My work: 'The Auteur at Work,' 'Moving Along,' and 'Professors'

My senior year of college was spent doing more writing, studying and researching than filming. I wasn't too happy with that. But I did manage to make three short films during that time, one of which I submitted for my senior capstone.

First, there was The Auteur at Work. I teamed up with Morgan, my Michigan-based partner-in-crime, to make a mockery of Auteur Theory, which we'd been learning about in our hard-as-hell film theory class, for our final project. Rounding out our team we had Ian (who is a fairly good actor, and don't let him tell you otherwise), Morgan's brother Collin, and her BFF Cody. Morgan, Ian and I nailed down the concept, I wrote us a script, Morgan took the helm as director, and we convinced Cody and Collin to act for us. Let the games begin!

Since most of us had worked together on Morgan's final project for production class, Death Lets it Go, we were pretty well gelled as a team already. The trick was pulling off a short film in less than three weeks, which as I mentioned when talking about Auto-Incorrect is no small task. The script was completed in two drafts. We didn't have time for storyboards or a beat breakdown. Casting came down to "wanna be in it? cool." Ian and I had to round out the cast, since we only had two real actors and the script called for at least four characters. To top it all off, we had technical difficulties as well: the day-of, we had to call in our production teacher to help with an audio issue, intermittent sunlight made setting up a shot nearly impossible, and we had to location scout on the fly. Then, once we had the damn thing shot, Ian had to work through a cold the last week of class to get it edited, and I was left to help choose the music and take care of post-production effects. Sleep? What's that?

But we pulled it off, and The Auteur at Work turned out to be the most fun I'd had on a film set in a long time. Watch it HERE.



I like making narrative films. I love to watch documentaries, but I don't consider making them to be my strong suit...so how the hell is it that I've ended up making so many of them?!? I've made three for various classes, two for good-cause events at my school, and two just because I felt like it. Huh. That's...a lot, now that I think about it.

Had I stayed at McDaniel, my first college, my senior-year project would have been a narrative. But I transferred to Oakland University, where I had to take a film-exhibition class for my capstone credits, and he wouldn't let me make a narrative film. So I made a documentary on the changing film exhibition industry, with special focus on why Blockbuster went out of business and the ways that theater and other video-store owners are staying in business despite the rise of Netflix and other on-demand services. If that sounds like a lot to pack into a five-minute capstone video, believe me, it was. But the end result was worth it.

The interviews were the easy part...but even the "easy" part involved traveling to Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills, coordinating with my mother when and where I could take the car, borrowing equipment from my production teacher, and printing and filing a handful of release forms for all the interviewees to sign. The hard part was finding B-roll and archive footage, as I didn't have any old photos or videos from Blockbuster that I could conveniently slip into the final cut. I ended up taking to the Internet for archive photos, hunting YouTube for old Blockbuster commercials, and asking Ian if I could film inside Disc Replay. And the hardest part of all was editing several hours' worth of material into a five-minute video that told a story without presenting too much of a bias. But all the work paid off when I saw the final cut--and when I saw my grade.

I never pictured myself making a documentary for my last-ever college project--but I'm so glad I did. Check it out HERE.



After all the hard work of my last semester of college, it almost felt like a relief to make another comedy short with Morgan. We were a "production team" for OU's end-of-year showcase, and our task was simple: create content. Make it OU-related. And above all make it good. This is for the school, after all.

Faced with this task, Morgan and I started out making a documentary, which turned into a loosely-scripted mockumentary about our favorite professors. For each of the four teachers we profiled we chose a well-known quirk and blew it way, way out of proportion. Our theory teacher, for example, was known for choosing a wide, often disjointed selection of films for his various classes. We filmed him choosing movies out of a hat and putting them into his class syllabus.

How Well Do You Know Your Professors was probably one of the easiest films I've ever made. The difficult part was finding the time to finish it; at the time that we were making the film, Morgan was writing a 90-page script for her class and I was shooting Moving Along for my capstone assignment. But we were lucky, because our professors cooperated every step of the way. And the reaction we got when we premiered it at the OU end-of-year cinema department showcase? Priceless.

Watch our dorky mockumentary HERE.

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Inside Out'

I saw Inside Out yesterday and all I have to say is: wow. Just. Wow. That movie. In the immortal words of white girls everywhere, I can’t even. Once again, Pete Docter does his absolute best to reduce the entire audience to tears. Grown men included. I move that from here on out, every Pixar movie should be screened for an audience entirely comprised of the most macho pro wrestlers, marines, and bikers they can find. If they all cry, your movie is TOO FREAKING SAD and needs to be modified before wide release. No, really. This is a safeguard that needs to happen, because I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater yesterday.

