February 16, 2024 • 22 mins
How do you turn the classic raunchy teen comedy on its head? Emma Seligman, writer and director of the critically acclaimed, lesbian fight club film, “Bottoms,” and the claustrophobic, indie hit, “Shiva Baby,” talks movie-making, her early aughts inspiration, queer representation on screen and how it’s changing. Guest hosted by Sharon Attia, our researcher and associate producer, who also happens to be Emma’s best friend.
GUEST:
- Emma Seligman, writer-director of “Bottoms” and “Shiva Baby”
FOR MORE:
- Watch “Bottoms”
- Watch “Shiva Baby”
- Why Emma Seligman Decided to Make a Movie About a Queer Fight Club (New Yorker)
- The Brains Behind the New Comedy, Bottoms (New York Magazine)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I think that once I figured out that I was queer,
had lived a little bit of a queer life for
a few years, I think that that just changed every
sort of movie that I dreamed up in my head.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacharum. And this is
in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment
that shaped.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Most of the time we look at the past, but
sometimes we want to hear from someone who is changing
the pop culture future. Today, we're handing over the pod
to our amazing associate producer, Sharona Tia. She's talking to
Emma Seligman, the director of the delightfully funny gay fight
club comedy Bottoms, which Harper's Bazaar called a horny masterpiece.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Hi, I'm Sharona Tia.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
I'm the associate producer and researcher on the show, and
I also happened to be Emma Seligman's best friend. Emma
is the writer and director behind my favorite movies of
all time. She Have a Baby and Bottoms. Shiva Baby
is this claustrophobic indie hit that follows a college student
who runs into her sugar daddy and ex girlfriend while
at a shiva with her parents. And Bottoms is a
(01:10):
recent blockbuster about two lesbian losers who start a high
school fight club to try and lose their virginities to
the hot cheerleaders. Since Emma's films are redefining the canon
of queer comedies, movies that we'll for sure look back
on in retrospect, and because these are exactly the kinds
of things that Emma and I talk about, I invited
her on to chat about movie making today, queer representation
(01:31):
and how that's changing. Here's our conversation. Hi, Emma, Hello,
that's my intro for you.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
That's such a sweet intro.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
So for our listeners who don't know your meteoric rise
and just every amazing thing that you've ever done, maybe
we'll give them just some brief background.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, Okay, I'm from Toronto where I am right now,
and I feel like I just grew up in a
family of film lovers, no one in the industry, but
in a community of people who love watching movies, which
is honestly most of the city of Toronto. I would say,
because of Tiff the film festival here. There's just something
(02:16):
about living here where everyone's very culturally in tuned with
what's out and I was always interested in movies. When
I was nine, I submitted a movie review for this
contest to become a juror for the kids Film festival
that tifferent.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Do you remember what the movie was for that you
wrote the review?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So my parents never took me to kids movies, and
they barely let me watch kids' TV shows if they
were in the room because they were bored by them.
So because this was my choice, because I got to
see the movie, I really wanted to see this ice
cube movie called Are We There Yet? Comedy about how
far one Man will go?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Hey, I want to say hi to the kids, I love.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You, to become part of the family. And I ended
up writing a bad review, which I didn't expect to
do because I think I was so snobby from the
taste that my parents had instilled in me that I
was like, this was cheesy and unrealistic, and I think
I was the only kid that submitted a review that
was like a bad review. But yeah, I did that
(03:23):
that festival, and that was the first time I'd really
seen a lot of foreign films and independent films, and
so I don't know, I feel really lucky. My parents
encouraged me to like watch movies whenever I wanted. I
didn't do sports or anything like that, so it was
just like that was my hobby. Samela girl same. We
all had to find something. And then I started directing
(03:46):
theater in high school and because I really loved acting
for fun, and then I just learned more and more
about acting through our drama program. Even though it wasn't
like an art school, it was just had good teachers
and I was really My mom was very encouraging about
me going to a US school, which is not an
easy decision to make when you're not from the US,
(04:08):
But I just figured if I got in and if
they were going to spend that kind of money, then
like I really needed to be serious about whatever I
was choosing to pursue. And then that's how I sort
of came.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
To movies, and how you came into my life because
you moved to New York to go to NYU and
we met, I want to say, within the first week
of school welcome week.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
That was like the first time we hung out.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
That was ten years ago, and since then we've both
come out as not straight.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Love that for us.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So let's talk about the intersection of those two things,
your queerness and your movie making. So your first film
was Shiva Baby, which was a short film, your thesis film,
and then you went on to make the feature the
set of which I got to beyond for a couple
of days, which was just so fun to be a
fly on the wall and see you make that film.
