I had no complaints. It was summer, I was sixteen, I got to take the subway to work in the morning and learn music and choreography all day. I was going to internet cafés to check my email, the film students were explaining things like “establishing shots”I and “coverage”II to me, and I was on my own. Sure, I wasn’t really a New York resident, and I wasn’t getting paid, but I felt like such a grown-up. Wait ’til the kids at choir camp hear what I did this summer.
Toward the end of the rehearsal period, our choreographer, Broadway legend Jerry Mitchell, stopped us for a pep talk. We were exhausted and he was about to tell us to get our shit together. He said that whether we liked it or not, this movie was going to be around forever and that what we put on film in the coming months would, unlike theater, exist long after we were dead. It was super dark and probably should have scared me off making movies forever.
What can I say? I was living in a pantry, I was getting yelled at in dance rehearsal—if I wasn’t living the dream, I don’t know who was.
Weirdly, my excitement did not stem from the fact that I was about to be in my first film. I guess, if I’m honest, it didn’t feel like we were making a real movie. Real movies had famous actors in them, like Tom Hanks or the German lady from Austin Powers (my metric was all over the place). And films about teenagers had gorgeous, polished, twenty-five-year-old actors, and the plots revolved around summer crushes—not going to prom in drag and getting your ass kicked.
I don’t mean to suggest that I didn’t believe in what we were doing, I just couldn’t imagine a world where anyone outside the cast was ever going to see it. I knew that tiny films like Clerks or The Blair Witch Project could be huge, but I wasn’t sure that musical numbers from Burt Bacharach’s Promises, Promises or jokes about Stephen Sondheim were going to play wide. I also knew that Killer Films had made dark, important films like Kids and Boys Don’t Cry, but again, Promises, Promises and Stephen Sondheim.
My big problem was Fritzi, a weird girl with greasy hair and terrible clothes who happened to be the character I was playing. Fritzi was the camp loser and she was obsessed with (and probably in love with) Jill, the hot, popular girl at camp.
Today, I would be thrilled to play such a twisted little character. At the time, I just wanted to wear makeup and have my hair done, like the other girls in the cast. I wanted to downplay the ambiguously sexual nature of Fritzi’s (very much unrequited) interest in Jill. I wanted to be likable onscreen. I still had to go back to high school once this was over, and I so badly wanted to be the hot girl in a movie, not the girl who washes the hot girl’s underwear by hand.
A few years ago, Diane Lane gave an interview where she admitted that she was equally conflicted about one of her first film roles. She played the talentless front woman of a rock band in (the wonderful) Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, and she hated that the band was supposed to be terrible. She wanted to be an onscreen rock star. I hear that, sister. Sixteen-year-old insecurity is a real impediment to truth in art.
The very first scene on our very first day was a long and complicated tracking shot on the street near the West Side Highway that involved almost the whole cast. After each take, we’d just stare at each other, waiting to hear if we needed to do it again. I didn’t know it then, but that’s sort of how it always feels. I heard Todd laugh that the people at Killer Films were going to be pissed when they saw the footage, because there was no coverage (I knew what that meant!).
That first scene was the only thing we shot in Manhattan, and when we finished, we piled into vans and drove up to a vacant camp in the Catskills, the real Stagedoor Manor, where we would shoot the rest of the film. In interviews, lots of actors say that making a movie is “like sleepaway camp.” They have no idea.
There was no phone, no TV, no internet, and no cell reception. If you weren’t working on a certain day (or a certain week), too bad. No one had a car, so you weren’t leaving. We got paid seventy-five dollars a day on the days we worked, and only on the days we worked. This is why unions matter.
The blessing was that the other cast members were wonderful. Without the aid of cell phones, we spent our days off wandering around the camp to see who else wanted to hang out. It was as close as I ever got to having a gang of neighborhood friends, like I’d seen in movies from the nineties about growing up in the seventies. Our ages ranged from twelve to twenty-five and our interests ranged from musical theater to music. Or theater.
We found a few board games in the main offices but got sick of them quickly and spent most of our time engaging in general nerdery. We held Waiting for Guffman trivia competitions and took makeshift dance classes from a cast member who had obsessively collected bootleg videos of Twyla Tharp shows. Sasha and Tiffany, the two best singers, taught each other riffs and tested them out in parallel harmony while the rest of us listened in disbelief. Casual singing became so normalized that when I went home, it took me weeks to stop peppering my conversations with melodic interludes.
I shot my first real scene about a week into our stay. That morning, I got into my awful wardrobe, a woman rubbed down my frizzy hair with fistfuls of men’s pomade, and I went to the set (a.k.a. I walked three minutes to a different part of the camp).
We did a few final rehearsals in the set of “Jill’s” bedroom, and Todd told us we were going to film the next one. Someone yelled “last looks,” which meant that three people came into the room and poked at me: the wardrobe department pulled my sleeves back down to my wrists, the hair department gave me another handful of grease, and the makeup department looked me over to make sure I hadn’t secretly applied lip gloss again, like I’d done the first day.
