Midnight mass

Since I graduated college my parents frequently ask me, "Why haven't you filmed anything lately? Why aren't you making anything right now?"

Well, because I get into the mindset of "okay now, everything I make has to be festival-worthy." Every movie I shoot, whether it's fiction or documentary, must be something that I would put in a showcase. Now, that's not necessarily bad; it's not like taking pride in your work and giving something your all is a negative quality--I'm pretty sure Kubrick would agree with me on that--but it wasn't always like that for me. When I was a kid, you couldn't separate me from my video camera with a crowbar. I mean, I damn near took that thing to bed with me. I made music videos to my favorite songs. I starred in one-woman shows. I'd just let the camera run while my dad and I played with Playmobil or Barbie dolls. Family outings, road trips, skating shows, martial arts tests, piano practice sessions...even room-cleaning or stops at the grocery store were caught on tape. I didn't care if I was recording a Herzog-inspired documentary; I just loved playing with that camera. And even when I got older and started making "real" movies, at first it was still just playing. I didn't care if it was good. I just wanted it to be fun.

Writer Jodi Picoult said in My Sister's Keeper, "Kids think with their minds cracked wide-open. Becoming an adult...is only slowly sewing it shut." That's how it's been with me for a while. Instead of writing or filming for myself, I do everything with the self-conscious thought of "what if someone else doesn't like it?" And that, as any of the directors I love will tell you, is no way to make art. It's a way to make yourself crazy.

But a few days ago I met real crazy. I met someone who is self-confident to the point of delusional, who does not care one iota that he has been called "the Orson Welles of crap." He's no Kubrick. He's not even Tim Burton, not even close. Hell, I'd go as far as to say that Michael Bay probably has more objective talent than this man. But I met him, and I talked to him, and I can tell you that Tommy Wiseau, director of the infamous black comedy The Room, has no damns to give about his status as Worst Auteur Ever.

I first saw The Room as part of the Rifftrax series "The Crappening." You see, the giant nerd that I am dating loves MST3K and any of its offshoots, and so we went to see what had been called "the Citizen Kane of bad cinema" out of sheer curiosity. It was hysterical, so we went back for the encore in January. And when we found out that the ringleader of that utter epic circus was in town, we knew we had to meet him. For anyone who doesn't know, The Room is one of the ultimate cult movies. Its initial theater run grossed less than $2000, but since then it's become something of a phenomenon, with most of its revenue coming from midnight screenings at arthouse theaters. Going to The Room is like going to Rocky Horror...but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, Ian and I went to the theater and got there around 10:45 or so, thinking that maybe if we got there early enough we could snag a few minutes with Tommy Wiseau before the show started. Turned out, Tommy Wiseau was the show.

The first thing I noticed was the underwear. I mean, I'd known Tommy Wiseau had his own line of underwear, but I hadn't expected him to sell it at the damn theater. But he did. I jokingly offered to get Ian a pair--and yes, his reaction was pretty much what you'd expect--when I found out that we had to buy something from the merch table before we could meet Wiseau. (No, I did not get any underwear. I got a Room-quote t-shirt.) And it's important to note, too, that the entire theater was decked out in Room stuff. There was a little stuffed puppy and a sign that said "You're my favorite customer" on the tip jar. Little Wiseau headshot postcards were tacked up everywhere.

And the best part was that Wiseau was just standing there, smiling away, taking pictures and bossing around all of his fans. He was dressed kind of like a pretentious college student, much to my eternal amusement, and wearing sunglasses indoors and just generally acting like he was the coolest thing to ever live on planet earth. Arrogant? Yeah, kind of, but there was a genuine sweetness to him too. Like, okay, you're borderline delusional if you think you're actually a celebrity...but then again we're all treating you like a celebrity, so it's also totally understandable. And he was more than willing to shake hands and take a picture with everyone, which is pretty cool given that the show was pretty much on the verge of selling out.