(05:05):
But it was so different from Bottoms, and that was
like a tiny, non existent budget indie and then Bottoms
was this like huge, your first big studio film. You
have a huge cast, so many extras, these big high
school scenes, but like at its center are these hilarious,
incredible queer characters. And Shiva Baby, which also stars Rachel Sennett,
(05:29):
also has a bisexual character as the lead. And so
did you always know that you wanted to make movies
with queer characters at the center, or that just kind
of happened organically.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I think that happened organically. I think that, especially for
Shiva Baby, what drew me to that story was the
jewishness of it. I mean, I've known that I'm Jewish
for far longer than I've known that I'm queer. I
think as a kid, I saw myself more in the
Jewish characters and got more excited and seeing Jewishness on screen.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
That's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'd only seen Jewishness portrayed on screen with a little
bit of hokeiness and like stereotype, super stereotypical characters, especially
when it came to Jewish women, you know, like the
Jewish mart So I've always been driven by telling Jewish
stories because that's my world. Those are the characters that
I know the best. Especially going into college, like before
(06:20):
I really had a sense of myself and my identity
as a as a young person or as an adult,
or as a queer person, or as a woman. Even
like I think that I felt like, Okay, I got
this community down.
Speaker 7 (06:34):
Who died?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Ibby, Uncle PORNI is stuck? And wife Schuster you don't remember.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
No, I don't think so she used to play bride
with Bobby?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Really?
Speaker 7 (06:42):
Yeah, Oh, mamma, can't eat that?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Why not? I'm vegetarian. You're killing I've told you so
many times.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
You've not eaten a single thing. Old, that's because we
just got here. You look like Gwyneth Paltrow on food stamps.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
My God, and not in a good way. While developing
the short film in school, like my thesis, it wasn't
about this bisexual love story. It was about this girl,
you know, coming face to face with her lack of
self worth.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
And running into her sugar daddy at a shiva.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Running into running into her sugar daddy at a shiva.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
And incredible promise and sort of.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Letting that make her feel like a little child. And
that was the sort of main focus of that. And
then I started getting more curious about queer characters in
other genres of movies. I think Transparent really changed the
game in terms of.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Kind of that intersection of both of those things, right,
like seeing Jewish characters and different types of queerness, and
like different relationships with sex and real characters too.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Now that you want to be a woman all the time,
do you still want to date women?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
If?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I mean, she's still me.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So you're a lesbian.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well so we got gay married before it was fashionable.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
That sort of was a real moment of feeling seen
in so many ways all in one, and that at
that point I was out. Yeah, I barely understood my
queerness yet, but I was aware of my identity and
also there's characters in that show who are discovering their
sexual identity, right, many of them are discovering their queerness
in different ways.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
Yeah, and so with Bottoms, did you know that you
wanted it to be this like queer teen comedy or
did you want to make a teen comedy and the
queerness just followed.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
I knew that I wanted to make a teen comedy
and that I wanted it to be queer from the
get go. Yeah, there was no we'll see what the
sexualities of these characters are.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
We teach a bunch of girls how to defend themselves
against the evil Huntington Killers.
Speaker 7 (08:43):
They are grateful to us. We build the community, we bond,
we share, we connect or punching each other, adrenaline is flowing.
Next thing you know Isabelle and bringing all kissing as
on the mouse.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I think that once I figured out that I was queer,
had lived a little bit of a queer life for
a few years, I think that that just changed every
sort of movie that I dreamed up in my head.
