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Washington Post
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The ambitious writer-director bringing trans stories to the screen
Next in Arts & Entertainment The ambitious writer-director bringing trans stories to the screen By Shane O'Neill February 11, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST 0 Sorry, a summary is not available for this article at this time. Please try again later. Jane Schoenbrun had just gotten back from the Valentino runway show in Paris. It was a new experience for them. They were seated near Jared Leto. 'I never thought, when I was a young boy growing up in the suburbs, that I'd be here today,' they said with a giggle. Much has changed for Schoenbrun, 38, since they left their hometown of Ardsley, New York. They've written and directed two critically acclaimed films, 'We're All Going to the World's Fair' and 'I Saw the TV Glow,' they've gotten a book deal and they've been embraced by the entertainment industry and the media as one of the most distinctive trans voices of their generation. Their moody, ethereal work, which nods to horror and sci-fi, can leave viewers with more questions than answers. 'It took me, like, a year of therapy to just be confident enough to tell people that I wanted to make a movie,' Schoenbrun said. Their therapist advised them to spend a week just pretending to be a filmmaker. 'And I did and I was like, 'Maybe that's the secret,'' they said. 'And I did it again when I wrote a novel last year.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement They're still getting used to a world in which they don't have to pretend to be what they want to be. 'I've had this experience a bunch over the last couple of years of being like, 'I don't have to feel like the weirdo in the corner here, actually,'' Schoenbrun said. Schoenbrun was sitting in the bedroom of their home in Hudson, New York, shared with their partner of 19 years. Their relationship has evolved into a framework they describe as 'non-hierarchical polyamory.' 'We got straight married in 2014 and then we both came out as extremely gay later on,' they said. 'We've just supported each other through so much change and evolution and continue to do that.' Schoenbrun described their transition — which also coincided with the opening of their relationship — as being akin to a second puberty. 'In many ways it feels like I'm learning things that other people learned at 16,' they said. 'Like, I'm literally going through my first-ever breakup right now.' Puberty, whether it is one's first or second, is hard. But being close to that sense of dislocation and growing pain has served Schoenbrun well artistically. Their insight into the psyche and aesthetics of being a misfit is what made them a rising film talent in Hollywood. An experimental storyteller Their first film, 2021's 'We're All Going to the World's Fair,' was a lyrical and experimental story told largely through internet browser screens. It followed a child traversing the internet, finding sinister online challenges, ChatRoulette-style live streams, and a grown man who might be a good friend and guide to her (although it's hard to say for sure). Story continues below advertisement Advertisement The film attracted the attention of Fruit Tree, the production company founded by Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCary, who partnered with A24 to make 2024's 'I Saw the TV Glow.' Schoenbrun deliberately wrote their second film to be more ambitious. ''World's Fair' was a movie I made for $100,000 in the woods, and 'Glow' was like 40 times that in size and scope.' Jack Haven, left, and Justice Smith starred in Jane Schoenbrun's film 'I Saw the TV Glow,' which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. () It centers on a friendship between two teenagers forged by deep shared fandom for a sci-fi TV show. One of the teens is trying to forge an identity while avoiding the wrath and attention of a domineering dad played by Fred Durst, the lead singer of the nu-metal band Limp Bizkit. Schoenbrun's first film had oblique references to the trans experience, but 'I Saw the TV Glow' offered a more direct allegory. 'The film is 100 percent a trans narrative, both because I'm trans and because this was born of a very specific experience of an egg crack,' Schoenbrun said, using a slang term for the process of a trans person coming to terms with their gender. 'Obviously, I don't want to be pigeonholed — the ways that identity can be commodified can be an incredibly limiting factor in art,' they said. 'But also the movie is absolutely coming from inside my own experience of transness.' The film was a hit on the festival circuit, winning a few awards and a spate of good reviews. Schoenbrun wanted to expand on the success of that film for their next project. They explained their ambitions using the work of the rock band Radiohead: 'If 'TV Glow' was my 'Creep,' then what's my 'OK Computer'? What's my epic?' The answer was their first novel, 'Public Access Afterworld,' which will be published by the Random House imprint Hogarth in late 2025 or early 2026. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Schoenbrun described the book as a dense, interwoven science fiction novel about a trans girl working as a content moderator for a streaming platform who discovers a cult of people who think that screens can function as portals to other planes of existence. 'It takes us to World War II, to space, to the '90s,' they said. 'My films tend to be vibey and atmospheric and ethereal, so I'm excited for people to read the novel because so much happens.' And they also recently finished the screenplay, currently titled 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,' a slasher movie that investigates the horror trope of the trans serial killer in films like 'Psycho,' 'The Silence of the Lambs,' 'Sleepaway Camp' and 'Dressed to Kill.' 'It's a movie about learning how to start living in your body and to start having good sex and to stop seeing yourself as that transsexual monster and to start seeing yourself as a person who deserves to exist in the world,' they said. 'It's basically a comedy,' they explained. 'It's got so much blood. It's going to be a messy one.'
