Welcome all to my second AMA, which I decided to do in lieu of putting out an actual essay last month since I have been uninspired and lazy. But I got some really great questions this time around and I enjoyed answering them. Big thank you to everyone who sent them in! I am clearly not the greatest at being consistent, but I am appreciative of all my subscribers and readers and will have more of an output soon. Hopefully this AMA is a worthwhile read!
[Some questions have been lightly modified for grammar and/or clarity]
Ever had the desire to write a screenplay?
Yes, the idiotic desire to write a screenplay or even go back to writing fiction (in high school and college I had the goal to be some sort of fiction writer for my career) comes and goes a few times a year. I will write something (usually a short story) for a few pages and then I’ll abandon it. I don’t really pursue it often because quite frankly I don’t think I’m a very good storyteller and I don’t even really love writing stories. But, you know, in school you learn that fiction writing is creative writing, so that’s just what I thought I was gonna do for my career, even though I knew I liked writing essays and research papers more. But I think I will write some sort of screenplay or short story eventually, just because the urge is pretty persistent even if I don’t think I’m very good at it.
Have you ever had a "What are you watching?!" moment? i.e., when someone walks in on you watching a movie during a very sexy scene and you have to frantically explain you're not watching porn?
No lmao I have never had that experience, and my parents would never walk in on me when my door is closed they always knock. Though I’ve had it happen quite a bit when I was living with my parents where I’d be watching a movie in my room and one of my parents like knocks on the door to ask me something and I pause it and let them in and they look up at the part of the movie that’s paused on my screen and are like “?????” Like, I paused watching The Devil’s Rejects so my mom could ask me something when I was still living at home back in November and it was on the scene where Otis is killing the hostages from the motel lol.
How do you become friends with people on Twitter without being creepy?
I mean, it’s not something you can force, but I have made very genuine connections with people from Twitter who are now some of my closest friends. Like, I didn’t keep any friends after college, most of my close friends are still from high school. So I had a moment not long after graduating of like “how am I gonna make more friends in adulthood?” I think that also like, being a film writer and going to festivals makes it easier to make friends in a more natural way because you have that reason to be actually meeting up with people irl. I think that though, in the general sense, you end up befriending people on Twitter by like, becoming mutuals and interacting back and forth on a regular basis organically. All my friendships with Twitter people, whether other writers or just film people, just happened like that. You’re friendly with someone long enough and eventually you’re both like “let’s just DM/text!”
Do you have any movies that greatly affected you the first time you saw it, that you have a radically different opinion on now?
Yeah I mean that’s happened with a lot of movies I loved as a teenager, or even in college, which is something I’ve sort of written about before actually. Recently I revisited Hereditary with my parents, a movie that I was totally overwhelmed by when I saw it when it first came out, and that I honestly think is kind of dumb the more I come away from this most recent rewatch. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I hated the Alien prequels on a first watch and I have come to love them immensely.
Do you have a favorite movie theater? Or, even a hypothetical model of factors that would make for a consistently good theater-going experience? Interested to know the criteria.
I really don’t have any anymore, but once I’m more acquainted with all the New York theaters I probably will. I suppose I enjoy the vibes of Nitehawk in Williamsburg and Film Forum and IFC. I was never very picky about the theaters I went to while growing up near Philly, but I remember for a while my preferences were based on how the popcorn tasted, or in high school that the AMC carded but the Franks Theater never did, so that’s where I saw R-rated movies. But I loved the little, non-chain theaters that played smaller indies and some rep screenings, like County Theater in Doylestown and Ambler Theater in Ambler.
If you had to curate a double feature with Crash, what would it be?
Ford v. Ferrari.
So, say you’re attempting to break into this field, wrote some shit that managed to get published, but not much. Already know how to pitch to editors (or least try to). But how do you apply for editorial internships when you only got some shit to your name, and for college background you fucked around in college, got shit grades? When I was attempting to apply for internship with an entertainment site, I came across a question asking for college GPA. Talked to some people that said that’s not unexpected. Given education history, should I just focus on standard pitching, freelancing, and just drop any pretense that I have any real shot getting such an internship (apologies for this comment, was too fucking long and asked more than one thing)?
Truthfully, I don’t think I’m the person to be asking about this? This feels like a question for someone with a bit more knowledge on internships, like an editor or a professor. I do not have much experience with internships. I did one internship in college which was mostly bullshit and then I did the Paste Magazine internship last year, but by that point I both had a degree and had been published quite a bit already. I have also not applied to any internships beyond those two that I did. So I don’t think I can be of much guidance to you. But you can try applying to the Paste internship when applications for the fall role around, they don’t ask for GPA (I believe) and they are tremendous.
How did you become such a big fan of film; are your parents into it like you are, or did you just get there yourself? If they aren't, what did they show you as a kid?
My parents are not into film like I am but they watch a lot of movies, and they are also very open to watching different kinds of movies, which is a plus. A downside to their tastes is that (besides a few caveats) they are extremely plot driven film-watchers. But, at the same time, as long as the plot of a movie sounds good they will give it a chance. And them showing me movies a lot as a kid definitely made me love movies. Like, I would go to Hollywood Video all the time with my dad while he picked out something to rent and I would peruse the aisles.
I would also rent stuff like The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie or The Haunted Mansion and watch them like, once every single day while I was renting them. I always loved watching movies more than doing most other things. My parents and I have pretty different tastes now though, especially me and my mom, which can cause friction when we’re trying to pick something to watch together because we watch movies together pretty frequently when I’m home. I vibe more with my dad and he is definitely more into movies than my mom. He showed me The Matrix and my first Kurosawa and he is also weirdly very into David Lynch. We have watched most of Lynch’s movies together.
