I Saw the tv Glow manager Jane Schoenbrun is fighting history

I Saw the tv Glow is simply a uncommon treat of a movie. It’s equal parts dense, complicated, funny, and sad, all while being an absolute joy to watch. Its communicative is equally afraid with the pain of loving a tv show that ended besides soon, and the pain of letting your full life slip by without always truly knowing yourself. uncovering ways to communicate all these complicated ideas while inactive making a watchable, entertaining movie is simply a large task, but TV Glow writer-director Jane Schoenbrun has experience with that.

Their fantastic first feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, centers on a young female who finds relationship online as part of a community obsessed with something called “the World’s Fair Challenge,” a viral ritual that supposedly changes the body of anyone who performs it. World’s Fair, and Schoenbrun’s earlier documentary about Slenderman, A Self-Induced Hallucination, are both profoundly rooted in online communities, creepypasta, and how we find ourselves and our identities in the media we consume.

TV Glow takes that concept even further, following Owen (Ian Foreman and, as he gets older, Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), 2 loners who bond over a shared love of a late-night tv show called The Pink Opaque — a mashup of ’90s tv hits that lives somewhere between Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Twin Peaks. Ahead of the release of I Saw the tv Glow, Polygon sat down with Schoenbrun to talk about their inspiration for the movie, their distrust of communicative convention, and the subtle ways all their films connect.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: Where did this script start for you?

Jane Schoenbrun: My process is very weird. I say my process — I don’t think it’s the way people usually work erstwhile they’re trying to make a communicative film. Something will kind of get lodged in my brain. And that something could be just like a title or an image or an idea. That’s definitely not a movie. But it feels stuck, and it feels connected to quite a few nerve endings that can be investigated.

And so for me on this film, there was this thought of being haunted by an unresolved cliffhanger from a child’s show, and the thought specifically of the characters on the tv show being in a certain kind of danger. That [feeling of] not having resolution, and that making it hard to be in the “real world,” to the point where you’re almost taking on the pain of those characters. And from there, I truly wanted to analyse why that peculiar intellectual metaphor or idea, and this kind of unreality and merging of fiction and reality that’s inherent in it, was so close to me.

I knew reasonably early on that what I was talking about was a trans experience and dysphoria. And as I was beginning to work through dysphoria and beginning my actual transition, I understood this as a movie about recognizing something that’s wrong, and about the process that goes into that recognition.

Do you think those feelings are akin for you, an unresolved tv show and the process of what it means to transition and to realize yourself better?

The queer philosopher Eve Sedgwick does quite a few literary theory. I was reading the intro to 1 of her books, and she’ll talk about, like, a Henry James fresh and choice apart the queer themes that are embedded in the work, or inherent to the work, even if only in a way that feels subtle, or only hinted, or glimpsed.

She talked in this intro about, in childhood, uncovering these glimmers of a thing that at the time, she didn’t have the language to call queerness, but that she understood as any kind of signal that she wasn’t picking up elsewhere, that she wasn’t picking up in the immediate surroundings of the “real world” she existed within, and the consecutive planet she existed within. And how she remembers almost making a promise to herself, whenever she would find these signals, these secret codes in the work that resonated with her, to look for that feeling in her adult life.

When I read this, I had already been working on the movie, and it felt so eloquent, evidently [in] a different medium, you know? She’s not talking television, but it felt like precisely what the movie is trying to talk about, which is erstwhile you’re young, and you see a glimpse of something that cuts through in the way that feels, like Maddy says, more real than real life. What do you do with that? And to what degree do you reassess the life that you’re in, that does feel real, to make area for that kind of transmission?

Photo: Spencer Pazer/A24

I think the characters [in TV Glow] are very much haunted by that question. This question becomes more urgent as they get older, and they possibly do start to realize the actual implications of the ways in which reality feels insufficient to them. And surely for myself — like, yeah, obviously, I’m not trapped in a tv show, to the best of my knowledge. But I think I was unpacking any very individual things that I was working through.

