Film and faith

I saw Bridge of Spies today (I know, I'm a little late to the party) and it is every bit as good as everyone says it is. It didn't quite knock Spotlight out of the #1 spot on my 2015 favorites list, but it's pretty damn close. Spielberg definitely hasn't lost his touch, and I'd say he's at least got a solid shot at snagging a Best Director nomination from the Academy this winter. And why shouldn't he? Bridge of Spies is absolutely beautiful. Spielberg, it seems, is at his absolute best when he's doing a period piece. (Evidence: Schindler's List. If that film doesn't make you cry, I don't know what will.) And while we're handing out kudos, my compliments to the art department. Those sets and costumes were out of this world.

But all of that wasn't why I loved the film so much. Oh, that's part of it, I'll admit, but it's not the reason. There's a lot more going on under the surface of Bridge of Spies, and I truly hope people aren't too distracted by the historically-accurate production design to see it. (Although if they were I wouldn't blame them because seriously, look at those sets.)

Before I get into why Bridge of Spies really sent chills down my spine I'll have to get into a little personal backstory. I've had a lot of ups and downs with my faith over the past eighteen months or so, going from Christian to "I want nothing to do with the church" to "okay, sure, God exists, but wtf do I do with that information?" So it's not set in stone, exactly; I'm still figuring out where I stand, religion-wise, but I do believe in God and I do love Jesus and I do pray and sing and worship, so for all intents and purposes, let's say I'm a Christian. I was raised Episcopalian and still lean that way, but I have major issues with the representatives of my religion in general, which is kind of problematic to say the least.

So basically, to put it as simply as possible:

1. I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2. I believe in Heaven and angels
3. I believe God is watching us, He loves us, and He wants to save everyone (yes, even the atheists)
4. I believe that love conquers all and that God is love (even when He seems to be mad at us)
5. I believe that there is hope for the world even now when we can't seem to stop shooting each other

...do I sound like a Christian hippie? You know, the kind that makes Adam 4D throw up in his mouth? Yeah, probably. But you get the general point.

Now, there are a lot of religious/spiritual movies out there that claim to "spread the Word" by lacing as many sappy, otherwise-bland romantic comedies and family flicks with Bible references as possible. I've seen a few of these and honestly, they made me throw up a little. Christmas Angel. What If... God's Not Dead. The Christmas Lodge. War Room. All of them so absolutely stupid and insipid that I was either bored to tears or amused at how pathetic the evangelism attempts actually were. All of them so heavy-handed that were I an atheist, I would watch these things and go "ok, let's change the channel, this is stupid." I once got into a minor argument with someone who will not be named, over whether or not The Polar Express was "preachy." I wish I could sit him down in front of Christmas Angel or War Room--I got your "preachy" right here, buddy.

So no, I'm not a fan of "Christian" media. I'm also definitely not a "Christian" filmmaker. Not like that, anyway. I doubt anything I do will be distributed by Pure Flix. (In fact, I beg you, please beat me with a stick if I ever make anything that Pure Flix is interested in. I would literally rather be Tommy Wiseau than get to that point. Seriously.) No, when I find God in the movies, I find Him in less-blatant, less-evangelistic places.

Like, say, in Bridge of Spies.

The plot doesn't sound too spiritual, really, when you look at it on paper. A Soviet spy is caught, tried, and sentenced to prison in America, while a young American spy pilot is shot down and detained in Russia and an American student is captured in East Berlin. The no-nonsense lawyer who defended the Soviet spy is selected to arrange a prisoner exchange, he goes to Berlin to negotiate, and long story short, history is made. A nice little espionage thriller. A period piece--just what Spielberg does best--served with a nice, fresh side of Disneyfied patriotism, interspersed with a lot of talk about the Lord, the Constitution, and How Great America Really Is And Don't You Dare Say Otherwise.

But oh, it's so much more than that. Early on in the film Abel, the Russian spy, tells Donovan, his lawyer, how he once witnessed a man getting beaten by soldiers. The man kept getting back up, no matter how hard the men hit him, so they eventually gave up and let him go. This man served as a role model for Abel, who remains utterly calm even in the face of the death sentence. Whenever Donovan asks him if he is worried or afraid, Abel replies "Would it help?" He refuses to cooperate and pass information to the CIA, even if it would secure his freedom. He is calm and collected no matter what the situation. He is absolutely ready to die or be hurt for his country. "I'm not afraid to die," he tells Donovan when told about the possibility of the electric chair,  "even if it's not my preference." Halfway into the first act I realized, shit, I kind of want to be like this guy and he's supposed to be "the enemy." Donovan repeatedly mentions throughout the film what a "good soldier" Abel has been and constantly expresses admiration for his conduct, despite the fact that he and Abel are on opposite sides of a very tense fight.

There is a popular worship song that literally everyone who has ever been to an evangelical protestant church has heard, called "Mighty to Save." In the second verse is the line, I give my life to follow everything I believe in/Now I surrender. I couldn't help but think about that line when I saw the way Abel reacts to his capture, and the way American spy Gary Powers reacts to his capture: both men are absolutely willing to give their lives for what they wholeheartedly believe in. They will surrender to the consequences, knowing they made the right call according to their own hearts and minds. Donovan worries that Abel's associates won't believe that he didn't give up any information to the Americans, and Abel assures him that even if they don't, it will be all right because Abel himself knows that he did not betray his country. That is a damn powerful message, considering our culture's obsession with heroism. In most movies if you do the right thing and aren't rewarded with a ticker-tape parade, it's seen as a tragedy. Here, it's acknowledged that even the right actions are not always noticed and rewarded--and that's okay.

In the Bible, Jesus tells us that our reward will be greater in Heaven if we don't loudly pray on street corners, if we don't make a show of doing the "right" thing or the "holy" thing, if we don't insist on showing everyone how religious we are. His message lines right up with the one presented to us in Bridge of Spies: if you do the right thing and you know it, it doesn't matter who else knows. You know. You are able to sleep at night, knowing you did what you needed to do. And that's all the reward you need.

I felt closer to God watching Bridge of Spies than I ever have watching a blatantly "Christian" movie. And when I look at some of the other movies I love, movies that I feel a spiritual connection to in some form or other, I think I see a pattern. The movies I fall in love with don't preach or force an agenda or insist that what they're showing you is the be-all end-all. They're just there, and let you draw what inspiration, comfort, or message you can from them.

One of my former Christian fellowship friends once saw a film I'd made in high school and commented, "I'd never know you were Christian from your work." Funny thing is, one of my fellow students had teased me about the same movie, saying "your virginity pledge is showing" because the romantic leads didn't have sex in the film. It's all in the way you look at things. Someone else is going to watch What If... and, with a sigh, say as the credits roll, "What a beautiful representation of Christ and His love, I wish everyone could see that movie!" Someone else is going to watch Bridge of Spies and think, "Blah, useless romanticized patriotism." Doesn't make any difference to me, or to Spielberg for that matter.

Because he knows what meaning he put into that film. And I know what meaning I took out of it.

And at the end of the day...you guessed it...that's what really matters.

The downward spiral of a broken media

I can't even count the number of times I've heard "Wow, you like a lot of violent movies, don't you?" Usually this is accompanied by a shocked face, or at least a raised eyebrow or two, or in a fair few cases a follow-up statement of "So why won't you watch Saw/Taken/Mad Max with me? Come on, it's not as bad as A Clockwork Orange." Okay, fair enough. Yes, I like a lot of not-so-G-rated media. Yes, A Clockwork Orange is one of my all-time favorite movies. Yes, I am absolutely in love with Marvel's Daredevil. Yes, I think that Gus Van Sant's Elephant is one of the most beautiful and haunting things I have ever seen. And don't even talk to me if you've seen Paranoid Park and didn't like it, because I'm not sure we can be friends. (Okay, that's an exaggeration, but seriously, go see it. It's a thing of beauty. Really.)

But here's the thing that all of those violent movies have in common: they all put an emphasis on the consequences of violence, not the mere act of violence. Think about it for a second. Think about how many films you've seen that treat violence as a given and brush off the consequences. Think about the films where superheroes take out entire cities and we're never told about collateral damage or civilian recovery. Think about war films where the hero takes out hundreds of enemies and we never even learn their names, it's just "the other guy" or "the bad guy." And then think about Daredevil. Not only is Wilson Fisk thoroughly humanized (we see montages of the guy waking up next to his girlfriend and making her a freaking omelet, for Pete's sake), but so are his victims--even the ones who are part of organized crime rings. Every time someone is killed on Daredevil, we see the fall-out. The death scenes may be violent and difficult to watch, but they serve a purpose. As a result, the message comes through loud and clear: your actions have consequences, even if and when you are acting for the greater good.

Now, here's the thing about Daredevil, and A Clockwork Orange, and all those other movies I just mentioned (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker, Saving Private Ryan, Let the Right One In--I could go on and on). They are all R-rated, independent, or available only through specific providers. For example, Daredevil can only be seen if you have Netflix, you can't just come across it channel-surfing or scrolling through the free options on Hulu. You have to seek them out. They don't just fall into your lap--or at least, they usually don't. If you're a film student, or your dorm counselor is weirdly into Swedish horror, or your dad has very specific tastes in superhero TV, well, that's another story. But the point stands. It's very unlikely you'll wander across A Clockwork Orange in your post-work channel-surfing.

But you are likely to come across a lot of other things channel-surfing that are not R-rated, or obscure, or foreign, or Netflix-exclusive. Like Lord of the Rings, for instance. Or Harry Potter. Or Spider-Man. Or--and this is the worst of all--Fox News. CNN. MSNBC. Hell, Buzzfeed, Huffpost or the DailyDot. Pick a news outlet, any news outlet.