This new ritual of last-minute touch-ups taught me that actors could become unfilmably ugly at any moment and needed to be beautified at ten-minute intervals. At first, it felt like pampering, but very quickly it became the standard by which I measured how insecure I should feel that day.
The scene was really just a conversation between Fritzi, my character, and Jill, the object of her obsession. It was creepy content, but pretty straightforward in terms of filmmaking. Back on the first day in the city, we had filmed the whole scene at once, in an open space, with complicated blocking. It had felt like a piece of theater. This was just two people in a room talking at each other.
Once Jill had been glossed, fluffed, and shimmered and I’d been, well . . . greased, we stood on our start marks and waited for “Action.” We did the scene, just like we’d done it in rehearsals, and eventually heard Todd’s voice call “Cut” from the next room.
That was it; that was my first time filming a scene in a movie. It might have driven me to distraction had it not been so . . . ordinary. I’d only ever performed in front of an audience before. The audience was a barometer of your success or failure. The audience gave you energy; their presence filled the room with a kind of electricity that told you, This is it, this is happening! The “audience” on a film set was just your director and the perpetually bored crew. Filming a movie felt exactly like not filming a movie.
I’ve come to love film sets and see the low-key environment as an asset, but it’s still unnerving that you can finish a scene and not know how it went. Things that crack you up while you’re filming can go over like a lead balloon in the movie, and things that feel stilted and boring on set can be tense and exciting for a viewer. While you’re shooting, you rely on the director to tell you if it’s going well, and you have to trust that they’re right. With my favorite directors, at least four times per shoot I’ll think, That is a fucking terrible idea, let’s do it.
I went back to my room and wondered what we’d done. I couldn’t ask anyone for advice because none of us had ever been in a movie before. My next scene involved six actors and was my first lesson in what it feels like when a scene is not going well.
The scene had a fair bit of exposition, a few jokes, and some good old-fashioned bitchy teen drama. In a practical sense, though, it had six first-time film actors s
logging their way through two pages of dialogue.
Everyone was making a meal out of their bits, fumbling punch lines, adding overdramatic inflection to minor lines. Todd was getting frustrated. At one point I heard him say, “I forgot that I’m not working with actors.” He didn’t mean it as a dig—we were just making mistakes that experienced film actors would not. I thought, Yeah, guys, come on, we don’t need to take these long pauses before every little line. I then proceeded to take a long pause before my one line.
Once I recognized that I was a total hypocrite, I started jumping in at warp speed in every subsequent take. It was a little weird, but it was an improvement.
Shooting the musical numbers helped bridge the gap between theater and film. We shot them in the various tiny theaters at the camp and performed them exactly like we would have onstage. Okay, this we knew how to do. We happily did them over and over as the cameras were repositioned around the theater.
Fritzi’s solo number was “The Ladies Who Lunch” from the musical Company. It’s a wildly inappropriate song for a teenage girl and was even more bizarre coming from one with the body of a twelve-year-old. This peculiar situation arises in the film because Fritzi has poisoned Jill after being rejected by her and steals the role mid-performance. She then sings a song about the ennui of middle-aged womanhood and her disillusionment with the bourgeoisie who surround her privileged 1970s Manhattan life. Sure.
When we finished shooting the number, we were supposed to get a shot of Jill watching me from backstage, furious and still throwing up, but Todd said he was going to scrap it. He whispered to me, “You don’t cut away from lightning in a bottle.” I’d never heard the expression before—in fact, for years I thought it was his personal invention—but I knew it meant I’d done well. He was the whole audience, so I had to trust him.
My mom came to pick me up on the last day of filming. I wept so hard and for so long that she pulled the car over, thinking I was going to need medical attention.
I haven’t cried at the wrap of a film since. At the time, I couldn’t reconcile the fact that no matter what we told each other, I would never go back there, never be with those people ever again. Now, I see catch-and-release as part of the beauty of what I get to do. Then again, I haven’t been stuck on a campground with twenty people and no technology for two months since, so maybe it was just the only time I’ve experienced Stockholm syndrome.
After filming wrapped, I went back to Maine and started the school year. Each time I described it to friends it felt less and less real. There were no famous actors in it. The plot sounded ludicrous. I had no point of reference to give. If High School Musical had already been made I could have described it as “like High School Musical, but with songs you’ll probably hate.” I kept my expectations low.
Six months later, I found out the movie had been selected for the Sundance Film Festival. I was over the moon. I couldn’t wait to tell people. But I held off—I had to find the right time to announce that the coolest thing that could possibly happen was happening.
Before winter vacation our French teacher had us go around the room and say what we were doing over the break “en Français, s’il vous plait.” Well, thank you very much, Madame Cadot, for this perfect opportunity. I reported my news. No one in the room even blinked. This was French Six. These motherfuckers understood me. Did they really not know what I was talking about? Maine is small, but we’re not devoid of culture. What the hell? Why are you not impressed with me?!
Killer Films booked three hotel rooms at the festival, meant for the three lead actors only, but everyone else in the movie flew themselves out with the unspoken understanding that we’d all be crashing with them. Three to a bed, everyone else on the floor. It was glorious.