While we were in line I was bantering with Ian and talking to Andy and just generally not paying attention, so naturally, when it was our turn to go up the first thing I did was trip over the divider that kept the ticket line separate from the "meet the mad genius" line. I already felt like an idiot, so for the first few minutes I stammered over words and said dumb shit (when asked "who should I make the autograph to?" I stupidly responded "me?" much to my friends' obvious amusement) until we were ready to take the picture, when I managed to get a hold of myself again.

We got a shot with my camera and then I realized that Ian probably would want one too, so I said "oh, we can get one with your phone too if you want," and Ian started to say no, we don't have to do that, but Wiseau's assistant quickly jumped in and said it wouldn't be a problem at all to get another shot. Wiseau teasingly told Ian, "Sure, sure, I'm not running this show, it's the girl"--or something like that, I didn't hear his exact words, but that's pretty much the gist of it. To which Ian (joking...I think) replied, "Yeah, it's been like that our entire relationship." Nice, Ian. Very nice. But I let that go because I had one more thing I wanted to say before we left.

I stopped to give my boyfriend the really? REALLY? you're really going to go there? look, turned back to Wiseau, and said, "I really, really love your movie. I just wanted to tell you, I love your movie." YOUR MOVIE, I said. Not YOU. But apparently that's how he interpreted it, because without missing a beat he replied, "Ah yes. I...love you too, actually." And then calmly went on greeting fans while I thought, okay, that was an odd response, but okay, why not?

Now, by the time all this was over, it was maybe...11:30. Not even. So we had to stand in line for a while before we could actually take our seats in the theater. Before the feature began, we were subjected to the pilot of Neighbors, a sitcom-style show that only Tommy Wiseau would ever be insane enough to make. The cutaway between scenes was a collage-style animation of a house, filled with the characters of the show...except for Wiseau's character, who stood on the corner bouncing a basketball...and oh yeah, a tree blew up and a chicken was eaten by a dinosaur. Just your standard sitcom fare, right? It was awful. But it was hilarious.

After Neighbors there was a Q&A with Wiseau. Now, I don't know why he always does these at The Room showings, because he seemed reluctant to answer even the most basic of questions. Every question, even one as basic as "What do you like best about acting?" was met with a short, impersonal response, followed by a curt "Moving on!" (Wiseau-to-English translation: "I don't want to answer that, next question please!") But with that said, he still interacted with his fans...he just did it on his terms. And he made one aspiring actress's night by staging an impromptu reenactment of the "You're tearing me apart!" scene from The Room, a moment that had the rest of the theater in stitches. You could tell that girl was having the time of her life. And trust me, so were the rest of us.

So being the creature of logic that I obviously am (somewhere my mother just laughed derisively and has no idea why) I decided that I would ask him a question, too. I was dying to know what possessed--and don't think I don't mean that literally--this man to start making crazy-ass films. So when my turn came I asked him, "What made you get into filmmaking?"

Without missing a beat, or even looking at me, he replied, "Because I like people, why else?" But then he looked up, saw it was me, and instead of his typical "moving on!" he added, "Also, I love you. I know you have boyfriend but I love you, you know." And then just calmly SMILES at me like there is nothing at all weird about this. For a second I was totally disarmed and just stood there like "whaaa...?" and then realized "okay it's time to get out of here, people are probably staring," and booked it back to my seat. By the time I got back to where my friends were sitting, I was cracking up--and I wasn't the only one. Later on when I told my dad about this little exchange, he said, "Did Ian tell that guy to get away from his girl?" And I said, truthfully, "No, he was laughing too hard."

And that was pretty much it. I wish I had gotten some of the event on video, because it's legitimately impossible to capture the weirdness that is Tommy Wiseau, or the craziness that is a The Room midnight screening (spoons. SO. MANY. SPOONS.) with words alone. But there were three major lessons that I took away from that night:

First of all, fandom is everything to a cult filmmaker. You'd think that years of being a Rocky Horror fan would've taught me that, but the thing about Rocky Horror is that there were a lot of legitimately talented people involved in that. There's a lot about Rocky Horror that's really, truly good: the music is the obvious one, but then there's the acting, the deliberate comedy--very important, that--and the blatant satire. I've seen the live Rocky Horror show at Meadowbrook. I can't see a legitimate theater company scrambling to put together The Room: The Musical! anytime soon. Critics, as you can imagine, are legitimately baffled by the following that The Room has acquired, because they understandably hate the movie. But the fans? Oh my God, we eat that shit up. Why? Because, for whatever reason, it resonates with us. I know why I love to watch The Room--but for someone else it could be totally different, and that's amazing.