Let me back up here and admit that, yes, I am a member of the Pixar Generation. As in, the kids who were born in the early 90s, around the time of the first Jurassic Park movie, for instance, and never had any idea what a world without CGI would look like. The kids who got first crack at falling in love with Buzz and Woody, never feared monsters in the closet again after meeting Mike and Sulley, squealed in delight when they found the light-up Squirt toy in their happy meals, and crawled around their living rooms pretending they were ants for days after seeing A Bug's Life. I’m one of those kids.

I actually don’t remember seeing Toy Story for the first time, but I know I did because I remember how thrilled I was when Dad picked up the VHS for Toy Story 2 on his way home from work one day. I remember eating a peanut-butter-and-cereal sandwich as I watched Rex trying to take down Zurg. I remember laughing hysterically at the “outtakes” at the end. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be Jessie the Cowgirl. But above all I remember just plain loving every minute of it. There wasn’t one part of that movie that made me reach for the fast-forward button. As a kid growing up afraid of my own shadow, those kinds of movies were rare for me.

Over the years there have been Pixar movies that I loved (Wall-E, A Bug's Life, Up) and movies that I didn’t like (Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters University) and ones that I just plain never got tired of (Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and, of course, the Toy Story series). Throughout it all, I never missed a chance to see a Pixar movie, even if I didn’t like the concept or the first trailers. When I got older and actually started going to theaters, I’d make Pixar movies my priority.

Okay, I’ve convinced you that I’m a complete sucker for a good Pixar film. So of course I went to see Inside Out and of course that movie made me cry like a small child. I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to express my love for Pete Docter. The guy gets it. He knows--not just tries hard enough, he knows--what it’s like to be a kid. He knows how it feels to be afraid of a monster in your closet. He understands the power that a persistent, innocent child can have over a grown-up. And after seeing Inside Out I am convinced that he knows better than any other grown-up on the face of the earth what it feels like for a kid to be uprooted and moved to a new place just as their childhood is winding down.

I think the reason that Inside Out hit me so hard was because I had a very similar childhood to Riley’s: I grew up an only child, very close to my parents, in a house in a neighborhood that I absolutely loved. But when I was about Riley’s age, my parents moved into a new house about an hour’s drive from our old one, in a very different area, and I absolutely hated it. I never ran away from home, or tried to, but there were days that I seriously considered it. And of course this completely baffled my parents, who assumed that because I’d liked making the drive from our old house to check on the progress of the new one I would like living in the new one. I couldn’t understand it either. I understand now that what I liked was having the time in the backseat to listen to music, getting to record and play with the camera while we were on-site, and getting to spend time with my parents. Whereas when we actually moved into the new house, there was a sense of finality. I hated it. I wanted to go home. Some days, I still do.

Recently I went back to St. Clair Shores, my childhood hometown, and saw everything through the eyes of a grown-up. (Or, okay, as close to grown-up as a 22-year-old can really be.) It’s a little run-down there now. The movie theater where I first saw The Santa Clause 2 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has long since closed down. There are cigarette butts all over my favorite park. A lot of businesses have changed hands or simply closed due to lack of income. In my old backyard, the tree that once held my swing has been cut down. But for all the changes, it is still my hometown, and I still love it. I always will.

So, yes, Inside Out really hit home, pun not intended. I was watching with my dad and I kept promising myself, no, I will not cry, I will not cry dammit, I’m a grown woman here and I will keep it together, Dad doesn’t need to see me cry (my dad hates it when I cry, even if it’s just over a movie), so I’m not going to cry--only to look over and discover that my dad had tears in his eyes too. That, my friends, is the power of Pixar. All the way back to the car he raved about what a great movie it was, and I have to agree.

What I love most about Inside Out is that it so perfectly captures how it feels to grow up. Just like Toy Story 3, which also reduced me to tears as I watched it right before going into my senior year of high school (can you say right in the feels?) and still had all of my American Girl Dolls and stuffed animals right there in my bedroom when I got back from the theater. I love the way Pixar can do that. I love that a team of animators, most of them grown men and women with kids of their own, can look around them and find inspiration for a film that hits kids and their parents alike right where it hurts in the best way possible. I love watching a film that makes me turn around and hug my mom and dad as soon as it’s over. I love that I can pop Toy Story 2 into the DVD player and still love it just as much as I did when I saw it back in 2002. I love that someday, I will show these movies to my kids, and see the looks on their faces when they reach the outtake reels at the end of the films. I love that.

So thank you, Pixar, for giving me something to love, something to look forward to, and something to aspire to. Because you can bet that as soon as I got home from the movie theater yesterday, I started working on my own script (more about that later) and contacting as many filmmaking friends as I could about getting this thing into pre-production. Oh…didn’t I mention my favorite thing about a Pixar film? No? Oops.

