Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!

So tonight for one of my classes we watched Best Worst Movie. Then we proceeded to talk about fandom culture, B-movies, cult classics and overthinking filmmakers. And I was fine, until we got to that last one, because that was when a handful of the guys in my capstone class basically jumped all over the poor dude and called him "delusional." Okay, guys. Okay.

Now, I understand where they're coming from. The director and writer of Troll 2 may have had the best of intentions, but holy Christ did something get lost in translation. I can see why Troll 2 has its cult following--God knows I like my fair share of awful movies; we've already talked about this--but I'm definitely not a fan. I like my b-movies like I like my fashion: straight out of the 1950s, and Troll 2 is just a touch too 1980s for my taste. (And if you're wondering why I'm not too into the 80s b-movie scene, sit down and watch Killer Klowns from Outer Space sometime. I still have nightmares about that one.) And no, for anyone who isn't familiar with the movie, Troll 2 was not a critical hit. It's got all the excess of a bad indie film with none of the charm. Bad acting. Bad costumes. Bad dialogue--oh, yes; as a scriptwriter that dialogue makes me cringe.

But with all that being said, I also understand where the director of Troll 2 was coming from when he was interviewed for Best Worst Movie. "They're laughing at parts that were not meant to be laughed at," the bemused director points out during one screening. It's clear that he has no clue that his audience is enjoying the film in a different way than how he intended. He's taking those laughs personally, and taking offense at the fact that the audience is laughing during a scene that's supposed to be tense. Maybe the audience is having fun, but the filmmaker is not. He's not sure what they find so funny.

And at that point during the movie, my heart went out to the poor guy, because I've been there. Oh, hell yes. I have been there.

Way back in 2010, I made my first thesis movie at Interlochen. It was called Posession, and it was...okay, it wasn't my best work. Watch it here, and decide for yourself. And if you don't have time, well, I'll just tell you: my editing sucked. My dialogue was iffy, at best--I was trying to pack fifteen pages of story into five pages of script. Not a good idea, believe me. As for my directing...well, I may have had a cast of good actors, but I was too shy to demand what I wanted of them. And that just didn't end well; it made all four of us look less than stellar.

But even with all that, I was proud of what I'd accomplished. So on the night of the thesis screenings I was so excited to show off my work. Nervous, yes, but totally thrilled. It was the first time I'd gotten to see something that I'd worked so hard on shown on a big screen. And I was so, so ready to see the audience's reaction. Through the first few films that night I let my imagination run wild. For a few brief, shining minutes I entertained the hope that I'd make someone cry.

And then Possession came up, and my hope was shattered.

The bulk of my jokes, including a Blair Witch Project reference that I'd thought was just so clever, fell flat. Instead, people cracked up at all the wrong moments. The moment that Gavin, my "out" gay character, confessed his crush to his "straight" (read: gay but so not ready to admit it) roommate, the entire room erupted. This was supposed to be the moment that everyone was holding their breath (would Ronnie like Gavin back? would they kiss? was there a happy ending?), but instead, apparently, it was a Comedy Central special. I couldn't figure out where I'd gone wrong. I spent the remainder of the screening trying to hide my tears from my fellow filmmakers. And I hated myself for being so useless. I thought this was it, I'd never make it as a filmmaker.

In retrospect, I think the majority of the laughter came from the fact that these were classmates, watching a couple of guys who they knew and loved play out a scene that, quite frankly, never would have happened in real life. Alex and Andrew, my actors, got along well enough on the set, but anyone who knew them probably snickered (or, judging by the reaction I got at the screening, laughed hysterically) at the thought of them being lovers. Also considering the fact that I was showing this movie to a roomful of teenagers, most of whom probably still found the idea of sex either mysterious or borderline uncomfortable....yeah, that probably didn't help either. But you couldn't have convinced me of that at seventeen. Nope, because that one scene got the wrong reaction, I was destined to be the next Ed Wood.

I realize that I spend far too much time on this blog writing about other filmmakers' work, and not enough time writing about the experience, the thrill and the pain and the fear of actually making a damn movie. I've said before I'm not a film critic--and make no mistake, I'm not--but I've always found it easier to analyze something someone else has done than analyze something I've done. I don't want to think about my own stuff because if I do...well...I have to think about what it means about me. And sometimes, that's the last thing I want to do.

But I look back on Possession now, apart from the glow of creation and the unflinching pride in my first "real" movie (I'll probably go into more detail on that later), and I can admit that God, yes, that thing is flawed as hell. But at the same time, there is so much good in it. No, it's not the story that I originally wanted to tell, but there are enough of my little quirks in it to make the film feel like it's truly mine. I cast the actors I wanted, got the DP I wanted, and found a composer to write the score I wanted--and to hell with everyone who said you don't want that actor or that girl hasn't DPed enough or that music doesn't match your story. I fell in love with my characters and maybe that was a mistake, but if there's one thing about Possession that I'm still proud of it's my characters. They are alive. They don't do things just to move the plot forward, they're human--and damn it, that was a hard thing to pull off.