There have been quite a few conversations about the thought of representation in movies, but it’s very different to talk about people uncovering themselves in movies, TV, and art generally, and seeing things they may not realize are part of themselves until they see it on screen. I think I Saw the tv Glow is incredibly adept at showing that feeling.

I think on a very simple level, the concept of representation, the shallow identitarian representation, feels like mostly a tool of the oppressor. It’s like, Who is the audience that is for? I’m not certain that it’s for me, and trans people. We know we exist, you know? It’s for any kind of imagined thought of equality that will never actually exist, due to the fact that we live in, like, a fundamentally evil, white-supremacist, capitalist hellscape.

But the thought of art creating anticipation — or putting language to anticipation — that previously felt either undefined or unimaginable feels to me like a form of representation, if you could even inactive call it that, that I could get behind. The thought of, like, a queer coming of age as something that’s inherently about creating unrealized or previously unrealized possibility, both on a individual and political level, and a part of art that is speaking very honestly and personally about everything, that’s both liberatory and terrifying and hard about that. I’m arrogant to have made that.

Why did you choose to center the communicative on Owen? Was there always a version that explored more of Maddy’s story?

I think if you’re reasoning about, like, what’s-his-name’s Hero’s Journey shit, then Owen is the least interesting character, in that he doesn’t so much grow as he decays. Until possibly at the very end of the movie he’s discovering or seeing something that explains the decay. And in this sense, he could be called, by, like, a hack studio executive, a passive narrator.

Image: Everett Collection

At the same time, I think that kind of “passivity” feels inherently tied to an experience that I — and I think many another trans folks — can relate to on a profoundly visceral level. It indicates precisely how our ideas about what appropriate communicative or advancement is is not only woefully limited in the experiences it’s showing, but besides like possibly by definition, masculine and cis. [It’s] reflective of an thought of agency and individual agency that doesn’t resonate with another experiences, like my own. And so I am trying to rewrite or call into question or challenge or simply just like, be within alternate ideas of communicative structure, to express something that feels emotionally truthful to my experience in the world.

I had a gathering with a truly smart maker for this film. And he was like, Listen, Owen is besides passive. You request to rewrite this thing. Owen needs to be like, he got out of his home town and he’s coming back to visit, and all of these things are haunting him. This character is just a mess, and nobody wants to watch a mess.

In fact, this maker told me, Your audience is going to be convinced that Owen murdered Maddy, erstwhile Maddy disappears. due to the fact that you are playing against a century of Hollywood filmmaking about the reclusive, passive man who is secretly a psychopath, right? Like the lineage of Norman Bates or Peeping Tom; the stuck-inside-himself, freak, passive, unusual recluse, a character we should be viewing with suspicion. And I was so fascinated by this. I was like, That’s a large point. And truly interesting from a trans perspective, due to course, Norman Bates was trans. And so I do think part of if it feels incorrect to you, to be watching a character who is so stuck inside himself in the way Owen is. And for you to sit with that and question it as narratively incorrect, like, what presuppositions are you bringing to the table with that?

Did you effort to parallel and connect the suburbs as Owen experiences them and the planet of The Pink Opaque?

There was an thought early on in the movie that it all existed in kind of 1 realm, that the suburbs Owen exists within are heightened in the way that the suburbs were heightened in ’90s television. The suburbs The Pink Opaque is set within are any kind of reflection of that, or they’re all kind of occupying possibly the same solar system, but different planets, due to the fact that the full movie is kind of playing with the thought of the memory of an imagined ’90s suburban utopia, and besides the memory of how the tv of that time helped to make that idea.

Image: A24

And then I think what happens in the movie is, both the real planet and the tv show transform as the movie goes on into something else, but they kind of transform in tandem, right? Owen’s planet becomes a darker and more haunted place, as the show transforms from this very nostalgic, cheesy, VHS analog thing to something that feels more like a snuff film.

One thing I truly enjoyed about your last 2 films is the way the outside planet interacts with the things we see from the characters. How did you approach building that off-screen planet for your characters, and developing the things we don’t see?

I think it comes from an knowing that your real estate, erstwhile you’re making a film, is actually rather limited. You have 90 minutes, maybe, and if tempo and pace and restraint are crucial to you, as paints on your paintbrush, which they are for me, you truly don’t have much time to smoosh in quite a few exposition.