Well, here it is, then: every time I watch a Pixar movie, it makes me love cinema as a whole all the more. And every time I turn off the TV or walk out of the theater after watching a Pixar film, all I want to do is go and make something that makes someone else feel the way my favorite Pixar movie makes me feel.

When Idols Die

I was twelve years old the first time someone I liked died. It was my favorite comedian at the time, Mitch Hedberg, and I honestly can’t remember how I felt at that exact moment. I remember in the following days there was a sense of confusion--how could he have died? I didn’t know he was sick, I didn’t know about his addiction, how could he be gone? I never saw him live, never got to send him fanmail, never got to tell him “you’re my favorite”--and a lot of surprise, but no sense of loss. I remember thinking that it sucked, but I never cried for him. I was just surprised.

Fast forward about nine years or so, to August 11, 2014.

This I’ll never forget. A punch to the gut. An actual, sickening sense of loss, the feeling that something had been taken away. The feeling that the world had actually changed. How could the death of one man change the entire world? I remember saying “This isn’t real, this isn’t happening, he can’t be dead, he just can’t.” I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was a cruel joke by a few bored news outlets.

But then it was confirmed. And that night, I cried myself to sleep over a man I’d never met. Because now I knew I’d never have the chance.

I never knew Robin Williams personally. Neither did the millions of fans who mourned him when he died. We didn’t meet him, didn’t know him, weren’t on a first-name basis. But it didn’t make our grief any less “real,” because we knew the Robin Williams that he wanted us to know. I talked to my friends the day after he died, and we all had a personal story relating to something that he had done, some movie he’d been in, that had changed our lives in some way. 

For me, it was RV. I saw that movie with my dad, my permanent “bad-movie partner,” and we both loved that film more than either of us thought we would. It was a bonding experience for us, and it came at a time when most girls were scorning their dads for being “too embarrassing” to hang out with. The father-daughter relationship demonstrated in that film cemented what I already knew: that it was okay, really okay, normal even, to love your dad and still not know how to talk to him. But for my dad and I, movie quotes are our “language,” we speak it to each other and we speak it fluently: a quick Back to the Future reference when something goes wrong (“This damn thing doesn’t work at all!”), a bit of Replacements snark when accusing each other of tomfoolery (“A good Christian boy like you would never do nothing like that!”), a little bit of Disney here (“Not yet, Baloo!”), a little Steve Martin there (“Don’t forget to fasten your condom--seatbelt, I meant seatbelt!”). And of course RV was added to the legion of quotable movies. I first saw RV in 2006 and to this day I still answer the phone when my dad calls with a rapid-fire “Yo, my mobile homeboy, what’s trippin’ in the wood?” It’s a little thing, it really is. But it was something that had an impact, however minor. And it still means something to me.

And it’s silly, it’s really silly, but I love to think that wherever Williams is now, he can hear it when those of us who loved his work quote him. I love to think that wherever he is, he knows he’s loved, he knows he’s remembered, he knows he’s missed. I really truly believe that he does. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s faith, but I feel like he hears us, and he knows we miss him, and he knows we still care.

My selfish reaction when an actor I love dies always falls squarely into the “bitter filmmaker” category. When Christopher Lee died, I got teary-eyed thinking of all the movies I will never make with him. I’ll joke about it sometimes; I told my best friend once, “If Ian McKellan dies before I get to work with him, I will have words with God when I get to heaven.” I joke about it because I’m not sure what else to say. Because I know it happens. Celebrities aren’t immune to death. No one is. And what do you say, how do you react, when your favorite actor or singer or comic’s death reminds you of your own mortality?

The hardest part about losing a celebrity idol is that you don’t have license to mourn them the way you do when someone you personally knew dies. If your favorite teacher dies and you cry over their death, people understand. They say comforting (or theoretically comforting) things and bring you food and send you sympathy cards and reassuringly cuddle you as they remind you that the person is in a better place now and they’re watching over you and don’t worry, they loved you too. But when your favorite celebrity dies…it’s almost like you aren’t allowed to be sad, because people will side-eye you when you cry for them. “But you didn’t know them. I mean, yeah, they did some great work, and they’re cool and all, but…” Or they say, “Stop it. You’re being selfish. Think about how their family must feel,” implying that you have no right to be upset because you weren’t married to or related to that person. Or, my personal favorite, the implication that the person somehow deserved it. As in, “Well, Michael Jackson was great, but he was on drugs when he died.” Like he got what was coming to him, and I should feel forewarned instead of sad. And then you feel sad and guilty and alienated because there’s no protocol in place there. It’s almost like the five stages of grief are presumed to not apply here simply because the person being mourned happened to be in a few issues of People magazine.