Let's tackle these one at a time, starting with movies that are widely considered to be kids'/teens' films. Lord of the Rings, for instance, where the Orcs are dismembered, stabbed, shot with arrows, hit with cannons--and that's just in one battle sequence--and entire armies are wiped out without so much as a "oh, shit." Let's talk about how the only deaths that are given any kind of due in those films are the ones where we know the characters' names. Otherwise, they're just there for the body count. Let's talk about all the supernatural battle scenes in Curse of the Black Pearl, or Harry Potter, or Chronicles of Narnia--that's the one that really grates my cheese, the Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, because we NEVER ACTUALLY SEE ANY DEATH. The witch turns someone to stone and it's undone by Aslan, who's just come back from the dead himself, and then to top it all off Lucy is given a magical cordial that brings back anyone who's on the verge of dying. I get that it's a fairy tale, but come on! Oh, and can we talk about the freaking battle scene in Breaking Dawn--you know, the one that was revealed to be NOT EVEN REAL? See kiddies, violence has no consequence! It's not even real! This stuff never happens! War is just a game and if you get stabbed, you have a special energy drink that'll bring you back to life!

Am I being a tad unfair here? Perhaps I am, but you know what, I'm done. I'm sick of it. Enough is enough. In a world where there are more mass shootings than there have been days of the year, America's parents are, I shit you not, more concerned with nudity than they are with graphic violence.  Let's just think about that for a second. People are actually, for serious, more afraid of their child seeing a naked body than graphic violence. Now, last I checked, was something that everyone had, and the mere act of being naked has never, in fact, hurt anyone; otherwise we'd be in serious trouble every time we took a shower...so what in the hell is that about?

Hey, MPAA, a little hint: if you normalize the shit out of violence by letting it creep into PG-13 and PG and even G-rated films, you cannot be surprised at the consequences.

"But Avery," you protest, "there's lots of evidence that violent movies aren't to blame!" Let me repeat, I do not exclusively blame violent movies. Did I not just say that A Clockwork Orange was my favorite movie? My problem is not that violent movies exist. My problem is that every film that I've ever seen where the consequences of violence are thoroughly portrayed and examined, has been slapped with an R-rating. Meanwhile films where killing someone has no consequence, or is justified because it's a "bad guy" (think Agent Cody Banks or, well, any Disney film really--but that one sticks out because in most cases, the hero-kid is not directly responsible for the death of the antagonist) get a free pass because it's usually bloodless. Now, isn't that just a little messed up, you think? Doing things that way literally removes the consequences of violence. In real life, when people get shot or beaten, there's blood. They die. In the movies...well, who cares?

And here's the issue I have with that. When I was a kid, I was convinced--and I do mean convinced, no one short of Jesus Christ himself could have persuaded me to believe otherwise--that Eeyore was stalking me from the hall closet. Back in the day, you see, there was a show called Pooh Corner and it featured Disney World-like full costumed characters instead of traditional animation. So in my mind Eeyore was real, he was in the closet, and he would not leave me alone. Why? Who knows. All that matters is that my parents had a lot of sleepless nights convincing me that there was not a depressed donkey hiding in our linen closet.

My point is that little kids cannot separate fantasy and reality. They're well known for it. For some kids it's a monster under the bed; for others it's Eeyore in the hall closet. Think about the effect that gratuitous violence has on kids who don't know whether it's real or not. That's exactly why my parents had the media policy they did when I was growing up: let her hear curse words, let her see a naked body, but anything more violent than a one-hit fistfight, we're going to have to talk about. Kids don't understand death. We really don't. I remember not understanding that when someone in a movie dies, the actor is still alive. A lot of kids I knew had the opposite problem and didn't get that when someone in real life dies, it's for good.

So there's one-half the problem, right there. And then we come to the other half: the news media. And by news media, in this day and age I don't just mean the New York Times, or Fox News. I mean TV, newspapers, magazines (ANY magazine, Time or Tiger Beat), online magazines and news sites like the Huffington Post, NPR, AM/FM radio, and--perhaps the biggest offenders--social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Buzzfeed, any of them. Now, I stand by the idea that news media is actually a worse offender in the violence department than film violence. Film violence is staged, and most rational adults realize that. But when you splash footage of violent killings over the news and talk about it at length, replay the clip in slow-motion, hire experts to analyze it while you replay it in slow-motion, reenact it with live actors or computer imagery...well, you get my point. It's real. That is a real person dying in that video clip. And now it's out there for everyone to see.

And what kind of message does that send to disturbed kids with access to weapons? It was bad enough back in the 1990s, when Columbine happened and round-the-clock coverage was on every news station of every TV in America. Now, shit's gone viral. Back then we relied on security footage. Now, you can whip out your cell phone as a gunman blasts into your school and film your last moments--there's a morbid thought, am I right? But it's true. In this day and age, I can google "ISIS beheadings" and find a video in the time it took you to read this sentence. We immortalize killers with TV, radio, and worst of all the internet. And then we're surprised when another psychopath with a gun and an axe to grind makes his attempt to go down in history...and every time, we give them exactly what they want. Roger Ebert said this a hell of a lot better back in 2003, and today it still rings true--maybe even more so than it did back then, because as I said, back in '03, we didn't have the viral video culture we do now.

But it gets even better, because that news media that I talked about, the one that will sensationalize killers with theme songs, catchy names and 24/7 motive analysis? They're excellent at putting the blame back on fictional media. The fictional media then turns right back around and satirizes the news media (see Gone Girl for a truly excellent example of this), the news media fights back by censoring and vilifying the fictional media, and the circle continues. Neither will accept their share of the blame, and neither will cease in throwing stones at each other. It's like watching a never-ending game of air hockey that nobody can ever win.

Now, I don't know what to do about gun culture. I don't know how to fight the NRA. Taking away all guns isn't the solution...we all saw how well that worked with alcohol in the 1930s...but the other extreme clearly hasn't done us much good either. Whatever your view on guns might be, I'm asking you to at least agree with me on this: letting kids think that violence has no consequence is a bad idea. Because, Jesus Christ, look what happens when those kids grow up. With that said, I don't know how to strike the right balance between freedom granted by the Second Amendment, the right to protect yourself, and the danger that guns present. Nor do I know the best way to talk to the next generation about this exact problem.

Here's what I do know and what I will do. I will continue to speak out against sensationalizing killers, thieves and terrorists in the news media. I will never, ever say or post the names of the Sandy Hook killer, the Columbine killers, the Planned Parenthood shooter, the Aurora Dark Knight killer...none of them. I will not be part of their immortality. I will continue to fight the glorification of violence and demonization of sex that we've seen in our culture. And I will ask, again and again, that my fellow filmmakers--students, amateurs, professionals and celebrities alike--do the same.

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Spotlight'

It's a well-known fact among my social circle that I am what we in the film industry call "a total, straight-up, melodramatic-as-all-get-out, undeniable Drama Queen." I don't just love something, I worship and adore it like it's my firstborn child. I don't just hate something, I despise it with every fiber of my being. Like I said in my Pixels review, I'm a fangirl. And I have never, ever made any bones about that or attempted to temper it in any way.

So when a movie with four of my favorite actors, directed by the same guy who made one of the best independent films I'd ever seen (have I mentioned that you should watch The Station Agent? because you should really watch The Station Agent) popped up in my newsfeed...well...you can imagine the ensuing freak-out.

The fact that Ian has heard me incessantly going on and on about Spotlight for the last three or so months and hasn't yet locked me in the attic is a testament to the fact that I literally have the best boyfriend ever. For real though. Every other day: "Ian, we have to see Spotlight!" "I will die if I don't get to see Spotlight." "I already missed Freeheld, I will literally kill someone if I miss Spotlight too!" "IT'S NOT FAIR. I want to see Spotlight but it's not in Michigan yet!" "I will boycott the Oscars if Spotlight doesn't get any nominations." (Yes, I said that before I even saw it.) So, obviously, I have been dying to see this movie since I found out about it in July. And let me tell you, it was so worth the wait.

On the way back from the theater, I told Ian "You're going to have to review this movie, because if I do it, I promise you I won't be able to be objective. My review's basically going to look like 'ASDFKSADFKJHAFSIDU I F-ING LOVE IT I WANT TO MARRY THIS MOVIE AND HAVE TOM MCCARTHY'S BABIES AND CUDDLE MARK RUFFALO UNTIL JUDGEMENT DAY AND IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL AND SO SAD AND SO REAL THAT I AM GOING TO CRY THESE ARE HEROES AND THE AVENGERS CAN GO TO HELL.'" And, well, here we are. I promise I'll try to be more coherent than that, but that's the gist.

I loved Spotlight. Hands-down it is the best film that I have seen all year, and trust me, that's saying something. All summer I've felt starved for independent film, and all of a sudden this past few weeks I've seen Trumbo, Suffragette and Spotlight one after the other. That's like good-movie overload. And yet still, Spotlight stands out. But why?

For starters, the casting is beyond-the-pale fantastic. We all know Michael Keaton is basically an acting god, but he shines in this film simply by...well, actually, by not being Michael Keaton. My favorite kind of performance is when an actor makes me forget that I know who they are. And for the first ten minutes of Spotlight all I could think was, "Shit, he reminds me of my dad." And he did. For two hours I forgot that I was watching my favorites, because they embodied their characters in a way that sucked me into the story and wouldn't let me go. The scene where Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo's character) breaks down and rants about how close he and his friends came to being abused by priests had me in tears--because it was real. It wasn't a Hollywood-glamorized "epiphany" starring MARK RUFFALO, it was a painful realization by a man who cared too much and didn't know how else to respond. And damn it, I could identify with that more than I initially cared to admit.

Which brings me to the treatment of the painful subject matter of the film. And this is the truly brilliant thing about Spotlight: for a movie that's ostensibly about priests abusing children, we see very few children, even fewer priests, and absolutely no abuse. Think about that for a minute. How much buzz and controversy could they have stirred up by making a film that depicted small children being molested by trusted clergy? "SHOCKING! PROVOCATIVE! GROUNDBREAKING! HEARTBREAKING! OSCAR MATERIAL!" the headlines would have screamed. But McCarthy resisted that temptation and instead made a movie that was not about the abuse itself, but what the reporters had to go through to bring that abuse to light.