Now, granted, my movie didn't wind up with a cult following, so of course Mr. Troll 2 is totally one-up on me there. And yeah, yeah, I know. It's not the same, a microbudget horror film and a student thesis movie. But tonight I felt a moment of kinship with this guy, this lovely man who genuinely believes in the movies he makes. You know what's really cool about that? The only real cult films happen when the directors don't set out to make a cult film. That's what separates the Scary Movie V's from the Troll 2s and Plan 9 from Outer Spaces. That's what makes people fall in love with your work: when you really believe in what you're making.

So for as long as I live and breathe and make art (good art or bad art, I don't give a damn), I will put myself into it, heart and soul. I will give every film I make my all, and if it's a roaring success, well, that's wonderful, and if it's a flop, so be it. I will do what I love, and let the audience laugh and cry at whatever moments they like. If their laughter means I've failed, then let me fail again and again. In the immortal words of the Mythbusters: Failure is always an option.

A letter to my seventeen-year-old self

To the teenage girl locked in her dorm room, lonely and afraid, who thinks the only people who are capable of understanding her are other misfits, who can’t stop crying, who thinks this is her last chance to be heard--I never thought I’d be so happy to say it, but you are wrong.

Possession is not your worst failure. He’s A Rockstar is not the best film you will ever make. Alien Water Torture is a dead-end script, you’ll only frustrate yourself trying to finish it. You will have better ideas, so many better ideas that will be thrilling and crazy and make you think that you’re a genius just for thinking of them. You will write better stories. You will make better movies. Four years from now, you will look back on the films you made at Interlochen and some of them will make you proud, and others will make you smile and shake your head as you think, my God, look how far I have come.

That TV series that you started planning out when you were thirteen? You’ll finish it. You will figure out how to end the show, and you will write the pilot script, and you will feel so unreasonably proud of yourself that you won’t know how to deal with it, so you’ll celebrate by telling your mom about your show (something you’ve never told her before) while your puppy (yes, you finally get a puppy!) jumps up and licks your face.

Seventeen-year-old Avery, I know you think that you will have your life together when you are 22. You won’t. You will be on the verge of graduating college. You will be terrified. You will be exhilarated. You will be so, so ready to get out of the classroom, so ready to run and scream and throw yourself into life headfirst. You won’t be afraid to move anymore. You won’t cling to what is left of your childhood with an ironclad grip because you will know that it is safe to move on. (But you’ll never forget where you came from. I promise you, you are afraid that you will forget, but rest assured you will always remember.)

You won’t have the body of Scarlett Johansson or the hair of Lucy Hale (I know, I know; it’s disappointing, but you’ll learn to deal with it). You won’t dress like Demi Lovato--but, I mean, did you ever really want to?--and you won’t ever have Katy Perry’s singing voice. The good news is, you will find someone who loves you even though you don’t have all those things, and you will love them back. You will get engaged, and the engagement will break off. You’ll live. You’ll write about it, and you will learn from it, and you will feel better. You will fall in love again, this time with someone who loves movies as unreservedly as you do, and he will make you laugh and make you feel more wanted than anyone else ever has.

And in March of 2015, just two months out from your graduation, you will be at your college film festival with this boy. He will hold your hand while the awards ceremony gets underway. And he will be as surprised--and as thrilled--as you are when your film, the one you worked so hard on and were so proud of, wins the Student Choice Award.

Wait, back up.

You, the girl who believes she will never be worth anything because she didn’t get chosen for Interlochen Collage or end-of-year Convocation, will make a movie over the summer. And it will be good. Not, like, Sundance-worthy or anything, but good. Funnier and lighter and less self-conscious than anything you’ve made in the past, with a simpler premise and relatable characters, and it will be a lot harder to make than you think it will be (damn iPhone subtitles), but it will work, and you will be so proud of it, and you will be so damn excited to let people see it. And on March 13th, 2015, you will win an award. Not just any award--the Students Choice Award. The award that means your peers, your fellow filmmakers, voted for you. The award that means hey, other people in your demographic think you’re kind of all right. The award that gives you the validation you’ve been looking for.

Oh...and by the way, you’ll win Best Special Effects, too. What do you think of that, girl-who-thinks-you-can’t-edit-or-do-anything-technical-to-save-your-life? Pretty awesome, am I right?

It’ll just be one film festival. Just one festival, hosted by your school, with a limited selection of films playing. But it will mean the world to you, and you will feel so happy that you’ll still feel the afterglow two days later. And it will give you the confidence you’ll need to submit to another festival, outside of your school bubble. You’ll be so excited you won’t care if you look fat in the pictures your parents and your boyfriend will take after the ceremony. You will hold onto your friend and partner in movie-making crime as she laughs in delight over her own little collection of awards, and you’ll feel more happy for her than you do for yourself, and for the rest of the night you’re too happy to let anything get you down.

No, it’s no Oscar. But it’s yours. It’s something you earned, something you wanted and something you got just for being good at what you do, and it’s what you’ve been waiting for and it’s going to feel like the greatest moment of your life.