My boyfriend’s favorite wrestler (well, one of them, I should say) died today. Now, I will warn you all, what I know about “Rowdy” Roddy Piper could probably fit on a mosquito’s toenail, because my only exposure to him was Comic-Con related. Ian made me watch a few of his matches before we went, because he wanted me to have some context, but being a total novice in the world of pro wrestling--again, thanks to Ian; I only started going to matches when he asked me to come with him--I legit had no idea who the hell the guy was. All I knew was that he wore a kilt (which I thought was kind of hot, but don’t tell my boyfriend I said that or he’ll think I want him to wear one too), that he was extremely good at his job, and that he was anti-bullying. Well, that was good enough for me. So when Ian asked if I wanted to come with when he went up to talk to Piper at Motor City Comic-Con my reaction was something along the lines of “well, why the hell not.”

Now, I’ve had a bad experience here and there with being completely, thoroughly let down by someone I really looked up to. At the tender age of fourteen I discovered that my favorite singer, Tyson Ritter, tended to act like a horny frat boy when on tour, and I was irrationally devastated. So, come Comic-Con, I was as nervous for Ian as I was for myself, because I was half-afraid that my favorites wouldn’t live up to my image of them (I was terrified of meeting Billy Boyd...turns out I didn’t need to be...but that’s a story for another post) and half-afraid that Roddy Piper would be a let-down for Ian. Because yes, I’m that kind of sensitive that means I can’t stand seeing other people in pain. Yeah, yeah, I know. Moving on.

Anyway, I needn’t have worried, because Piper was unbelievably kind to Ian. I’ll never forget that. First the guy called me beautiful (and if/when I post stills of myself on-set, you’ll see why that was such a shock) and implied that Ian had done well for himself by getting me as a girlfriend, then he threw in a comment about how “cool” my boyfriend seemed (reminder: we were at Comic-Con, a.k.a. Nerd Heaven; conventional definitions of “cool” seemed irrational here). I don’t remember much else of what was said, I just remember how unbelievably happy Ian was, how thrilled he was to meet his favorite, and how patient Piper was with the whole thing. Like how many people had that guy had to talk to that day? And yet he made damn sure to treat Ian like he was the only other person in the room. Didn’t rush us through the line or make the “yeah, whatever” face. Listened to Ian’s stammered thanks for supporting an anti-bullying group. Noticed our insecurities and complimented us in a way that would minimize them. Noticed me, despite my half-serious efforts to hide behind Ian (I was a little scared to meet a legit pro wrestler, okay?). Now, again I say, I didn’t know this guy--but based on one short meeting, and all the information that Ian piled on me in the weeks before Comic-Con, he seemed like a hell of a nice guy.

So how do I react, now that he’s gone? What the hell can I possibly say to my boyfriend that will ease his pain over the passing of someone he admired? What could those few friends of mine who didn’t think Robin Williams hung the moon have said to me when he died, other than “I’m sorry?” Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem like enough, but to say more feels contrived. And the fear of saying the wrong thing is very real, because one wrong word and you sound about as sensitive as Nurse Ratched. I remember feeling so frustrated when one of my friends jokingly said “You just had a crush on him, didn’t you?” when another comedian I liked passed a few years ago. It was infuriating. It completely dismissed my pain at losing someone whose art meant so much to me. 

But what did I expect her to say? What can you say when someone’s--idol? I don’t like the word “idol,” I really don’t, it’s taken on such an awful meaning over the years (American Idol...ugh!), but it seems appropriate here--is taken away? It’s not like you knew the person, but on another level you did, and what the hell can someone say to you that will be comforting but not patronizing? How do you mourn someone who felt like a best friend to you, despite the fact that they never knew you existed?

All I know is that we did know them. I knew Robin Williams and Christopher Lee exactly the way they wanted me to know them: as Mrs. Doubtfire or Saruman; as a crazy OB-GYN or wacky Genie or beloved teacher, as a Bond villain or vampire or intergalactic dictator. I knew them as they wanted me to know them, and I will never stop loving the characters that they brought to life or being incredibly thankful to them for bringing those characters to life in the first place.

Ian, my love, I know that nothing I say now can make it hurt less that someone you admired is gone forever. But here’s what I believe: I believe that those few minutes you talked with him were invaluable. I believe that he knew, even just for those few minutes, how much he meant to you. And I think that wherever he is now, he knows that he is loved and missed and remembered. And don’t let anyone belittle your connection to him, or call your feelings for him “superficial” or laugh it off as hero-worship or say dumb things like “but you didn’t know him, how can you mourn him?” They’re wrong. You did know him, you knew him the way he wanted you to know him, and because of you, because of all the people who knew him and loved him and put his picture on their walls and read his book and asked him for an autograph at Comic-Con, he will never be forgotten.