By making the film more about the team than about the scandal, McCarthy ensured that Spotlight would not become a sensationalistic piece of "Oscar-bait" that existed purely to make people feel bad about their non-tragic lives. On paper it sounds so oddly flat: "it's a movie about people writing a news article." But the emotions burst off the screen and bring the story to life. There's nothing dry or boring about the frustration, shock, pain, anger, desperation and, finally, exhilaration that the team experiences as they force to the surface a story that so many wanted to remain buried. Now, as I said, this is in part due to the brilliant performances, but the rest of it is in the writing and direction.

The scenes in which the team speaks to abuse survivors are particularly strong. Again, these could have been over-the-top, exploitative sequences that were specifically engineered to make the audience squirm. Instead, we are forced to confront the painful reality that unlike, say, Von Trier's Antichrist--a film so gratuitously violent and sexually explicit that even my film school teachers shied away from playing it for us--this stuff actually happened to people. Do you know someone who's mutilated their own genitals after being confronted by a self-disemboweling fox? I sure don't. But I know people who have been betrayed and sexually abused by people they trusted, and that, to me, is far more terrifying than anything Von Trier could have dreamed up.

There's a scene towards the end of the film wherein Robby (Keaton) walks into his little office and hears phones ringing off the hook as survivors from all over Boston call in to talk about their experiences with the priests. It takes him a minute to comprehend what is happening, the effect his team's work has had, the backlash they might face, the exact size of the can of worms he's just opened--and all the good that might just come of it. There's no dialogue. The look on his face says it all. No, a news story can't undo the damage that the degenerate clergy has done. But the work he's done with his team can lead to a better future, and that, to him, is what really matters.

And that, to me, is the meaning behind Spotlight. That was why I told Ian, as we left the theater, "They are heroes." They are--I wasn't kidding when I compared them to the Avengers--but it's not because they won the Pulitzer Prize or blew the lid off of a disgusting conspiracy that never should have existed. It's because they knew something was wrong and they put every effort into making it right in the best way they knew how. Those are the kind of characters I can root for. That's the kind of story that I like to see.

That's the kind of movie that someday, I really, really want to make.

Dear Movie Theaters

I am angry at you.

Not all of you. But most of you. Collectively, I am angry at movie theaters. And honestly, I really think I have good reason to be.

In this age of instant streaming, video-on-demand, Dish Network, Redbox and YouTube, I do not have to go to a theater to see a movie. I do not have to pay you upwards of $20 to see one movie in one night. I do not have to drive for half an hour or more for the privilege of forcing a pair of 3D glasses over my regular glasses and missing half the movie due to closing my eyes to combat headaches brought on by eye-popping graphics. I have an HD flatscreen TV with access to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and YouTube, and I also own a Blu-Ray player. So, in short, screw you. I do not have to pay for the honor of seeing a film that you deem worthy to grace your silver screens. I can wait six months and see it on Netflix, where I get to watch all the movies I want for less than $20 a month. That's right, for $20 per one month, I can see unlimited movies, instead of paying $20 in one night to see one film that I probably had to go way out of my way to see.

What I pay for, in case you care even a single iota, is the experience. And in the last five years or so, holy mother of God has that experience been lacking.

So yes, movie theaters, I am angry, and I am sad. Because in the years since I graduated high school, you have been slowly, gradually stripping away everything I loved about seeing films in a theater.

You have taken away midnight premiere showings, instead beginning showings of a hot new movie at 7:00 the day before. Little hint, guys: just say it comes out on the 19th instead of the 20th. Stop kidding yourselves. Stop lying to us.

You have taken away my choice to wear a costume to a franchise premiere.

You have taken away my ability to feel safe in a movie theater by implementing your ridiculous "security measures" that make me feel more like I'm going through an airport than going to a movie.

You have even taken away my ability to see the movies I really want to see. You see, when you relegate films like Freeheld and Room to tiny arthouse theaters instead of granting them even short runs in your precious mainstream multiplexes, you force those of us who want to see them to drive ungodly distances just to see one film, thus adding gas to the ever-growing cost of seeing a film. Do we really need two dozen showings per day of the latest Paranormal Activity film? I guess so, because you refuse to even give one of those screenings to a real movie.

Back in 2011 I saw the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II at my local theater. Local, as in, less than ten minutes from my house. I wore my Hermione Granger costume, complete with homemade wand and time-turner, and stood in line for almost an hour and a half to guarantee that I'd get in to see the film--and good thing, too, because by the time midnight rolled around, the entire theater was sold out. Inside the building it was beautiful chaos. The entire place was decorated with Harry Potter paraphernalia, including Warner Bros licensed, life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the characters. Theater staff wore cloaks and wizard hats over their uniforms. Some of them directed us to the screening rooms with wands. Over half the attendees were in costume. There was a palpable energy inside the theater when we took our seats. Some of us were in tears before the film even started. Others couldn't stop shaking with excitement. And when the movie started, forget it. We were all wizards in that moment. We were all Harry, all Hermione, all Ron, all Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley. We cheered when Neville pulled the sword out of the hat. We roared our approval at "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH." We cried together over Fred, Tonks, Lupin and Snape's fates. We whistled and "aww"-ed at Harry and Ginny's last kiss. And when it was over, we gave a standing ovation. Some of us who'd brought wands pointed them in the air and said, "Mischief Managed." Perfect strangers hugged and cried on one another's shoulders. It was...there's no other word for it...magical.

That was the last time I saw a movie like that.

Six months ago I saw The Avengers: Age of Ultron at 11:00PM on April 30. Now, let me begin by saying I could have easily seen it at, oh, 6:30 or so had I chosen to do so. I didn't, however, because I wanted to see it with my boyfriend, who didn't get off work until 10:00 that night. We put together a little group: me, him, and I think four of his friends. And that was...it.

No, really. There were exactly eight people in that theater. At the freaking AMC. For Age of Ultron. In that whole room, there were eight of us, I was one of them, and I knew five of the others.

It gets worse. Since I knew costumes would likely get us booted out of the theater, I didn't even bring up the idea of dressing like the Avengers (since there would be six of us, obviously) for the premiere. I dressed in my favorite Avenger's trademark colors, but that was as far as I dared to go. I think one of the guys wore a Captain America t-shirt. That was it. That was as much as we could do. I have no doubt that if I'd showed up dressed like Black Widow I would have been turned away.

It still gets worse. The theater was practically dead. The reactions were mild, to say the least. I heard a smattering of snarky comments from Ian's peanut-gallery friends. I heard some laughs from the couple in the back. I did my share of laughing and rolling my eyes and clutching Ian's hand, but even I couldn't get into the "spirit" of things. How could I? There was no crowd, no mob mentality to roll with. Even the moment when Scarlet Witch finally gave in and joined the Avengers, even when Quicksilver bit the dust, even when Banner and Black Widow kissed for the first time, there were no screams of approval or cries of pain. It was just...there. Like any other movie we could've chosen to see that night.

I told Ian I needed the bathroom after the movie was over. It wasn't really a lie, because I did need the privacy of a bathroom. Safely hidden from his wisecracking friends, I locked myself in a stall and cried. I had so badly wanted the experience that I'd had when I saw Harry Potter that anything less was a crushing disappointment. But I didn't want the others, who seemed more than content just to see the movie in 3D, to know how hurt I was. So I pulled myself together after a few minutes and went back out, pretending that I was as impressed by the graphics and annoyed by the plot holes as they were.

Movie theaters, you have, in plain English, screwed up. You have taken what was once a thrilling experience and made it about as common as grocery shopping. "What are we gonna do tonight?" "I don't know man, let's go see a movie." "Ok bro, whatever."

For one of my senior projects in my last year of college I made a short documentary about the ever-changing movie distribution industry. I asked a theater owner what he thought would "save" movie theaters from the same fate as video stores and he talked about the incomparable experience of seeing a feature film in a theater. So far, so good. But instead of talking about experiences like the one I had seeing Harry Potter, he briefly mentioned something about escapism before going off on a long explanation of how movie theaters have to be more than a theater now. They have to include bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, arcades, party rooms. They can't just, y'know, show movies, don't 'cha know. They have to be more.

But...hold on...what if they don't?

I don't want to go bowling when I see a movie. I don't want to eat overpriced food before or after the movie as well as during the film. (If I'm paying $10 for a bucket of popcorn, you'd better put some freaking fairy dust on that shit.) I don't want to kill 20 minutes after the film playing a first-person shooter game. I don't want to get drunk on cocktails. And I certainly don't want to pay $50 when all is said and done, just to see one movie and have one meal. I don't want to have to drive 35 miles to see Room or Spotlight. I don't want to have to watch a 3-D trailer for Paranormal Activity. I don't want to walk through a metal detector or have my bag searched. I don't need any of that, and I certainly don't enjoy it.

I just want the energy back.

I just want to wear a real Hawkeye costume, instead of resorting to a black t-shirt and maroon jeggings.

I just want to see a midnight premiere at midnight instead of having to see it at 8:00 or 9:00 on a Thursday night with a brain-dead audience.

I just want to see a movie in a packed house with a crowd that's as thrilled to be there as I am.

I just want to go into a theater and, for one or two short hours, forget that people like the Aurora theater shooter exist.

I just want to feel like I used to feel when I walked into a theater: safe, and wanted, and happy. Like I belonged there. Like I was meant to be there.

I just want to go home.

Tales from the Set: The Auteur at Work

So one of the best things about being an independent/student filmmaker is getting to work with people you absolutely love to bits. There's something really, really satisfying about getting together with a group of friends and in the timeframe of one or two days, or sometimes even one or two hours, just making something because you freaking can.