Which leads to Takeaway #2--art doesn't have to be good. Shocking, right? Not that I haven't been preaching that all along; we all know already that bad movies still have value, but let's face it, nothing that Tommy Wiseau puts out is going to be on any Oscar ballots in the near future. But guess what? Dude doesn't care. Compare The Room to James Cameron's Avatar. Avatar made breathtaking amounts of money at the box office--even after subsequent releases of superior films like Toy Story 3, The Avengers, and Jurassic World, the damn thing still holds the record for highest-grossing film ever--won dozens of awards including three Oscars, snagged an Academy nod for Best Picture, and was hailed as groundbreaking for its special effects and 3-D achievements...but it has left practically no footprint on popular culture.

Seriously, think about that for a minute. If I make a joke about The Room in a group of, say, ten people, odds are at least one or two people, even if they haven't seen the film, will know what I'm talking about. I once made a reference The Room in front of my friend Morgan, who absolutely hates the film and only saw it once about five years ago, and her immediate reaction was "Oh, not that piece of shit." She hated the film, but she remembered it. When I was at work a few days after my initial viewing of The Room, one of my co-workers had been joke-insulting me all day. One of our "things" was trying to outdo each other with pop-culture references, and hoping to stump him with a culture reference that I was sure even he wouldn't know I began to yell, "You are tearing me apart Lisa--" only to hear not one, but two of the managers on-duty shouting it along with me. One of these managers was about fifteen years older than me and had a college degree in hospitality; the other was a smartass kid my age who'd never said two words to me before. The Room, I was surprised to find out, had a wide range of fans.

But try naming two of the characters from Avatar besides the two leads. Or quoting a line, any full line, that didn't come from the trailer. I remember so little about that movie aside from the eye-popping visuals it's almost shocking. I remember the whole "unobtainium" thing because my reaction to hearing the "precious element" that they were retrieving was "...seriously? unobtainium? are you shitting me, Cameron? that's the best you could do?" but I don't remember any of the dialogue. And then there's the hair-plug-in-means-sex thing, which I only remember because so many of my film-school classmates endlessly mocked it. I thought I was the only one, but I was wrong: even many of the people who loved Avatar when it first came out, now only recall the stunning visuals of the film and can't tell me even basic details about the plot. That, to me, is...well...there's no other word for it: insane. Think about it: the highest-grossing film of all time has a smaller, less-vocal, less-dedicated fanbase than a film known as the Citizen Kane of awful movies. How many bricks do you think James Cameron would shit if he knew that Tommy Wiseau has crazier fangirls than him?

And thus we come to the third and final point: it doesn't freaking matter if you're James Cameron. It doesn't matter one iota if you have a shelf full of awards, or blockbuster box-office revenue, or journalists and film analysts pounding down your door for an interview or a quote. It doesn't matter, as long as your movie resonates with someone the way The Room does with its fans. Sure the film sucks. I love that movie and I will say, here and now, it sucks. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that my early attempts at filmmaking are, from a technical standpoint, better and more coherent than The Room. But you know what? WHO THE HELL CARES?!?!?!? Tommy Wiseau, lunatic as he may be, has made a lot of people happy. That is the true measure of success, right there. Making someone that happy, as Ian tries to get through to me every time we watch an awards show, is worth all of the accolades in the world.

 The Main Art Theater, the location of many a legendary midnight showing.

If Wiseau can get his name up in lights...then someday, so will I. 

I wonder whose idea that sign was? :P

The astonishing display of junk we could buy from Wiseau's collection. I chose the red t-shirt in the upper left corner.

