, but like many fictional eponymous film characters such as Lydia Tár or Mortdecai, she’s somehow taken on a life of her own. From the trailers, McCay seems like a throwback mid-2010s film heroine — a real “I don’t know how she does it” type. She’s got a crazy family, and she’s about to be the governor of a state; how will Ella McCay ever make any of that work? There’s an improv-exercise quality to the premise, one that presupposes that adding more factors — a wacky aunt played by Jamie Lee Curtis, a weird brother played by Spike Fearn; Kumail Nanjiani is in the mix too — will somehow build out a more robust universe. Meanwhile, any and all in-theater marketing consists of posters featuring Ella McCay putting on her shoe. Per sources, this doesn’t even happen in the movie. She puts on her shoes just fine!
The Ella McCay trend, originated by a Twitter user named Michael Roberts, began as a tribute born out of simultaneous admiration and bafflement. “At first, I was just really into the trailer and the concept of Ella McCay. I feel like I saw it attached to every movie in the last three months,” Roberts explained. “There’s just an inexplicable tone to the whole thing. I don’t know how you craft a poster for a movie about a 34-year-old governor with family issues. But I love the decision to have a big studio comedy being sold on the image of an unknown woman fixing her shoe.” When Roberts went to go see Sentimental Value the night before Thanksgiving, he “felt the need” to take a photo with the Ella McCay poster.
News of the Ella McCay challenge — or at least the pose that inspired the Ella McCay challenge — has gone so far as to reach Brooks himself, who was asked about the shoe moment in a Reddit AMA. “SHE’S GOING SOMEPLACE AND A BAD SHOE IS GETTING IN THE WAY … GUESS IT’S A METAPHOR,” Brooks wrote (caps his own). What about the shoe itself is bad? That’s a mystery that only the film Ella McCay could answer, if the moment in question were in the movie (#ReleaseTheShoeCut). What Brooks calls a metaphor seems to just be a motif: Things aren’t easy for Ella McCay, but she keeps trudging along anyway, whether or not the shoe fits. Ella McCay needs us more than ever. The meme doesn’t exist to mock Ella McCay’s existence but rather acknowledge its bizarre ingenuity. “I think it is a celebration of the theatrical experience and original storytelling,” Roberts said of his meme, something proven by Fox Searchlight’s Twitter account getting in on the action. The challenge is one thing, but in order to truly help her get her shoe on, people have to buy tickets to see this thing. “I’m going opening weekend for sure,” Roberts specified.
In the meantime, I would bet $10 that we will see Ella McCay cast member Ayo Edebiri hit the Ella McCay challenge before the end of the year is up. If nothing else, it’s a sweet rallying cry for a film that seems to desperately need its champions right now. Ella McCay doesn’t have orange ping-pong balls or a breathing ritual ahead of its screenings. It just has people standing in front of a cardboard cutout with their leg in the air. (Per Roberts, the only correct things to do are making sure it’s your left leg in the air and your gaze is on your shoe, but otherwise, “there’s definitely room for interpretation outside of those parameters.” It’s working — or at least, people on Twitter are loving it. Lisa Simpson is loving it. Even some haunted animatronics are loving it. Besides, does she really have to put her shoe on in the movie for the challenge to be worthwhile? The #EllaMcCayChallenge is not about the journey; it’s about the pose.
