DETROIT — The cult hit "Dinner in America" is still serving happy fans, and its cooks couldn't be happier.

The Michigan-made indie comedy, about an on-the-lam punk rocker and the unlikely connection he forges with his biggest fan, is now on at least its third helping.

The movie debuted at Sundance in 2020 a few weeks before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it then received a small theatrical and digital release in 2022, where its quirky sensibilities and outsider's edge started to win over a small group of loyalists who identified with its idiosyncratic worldview.

Then over the summer a new wave of notoriety washed over the film, as clips from the movie and its anthemic theme song, "Watermelon," went viral on TikTok. A grassroots round of theatrical showings popped up to both capitalize on and further the phenomenon, and now the movie is playing at 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Historical Howell Theater, its first theatrical showings in Michigan since 2022.

"This train has gone around and around, and it's never stopping," says "Dinner in America" star Emily Skeggs, on a Zoom call last week alongside her co-star Kyle Gallner and the film's writer-director, Adam Carter Rehmeier.

The trio was together for a screening of the film in New York earlier this month, and they find themselves in the unique position of still being on the film's press tour nearly five years after the movie debuted.

"I hope we're on it 'til we f— die," says Gallner, invoking a bit of the anarchistic spirit of his "Dinner in America" character, Simon, who is also known as "John Q."

"Dinner in America" is about the crash course collision between John Q. and his shy and reserved superfan, Patty, played by Skeggs.

The movie's surprise success story mirrors the unorthodox connection between its two main characters, says Rehmeier, who has been blown away by the film's trajectory.

"I love that it's still growing and evolving, and it gives me hope that any situation in the business can really happen," says Rehmeier, a Michigan transplant who grew up in Nebraska City. "We all know you rarely get a second chance with a movie, and there were weird circumstances with the pandemic that forced us into a more lackluster rollout than we would have had in a normal year. But it's the kind of movie that hits people a certain way and has a profound effect on the people that it speaks to, and it's given me hope that there's no defined path, as an artist or for distribution for a film. It can be anything you want it to be."

A 'Dinner' setting

"Dinner in America" was shot in and around Metro Detroit in 2018, with locations in Detroit as well as Southfield, Farmington, Hamtramck and on the campus of Oakland University.

Rehmeier says Metro Detroit, where he was living at the time, had the look and feel he wanted to evoke with the film, and he chose to shoot the film here rather than Ohio, which would have provided valuable tax incentives for the project.

"Detroit had the burnt-out middle class look that I was looking for," says the filmmaker, who also directed this year's raucous early '90s teen comedy "Snack Shack." "If you took Grand River all the way into the city, you could see what I was looking for. It hadn't been remodeled since the late '80s or early '90s, and I felt like, for the story I was telling, it was the perfect backdrop."

Cast and crew were spread throughout Metro Detroit while shooting; Skeggs, a 2015 Tony nominee for her role in "Fun Home," was staying at an Airbnb in Royal Oak, and Gallner remembers going to a high school across from where he was stationed and being treated to some Midwestern hospitality.

"I went to their jazz night and they all fed me," he says. "Everybody there was like, 'Sit down, baby, let me feed you,' and I was like, 'Hell yeah, let's go!' I sat down and I watched all these kids play a jazz concert and I hung out and got to know people in the neighborhood."

At Sundance in 2020, screenings of the film were gangbusters. But just a few weeks later, the pandemic slowed the film's momentum to a halt, and "Dinner" — like the rest of Hollywood — was suddenly on hold.

After inking a distribution deal with Best & Final Releasing, an arm of locally owned independent film company Hantz Motion Pictures, "Dinner in America" received a small theatrical release in May 2022. It didn't make much noise — it hit theaters the same day as "Top Gun: Maverick" — and it was released digitally two weeks later.

While reviews of the film were strong — it holds a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes — it didn't have the immediate impact Gallner thought it deserved, though he never gave up hope.

"I always had a feeling this thing would find its audience," says Gallner, who also made waves in this summer's buzzy serial killer thriller "Strange Darling." "I think that's why it's been so hard to let go of it. I love this movie so much, and when the pandemic hit and the movie kind of did what it did, there was this part of me that was always like, 'That's not good enough, I'm not accepting that.' And we kind of held on, and the universe provided in its own way."

TikTok takes over

That started happening over the summer, when Gallner and Rehmeier were on the Kentucky set of their new movie "Carolina Caroline," a romantic thriller co-starring Samara Weaving.

"I don't have a TikTok, but people would be sending me stuff, and I was like, 'Oh wow, people are starting to make some 'Dinner in America' videos.' And me and Adam would be talking and I'd say, 'Have you seen this?' It was like a cool little uptick," says Gallner.

"And then suddenly there's thousands of these things, and some of these videos have 300,000 likes or more. And people would be sending me stuff like, 'Look, you're at the top of iTunes' or 'Look, you're at the top of Hulu,' and it would be ("Dinner in America"), and then all new releases. It was so bizarre," he says.

"And so we said, what if we put it out there and see if somebody bites? Let's put it in theaters, let's have a second chance at this," Gallner says. "And people responded."

Screenings across the country, many demanded by fans, have drawn sold-out crowds who dress up as the film's characters and make jewelry and clothing items dedicated to Patty and Simon. (Best & Final is also selling merch related to the film, including a limited edition "Watermelon" vinyl record, and a new line of "Dinner in America" T-shirts and apparel from Houston-based Super Yaki was just released.) Gallner says he's even seen people sporting tattoos of "Dinner in America's" characters.

"It's been really cool to see people find this movie. People fall in love with these characters. It's really it's own kind of punk rock movement," he says. "I have always loved this film, I've always loved Patty and Simon, so to see people fall in love with the film and fall in love with Patty and Simon the way I've always loved them is really gratifying."

One criticism about the movie that keeps coming up is the script's use of thorny language, including homophobic slurs, but Rehmeier defends their usage in the movie.

"While I agree that there's moments that are jarring and triggering, I feel like that spikiness has purpose in the movie," he says. "As those harsh exteriors get peeled away, we're left with a very sweet story inside of it. I always argued that you can't have the sweetness of the story that it becomes without the saltiness of the world that we set up.

"And we're living in that world," Rehmeier says. "Nothing changed from my POV, other than people's sensitivities to things. As far as hearing those words, I hear them everywhere."

Skeggs, who co-wrote the infectiously catchy "Watermelon" with Rehmeier, agrees.

"We get a lot of folks at Q&As and screenings who thank us for keeping it real. They say, 'that was me on the bus, I was called those words and I hear those words,'" she says. "I think those are triggering words, and that's important to talk about. But also art reflects life, and this is a reflection of the world we're living in today."

As for what's next for "Dinner in America," there's no telling, although Gallner, Skeggs and Rehmeier are all due at a screening of the film at Chicago's Music Box Theater in February. And the three of them are itching to come back to a screening of the movie in Detroit, where it all began.

"We need a big screen in Detroit. We should be on the screen at the DIA. DIA at the DIA!" Rehmeier says.

Sounds like dessert.

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