Ian took this picture of the theater decorations. I wasn't kidding when I said the whole place was decked out Room-style. 

 The man, the myth, the legend...

...the...mildly unhinged...myth and legend...

It was a crazy experience. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Carol'

I wanted to like Carol. I really did. I love Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. I've always had a soft spot for Kyle Chandler. I love period pieces, especially mid-century ones--I think we all remember what I thought of Big Eyes--and I love LGBT films. And after I read all the rave reviews, and saw that Carol got a handful of Oscar nominations, I was so excited to see it. I expected a love story for the ages. I expected a film that conveyed the magic and mystery, and the pain, of first love. And with all the rage that it wasn't nominated for Best Picture, I expected...well...an Oscar-worthy film.

And I didn't get it.

Let's start with the positives: Carol is an absolutely beautiful film. It's a work of art. It really is. The nominations for cinematography, music, and costumes are well-deserved. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett kick ass as Therese and Carol, bringing a subtlety and glamour to the film that is usually absent in epic romances. Even when their male counterparts--Jake Lacy (Obvious Child) as Therese's boyfriend Richard; Kyle Chandler (Early Edition, Friday Night Lights) as Carol's ex-husband Harge--go into melodrama mode, Mara and Blanchett remain subtle, stoic and absolutely breathtaking. The lovely women seamlessly fit into their perfectly-crafted environment, which combines light, color and texture to create a cinematic wonder.

Unfortunately, that beautiful world isn't enough to carry the film all on its own. The story is surprisingly thin and disappointingly predictable. Worse, all the characters other than the two leads are one-dimensional stereotypes. Every man in the film is either a total jackass, or a throwaway character that exists only to move the plot forward. (Well, hey. At least SOMETHING is moving the plot forward.) Even Carol's best friend Abby is something of a ghost, popping in and out when needed with little background or motive of her own. It's almost as if literally every character but the two leads are puppets that exist only to explain the motives of Therese and Carol.

This issue is particularly irritating when the film's two-hour running time is taken into consideration, along with the surplus of establishing shots, insert shots, and lingering tracking shots of almost nothing at all. The cinematography is fantastic. The editing and script, however, leave something to be desired. There's 120 minutes here to play with, and yet it feels like there's no real story. Carol feels like a screenplay that never got past the log line. There's no real subplots. Characters that should be important, like Carol's daughter Rindy, are little more than human MacGuffins. Screen time is wasted on elevators and long tracking shots of train sets, while character development falls to the wayside. As for the antagonists, I've seen dollar-store cashiers more threatening. I get what they were trying to do--the oppressive atmosphere of the 1950s is the "real" villain--but it doesn't quite play out, leaving the film feeling unfortunately empty when all is said and done.

With all that said, Carol is still worth a watch. It's up there with Bridge of Spies in terms of production design, and the cinematography is to die for. Fellow feminists, you will be pleased to know that whatever other faults the script may have, it does pass the Bechdel Test--at least several times over, too. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are in top form, and their nominations for Best Lead and Supporting Actress are well deserved. If Mara's turn as Lisbeth Salander didn't knock your socks off, her performance here will. (And can we please stop trashing on her for Pan, because that is really, really unfair.) Blanchett is as classy as ever...I don't know how that woman can make smoking and cursing look smooth, but she does...and her performance as the elusive Carol would make just about any of Hitchcock's blondes green with envy. It's the rest of the cast that doesn't quite hold up. Someone please tell Kyle Chandler that when acting opposite an actress as nuanced as Cate Blanchett, the "yell and project like a high-school theater major" approach does not work. But the ladies carry the movie well enough, when their star performances are combined with the beautiful visuals. It's just a shame that the story couldn't bring the same punch as the other elements.

I hate to pit women filmmakers against each other, but take a look at Jenny's Wedding in comparison to Carol. When I first saw Jenny's Wedding all I could think was "oh my God my parents have to see this." It was relevant. It would have been relevant two years ago when I was dating a girl (of whom my parents did not approve, for the record) and it's relevant now when I'm on the verge of moving out, because the film isn't really about a lesbian relationship, it's about learning who you are without your parents' approval. What's Carol really about, besides a lesbian romance? It doesn't seem like the writer or the director knew going in. And that is what takes a film that could have been fantastic, and knocks it down to just "really, really good." Still an A-grade, no doubt, but it's sad, because Carol deserved to be an A+.