The Guardian
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Straight Story to You're Cordially Invited: the seven best films to watch on TV this week
In his lifetime, David Lynch directed very few films that could safely be shown on TV at Sunday teatime. In this regard, The Straight Story serves as a career outlier. However, despite lacking all his trademark dread and disquiet, it deserves to go down as one of his very best. Based on the true story of Alvin Straight, a man who, in 1994, took his 5mph lawnmower on a 240-mile road trip to visit his sick brother, it shimmers with awestruck wonder. Lead actor Richard Farnsworth was in the latter stages of terminal cancer during filming, and his stubborn determination to see the journey through is reflected throughout the whole movie. A perfect film with a perfect ending. Sunday 2 February, 4.10pm, Film4 In the same way that 2022's Ticket to Paradise felt like a comforting throwback thanks to Julia Roberts and George Clooney's easy romcom patter, this feels like a treat for nostalgists. It stars Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon as two people who double-book a wedding venue with inevitable slapstick repercussions. It's the sort of unapologetically broad comedy that doesn't get made any more, complete with gratuitous alligator wrestling. Will you remember it a year from now? No. Will you have the time of your life watching it now? Certainly. Out now, Prime Video Jane Schoenbrun's 2021 film We're All Going to the World's Fair was memorably unsettling, but this follow-up runs laps around it. A horror about two young people whose nostalgic connection to an old TV show warps their sense of reality, the film manages to visually mimic the old VHS horrors of the 1980s while maintaining a strong modern message about gender identity. Martin Scorsese is a fan, calling it 'emotionally and psychologically powerful.' More than anything, though, it will creep you out to a stupendous degree. Saturday 1 February, 9.40am, 10.35pm, Sky Cinema Premiere For those wondering how Paul Greengrass was able to transition from ITV journalist to Hollywood power player, the answer is with films like Open Fire. This is his first work of filmed fiction; a 1994 made-for-TV movie about the real-life manhunt for escaped criminal David Martin, and the police blunder that led to a national scandal. As a finished piece of work it's undoubtedly a little rough around the edges, and very much of its time. But as an artefact of Greengrass's progress, it's endlessly fascinating. Saturday 1 February, 11.10pm, Talking Pictures TV Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion When he was 21, Connor O'Hara lost two of his friends; an ordeal that he used as raw material for his debut feature Kindling. The result is an undeniably lovely story about a group of young men who gather to build a fire during the final summer of their friend's life. It's sweet and poignant, but really shines in its portrayal of male friendship. When Kindling gets it right – when it aims its focus squarely on a group of lads who need each other to get through something unimaginable – it's nothing less than beautiful. Sunday 2 February, 10.30pm, BBC Three In 2015, journalist Shiori Ito awoke to find herself being raped by an older peer. But after the attack, she realised exactly how powerless she was. Her rapist was famous and well-connected. Japan's rape laws were a century old, and no longer fit for purpose. The media refused to touch her story, so Ito started to document her struggle to be heard. Black Box Diaries is that document; a brave and gruelling account of one woman's effort to change an entire culture. The fact she chose to do it at all is admirable; the fact that it worked is incredible. Don't be surprised if this wins an Oscar next month. Tuesday 4 February, 10pm, BBC Four Even by Hollywood standards, you'd be hard-pressed to find a film as poorly treated as The Bikeriders. First bumped from schedules due to strikes, the film was then shopped around to other studios before it limped into cinemas last summer. And yet The Bikeriders is great. A 1950s motorcycle outlaw drama by Jeff Nichols (of Mud and Midnight Special renown), it features Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer, along with newly minted star Austin Butler, all doing brilliant work. Treat this as an opportunity to right a historic wrong. Friday 5 February, 11.25am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