What's really great about the Oakland University cinema studies program, not to shamelessly advertise my own school or anything, is that even though most of the classes offered are theory or analysis-based (Film Theory, Methods of Cinema Studies, Masterpieces of World Cinema, Film History, etc.), the majority of the professors will allow you to make a film or other creative project for a grade. I ended up making a short documentary on film exhibition as my senior capstone. In my junior year, I wrote a script about globalization for my World Cinema class and then did a short documentary on the effects of globalization in Detroit for my Documentary theory class.

And in my second-to-last semester at OU, I teamed up with my close friend Morgan and my boyfriend Ian to make a short film for the film theory class that all three of us were taking. The movie we made was called The Auteur at Work, which you can see here, and let me just say, here and now...it would have been way easier to just write a paper.

Trying to work in a team when all three of you have wildly varying opinions and filmmaking styles is no picnic, but the thing is, that can always be worked around. Morgan and Ian and I just sat down one evening between classes and said, okay, what do we want to do? The assignment was to make a short film--not a video essay--about a film theory that we had studied that semester. We tossed out a few ideas, but the one that really stuck was making fun of several prominent filmmakers that we'd studied that semester by making a film about auteur theory.

And for those who have not suffered through endless film-school debates about auteur theory, allow me to briefly explain what the hell that is. Basically, auteur theory claims that directors deserve "authorship" for their films. So, by that logic, Big Eyes is not a Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski film, it is officially a TIM BURTON film. Because the director has the most creative input, they deserve to "claim" the film as their own, the way a writer claims authorship of their book or an artist claims authorship of their painting. A lot of people agree with this point of view, but there are definitely scholars, critics and teenagers out there who do not. Hence, the debate.

So Morgan and Ian and I decided that we would shamelessly make fun of auteur theory and several prominent 20th-century auteurs--Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, and Orson Welles--with our final project. The story was simple: a director would write and re-write a script in the hopes of pleasing a producer and, in the end, would end up pleasing no one. The message was that in order to really be an auteur, you couldn't copy other directors' work, you had to create your own style or you wouldn't get the attention your work deserved.

It took me all of two days to write and edit the four-page script. We quickly decided that Morgan would be director and camerawoman, since those were her favorite aspects of production, and Ian, the tallest of the three of us, could do audio. Since Morgan had her hands full juggling final exams, Ian and I would be the editors and finish the post-production work. Morgan found our cast, too: her friend Cody would be the director, and her brother Collin would play the producer. We had a shotlist, we had a cast, we had props, we had a plan. Everything was in place.

And then, as always happens, once we got on-set everything went to merry hell in a handbasket.

Problem #1 came when we realized that the sunlight was encroaching on our chosen location for the producer's office. Morgan was about ready to go upstairs and outright yell at the sun, but that wasn't an option for obvious reasons, so we had to improvise. By moving office furniture to the right, we managed to keep both of our actors out of the blinding sunlight and maintain semi-even light through the scene. Crisis averted, but then we had to figure out how to make our audio work. We ended up calling our professor, the one who'd taught us to do audio and camerawork in the first place, and he told us how to solve the problem. Crisis averted again. And with the exception of Collin knocking over the table, we got through the scene with minimal outtakes.

The next major problem popped up when we realized we had nowhere to actually shoot the scenes from the Director's script. Ian and I ran out to find the next location, while Morgan, Cody, and Collin stayed with our equipment stash. Everywhere in the Oakland Center (where we shot the entire project) was occupied. We needed a long table to shoot the "Citizen Kane" parody scene, and we needed a place with a lot of light because two of our scenes were "deep depth of field" shots, meaning that everything and everyone in frame needed to be in focus, not just the people/objects in the foreground. After ruling out the food court and the basement, we settled on fireside lounge. Perfect, because lots of windows meant lots of light, and--miracle of miracles--there were several long tables that were not in use, right there, ours for the taking! Couldn't have been better.

Then we realized that lots of windows didn't just mean lots of light, it meant lots of backlight. Figuring out how to shoot without breaking the 180-rule while keeping our shots in the right light was a pain. Finally Morgan came up with the brilliant idea of shooting only one angle for each scene. Why not? Godard was famous for long takes, and Welles loved using a stationary camera and long takes to create a live theater-esque aesthetic. As for the Eisenstein parody shots, well, we could do that in post-production; he was more famous for editing than camerawork anyway. Problem solved.

The idea of the director's script was that it was a normal scene (we decided to have me passing a note to Ian, nice and simple) that got progressively more elaborate and jacked-up as the producer demanded more and more rewrites. First, he'd demand an Eisenstein-esque rewrite. Unsatisfied with that, he'd instruct the director to give him a Godard-themed rewrite. And when that wasn't good enough, he'd ask for an Orson Welles homage. And, crazy as we are, we decided that we'd shoot all these "rewrites" in order.

The first take, the "normal" shot, was easy enough. One take. Boom. We needed a close-up of Ian's wide-eyed "shocked" face for the Eisenstein parody, which we got no problem. One take, boom. Hey, maybe this was going to be easier than we thought...

Nope. Not even.

The Godard parody was one long shot. This basically meant that if we screwed up one thing, we had to do the whole scene over again. And because it was a parody of Godard, who loved to cram lots of details into his movies, we had a lot of little things to worry about. We had one guy (Collin, doing double-duty as an extra) pelvic-thrusting with flowers stuck in his pants. We had Ian fixing a Barbie polaroid camera with a candy cane. And I was supposed to come into the middle of this craziness and hand Ian a note, which Cody, wearing my Star-Lord mask and a feather boa, would snatch from my grasp with a pair of tongs. If none of that makes any sense at all, don't worry. It's not supposed to; it's a damn Godard parody for Pete's sake. But it made for some damn difficult filming. I think we did maybe three or four takes, not including all the rehearsal takes that we didn't film, before we got it right.

Finally we shot the Citizen Kane parody. The danger here was laughing. Collin played a butler, who passed Ian my note on a silver tray...while wearing my blazer, an old black velvet thing that, when put on him, was so painfully obviously a women's blazer that it bordered on hilarious. Then Ian would read the note and react...well...Kane-style. He was supposed to flip the table, throw furniture, and yell at me...and guess how much of that he was actually comfortable doing in a public place? If you guessed "zero out of three," you'd be right. "I'm worried about causing a scene," he told us. Ian, honey. We've already pelvic-thrusted with flowers in our trousers, run amok dressed like Star-Lord at the Pride Parade, and set off my broken alarm clock. We're way past causing a scene at this point.

I won't bore you with the details of post-production. Just know that if one of your editors is working through a cold and the other has the actual maturity level of an eight-year-old on Froot Loops, you will get nothing done. Seriously. We had to bust our asses, mainly because we wasted so much time laughing off said asses while we watched and re-watched the clip of Star-Lord-Cody snatching the note away while Collin pelvic-thrusted with the flowers in the background. (In our defense, it was finals week and we needed something to laugh about.)

But for all of that we made a damn cute film. I'm proud of it, and I truly hope that the others are, too. The moral of the story here is, work with your friends. You will love the results. Seriously.

Attention filmmakers!

HEY. You there. Yes you, the person reading this blog. First of all, thank you. (Seriously, if you're actually reading this weird-ass blog, thank you.) Second, if you're at all interested in making movies, ENTER THIS CONTEST. For realsies. Make a 30-second winter holiday movie and send it to Jenny Slate. Because why the hell not, that's why. Seriously, what have you got to lose?

A special note to my fellow awesome lady filmmakers: here is an opportunity to have your work looked at and judged by another awesome lady filmmaker. Do you really want to pass that up? I didn't think so.

So get cracking, everyone! Contest deadline is December 7. You've got one month to make as many 30-second holiday flicks as your little heart desires, so in the immortal words of Nike, JUST DO IT! And be on the lookout here too, because you bet I'll post mine as soon as they're done! :)

Let's talk about on-screen sex

Okay. I'm pretty sure any of my college friends who read this right now are laughing their asses off ("WHAT?!? the goofy, naive, hopeless romantic who wore a purity ring is writing about MOVIE SEX?!") but honestly, I really don't care. I mean, I've already covered death, feminism, awards-show politics and Dogme 95 - so really, how can I top that without talking about sex?

So, let's get to the heart of it: for a girl who's spent a long time swearing blind that she wants to wait until her wedding night, I have seen a lot of sexually provocative (and, in some cases, flat-out sexually explicit) movies. I've seen it all, from the fade-to-black cutesy scenes of movies like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants to the blatant hedonism of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And yet all of these movies have something in common: the sex is all glamorized and romanticized and totally...well...staged.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting directors start pulling a Lars Von Trier every time they want to shoot a love scene. But there are a few things I'd like to address, Love-Scene Directors, and I think if we all work together we might be able to change the Hollywood standards of perfect sex:

1) What's up with the whole woman-looks-perfect-post-sex thing? I look like a hot mess after I carry two full laundry bins up the stairs, and I mean, not to get graphic or anything, but isn't sex a bit more strenuous than that? I get that it's Hollywood and you can't just let the woman look like she's recently been hit by the Sharknado, but could we get beyond the need to have everybody's makeup perfect 24/7 already? Isn't it a little sexier if her lipstick is smudged and she's a little sweaty and her hair's been messed up? I'm just saying, if you look like a model off the runway right after you've just finished getting busy, I imagine you must've had some pretty boring sex. And Hollywood, a little hint, boring doesn't sell.

2) Speaking of which, can we have more sex scenes that focus on the woman having a good time? Kimberly Peirce once got a hard time from the MPAA for having a girl's climax last too long in Boys Don't Cry. To which she helpfully replied, "Okay, but why? No one's ever been hurt by an orgasm that lasts too long." Good point, Ms. Peirce. Again, I'm not asking for a complete 180 - I'm pretty sure every straight girl in the movie-watching world would revolt if all the slow-mo shots of the men getting naked were removed from the cinematic experience - I just think it'd be nice to see more sex scenes like those in Boys Don't Cry and Gone Girl. (Seriously, is there a reason why good sex scenes have to be layered into movies that are choked with violence? I really don't think John Lennon would've approved.)