That’s what’s coming up for you, seventeen-year-old Avery. Please, wait for it. Please, don’t think you’re worthless because you haven’t gotten it yet. It’s coming. It’ll be here. And I have a feeling there’s more where that came from. So just--hold on. Just know, it’s not here yet, but it will be. and you will be too excited for words when it happens.

Just hang in there until it comes.

My own manifesto

So last week for my film history class, we read Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s “Vow of Chastity” and “Vow of Chastity Rules.” Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Dogme 95 (which, I’m assuming, is the majority of people who have never been forced to learn about it in film school) basically it’s a list of strict rules that must be followed in order for a movie to be “real,” or “pure” cinema. An excerpt of said rules:

I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGMA 95:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.)
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera.)
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.

…Yeah. Okay.

Now, here’s the thing. We actually watched a Dogme 95 film, The Celebration, and believe it or not it was actually pretty damn good. I liked the style. I’ve always liked stripped-down, “indie” aesthetics every bit as much as I love the classic, big-budget Hollywood style. I’m one of those weird-ass people who will sit through Django Unchained, then go home and watch Twilight or Juno just for kicks. (So far my weirdest double feature to date is Tim Burton’s Big Fish back-to-back with Legally Blonde, which I chased with an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.) Point is, yes, I detest Von Trier but, as I discovered this past week, I do not, as it turns out, detest Vinterberg.

But those rules! Good God! Can we talk about those rules for a second? So restrictive. So intense. Holy crap, they even recognize right there in the rulebook how restrictive they’re being with their movies--they call it chastity, for Pete’s sake! Lord above, I could write a blog post on that alone. As if all the other movies who didn’t follow their rules were...dare I say it?...slutty.

Look, I understand that Dogme 95 is an important movement and it’s in reaction to the big-budget commercial films of the early 90s. I get that. And I understand that there are plenty of people out there who are not like me, who do not like the shiny Hollywood look as much as the gritty indie look, who absolutely despise the shiny Hollywood look and want to kill it with fire. I understand all of that just fine. And I applaud Vinterberg and Von Trier (I hate that I just said “I applaud Von Trier” in any context, but credit where credit is due) for having the balls to say, “The hell with this, let’s do something no one’s ever done before. Let’s strip that down and make it right.”

But…

But…

Well, but...when you make up a list of rules and force yourself to stick to them, simply for the sake of sticking to the rules that you yourself imposed, it gets pretty damn limiting.

And I don’t like limiting.

Here’s what I loved about The Celebration: that movie was not afraid to, excuse my language, let you know how many flying fucks it did not give about whether you liked it or not. It had the aesthetic of a found footage movie without the gimmicks. And it was a thing of absolute beauty simply because it didn’t preach, didn’t command, didn’t get all fussed about making a statement. It was like, here, take these characters, love them or hate them, but just watch them and see where this goes.

In short, it was everything that Von Trier’s subsequent work was not. Don’t believe me? Watch Antichrist (or, if you have the slightest shred of self-preservation, don’t) and tell me that movie follows those rules he wrote and swore to follow. Watch Dogville and tell me it’s not the most pretentious piece of work you’ve ever seen. Watch Melancholia and...actually, Melancholia didn’t suck. (Actually, it was pretty decent. But don’t tell Von Trier I said that.) But I’ve made my point. Von Trier wrote the rules and then proceeded to indiscriminately break all of them, yet he continues to act like he’s the shit because he has, in the objective sense, a talent for filmmaking. And that, when you get down to it, is really what fries my cheese concerning Von Trier: he acts like he’s above everyone else, and then he doesn’t even follow his own damn rules.

And yet Dogme 95 is still incredibly interesting to me and I can’t put my finger on the reason why. Maybe because it inspired so much of the independent cinema I know and love today. Maybe because without this movement we wouldn’t have Jimmy and Judy or, hell, even the silly ones like Funny Ha Ha or Hannah Takes the Stairs where you just sit and watch and wonder Jesus Christ is this movie ever going to go anywhere or develop anything vaguely resembling a freaking plot. Maybe because I find it so restrictive and so interesting and so weird. I doubt I’ll ever even attempt a film that would meet the Dogme 95 standards. But hell, maybe one day I’ll try, who knows?

But in the meantime...with all that being said, here’s my own vow. My manifesto. You know...my rules.

Here and now I promise, as a filmmaker, that I will never try to break ground for the sake of breaking ground. I won’t be purposefully “artsy” or throw in moments of shock just to get attention. I’ll write my own films, as often as I can. And for the love of God, someone smack me if I ever even think about making anything that resembles a Michael Bay film.

I promise I’ll make movies that follow a story. A real story. A real story, about real people. I won’t say now that I’ll never do a blockbuster--in this day and age, who the hell knows?--but I won’t make one just so I can say I’ve done it. I will never, ever make a movie that I can’t connect to on an emotional level, because if I can’t, God knows my audience won’t be able to.

I promise, in short, to stay myself. And in an industry motivated by fear, I know that’s even more difficult than meeting Von Trier and Vinterberg’s exacting standards.