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.

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl'

 One of the perks of dating a film critic--yes, even one who self-identifies as an “online amateur”--is that they are regulars and members at just about every theater within a 20-mile radius of their house, which often results in rewards like free movie tickets. And if you are the girlfriend of said ticket-holder, well, you can guess what that means.

So Ian had free tickets to see this cute little indie movie, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (you know, the one that indieWIRE was shocked to hear had made less at the box office than Jurassic World?) and being the total sucker for good independent films that I am, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to go see it, so I tagged along. And that turned out to be a very, very good decision. Good enough, in fact, for me to attempt a review. So let’s jump right in. Here are ten reasons to go see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl right now:

1. The Cast
It’s not like the movie is packed with A-list stars. But it’s absolutely perfectly cast. The high-school kids actually look like high-school kids (was that a slam at Glee? why yes, it absolutely was!) and the adults, shocker of shockers, actually act like adults. There’s a few bigger names here and there, most notably Nick Offerman as Greg’s eccentric father, but when it came to casting the two leads they wisely went with actors who were professionals (previous credits of theirs include It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Bates Motel, iCarly and The Quiet Ones) but not huge-name Disney stars. Even better, Earl is played by a virtual unknown--more on him later. I know that casting alone doesn’t make or break a movie. But casting is a huge thing, as I found out the hard way with my first short films, and believe me, in this case, casting kind of did make the movie.

2. Rachel, Earl, and Greg
There are two things that I love about the dynamic between the three title characters: 1) the temptation to downshift into a Hunger Games-style love triangle was deliberately avoided, and 2) the development of the three-way friendship is perfectly natural. It’s not like Juno--much as I loved that movie, don’t get me wrong--where the three leading teenagers are so quirky and so ridiculous that they couldn’t possibly be friends with anyone but each other. Rachel is shown to have a social life outside her new friends, at least pre-cancer, and it’s established early on that Greg’s main flaw is that he tries far too hard to be an everyman. The characterization is spot-on, no one is allowed to be a flat stereotype, and at no point does the film fall back on the reasoning “well, look how not-mainstream they are, you HAVE to like them”--a hell of an accomplishment, considering that hipster has basically become the new cool.

3. The cancer storyline
I won’t spoil how things end for the “dying girl,” but I will say that I loved the way the film treated cancer. Again, it’s very easy to use illness as a plot device or--even worse--an obvious grab for an Oscar. But Alonso Gomez-Rejon, God bless the man, does not fall into that trap. In addition to a powerful, realistic portrayal of the way illness affects the loved ones of the afflicted, he opts out of showing Rachel in treatment, so we don’t see her puking from the chemotherapy or recovering from surgery. She is treated with dignity by the filmmakers, if not her classmates, who shower her with cards, flowers, and repeated choruses of “God has a plan!” In one memorable scene Greg, aided by a Wolverine poster, advises Rachel on how to respond to people who define her by her disease. It’s one of the best scenes in the film because it establishes early on that this is not just a “dying girl.” This is a person. And because the filmmakers treat her as such, so do we.

4. High school
High school stories have been beaten into atoms by the movie industry, ranging from the unrealistically upbeat to the unrealistically cynical to the outright insane. But Me and Earl and the Dying Girl portrays high school so achingly realistically that it doesn’t feel cliche at all. A stoner and a goth kid swear revenge on Greg after he accidentally incriminates them…only for one of them to forget the whole thing, and the other to attempt a truly pathetic follow-up months later. In another movie this would be a major plot point. In this one, it’s played out as a way to increase Greg’s sense of detachment from an environment that everyone around him takes extremely seriously. He doesn’t want to go to prom, or play football, or be popular. He just wants out. Even better: while everyone else views college as an escape, Greg accurately points out that it’s just another four years of school. Not too many high-school-centered flicks do that. This one, much to my excitement, actually does.