3) Do all the sex scenes have to be set-dressed to the nth degree? I get that you can't show nudity and still maintain a PG-13 rating (unless you're Tim Burton showing off Danny DeVito's naked ass, but believe me, that is an entirely different thing) but to go back to point #1, if your bed looks like it was just made by Cinderella's mice when you've just finished a roll in the hay, your sex life must be about as fun as reading IKEA instructions. I remember talking about this with one of my screenwriting professors once. We were talking about how to write a realistic love story and I made some snarky comment about how in movies, the woman is always wrapped perfectly in a sheet post-sex. To which he replied, "If those movies were realistic, the sheets would be on the floor." Couldn't have said it better myself.

4) Why do all movie climaxes sound the same? I swear to God if I cut out the sex noises from one standard movie love scene and pasted them into another, no one would be able to tell the difference. Now, given that I am not a creeper who goes around listening to other people get it on,  I'm clearly not an expert on the subject, but I am 99.999999% sure that in the real world, every big O does not sound exactly the same. Let's just try for some diversity here, okay? If you need inspiration check out Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song, those actors made noises I didn't even think humans could make. Or, y'know, continue to show your actors Easy A, for How to Fake Sex 101. I know you know which scene I'm talking about.

5) Is it illegal to try the "less is more" approach? I'm not talking about the "fade to black" standard of most PG-rated rom-coms. Though I do tip my hat to them for throwing back to the Hollywood Production Code days without resorting to actual censorship...but that's another story. I mean the reason the scenes from Gone Girl and Boys Don't Cry (I'm going to go back to these two a lot because seriously, they are the best movie sex scenes I have ever seen) are so great because they're so intimate. No one is yelling "oh God! OH MY GOD!" at the top of their lungs. Clothes aren't torn off and hurled over inanimate objects. The pictures on the walls aren't rattling. But even though the furniture may not be rocking, it's clear that someone's world is. Sure, there are times when the story calls for a sex scene reminiscent of the one in Dark Shadows, but sometimes, subtle can be sexier than the alternative.

6) Is nudity actually required for every scene? Look y'all, I'm as happy to look at a shirtless Bradley Cooper as the rest of you, but let's return to that "less-is-more" principle. Especially for movies with multiple boot-knocking sequences, like Gone Girl, sometimes it's more about what we don't see. Again, I'm sure everyone knows exactly which scenes I'm talking about here. Did Rosamund Pike need to be naked in either of her big moments? Nope. We were still as interested or horrified, depending on which part we were watching, without the presence of boobies. And in some cases, it can be used as a character-layering moment. Another note about Gone Girl: Andie gets naked in her sex scenes, Amy does not. Amy is associated with class, sophistication and intensity; Andie is played as totally naive. See what Fincher did there?

Which brings me to the final point: let sex be part of the story. We live in a world where sex is used as a tool. It's an advertising ploy. It's a power-play. It's used to sell, to obtain, to negotiate, to get revenge. But it doesn't have to be that way in the movies, does it? That's what movies are about, after all: creating a picture of a world that's different from the one we live in. It's fleeting, but it's there. It can just be another part of the story. It doesn't have to be the defining part. Just another cog in a crazy, beautiful machine.

And here's my plea to you, the MPAA: stop criminalizing sex and normalizing violence. You're not fooling anyone with your "it's realism!" spiel. No, you're not. We filmmakers can't change standards unless you let us. We can try, but who'll see the movie if you stamp it with NC-17 because it depicts a woman getting off? Like Pierce said, it's not like someone's getting hurt. But you know what? I'd bet money that the reason sex scenes in movies are so shiny-pretty-glossy is because when they get realistic, you tag it as pornography and tell the filmmakers they should be ashamed. So let's chill out a bit, MPAA. Because I guarantee that when you do, we will too.

Finally: to all the filmmakers who are making cool movies with cool sex scenes...you rock. Don't ever change. (Seriously, don't.)

(...I promise that's not my desire to see shirtless Bradly Cooper talking.)

If you like music and movies...

Composer Jim Steinman loves to refer to his best-known work, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, as a "cinematic" album. And he's right. There's a reason that the 1960s, 70s, and 80s are often credited with some of the best music of the century: because that's freaking true. The Beatles' The White Album, the Who's Quadrophenia, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, the Clash's Sandinista!, and of course Bat out of Hell - these are not only some of the greatest albums of all time, but they're also known as concept albums, meaning that unlike 90% of the popular albums released today, they're built around a unifying theme or, in the case of Quadrophenia, the whole album is meant to tell a single story. And I mean, call me a nerd, but holy cow wouldn't that be great for a movie.

No, really, hear me out. We've made movies out of books, comics, TV shows and amusement park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean, anyone?), and as of lately, a new trend has popped up: making films out of video games. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but you know what's happened a couple of times but never really became a thing, the way making movies out of video games became a thing? Making movies out of concept albums. Oh, sure, it's been done. But it usually was borne out of a desire to create a franchise (think the Monkees TV show or, like, pretty much every single Beatles film ever made). I can only think of a few albums that were ever genuinely turned into a film for the sake of turning an album into a film. And some of them, like Quadrophenia, weren't even direct adaptations, more like dramas loosely based on the original music.

So these are the albums I'd most like to turn into a film if I could. Some of them are Greats. Some of them are...well, not. But they're all close to my heart and if I ever got the chance to make any of them into a movie, you bet I'd take it.

Avery's Top 5 Rock Music Films:

5. The Christmas Attic (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

I saw this show performed last year at the Palace of Auburn Hills and...holy shit. I love artists like TSO because it's almost like they set themselves up for this kind of thing. Their albums are mostly rock operas, and The Christmas Attic is no exception. The album tells the story of a little girl who goes up into the attic and finds a box of letters that tell a love story with a sad ending. Now, this might sound entirely cliche, but if you've seen their live show, you know it's anything but. And if I were to make this album into a movie, I'd try to channel that same intensity (though given that it's a movie, maybe I'd dispense with the laser show) and I'd try to include as many members of TSO in cameo roles (or, heck, if they're up for it, major parts) as possible.

4. Rock Spectacle (Barenaked Ladies)

Rock Spectacle is the first live performance album from the Barenaked Ladies and it contains some of their finest songs: "When I Fall," "Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank," "Brian Wilson," and of course the famous "If I Had $1,000,000." This was one of the defining albums of my childhood. When I was a kid my dad would put this on and we'd dance to it - sometimes there'd even be stretches where I made him play it every night. I always felt like there was a story to the music, even when I was little and could understand literally none of the lyrics. Well, now I'm older and (theoretically) wiser, and I feel it now more than ever. This is also probably the album with the most room for fun, because I swear if I made this into a movie, it would have the biggest ensemble cast ever - and, as an added bonus, this band loves to sneak little bits of humor into their music, even some of their less-upbeat songs, which leaves plenty of room for comedic interpretation.

3. Bat out of Hell (Meat Loaf)
There's been a movie (or TV special) or two about the making of this album, but I don't want to do a biopic or documentary. I want to do the story of Bat out of Hell. I want to take the stories that Jim Steinman told in his lyrics, and bring them to life. I mean LOOK AT THE COVER ART for heaven's sake and tell me that's not one of the most cinematic things you've ever seen. Imagine that on a movie theater screen. Of course it would be violent--with a title track about a motorcycle crash, how could it not be?--but the more "fun" songs, like "All Revved Up" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" would usher in the chance to show off Steinman's infamous sense of humor, and that would be the major hook for an audience.

2. Don't You Fake It (Red Jumpsuit Apparatus)

It's not exactly a concept album in the vein of Bat out of Hell or Quadrophenia, but you can't deny there's a cohesive sound in Don't You Fake It. It's one of the most underrated albums of all time, and undoubtedly RJA's best. And if you listen to the lyrics, the songs really are mini-stories of their own. Watch Ronnie Winter's Half of Us interview and the inspiration for those stories becomes painfully clear. And that would be the storyline for the movie: the story of the formation of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, with the real-life events behind each individual song getting a spotlight. And it probably wouldn't be as fun as some of the others (let's be honest though, none of the ones I've thrown out there so far would be straight comedy, except maybe the Rock Spectacle movie), given that it's based in real life as opposed to, say the theatricality of Bat out of Hell, but it's because it's so heavily based in reality that I feel like it's a story that really, really needs to be told.

1. Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

WHY HAS NO ONE DONE THIS YET!?!? Springsteen once said that he could see every song on Born to Run taking place at the same time, over the course of the same summer night in different places. There's your film plot, right there. And of course "Jungleland," the operatic epic about the Magic Rat and his involvement in an unfortunate street war on Flamingo Lane (my God, Springsteen should've been a novelist), would be the entire third act. The whole thing would, of course, take place in 1970s New Jersey, a shout-out to Springsteen's hometown. The film practically writes itself. If only Clarence Clemons could be here to see it...

In the end, I know the odds of actually making any of these films are so impossibly low that it's almost laughable. But that's part of the fun of filmmaking: having an idea that's so out there it'll never happen...and knowing that someday, somehow, if you try, you just might have a chance.

Avery Tries to be a (Retro!) Critic: A Nightmare on Elm Street

I recently wrote about my slow evolution from professional chicken to cautious horror-lover. At the end of the post, I mentioned that I planned to see A Nightmare on Elm Street this Halloween. Well, Ian came over to keep me company last night while my parents were on a weekend getaway, and guess what he brought with him? I'd planned to watch it, I was excited to watch it, but at the sight of the DVD cover (which, trust me, isn't pretty) I nearly backed out. I'm not that brave yet, I wanted to tell Ian. I can't do it. Halloween shops scare me; what effect do you think this will have? Can't we watch Beetle Juice instead?

"I'm not sure about this one," I told him.

"Give it a chance," he insisted. "You'll love it. If you don't, we'll turn it off."

