How The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things Captured Kyle Allen's Real-Life Time Loop

In the last weeks of filming the surreal romantic comedy The Map of Tiny Brilliant Things, the crew, including rising actor Kyle Allen, condensed countless days on set into just a few. With the coronavirus spreading plus a lockdown impending, whole segments were cut, scenes removed to meet the deadline — and then it stopped entirely. On the final day of shooting, production came to a screeching halt, with the project’s outstanding moments left in a seemingly endless pause, up until the remaining frames would be captured seven months later.


The bleak humor isn't lost on Allen that this film, which like Groundhog Day and Palm Springs before it uses a temporal loop because the basis for its plot, was left in its own sort of infinite replay. In the film, out Friday (February 12) on Amazon Prime Video, he plays Mark, a 17-year-old who attempts to create the ideal of a day he is living on repeat. While doing so, he meets Margaret (Kathryn Newton), a young girl stuck in the same loop, and falls in love with her. With each other, they make a “map of tiny brilliant things,” where they note all of the little events — karaoke jam sessions in a stolen vehicle, biking by means of the hallways of an empty high school — that make the day perfect.


“I was really appreciative of the way [director] Lev Grossman paints these characters who are struggling with growing up,” Allen tells MTV News. Like his character, Allen maintains a happy, childlike spirit over the phone. “I mean, you give a 17-year-old the possibility not to grow up, what are they going to do with it? It was a fascinating way to use the device of a time loop.”


Allen’s own map has led him here, not to the job of his dreams nevertheless somewhere even better. The 26-year-old grew up on a vineyard in Livermore, California, where he remembers raising chickens, building outside forts, and tending to the grapes. “There are these trees there in a flat path that I planted If I was about 14,” Allen says. “And right now they're huge. That's really gratifying.” He started studying acrobatics once he was 6 years old, practicing for three hours a day, six days a week. Before acting, Allen wanted to be a circus performer.


By 13, that drive morphed into a wider affinity for movement and efficiency. Allen noticed a community in a tight-knit breakdancing troupe in his hometown, and his dancing soon caught a person's eye of a teacher, who proposed he audition to study ballet at the esteemed Kirov Academy of Washington, D.C.


“I wasn't serious about ballet at the time, nevertheless I loved the idea,” Allen says. “I loved how impossible it was. It was the hardest thing I'd ever attempted. And I also loved the idea of not living at residence anymore because I was at boarding school. And I really didn't think I would get in. I did it on a whim, you know. And I got in. Also it was such an extraordinary possibility, I figured I had to give it a shot.”


Immediately soon after graduation, Allen moved to Los Angeles, where he started working in a dance studio. He revisited his childhood dreams of performing in Cirque du Soleil and took up street dancing again. He joined a casting website in search of gigs, only to discover that most of the listings involved acting, as well.


“I just began taking [acting] really seriously, and I sort of noticed a residence there,” Allen says. His first role was in a web series called The Dead Diaries, and he made a tiny appearance in American Horror Story's apocalyptic Season 8. He also played Kyle Campbell, best friend to Harry Shum Jr.'S Sol, in last year's drama All My Life. His starring turn as Mark in The Map of Tiny Brilliant Things marks his biggest job to date, and Allen says he immediately regarding the character’s playfulness and wit.


“It's sort of rare that you read something and you're just like, ‘This is me. I am this guy,’” Allen says. “Not that we're the same, yet I think whenever you're studying acting, you become intimately aware of the characters that you would best portray. This was certainly one of these characters.”


The film contains playful easter eggs that sci-fi fans will immediately recognize. The map itself is a reference to Time Bandits, and at one point, Mark compares time to “a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff,” a nod to Doctor Who’s David Tennant. To make for the role, he watched old episodes of the beloved British franchise. “It's so charming,” Allen says. “I got major warm fuzzies, [and it’s] some of the most terrifying cinema I've seen.” He also took into consideration what he would do if stuck in the same day forever. Like his character, he’d hope to help people — and have a blast doing it.


“I would find the ideal thing to mention to, like, 200 people to basically invoke their undying loyalty to me,” Allen says, with a laugh. “I’d be like, ‘Never call him again,’ and ‘The answer to the burning question within your soul is garlic.’ And then they could be like, ‘Oh my God, I have to listen to everything this person says.’ I would go and converse with all those people and tell them to meet in the park in two hours, and in those two hours, get as several playground rubber balls as you could. And then we just have a massive, massive dodgeball tournament.”


Later this year, Allen will make his big-screen debut as segment of the New York street gang, the Jets, in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming remake of West Side Story. He can’t mention much, however he does note it will “blow people’s minds.” He'll also star alongside actress Joey King in the upcoming Arie Posin-directed supernatural romance The In Between, which is expected to start filming this year. “She's so cool,” Allen says of King. “Like, what's up with that? How are you that cool? Who's your coolness dealer? Wish I could have access to that level of cool — is it hereditary?”


In The Map of Tiny Brilliant Things, Mark makes the most of the day he can’t seem to escape, yet in general, he wants his world to return to usual. Yet Mark is unsure of what to do with his life, piece of the journey is admitting that uncertainty to himself. Allen has embarked on a similar journey while in the pandemic by allowing himself to feel defeated at times, which has, in turn, helped him face difficulty more pragmatically.


“You've fried 1,000 loaves of bread, you've taken up crocheting, you’ve learned three new hobbies. Although at the end of the day, we want our world back,” Allen says. “And that's just hard. So, I think just admitting to yourself that it's tough has been one of the most valuable things I've discovered in this time.”