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Pixels'

So basically, I’m a fangirl. I will go see any movie--don’t really give a damn what it’s about--as long as it has one of the following qualities: 1) it was made by a director I like, 2) it has an actor in it that I like (bonus points if there’s multiple favorite actors), 3) it was written by a screenwriter I like, or 4) it was based on a book by an author I like. (It doesn’t matter whether I’ve actually read the book. Yeah, yeah. I know.)

So, Pixels had a lot of strikes against it--it’s CGI-heavy, which I usually hate; it has Adam Sandler, who I absolutely despise; it was written by a screenwriter whose movies I generally don’t like; and the reviews were absolutely terrible, which shouldn’t influence me but it usually does. BUT. It involved Pac-Man (which I absolutely love) and, more importantly, was directed by one of my all-time favorite directors, Chris Columbus. To make matters even more complicated I knew that one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage--and if you don’t know who that is, I beg you to go and watch The Station Agent, it is a work of art and your life won’t be complete until you watch it--had a prominent role.

So I decided, what the hell, I’ll see Pixels. Why not? Could be great or awful. I’m just enough of a Columbus fangirl to find out. I only hoped it wouldn’t live up to those awful reviews.

And, to my immense delight, it did not live up to those awful reviews. Not even close.

Okay, I’ll admit, the script is…well, it’s about as good as I expected it to be. It’s choked with a lot of throwaway jokes and heavy with nostalgia about the “good old days” before video games became violent and “realistic.” If you’re like me, and the thought of playing Walking Dead instead of Super Mario makes you want to puke, you’ll like it; if you call everyone who says Pac-Man is better than Call of Duty is a gaming snob, then you probably won’t appreciate it. I tried not to watch it from a political angle, but with all the critics calling it misogynist, it was hard not to. And yet I couldn’t find much in the way of political message here, unless Sandler & Co thought it highly important that we all understand the danger of aliens thinking our video games are a declaration of war. Gotta wonder where all the people who are crying “It’s just like Gamergate!” are coming from, because I sure as hell didn’t get that vibe from the movie at all.

Now, I’ll admit, there are some places where the plot is a stretch. “There’s no career for a gamer.” Really? Uh, okay, could this guy not have designed new video games, opened his own arcade, or if he was really ambitious become a Disney Imagineer? Hell, couldn’t he have made a career of collecting, trading and selling vintage games or game machines, if he really couldn’t think of any other possible game-related career? That part was a stretch to me. Especially given that his BFF, whose childhood claim to fame was stealing quarters from little girls’ lemonade stands, grew up to be the President of the United States. Okay, we’ll just pretend that was in the realm of possibility.

And yet to quibble about realism when the plot of the movie revolves around an alien invasion is kind of pointless, when you think about it. The reasoning behind the entire story of Pixels is soft sci-fi at its finest. We’re not meant to question why the aliens took what was clearly a time capsule and read it as a declaration of war. We’re not meant to question the “light guns” that fight off those aliens. And we’re definitely not meant to question how Dinklage’s character could possibly have used cheat codes in a real-life situation. No, if you’re sitting there marking every continuity error, scientific impossibility and minor anachronism, you are definitely watching Pixels the wrong way. The effects are impressive, the humor is surprisingly clean, and of course Q*bert is about as cute as it’s possible to be. With all of that, it’s fairly easy to overlook the plot holes. Just don’t think about it too hard.

The finest moments of Pixels are when the movie points out its own weirdness. Now, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for self-aware movies--I’m a Mel Brooks fan, what did you expect?--so my favorite parts could be (and, judging from some of the reviews I’ve seen, definitely were) someone else’s biggest irritation. So be it. But I thought the scene where Sam goes over to install Matty’s new TV and ends up drinking wine with Violet in the closet was one of the best in the film. We expect them to kiss and fall in love at first sight because that’s how movies work, but they don’t, and it’s a moment that’s as funny and heartfelt as it is cringe-worthy. Later on, one of the good-guy aliens (you’d have to watch the film to understand) transforms into Lady Lisa, the longtime crush of one of the game nerds. “Am I the only one who’s weirded out by this?” Sam questions, while everyone else goes “Aww.” No, you’re not the only one, Adam Sandler. We’re all a little weirded out right now. But that’s okay, we’re supposed to be.

For all the movie’s flaws, the characterization is damn good. Critics are trashing the film for misogyny, but I personally thought that Violet was very well-written and well-acted. We all remember what I said about perfect female characters, and I am very happy to report that Lieutenant Colonel Violet Van Patten is the absolute opposite of perfect. Physically attractive she may be--and unbelievably smart, to boot--but she too is prone to hissy fits and juvenile snark, just like Sandler’s Sam Brenner. The “nerd team” of video game expert fighters is about as stereotyped as you could expect, from the insecure leader to the weirdo in love with his favorite game character, but somehow the script still manages to make them lovable in their own way. I read a lot about misogyny, lack of female gamers and Gamergate in the reviews, but I have to say I never felt threatened as a female viewer. Yes, I’d have loved to see more women as gamers in the film, but--minor spoiler alert--Violet has enough badass moments to make up for it; after all, she does invent the light guns that are the only defense against the aliens.