And beyond that, I’m skeptical of the ability of a work of art to explain anything. I think that narratively, if you see that Owen has an angry dad, then the “Angry Dad” becomes a stand-in for an explanation for something. Or if you see that Casey [in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair] is being bullied in school, then everything you’re seeing in the movie becomes explained to a certain degree by this communicative choice. And it’s all constructed, right? Everything in there is simply a decision I’m making. For me, erstwhile we get besides far from the margins into these expository zones, it almost becomes a way for me to interact with the viewer.

I’m little curious in a intellectual explanation of, Oh, Owen’s life is like this due to the fact that X. I’m going for more: If I show you these 3 things, and then proceed to research what I’m exploring at the center of the film, what is your relation to the exposition? Which is kind of heady, and, you know, possibly a small pretentious, but I do find that this kind of light contact makes films linger in ways that are more generative and evocative and long-lasting than if everything was able to be charted out and mapped out and explained.

What do you see as your own inspiration for that kind of storytelling and approach?

I am inherently suspicious of narrative, is most likely where it comes from, and I think this is very apparent in my work. The work is so curious in communicative construction. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair explicitly is simply a movie about communicative construction and a movie about a character narrating themselves. And I think TV Glow likewise is simply a movie that’s curious in how power mediates the narratives that we are able to be within.

I do think there is this impulse in [my] movies to do a thing that’s a small bit intentionally frustrating, perhaps, to people who are utilized to a straightforward, narrative, commercial language of cinema, which is to be interrogating communicative plan and communicative tropes as a limiting, possibly even nefarious mechanism.

I think the work is not trying to necessarily satisfy. And I think quite a few American entertainment, its primary goal is to satisfy in a very shallow and short-term way. To give you an experience that feels like spectacle, or feels relaxing and satisfying adequate immediately that you can then go on with your life and see the next thing that’s going to satisfy you.

Image: Utopia

That’s just not what gets me out of bed, in my art, you know; I want to be making things that are speaking to the planet we live in. And I do think our relation to entertainment, which is our relation to, like, communicative or resolution, or as [cultural critic] Lauren Berlant would talk about, ideas of the good life, or Cruel Optimism that can only let you down in reality. All of these things are [what] I’m trying to leverage the art and the experience of the movie to be like, to be generative in a way that’s a small bit deeper than just [giving] you finely tuned, perfected, communicative satisfaction.

Is that something that resonates with you in another people’s work as well?

It’s almost mandatory for me, especially in the movie and tv and written-word work I consume. Something like The Sopranos, possibly kind of a random example. But I feel like the full intent of that show was precisely this. [It] was about utilizing the tv form. All of these different episodes, each of them kind of flirting with progress, but never rather getting there, and always doubling back on itself until it’s yet over. That’s a perfect metaphor for speaking about the way life can feel. And I think so much of the art I’m drawn to, it’s not that it’s disinterested in the pleasance of narrative, or like the power of catharsis or arc, but it is utilizing those weapons toward a goal that’s more than just enjoyment.

I think your first film, the Slenderman documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination, is truly fascinating and great, and it besides seems like kind of a skeleton key that echoes the themes of your next 2 movies. How frequently do you think about that movie and the stories you include in it?

I think everything is an echo of everything else. And I think I did crack something with Self-Induced Hallucination that started a process I’m inactive very much a part of. I think my work has always been curious in this intersection point, this non-straightforward relation between fiction and reality. And is it fiction that makes reality, or reality that makes fiction? Or is it something more complicated and interlinked?

I think about [that] all the time. Like that Tulpa kid, at the end of Self-Induced Hallucination. I think about this thought of something fictional that you realize on a certain level is fictional, being real adequate to save your life. And I think about the ways those questions aren’t just a way to analyse the construction of identity, but are besides a way to talk about this planet we’ve built, and all of the ways in which it is both very real and very constructed. Like I was talking about earlier, the ways in which anticipation could possibly be opened from the things that we consider “fiction.”

I Saw the tv Glow is in theaters now.