And still I resisted. "If I say turn it down, turn it down," I warned him. "If I say shut it off, shut it off. If I say I need a break, pause it immediately. If I tell you to fast-forward, do it. And if I watch the whole thing and can't sleep tonight, you're staying up with me. But I like Wes Craven. So I'll give it a try." So Ian gave me the remote so I could lower volume/pause/stop/fast-forward as needed, turned on all the lights in the TV room, and settled my puppies on my lap for an extra layer of protection. And then we started the movie.

I'd like to say I forgot why I was afraid to watch it in the first place. I can't. But that, in this case, is a good thing, because it means that Craven did his job, and did it very, very well. My precautions did turn out to be unnecessary; aside from a bathroom break or two (turns out drinking half a gallon of tea before settling down to watch a movie is a bad idea...who knew, right?) we didn't need to pause or stop the film. And no way in hell was I going to fast-forward once I saw how beautiful the movie's aesthetics were. I didn't want to turn away, or turn it off, because not only was it beautiful, it was exciting. It was like a Hitchcock film: I never knew what was going to happen next, but I definitely wanted to find out.

I like Wes Craven a lot. I loved Red Eye and was pleasantly surprised by Scream, and Nightmare on Elm Street is in the same vein as both: a little humor, a lot of great aesthetic effects, a hell of a lot of suspense, and all the trope-subversion in the world. Craven loved to play around with audience expectations, and my God was he ever good at it. That's what makes Nightmare so wonderful and so terrifying. Craven uses his jump scares where they count. And he makes sure to place them where you least expect them to be. Oh, and as if that's not enough, he uses just enough body horror, and just enough psychological freak-outs, to make sure you never forget what you've just seen.

For the millionth time I'll say, I'm picky about horror. I like my horror like I like my period pieces: classy, and with as little gore as possible. (Which is why I will never understand what my dad sees in shows like Hell On Wheels because what even is that thing.) But Wes Craven knew what a lot of modern horror directors do not: how to make even the goriest slasher film a work of art. Because whoa, there is a lot of gore in Nightmare on Elm Street. There are literally fountains of blood in that film. Fountains. I'm not kidding. There are maggots, there's writhing intestines, at one point Freddy Kruger's face is torn off revealing a bloody, fleshy skull underneath. ("I told you to warn me if something like that was going to happen!" I protested to Ian when that scene came around. It was...oh, I don't know...about fifteen minutes into the film.) But even throughout all of that, the aesthetic is so beautiful you don't really know what to make of it.

And then there's the music. It's eerie. It starts off soft and builds to a crescendo, which is cool enough, but the brilliant part is that throughout most of the "normal" scenes. i.e. when Nancy and her friends are awake, the music is almost classical--piano, chimes, and simple repeating note patterns. Then when we enter dream-world and Freddy makes his appearance, BOOM--in come the drums and the synthesizers we associate with the 1980s. Again, very well-played, because even though the music varies, the score feels cohesive.

And then there's the characters, and there's Nancy, oh my God can we just talk about Nancy for a minute? People may hail Joss Whedon as the champion of Strong Female Characters, but the man has nothing on Wes Craven. I've yet to see a Craven film where women are firmly placed in the role of "victims" and the men are in the role of "saviors." It's always a toss-up. And this is what I mean about Craven majorly screwing with the tropes. For instance, we expect that Tina is definitely going to die first because she has sex. Well, spoiler alert, she does...but guess what? Her boyfriend is punished too. This is huge because #1, this movie came out in the 1980s, and I don't think I need to remind anyone how conservative America was in the 1980s...and #2, even today in a lot of our media, we fall into the trap of shaming girls and glorifying boys who have sex. Not so in Nightmare on Elm Street. Everybody's fair game: girls, boys, virgins, non-virgins, dorks, jocks...Freddy Kruger doesn't care about your sex life. He just wants to slit your throat.

But the reason Nancy survives is not because she's a virgin--in fact, it's implied that she isn't--but because she figures out how to empower herself against Kruger. The bathtub scene, where his clawed hand comes up between her legs, implies rape, as does a later scene when he attacks her in her bedroom. But she defeats him not just with physical force, but emotional: she gets to look him in the eyes and say "You can't hurt me. F**k off. I own my own mind and my own body, and if you don't like it, tough." And even without the rape/assault survivor analogies, can we just acknowledge that this girl has the biggest, brassiest set of metaphorical balls ever? She Home Alone-ifies her house, makes sure her mom is out of the way (or tries to, anyway), tells the authorities what's up and won't take no for an answer, and then walks right into the path of a serial killer. She knows she has to be the one to take him down and instead of hiding away, she rises to meet the challenge. And when he attacks her friends and her mother, she doesn't run away in fear. She gets mad. It just got personal, Kruger. You messed with her mom, and now she's going to mess with your already-none-too-handsome face.

The scene where Nancy tells Kruger, once and for all, that he has no power over her reminds me of a scene in Divergent. Inside a fear-driven simulation, heroine Tris's boyfriend, Four, tries to force himself on her sexually, even though in real life he promised he'd go slow. Tris stops him, kicks him off with a decisive "NO!" and wakes from the simulation to find everyone applauding her and telling her she's an example. Not only does she fight off a rapist, but she is congratulated for it. Her empowerment is treated as something to be rewarded, rather than a given. Instead of hearing "Well, you go alone with a guy in his room, what do you expect?" the message is "Whoa! You fought that guy off! Way to go!"

Same for Nancy. While no one is there to give her a high-five after she strips Kruger of his power by refusing to believe in him, Craven makes it clear that Nancy's success against him is real. She couldn't do it just by booby-trapping him, she had to confront him, and then she had to stop giving him the power to hurt her. Again, it's huge, considering the era in which this film was made. Craven's message might've been clouded by the unhappy ending (which, for the record, he didn't want there in the first place), but his original intent is clear. You have the power. You might be afraid, but that doesn't mean you can't be brave.

And last night after watching this thing, I slept well with my pups curled up at my feet and the window wide open. Ian told me he was proud of me for getting through the whole movie, but he can't possibly be as proud of me as I was of myself. Because here's the thing that I've slowly started to discover about horror films: done right, they can be as empowering as they are terrifying. And let me tell you, Craven knew how to do it right.

But purely from a filmmaker's perspective, the best thing about horror films, especially ones like Nightmare on Elm Street, isn't their empowerment factor. It's that when they're over, when you come back to reality and remember that it's just a movie and it wasn't real, it hits you that hey, this film, this really cool piece of visual storytelling, came out of someone's imagination. And then comes the very best part of all: going and writing your own film, and seeing what kind of things can come out of your imagination.

Theory: Your Scathing Condemnation of Fan Theories is Mean

I love fan theories, or headcanons, as some like to call them. I love them. I really do. I love the silly ones. I love the sad ones. I love the ones that could be true. I love the ones that are so insane they're perfect. I love them all.

Apparently, IndieWIRE critic Sam Adams does not agree with me.

Okay, I can see how fan theories might annoy some people. They're pervasive. They're divisive. They start fandom wars. They confuse the living hell out of non-fandom members when they come up in a random Google search. I get it, you don't like it, you wish people would just chill out or keep it to themselves.

Well, I have bad news for you, sir. That's not going to happen. Fan theories, whether you like it or not, are here to stay. I'm not going to even try to explain all the ins and outs of fandom culture. I'd need an entire blog for that. But I will tell you a story. Just bear with me for a minute here and I promise I'll explain myself.

My boyfriend is a huge dork. Not, like, smartest-kid-in-the-school, pocket-protector-wearing, makes-a-nuclear-reactor-out-of-paper-towel-rolls kind of dork, but, like, a pop culture addict kind of dork. And what a lucky girl am I, because guess what? Me too. We're total nerds together. It's kind of amazing. So, we went to Comic-Con together in May. He went to meet Roddy Piper. I went to meet Robbie Thompson. And I went in costume as Castiel, because to me, that was just the height of cool: going and meeting the TV writer who writes episodes based around your favorite character, dressed as that character? Once-in-a-lifetime experience, right there.

Now, in the weeks leading up to the con, we showed each other the movies/TV shows/wrestling matches starring our favorite people, just so we could understand why each of us wanted to meet those celebrities. He showed me Piper's best matches. I showed him my favorite episodes of Supernatural. But before I did, months before, when I was first planning my costume, I tried to explain to him the nature of Dean and Castiel and their relationship. "Well, Dean's a human, and Cas is an angel..." I began, about to do my usual lead-up of now this is just speculation it's not been confirmed yet but it's a very widely accepted fan theory...and then I realized, wait, Ian has never seen Supernatural. He doesn't know who Dean and Castiel are. He has no idea. I don't have to apologize for my views on this. I can just flat-out tell him.

"About half the fandom takes Dean and Cas's relationship at face-value, and believe they're just very good friends. But the other half - and I'm in this sector - interpret their relationship as romantic," I told him matter-of-factly. "We pick up on clues that the showrunners may or may not have intended to leave. It's not confirmed by the show yet whether their relationship is canon or not. It's just a very, very popular, intensely-believed fan interpretation."

"Oh, I see," was Ian's reply. And then we moved on to discuss costumes. I only brought it up because I wanted to warn him not to wear anything remotely Dean Winchester-like at the con, unless he was up for some serious teasing. When I showed him an episode of Supernatural, I made sure to choose one wherein Castiel interacted with both Dean and Meg, just to show him both sides of the debate. And that was that.

But when I hung out post-Comic-Con with him and his friends, one of them was very vocal about his opinion that the Dean/Castiel romance "is a load of bullshit." At one point I made a comment about how I preferred more subtle hints of their romance, because it let the fans truly interpret it for themselves, and I disliked more heavy-handed or obnoxious references and lines like "You know, the angel in the dirty trenchcoat who's in love with you." Before I'd even finished this sentence, the guy jumped in to insist "that's because they're trying to make fun of the idea that this relationship could EVER be romantic." "So basically, they're making fun of people like me," I translated. The guy shrugged it off. "Yeah, pretty much." And then the subject was dropped.