So that brings me to the outlandish reaction to Pixels. The accusations of sexism were what really got my goat, because upon watching the movie I found nothing outrageous about it. It all ties back into what I said about the Perfection Curse that we slap onto our female characters and call it “equality” for “strong female characters.” We as a society demand more female representation, and then complain when those characters don’t live up to our expectations. “We want more women in the films!” we cry, and then hastily add, “but if those women aren’t exactly the way we want them, you are sexist and we hate you!” Hence, our reactions to Black Widow, Katniss Everdeen and Violet Van Patten. We demanded them, now we throw them back when they aren’t just what we wanted.

Ladies and gentlemen, don’t take this the wrong way, but give me a freaking break.

I’m not going to say Pixels was fantastic, because it wasn’t. It’s a great “popcorn” movie--the kind you watch with your best friends on a Saturday night or pop into your DVD player when you’re ready for a nice hit of nostalgia--but I won’t defend it as Oscar-worthy or say it changed my entire perspective on Sandler. But I think the reaction to it says a lot about us as a society of movie-watchers. We are ready and waiting to rake anything that doesn’t live up to our exacting expectations through the coals, and then complain that filmmakers don’t “try hard enough.” And to someone who’s primed to go into the film industry…holy shit, that is scary.

The genre judgement conundrum

Okay, I’ll admit it: sometimes I don’t practice what I preach. I’ll write here all night and all day about not judging a movie before you see it, watching a variety of movies instead of sticking to your favorites, seeing movies outside your preferred genres, giving movies a chance even if they don’t get good reviews…but I confess, there are a lot of movies where I take one look at the trailer (or a DVD cover) and go, “Nope. Not a chance.” I have my pet peeves within a film, and if I know going in that the film I’m watching has those issues, it’s practically guaranteed I won’t like it. 

I can’t stand gore or torture porn. If you ask me to watch Evil Dead or Saw I will run away. I don’t like supernatural horror, mainly because it scares the hell out of me, but also because those movies have a tendency to rely on archetypes and jump scares instead of fleshing out a real story. I don’t like R-rated comedies where 90% of the jokes revolve around sex, controlled substances, or petty crime. Oh, and don’t even ask me to consider knockoff parodies like the Scary Movie series--there is no chance in hell. I hate those cheap comedies most of all, because all I can think about when I watch them is, if only I had those resources…God, what I could do instead of making crap like this.

So when I found myself putting Ted into my DVD player, all I could do was stand there, disgusted, and ask myself, what in God’s name am I doing.

Let me back up here and explain that back in May, Ian took me to Motor City Comic-Con and it was pretty much the best date of my life. I got to sit in on a panel with a Supernatural writer, meet some of my favorite actors, and oh yeah, meet and talk to Billy Boyd--thanks to Ian, who surprised me by not only taking me to the con, but getting me a photo op with my favorite Hobbit. So, to thank him, I offered to let him pick the next ten movies we saw together. So far I’ve loved all of the ones we’ve seen (up to yesterday we’d watched treasures like The Truman Show and Angels in the Outfield) but when he came over the other day he handed me a DVD that I desperately wanted to throw in the trash can.

I hate, hate, hate movies like Ted. They are full of raunchy, cheap jokes that rely on shock value and foul language instead of actual humor. The acting is usually half-assed at best, unless a weirdly good actor randomly ends up in an otherwise-shitty movie. One of the reasons I get so pissed off when people like Ethan Hawke compare all mainstream films to “hamburgers and hot dogs” is because it means they’re lumping in truly brilliant blockbusters, like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, to crap like This Is The End and Epic Movie. These films are, in my mind, truly empty entertainment. I can’t remember the last time I watched one of those movies and came away thinking, “Y’know, I’m glad I watched that.” I’d sooner watch any of the junk featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 than put myself through Superbad, Bridesmaids or The Hangover.

So you can imagine it took a fair bit of convincing to get me to watch Ted. Ian had to repeat over and over that it was really cute, that the jokes weren’t all centered around sex, that it was one of Seth MacFarlane’s better projects, and that the acting was actually pretty decent. I tried to guilt him out of it, reminding him that my ex had once forced me into seeing Scary Movie 5 and it gave me nightmares and I hated porn jokes and can’t we please watch, I don’t know, Nightmare on Elm Street instead? But he reminded me of my promise and I finally gave in and watched Ted.