5. The movie parodies
So one of the plot points of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl revolves around the deliberately bad parodies that Greg and Earl make as homages to classic films. And for real, that alone was worth the price of admission. Admittedly some of them were so out there they’d only make a film student laugh (Sockwork Orange was my favorite--okay, I’m actually a huge dork, there we go, I admitted it, everyone happy now?) but if you’ve heard of literally any of the movies they parody in this film, you will laugh. Hard. And that brings us to…

6. The perfect split of comedy and drama
I’m so sick of filmmakers who act like a happy ending--or even the slightest bit of optimism--is poison for realism, when in reality, humor is one of the fastest ways to add realism to your movie, especially--for the love of God pay attention, indie filmmakers--if your movie is about teenagers. When I was in high school, there were days where I wanted to just crawl into my closet and disappear. (Though I don’t know where my logic was there. Maybe I’d just read The Chronicles of Narnia too many times.) And sure, movies do a great job of portraying that. Love us some audience tears, we filmmakers do. But there were also days when I laughed so hard I almost threw up, and there are so many teen dramas that forget to add that little bit of hope. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl walks the fine line between humor and sadness. And the result is truly amazing.

7. It’s not an action movie
Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good action movie just as much as the next moviegoer, as my unreasonable devotion to Chris Nolan demonstrates. And I think we’ve already established that I have nothing against blockbusters; in fact, I kind of love them. But you don’t have to be a film student to notice that summer is kind of the reigning season for blockbusters, and if you aren’t pumped up for Jurassic Park or Ant-Man or Terminator: Genysis, you’re out of luck. So if you don’t care to watch people get eaten by dinosaurs or see another unlikely superhero dramatically save an entire city single-handedly, here’s a movie you’ll love. If you are an action-film-addict, go see it anyway--you never know, you might love it too. And if you’re a no-preference dork like me who will see just about anything if the trailer looks good enough…what the hell are you waiting for?

8. Accurate portrayal of the artistic process
Okay, okay, this is a selfish one, but I really, really hate how often movies give the impression that the BEST IDEA EVER will come to you in a flash, or how someone miraculously comes up with the most perfect screenplay/film/song/poem/monologue in the history of art just in the nick of time. I expected the movie that Greg ends up making for Rachel to be OMG so perfect, but just like Greg himself, it is not. It takes him four months to come up with a movie that any other teenager on the face of the earth could dream up, and I thought that was pretty damn cool.

9. Avoid cliches like the plague?
Okay, the ending is predictably sappy and the message of love in the face of death is…well, it’s not exactly groundbreaking. But so many situations that could be predictable in this movie take a pleasantly surprising turn. We expect Greg and Rachel to fall in love; they don’t. We expect Greg to take Rachel to the prom; she doesn’t go. We expect cancer to make Rachel unreasonably profound; it doesn’t. We expect Mr. McCarthy to be the one turn Greg’s life around; he isn’t. We expect Greg and Earl, and Greg and Rachel, to have on-the-nose make-up scenes after their respective fights; they don’t. We expect Rachel to die--and no, I’m not going to spoil that part for you. Go see the damn movie. The point is, there’s a lot about the film that doesn’t meet expectations. And in that case, that’s a good thing.

10. It’s not Oscar-bait
Or maybe it is. I wasn’t in the heads of the collective filmmakers when they made this thing…but given that it probably started production before Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne won big at the Oscars, it’s a good bet. (I know, I know. We all know I hated the outcome of the Oscars this year. Moving on now.) In all seriousness, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is not a shameless grab for awards. It doesn’t present illness as The Issue Of The Year. It doesn’t make Rachel a martyr or Greg a hero. I loved that, because you can see when you watch the film that no one who was involved in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl thought they were making the next Juno or Little Miss Sunshine. They know this is a niche film, not a phenomenon. But it still has potential, and if I were you, I’d go see it. Right now. 

Seriously. It’s that good.

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.