I hate incidents like that. Ian and his friend, without even meaning to, pretty much demonstrated the absolute best way to respond to a fan theory, and the absolute worst way to respond to a fan theory. The best way, even if you think the fan theory is ridiculous, is to just go with it. Let that fan, be it a super-fan or a casual fan, ramble about their interpretation of the story, and then let it go. If you agree with it, great. If not - let it go.

But when his friend insisted that the showrunners of Supernatural actively go out of their way to make fun of the fans who believe in the Destiel theory, it was more than just annoying. It hurt. I wanted to ask, "And what harm, exactly, is this fan theory doing to you? Like are you really so afraid that it might actually be true, that you can't even entertain the thought for five seconds?" It wasn't that he disagreed with me. He was entitled to his opinion. But the way he reacted with eye-rolling contempt, as if believing in the Destiel theory immediately demoted me to "mindless fangirl" status? That really stung.

People who forcibly oppose fan theories remind me of politicians. They really do. They will never be convinced that the fan who came up with the theory has a leg to stand on. They will not only go out of their way to let the whole world know that the theory is WRONG, but they will also go out of their way to discredit the fan who came up with the theory. I've seen comments on those Pixar movie posts ranging from "meh, nice, but it's too out there to be true" (reasonable enough) to "oh my god you are insane get a life you dumbass" (not so reasonable). I don't mind being disagreed with. And I'm sure no one else who supports a fan theory minds, either. What we do mind is being told that we are "crazy" or "stupid" or "fake fans" for coming up with the idea in the first place.

And that was the problem I had with Adams' indieWIRE piece. Is the guy entitled to his opinion? Sure. Fan theories aren't canon. They don't have to be accepted as fact - and they shouldn't be. It's a matter of interpretation. But guess what? You don't have to believe in a fan theory to respect the fan who came up with it. And slamming someone else's interpretation, or personally attacking someone for coming up with a theory you don't agree with, is mean.  The fastest way to kill someone's passion for something is to make fun of them. Snorting, rolling your eyes, and calling someone a "fake fan" (or, to use Adams' phrasing, a "so-called fan") because they dared to interpret something differently than you did is a douche move. It's a surefire way to make sure that person never speaks up again. And I know, because I've been there.

So, to all the people who agreed with Adams' take on fan theories: shut up. We get it. You are allowed to think that it's ludicrous to believe that every Pixar movie takes place in the same universe. You are not, however, allowed to say that someone is not a "real fan" because they do believe that.

And to all the people who come up with these fan theories: keep it up. But I beg you, don't waste your breath trying to convince the haters that it's true. They'll just blow you off. But don't let that stop you from putting yourself out there in the first place, because you know what? I met a Supernatural writer. I told him, "I believe in Destiel." I told him that while I was standing there, in front of him, dressed like Castiel. And you know what he said?

He told me, "You go right ahead. If that's how you see the show, you go right ahead and believe that. We put the show out there, that's our job. How you interpret it, that's up to you."

How you interpret it, that's up to you. Words to live by.

The genre judgement conundrum part II: learning to love horror

August 2006. 13-year-old Avery sees a Blockbuster VHS case (my God, those are archaic words, right there) in her dad's hand. "What's that?" she asks.

Dad holds it up so she can see the title. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "What's that?" she asks again, because up to this point, her only exposure to this cult classic has been the Kidz Bop cover of "Time Warp," which she hasn't listened to in forever because, at this point, she has clearly outgrown Kidz Bop. (But, being the child-at-heart she is, if she still listens to those old CDs time to time...well, who's going to know, really?)

"It's an old musical. From the 1970s." Her mom and dad exchange a look. Is their child old enough to see this? After all, their objective thus far has not been to censor her viewing material (she's been allowed to watch Big Trouble and My Cousin Vinny and The Replacements--movies that most of her friends would have had to see behind their parents' backs) but this is considered widely to be the most raunchy musical of all time. Can they really...?

Finally, assuming (and rightly so) that most of the jokes will go over her head, her mom casually says, "You should watch it with us. It's got Meat Loaf and Tim Curry in it. You'll like it."

And for the first forty-five minutes or so, she does. She giggles at "Dammit, Janet," gets up and dances to the Time Warp, and squeals in delight at her first sighting of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. "That is Tim Curry?" she gasps, not recognizing the man who co-starred in Pirates of the Plain and Home Alone 2--some of her favorite movies of the day. She's a little nervous when Rocky is born, but when she sees not a hideous Frankenstein monster but a muscle-bound jock running around in shiny gold underpants, she starts laughing again. So far, as her parents predicted, she loves it. Sure, a lot of the sexual references are lost on her, and she's a little confused as to why Frank-N-Furter seems to be gay or at least bi (since she knows, from years of watching Eddie Izzard, that "most transvestites actually fancy women"), but those are minor things and overall she's happy.

And then comes Meat Loaf's entrance. And, with it, his gruesome death at Frank-n-Furter's hands. That's when she starts to cry. That's when her parents start to think, oops, might've introduced this one a bit too soon. They let her watch for a bit longer, right up through "Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me," which they hope she will find sufficiently funny to erase the memory of Meat Loaf's untimely demise, but they're careful to shut off the movie before Eddie the Delivery Boy's final...uh...resting place is revealed. Because if she can't handle an ice pick and some blood, they know she won't be able to handle that.

One year from now this movie will be one of her favorites, and she will go to see the play live, dressed as Magenta and singing to every song, squirt gun in hand and a smile on her face. But you couldn't convince her of that now. Not for all the money in the world.

~

So fast-forward now to Halloween 2012. After a lifetime of actively avoiding horror movies, I was facing a conundrum because, you see, my teacher had put The Exorcist on his syllabus, as it's one of the most famous (and, admittedly, one of the most groundbreaking) horror films of all time. Most of my classmates are psyched. It's a great horror film, they insist, and it's just perfect that we're watching it on Halloween night. I'm sure they're right, but I have a problem. I hate horror. I really, truly hate it. There are few times that I've seen a horror film and not hated it: The Blair Witch Project, Let the Right One In, Psycho, and of course Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. That's it. The number of horror movies that haven't terrified me into oblivion can actually be counted on one hand.

My mother always said that my problem with movies--and she still says this, now, in 2015, when I'm a college graduate who consistently sleeps with the lights off--was that I had a hard time telling fantasy and reality apart. Maybe that's true. All I know is that up to my college days I could not watch a horror movie without my parents holding my hands. In fact, during a Genres class at Interlochen, we watched Diary of the Dead to study "documented" horror, and I was so shaken I had to leave halfway through the screening and, afterwards, spent the night at a hotel with my parents because I was too afraid to sleep alone in the dorms. I believe by now I have hammered the point home: horror and Avery did not mix. Just couldn't happen.

But on Halloween night, 2012, I caved for the sake of my grade. My teacher was very nice about it, but he would not let me get out of seeing the film. He let me bring my girlfriend and looked the other way when I buried my face in her shoulder during the worst parts, but still I had to sit there, without sneaking out of the room, and watch the movie. And I hated it. Take away the terror factor and I still doubt I'd have liked it; I can see why it's hailed as a masterpiece, but The Exorcist just isn't my taste. But I could handle it. I hated it, but I watched it. The whole thing. Levitation, head-twisting and all.

And I cannot stress how big a deal it is that I stayed for the whole thing. Up to that point I'd even avoided horror films that were part of a class (see: Diary of the Dead incident) and skipped out on Halloween parties because my friends always wanted to watch, well, the Halloween movies and I couldn't do that. I still covered my eyes during certain parts of Lord of the Rings, for crying out loud. I went out of my way to avoid anything scary, much to the frustration of just about any teacher who had me in their class wherein a horror movie was present. This same teacher, the one who gently refused to put up with my B.S. where The Exorcist was concerned, had already had to convince me the previous semester that Planet of the Apes was really worth a second look and that Alien was not, in fact, more terrifying than Paranormal Activity.

So willingly going and not only seeing The Exorcist, but taking notes on it and calmly discussing it in class the following Monday, proved something to me: whether I loved or hated them, I could watch horror movies. I could handle it. I would not collapse into a panic-stricken jelly lump just because a movie had some scary scenes in it. I could do it.

I started pushing my boundaries that very night. I let my girlfriend talk me into seeing Scream - my very first Wes Craven movie - and discovered a simple fact about me and horror films: if it could be defeated, I wasn't afraid of it. A flesh-and-blood killer was something I could deal with. I didn't like gore and I didn't much care for the supernatural (hence my disdain of films like Saw, The Evil Dead, and The Exorcist), but as long as there was a way to defeat the villain I could not only watch a horror film, but find some enjoyment in it. I didn't love Scream, but there were a lot of parts that made me laugh and, unlike Diary of the Dead, I didn't regret going to see it.

More incidents like that one followed. I went to see Warm Bodies, the first - and, to this day, the only - zombie film that I absolutely loved. I started watching Supernatural, a show that I'd avoided for years because I thought it would be too scary, and delighted in watching the villain get defeated in every single episode. Ditto for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I realized that I'd been scorning horror for years, without realizing that there was so much that I already liked (Tim Burton, Alfred Hitchcock, German expressionist films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - heck, Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers had captivated me long before Twilight Fever rocked my high school), and I had been limiting myself out of fear. I resolved not to do that anymore.

When I transferred to Oakland University, my World Cinema teacher showed us Somos Lo Que Hay (translation: We Are What We Are) the same week that I re-watched Let the Right One In for the first time in years. I fell in love with foreign horror - especially of the European variety. I came to the realization that what I really loved, not just tolerated for a grade's sake but loved, was psychological horror. I watched The Sixth Sense and loved it. I watched The Shining all the way through for the first time, and loved it. I watched Silence of the Lambs, I watched all the Hannibal Lecter movies, and I loved them. That fall I saw Peeping Tom in a film theory class and absolutely adored it. My love of psychological horror stemmed from my love of Tim Burton, of Loki the God of Mischief, of the Goblin King and Alex DeLarge and all my other "favorite villains" - the idea that everything isn't what it seems. I realized that without pre-conceived assumptions and fear getting in the way, I could see whatever the hell I wanted to.