Do you remember the first R-rated movie you saw? Did your parents let you watch whatever you wanted as a kid or did you have to sneak around to watch the bloody/sexy movies as a kid?
I have no memory of my first R-rated movie, but I feel like my parents had to have shown me some R-rated drama or thriller or something. They weren’t super duper liberal with what they showed me but I know I saw some inappropriate stuff. But I did have to sneak around a little to watch R-rated movies on my own for a bit. I think by high school once I was pirating movies constantly and consuming a lot of stuff on a regular basis I don’t really have any memory of being particularly sneaky about anything. Like once I was an older teen I don’t think my parents cared about what I was watching. But for a while I had to be sneaky about seeing R-rated movies in theaters especially during middle school. But again, once I was in high school I think they stopped caring, and like I mentioned in one of my prior AMA answers, one of the theaters in my hometown never checked IDs.
Favorite combo of director + popular musician, both irl and what you would like to see (popular does not mean trendy)?
Recency bias but I love Andrew Dominik/Nick Cave’s friendship and creative partnership. Cave and Warren Ellis’s score for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is incredible and I’m so excited for their score for Dominik’s Blonde. Fun fact: Cave and Dominik became friends because they dated the same woman.
What I would like to see is Nick Cave collab with Jim Jarmusch. Or (maybe boring choice) David Lynch, which I partly say out of recently finding out that Cave also does TM.
How do you deal with instances of feeling creatively burnt out? Do you re-watch faves, disengage from movies generally, re-read stuff? What sparks the creative mind again?
When I’m experiencing “ideas block” I typically just don’t force it. I do my worst work when I’m forcing something out of myself, though I’ll occasionally hunt for ideas on Twitter or in entertainment news, which can spark something. But if I’m not inspired by anything I’ve watched recently (which was like, most of March), I just kind of continue on business as usual until I watch something that strikes inspiration. Something will hit eventually. Sometimes I will get into melodramatic moments of like “I’m never gonna have an idea for an essay ever again,” but obviously that is never the case. I just wait for something to come about organically.
I’m making my way through the Danny McBride/Jody Hill/David Gordon Green shows. What’s your ranking of the three: favorite to least?
This is an extremely difficult question, because I love all them. But I would say Eastbound & Down is my favorite (recently closed out my fourth watch), closely followed by Vice Principals, closely followed by The Righteous Gemstones.
I don’t know where or if you went to college but, if you did, was there ever a period where you felt like you weren’t at the right school. That’s how I feel right now. I’m at The Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio, studying film but lately I’m starting to feel like their film program isn’t very good and I’m not making too many friends (though I do have a few) and I’m just overwhelmed because I don’t know what to do.
Exclusively for financial reasons I went to Penn State, which was possibly a terrible decision for film school. Their film program was dogshit, dogshit school, dogshit people that go there. Genuinely worst vibes of any place I have ever been in my entire life. But for aforementioned financial reasons I finished out my time there and got an education and I’m grateful that I did, but I understand your feelings. I don’t know what your entire situation is, of course, so I don’t really know what advice to give. I don’t regret going to college and getting a degree but the film program didn’t really do a whole lot for me. I learned some film theory/history stuff that I held onto, and I learned Premiere Pro, which I use at my current job, so that came in handy.
I chiefly took a number of fiction and creative writing courses which were the most beneficial to me. But I was very unhappy at my film program and I bullshitted my way through the production and filmmaking courses and I’ve all but wiped them from my memory. I have probably learned more about filmmaking since after graduating. Sorry if this was not helpful, but I totally empathize with you!
Did you rewind the steamy car scene in Titanic as a kid as much as I did when I was a little girl?
I have never seen Titanic, sorry!
What do you think of Rob Zombie's movies?
Love them. I am a Zombie head.
Who would you like to see play Nick Cave in a biopic?
I would not like Nick Cave’s life to get the biopic treatment so I will not entertain the question as to not put bad vibes out into the world!
If you could only watch one horror movie for the rest of your life, what would it be?
How would you rank the On Cinema Oscar specials?
Ranking them feels like too onerous of a task, but my favorites are probably 5 and 7.
Any plans for larger essays/books?
Nothing of either currently in the works, but I would love to write a book someday! I have no idea what about, but that’s a really big personal goal of mine.
Do you have a least favorite movie? Or a movie that is the antithesis of what you wanna see?
Some movies that have inspired particularly negative reactions out of me over the years have been La La Land, A Cure for Wellness, Jules and Jim, Madeline’s Madeline, The Twentieth Century, M*A*S*H. Soderbergh’s High-Flying Bird didn’t get a visceral reaction but was definitely a big instance of “this is not for me.” But I feel like the most striking instance of that which did get a negative reaction out of me was After Yang. Very much a movie that I would consider to a T the antithesis of what I want in a movie. Almost every part of it is in total opposition to what I like.
Are there any pop cultural or even just cultural pockets that you’re extremely into, or even arguably an expert in, but which you don’t ever write about/aren’t known for?
For one, I don’t really consider myself an expert in anything. I am still just learning about stuff as I go and as I write more. I am not an expert in Nick Cave, though I would genuinely like to be someday. It’s a boring answer but there’s really nothing behind the curtain. I have always gotten loosely interested in things that I tend to drop if I don’t cling onto. The thing is, when I’m passionate about something, I just want to be annoying about it. I want to tell everyone and talk to people about it, so I don’t have any hidden interests or passions because I want people to know about them lol.
How’s Buddy?
So wait ... where's the enemies list? 😄