Now, I won’t say I loved it. I didn’t. It was decent, but it’s not going to be on any of my top ten lists. And I can see why it wasn’t an Oscar favorite. I can’t say I’m suddenly interested in watching another handful of similar comedies. I’m not about to run out and see the sequel, and God knows it’s not going to turn me into a MacFarlane fan.

But…

But for all its flaws, Ted is actually pretty damn cute. It’s raunchy, yes--for anyone who hasn’t seen it, allow me to drop a little spoiler: the teddy bear gets laid--but there’s enough wit in the humor to offset some of the more tasteless potty humor. Okay, maybe it’s still about as stupid as you’d expect (at one point I told Ian “if they make one more fart joke I’ll throw something") but there are some pretty good lines, there’s some nice banter here and there, the celebrity cameos are well-timed, and the romance between Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis’s characters is actually fairly believable. Not only that, but there are some moments that would make any Tumblr warrior proud: a gay love story is casually tossed in and treated like it’s no big deal, and at one point Wahlberg’s character sarcastically says that if he’s assaulted it’s his fault for “asking for it.” Little things like that keep the movie from collapsing into pure, unadulterated piles of yuck, but underneath all of the both PC and non-PC humor, the whole thing is actually…sweet. Surprisingly sweet, in fact, given that the film is about a foul-mouthed twentysomething teddy bear and his childish human BFF.

Like I said, I’m not about to run out and rent all three of the Hangover movies. And no power on this earth will make me see the rest of the Scary Movie franchise. And, please, someone shoot me on the spot if I ever think about making a movie with that many fart jokes. But watching Ted--and actually enjoying Ted--gave me a new perspective. I’ve been sulking furiously over every last indieWIRE article that makes fun of Jurassic World or insinuates that blockbusters are empty brain candy, only to turn right around and call a whole other genre “brain candy” without even watching the majority of the films in that category. And that, as I’m sure any sane person would tell me, is not fair.

No, Ted isn’t a masterpiece. But it’s still a movie that took time and energy and, yes, a lot of money to make. Someone had to come up with the idea, however cringe-worthy, of letting a cute, fuzzy teddy bear have sex with Norah Jones. (And can we just take a minute to admire the guts it took for that woman to take on a film role where she fondly reminisces about getting it on with a frickin’ stuffed animal? I’m not sure I would’ve done that.) Someone had to write, direct, film, edit, and distribute this thing. Just like all my favorites, Ted was the product of a group of very dedicated people who didn’t give a shit about anything except the fact that they had a story to tell. 

And whether you liked the film or not, you’ve got to at least give it some credit for that reason alone. At least, I have to. Because I can’t call myself a bad-movie champion, and give the critics hell for judging a movie based on its genre, and then refuse to give movies like Ted a chance.

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.

Where it all came from

Maybe it's the fact that I'm now a college graduate that's got me feeling so nostalgic, but for some reason I can't stop thinking about what I used to do, the things I used to write about, and how they compare to the films that I make and the scripts I want to write now. And I don't mean the stuff I made my first year in a high-school-level film arts program. I mean that back when I was ten years old I would make up "scripts" using the text function of Microsoft Paint, and I would laugh myself stupid over my own cleverness. Every single script, I shit you not, revolved around my pet rabbit, Sassy, asking for someone to feed her, and some bunch of crap going down that prevented us from actually feeding her. It was stupid. It was absolutely, dead-on, flat-out, no-other-way-to-interpret-it ridiculous.

And my mother, God love her, encouraged me to do it every step of the way.

When I was very, very little--I mean, too young to write much beyond my own first name--I would dictate stories to her. These were often less than one notebook page and were stories about characters that I knew from TV shows, movies, or the thousand and one picture books that had accumulated since my first birthday. Stories like "Mickey and Minnie's Day Off," or "Do-Good Dog Eats Too Much Junk Food," or "Donkey Dan Cleans His Room." I didn't know then that I was essentially writing fanfiction (I told you I was a born geek, didn't I?), and my mom didn't let me in on that secret just yet. Instead, she wrote down the stories that I told her, and then hand me the notebook so I could illustrate them. She never told me "This is a waste of time" or "If you want to do this, learn to write, I'm too busy." Later, when I got older and learned to type, she patiently sat next to me while I wrote version after version of "The Nutcracker" and "Once Upon A Clothesline," both of which were plays that we had seen in local high schools. I must've been about eight then--maybe younger, I don't know. My dad would act them out with me, sometimes videotaping, mostly not. We still have those tapes somewhere, and I'm sure if you dug through the hard drive of that old computer, all those "Nutcracker" word documents would still be there.