I also began to understand my own rules. I needed to have some degree of control over the movie. I needed to be able to pause it and walk away if I had to. I needed to have someone with me, or at least near me, to remind me that it was only a movie. With those few guidelines in place, what couldn't I watch?

I still have moments of doubt, believe me. No power on this earth can make me sit through the Evil Dead or Saw canon. And good luck convincing me to ever, for any reason, sit through an episode of The Walking Dead. I won't go through haunted houses or haunted mazes (acting in one my senior year of high school was more than enough, believe me) and I will never, ever go to an amusement park "fright night" again. I didn't suddenly morph into a horror-lover. I have my limits. If I see a movie that I might like, but looks like it's a scary one, I'll wait for the DVD, thankyouverymuch, and there are plenty of deal-breakers for me. Zombies are a red flag. Cannibalism is pushing it. Possession is a hard limit. And God forbid I ever see anything with the word "exorcism" in the title again.

But this Halloween I will watch Nightmare on Elm Street with Ian. I've always wanted to see it, but dodged it based on the assumption that it would be too scary for me. But it's a fantastic movie, or so I've always heard, and it's one of the defining horror classics, and it's got all the elements I love: a villain with a dark past who attacks his victims on a psychological level, highly stylized aesthetics, and the headship of a kick-ass director. (No one can see Red Eye and not believe Wes Craven was a genius. I'm 100% sure of that.) Maybe I'll have a sleepless night or two over it. But I'm not worried.

After all, I've already handled Pazuzu. After that, how bad can Freddy Kruger really be?

Hannah Montana, Harry Potter, and the Hollywood habit of blaming everyone but yourself

So, fun fact: before I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted to be Hilary Duff when I grew up. Well, not necessarily Hilary Duff. Maybe JoJo, or Ashley Olson, or Selena Gomez or Emma Roberts or, of course, Miley Cyrus. Didn't matter who I patterned myself on, the point is that I wanted to be a Disney Girl. I'd never say as much out loud; I'd phrase it as "I want to be an actress," but I wanted the whole package. I wanted the Tiger Beat photospread, the sold-out pop concerts, the chain store clothing line. I wanted to be Starlet Avery, instead of being the ordinary twelve-year-old girl I really was.

And hey, I could have been, if my parents had thought it was really what I wanted. Had I lived in Burbank, CA instead of middle-of-damn-nowhere Michigan, I could have had a shot at being Hannah Montana. Why not? I was a cute, sassy preteen girl with a giant ham for a dad and mad piano skills. I could dance. I could model, I could pose. I had braces, but sometimes girls need someone who's a little "ordinary" to look up to, isn't that the Disney press-conference line? I could have been, if it had been serious, if it had ever been more than a fantasy.

But thank God I realized that wasn't what I wanted. Acting was fun, but creation was more fun. It was better, I eventually realized, to be Woody Allen than Ashley Olson. Better to be a jack-of-all-trades who could write, shoot, edit, and star in your own movie, rather than someone who said other people's lines both on and off the camera and was literally paid to be cute because, as Mara Wilson so accurately pointed out, when the cuteness goes away, so does your career.

I'm not perfect now, but I'm relatively happy. A few days ago I got into a lecture/argument with my mom, who basically reminded me to shut up, stop complaining that I don't have my dream job (I'm only 22; what the hell did I expect?) and count my f'ing blessings, already. I have a fantastic boyfriend who has gone above and beyond to make me feel loved and supported, and parents who have sacrificed for me and gone to bat for me and cheered me on since the day I was born. I live in a house with a swimming pool in the backyard, my parents let me drive the car pretty much whenever I want, I'm educated and not in debt. I'm working on my next movie, and I'm positive this one will be in more festivals than the last. I'm damn lucky. I'm no popstar, but I'm damn lucky.

Now, does someone want to give Miley Cyrus that talk that my mom gave me? Because I think she needs it.

Look, I clearly can't comment on how it feels to be a child star, because I never was. And I'm not stupid, I know that most people who were raised in the spotlight turn out to be addicts or worse...but wait, is that really true? What about Mara Wilson, Cole Sprouse, Emma Watson, Dakota Fanning, Hilary Duff, or Daniel Radcliffe--people who went to college, got married, had families, found new jobs and new lives apart from show business, or else went on to be successful in their careers despite being the dreaded "child stars?"

We look at entitled dumbasses like Justin Bieber, or lost souls like Lindsay Lohan, and assume that must be where children who are raised in Hollywood end up. It's inevitable. There's no escaping it. It's why Miley Cyrus dirty-danced with a married man at the VMAs. It's why she got naked in her music videos. It's why she smoked salvia and runs around in onesies and curses like a sailor. She's just trying to show that she's grown up, give her some space, dammit; she was a child star, she is to be pitied.

Except I don't feel sorry for her. Not one little bit.

And let me be clear, I have no comment--actually, one sort-of comment, but that's it--on Cyrus' revelations about her gender identity and sexuality. Good for you, Miley. If you're down to date any consenting person regardless of the plumbing God gave them, more power to you. If you identify as androgynous, no problem. Hell, if you come out as trans I wouldn't bat an eyelash; it's your body and your life and you can do whatever you need to do with it.

My problems with Miley Cyrus have nothing to do with where she falls on the LGBT spectrum. I do, however, have a problem with her apparent belief that having any kind of negative experiences in her Disney career somehow gives her a get-out-of-jail free card.

In an interview with Marie Claire, Cyrus claimed that being on Hannah Montana caused her to develop body dysmorphia. Furthermore, she claimed that working 12-hour days gave her anxiety attacks and prevented her from having a normal childhood. Now, all of this may well be true, or it may be exaggerated; I don't know. I do know that the entertainment industry has a long history of high standards and impossible demands when it comes to women's bodies (and, honestly, male bodies too, in most cases) and that teenagers are particularly susceptible to the effects of said impossible standards set by that industry. But...hold up...wouldn't you know that, if you've ever watched, say, one hour of TV in your life? Look at Pretty Little Liars for crying out loud, you've got 28-year-olds playing 16-year-olds; do you really think normal high school girls look or dress like that? Even at age twelve, I knew that being Hollywood-standard pretty came with a price; being unwilling to pay that price was part of what drove me into filmmaking instead of acting.

And to the other point, Miley, you were a twelve-year-old with a six-figure job. Did you think that would be easy? Again, this isn't a case of hindsight. Even when I was ten years old, reading Disney Adventures because I was too young for Popstar, I'd come across articles interviewing the Harry Potter kids (more on them later), all of whom gave full, detailed descriptions of what it was like to be a kid on a movie set. Long hours. Tutoring instead of going to school. Uncomfortable costumes. Demanding directors. Unpleasant shooting conditions. I refuse to believe that if I, at age ten, could read an interview in Disney Adventures and think, huh, this acting stuff isn't really that glamorous, is it, that Miley Cyrus couldn't have come to the same conclusion before landing the role of Hannah Montana.

Furthermore, Cyrus claiming that the show was the sole reason for her body issues or anxiety issues is kind of like me exclusively blaming Interlochen, my former boarding school, for giving me an eating disorder. I was sixteen, living away from home for the first time, and naturally it was a hell of a stressful time. Certainly that stress may have contributed to the situation--but there were so many other factors, and I firmly believe that if I hadn't gone to Interlochen, it would've happened when I went away to college. Or if I'd lived at home for college, I'd have developed that same disorder when I moved out into my first apartment. You get the picture. My circumstances may have exacerbated my issues, but they didn't create those issues.  It's not my dorm counselor's fault that I couldn't handle being on my own, nor is it her fault that I didn't ask for help before the problem got out of control.

I'm not saying that Miley Cyrus is a bad person. I am saying that I would have a hell of a lot more respect for her if she would take responsibility for herself and her actions. And as a recent college graduate who is currently working in a fast-food restaurant, allow me to tell you, Miley, that there are much worse jobs you could've had. You could have worked at McDonald's or a super-store like Target, to put yourself through college. You could have lived with your parents until you were 25. You could've been a single mother, or gone to community college because you couldn't afford a 4-year degree, or did what my mom did and wait until you were married with a kid to get your master's degree. My mom has given me a lot to live up to. But I don't mind. And you can bet that if I had gone the Hollywood-starlet route, she wouldn't have let me get away with whining to a magazine that my job just sucked and gave me all kinds of mental issues...but only after it made me a multibillion-dollar household name.

Daniel Radcliffe once said that in the early days of his career, when he was a little kid on the Harry Potter set, he would occasionally whine to his father about how hard his job was. To which his father would reply, "Well, at least you're not down a coal mine." Radcliffe later admitted that fear of failure, and the pressure of fame, led him to drink while on-set of the final Harry Potter film and occasionally turn up hungover for filming, until he recognized his behavior as "unhealthy and damaging" - his words - and went sober in 2010. Notice, however, that while he acknowledges the role that fame played in his troubles, he does not blame his drinking on 12-hour workdays or unwanted beautification; he acknowledges that it was his own fear and insecurity that got him into trouble. And he is quick to credit the Harry Potter franchise for kick-starting his acting career and providing him with experiences that he otherwise never would have had.

I tend to go looking for information on the way the film industry affects people who are so deeply involved in it because, obviously, that is where I want to be. And when my time comes - and I am still optimistic that it will - I don't want to be like Miley Cyrus. I don't want to use my fame to my advantage, and then denounce the very thing that made me successful. I want to be Daniel. I want to be that grounded, and that self-aware. I want to be able to look back at the work that made me who I am, and be proud of it, and think to myself yep, that's it, that was the way to do it.