We were gleefully aware of our status as the ragtag nonunion group in a sea of real, SAG card–carrying actors. We went to gifting suites that refused to give us anything, reveled in the bright cold, holding fancy coffees we had no intention of drinking, and took advantage of the parties by sending one of our legal cast members to the open bar for seven drinks at a time.
I saw Oliver Platt going into his hotel and executed my first—and last—celebrity approach.
“Oh my god, you’re Oliver Platt! I loved you so much in Dangerous Beauty!”
He smiled and thanked me. I smiled expectantly at him for too long and eventually he told me to have a nice afternoon and went on his way. It was a strange interaction, and I left it feeling dissatisfied but not knowing what I’d hoped would happen. I’m terrible in every social situation; I don’t know why I thought it would go better with a famous person. I vowed to never approach a celebrity again.
On our second day at the festival, we shuffled into reserved seats at the back of the Library Theatre to watch our movie. The film screened and something surreal happened. It played HUGE. People were laughing. A lot. They got all the in-jokes about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and ’Night, Mother and Stella Dallas. I didn’t even get the joke about Stella Dallas.
When subservient Fritzi poisons Jill, Todd tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Get ready.” Fritzi deadpans, “The goddamn show must go on,” and the theater exploded in cheers. I felt electrified. I was just sitting in the audience, but my ears were ringing like I’d been struck by lightning.
When the credits rolled, each character’s face appeared for a moment, with the actor’s name at the bottom of the screen. I gripped my seat waiting for mine. My face came up, and again, that electric feeling went through me. It was MY name. I’m not sure I can explain this properly, but I was still expecting to see my character’s name. This was MY name. This was the name my mother called me and my teachers called me and the neighborhood kid who flashed his penis at me in fifth grade had called me. Seeing it on film gave me the same feeling you get when you see yourself in the background of a photo you didn’t know was being taken. I didn’t feel especially proud or accomplished—if anything, it reminded me what a dummy I was for being so surprised to be listed under my own name—but seriously, guys, holy shit.
Then the strangest thing happened. The audience was on its feet. For a movie with no real actors in it. For a movie about losers who sang show tunes. For a movie that looked like crap and had no production value.
We went out and partied like only a group of dorky teens and young adults who’ve just had an incredible first screening of their weird movie could. That is to say, we crashed the Pieces of April party and drank them out of house and home.
Trying to blend in with the established Sundance crowd and succeeding.
The next day, I got a call from a friend back home. At this point, Sundance was at the height of its unintentional rebranding from respected independent film festival to celebrity hangout. In fact, the following year, Paris Hilton showed up for no reason, which actually helped the backlash reach critical mass, and soon after, Sundance returned to being more about movies than celebrities. (Although I’m told it won’t ever be the same as it was in the nineties. We get it, Kevin Smith; it was real back then.) My friend made small talk for a while, then said, “Hey, my mom was just watching Access Hollywood and it said something about Britney Spears and Fred Durst being at Sundance right now. Isn’t that weird? You’re at something called Sundance, and then THE Sundance, with the famous people, is going on at the same time. Did you know that?”
“What? No, I’m . . . what are you talking about? I am at THE Sundance.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m in a movie that is playing at the Sundance Film Festival right now.”
“Wait, really? Have you seen Britney Spears?”
I had not seen Britney Spears, but this conversation recontextualized the underwhelming response I’d gotten in French class. They had heard of the Sundance Film Festival; they just thought I must have meant something else. I suppose it would be like a coworker you’d known for years telling you they were about to compete in the Olympic trials. You assume they meant, like, the company Ol
ympics, and forget all about it.
“No, I haven’t seen Britney Spears, but the movie got a standing ovation, which everyone says is really rare here. And I met Oliver Platt!”
“Oh. Ross called Lauren S. to ask if they had biology homework for winter break, but she says that she saw him write down the assignment in class.”
“No! Did Jenna dump him?”
Double life. James Bond.
• • •
The movie came out and did not do well. The beauty and curse of Sundance is that the screenings are packed with film lovers, most of whom connect to the pain of being an outsider and get obscure references. They are also generous audiences for new talent. They forgave a lot of the film’s flaws.
Marketing the movie to the general public as a teen romp backfired enormously, and many people who thought they were going to see a musical American Pie were turned off by the homosexuality, cross-dressing, and vintage synthesizers. They were also less forgiving of the uneven quality of a low-budget film.
Being in that theater at Sundance is one of the great memories of my career, and maybe my life, so far. But when I met a guy in London the following year who said the movie was boring and weird, I couldn’t fault him. And when I met a girl six months ago who told me she named her car and her dog Fritzi, I made a mental note of her distinguishing features in case I had to describe her later for a police sketch.
* * *
I. The first shot of a new scene that establishes the location for the audience. You know how on Seinfeld there’s always a shot of the exterior of the diner before they cut inside and we see the gang slowly ruining their lives? That’s the establishing shot!
II. After the first wide “master shot” of a scene is done, the subsequent camera angles (close-ups, two-shots, etc.) are considered coverage. You know the opening sequence of Boogie Nights? It’s the opposite of that.
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