I remember being eleven years old and deciding, out of the blue, that I was going to write a book series. You see, back in those days I loved The Baby-Sitters Club series (I know, I know) and by that point I had a grasp on that "original characters" concept. So I decided, why not? I could write about ten and eleven-year-olds; I knew that age demographic well enough, didn't I? That was when my mom finally decided that it was time for me to learn how to write. "Beginning, middle, and end," she'd repeat over and over. "Conflict and resolution. That is what will make people want to read your stories." I'd e-mail her word documents with seven-or-eight-chapter stories that I'd written in one or two days, and she would send them back with comments typed in red. "You can't just sit down and write a book series," she told me one day, and I responded, with all my fifth-grade innocence, "Well, why not?" Later she told me that was the moment she knew that I was going to be a writer.

Whenever I wrote papers for school, she insisted on reading them first and giving me feedback. At the time I hated her for it. I'd write what I thought was a perfectly good essay, and she would tear it apart. One day she told me, exasperated, "You write better than anyone I know. You're just not applying yourself." I wrote the essay because I had to, but afterwards I hid in my room and cried. When you're a kid, after all, you can't tell the difference between healthy criticism, of which I had plenty, and real disdain for your writing.

Meanwhile, I fell in love with my dad's camcorder. I started making tapes on my own, which I called The Avery Udell TV Show. It was awful, it was stupid, and it was my favorite thing to do. Every single one of these shows was improvised; the thought of filming one of my scripts never crossed my mind until the day my dad suggested, "Hey, why don't we think about what we're filming before we film it?" There was a novel idea. I started doing re-takes, but still didn't edit--that would come later. I figured out how to dub music over the tapes and began making fake music videos. When I look back on this, I can't help but laugh because most of my music videos told better, more concise stories than my "TV shows."

When I got to high school I wrote fanfiction and, fearing that my parents would find out, never posted it. I wrote about my then-favorite band, the Jonas Brothers. I wrote about Harry Potter. I wrote about Twilight, and--when I got a little older--Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and The Academy Is... and Selena Gomez. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I often got in trouble for writing too much. "Go outside!" became a frequently-issued suggestion/command in my house, right up there with "Get off the computer!" As I'm sitting here with a laptop writing this now you can rest assured that I did not, in fact, get off the computer. Instead I began showing my parents my stories, and at first they'd laugh (and, honestly, I can't blame them) but then my mom, with her usual sky's-the-limit attitude, pointed out "You know, if you just changed one or two things, this would be a much better story." Whenever and wherever she told me to change something, I always did. And when I got to college, I was thankful for her instruction after reading some of my classmates' papers. There are many things upon which my mom and I still disagree, but the importance of knowing how to write has never been one of them.

When I look back on my childhood, it's not too hard to see why I ended up going to Interlochen. I was always encouraged to be creative. My dad fueled my creativity by acting in every one of my God-awful home movies with me, by dressing up in whatever ridiculous costumes I asked him to wear and improvising rap songs on the spot just to make me laugh, by acting out scenes from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter to my heart's content, and by taking me to see whatever silly movies I wanted to see. (Dad, if you read this, I'm sorry about Twilight. Really, I am. I hope seeing American Sniper made up for it. I know it didn't, but I'm trying, okay?)  And my mom encouraged me to be creative and productive. It's really to her credit that I know how to write at all; I like to think that at least some of it is innate talent, but I know far better. Without her criticism I might still write like certain fanfics I've seen--all bad punctuation and worse storylines--and for that I am grateful, no matter how painful it was to hear critique at the time.

When I hear my friends talk now I realize just how lucky I am. Some people would've killed to go to Interlochen, but their parents wouldn't have let them because it's "a waste of money" to get an arts-based education. Some of my friends at McDaniel would've killed to major in art, theater or music, but their parents pressured them into psychology, business, or pre-law because it was "more practical" that way. One of my classmates told me she wanted to be a painter, not an art therapist, but her parents convinced her that she'd never make any money and had better do something "real" with her college years.

I know that their parents all meant well and did what they did out of love, but I can't help but feel spoiled sometimes, because my parents chose to show their love in a different way. They told me, from the very beginning, that if writing was my passion I should follow it. To this day my mother actively encourages me to apply for professional writing jobs instead of the "more practical" route of administration or State work - both of which I could, with my background in communications and writing, theoretically do. My parents have always been, and always will be, my biggest fans and greatest supporters. Whether it's patiently hearing out my half-baked screenplay ideas or driving me to workshops with professional filmmakers, they are always there for me in whatever ways I need them to be. They were right there with me when I wrote my first script about feeding my pet rabbit, and they were right there with me when I won Audience Choice at my first-ever film festival. And should a miracle occur and I ever make it to the Oscars, they will be right there with me then, too.

So if anyone out there is wondering what a difference support from your family can make, now you know.