But I really missed the teen movies of our childhood
and of just before our childhood that really honored the
(09:17):
teen characters as humans and as people and honored them
with quality filmmaking that at the time I don't think
we appreciated because teen movies would always get bad reviews,
especially if they were female driven, like it was geesy
and unrealistic, and they were repeating the same sort of
storyline about a bet or some sort of lie, or
you know, turning Shakespeare on its set or whatever. So
(09:39):
that was part of why I wanted to make a
teen movie, and I think also one of our producers,
Elizabeth Banks say is something like, you can't underestimate how
much young people want to see themselves on screen. I
think that when it comes to seeing myself and seeing
other queer people on screen, then teen movies were the
first place that I went to, probably because those were
(10:01):
the movies that I like, loved the most growing up,
and also feel the most universal. I think that no
matter how old you are, or what your gender is
or your sexuality is, everyone can relate to a teen
movie to a certain degree.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I didn't even realize.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
I guess I had associated teen movies so near and
dear to my heart because I watched them semi around
that age, But in reality, I actually still hold them
close to my heart because I think that that time
in your life, the stakes feel so high, and so
everything just feels important and it is important, and so
(10:39):
playing within that world and that genre is just so
fun because I think everyone's on board.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, that's why Olivia Rodrigo music like hits so hard
for anyone of any age, but older millennials especially.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
Because Ali, if you're listening, no, because it's like that
time just feels so oh unnecessarily emotional, and it's easy
for people to put themselves back in those or maybe
not easy, but there's a frame of reference that you can,
you know, put yourself back in when you're watching these
youthful stories.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Speaking of teen movies and how we're growing up during
what I would say is like a golden age of
the teen movie cannon in the nineties and early two thousands.
Can you talk to us a bit about some of
your references for bottoms or any sort of inspo that
you had.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, I mean, I do think the late nineties, early
two thousands, the Kirsten Duntz era was the heyday of
teen movies. Everything from the super campy cult classics like
Dropped at Gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I never liked her but she didn't deserve to die
in the belly of a swim like that.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And Dick.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
You can't let Dick run your life.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Bring it on, it's not a democracy, it's a cheerocracy. Jawbreakers,
Like there's those like can't be female driven, often dark
kind of movie. Yeah, and then there were like the
male driven comedies like American Pie, which I loved growing up.
And then I Love you know, I mean ten days
I hit about you. She's all that. I think that
(12:14):
as we got into the early two or the mid
two thousands, you know, we were very lucky and I
mean it like She's the Man, and Mean Girls felt
really female driven in a strong way that was like
complicated and fun and silly and stupid, and yeah, got
to sort of place these women at the center of
(12:36):
these like funny ensemble movies that had also like a
little bit of edgy humor to them despite the fact
that they were PG. Thirteen, you know, like especially Mean Girls.
And then there were still more not Broie, but there
were more boy driven teen adventure movies also around that time,
like kick Ass is one of my favorite movies in
(12:56):
Scott Pilgrim.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Yeah, you love an adventure movie.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
I love any say the day, fighting to get the girl,
fighting to save the world and doing it with your
friends and being stupid, and then of course super Bad,
which just changed the game in terms of just how
funny teen movies can be. Yeah, just how funny the
teen sex comedy can be. I mean, American Pie was hilarious,
but super Bad that changed the genre as well.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
This guy's either gonna think here's another kid with a
fake ID.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Or here's mclovin, the twenty five year old Hawaiian organ donors.
Speaker 7 (13:29):
So what's it gonna be?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I am mclovin.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
I feel like a lot of the things that I'm
seeing because I famously will consume absolutely any piece of
content that is both teen and queer. Is that a
lot of the storyline are kind of moving away from
showing sex or horny characters. And maybe this is because
(14:08):
for so long that was like the only thing that
was focused on, Like people are just obsessed with like,
but how do queer people have sex? So it's either
like a coming out or traumatic story or it's like
so dripping in sexuality that there's no nuance and they're
not complete human characters. Is that something that you're noticing
as well in terms of queer representation, horniness, first, innocence,
(14:30):
all that jazz.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, definitely, I understand that critique of sort of telling
queer stories that go beyond what our sex lives look
like and how sex works and trying to explain that
to a straight audience. But I think that when it
comes to telling queer stories for young characters, with young characters,
I'm very grateful for the amount of progress we've made
in queer representation over the last even like five to
(14:55):
ten years, you know, But I think that there's almost
been a little bit of a course correction because is
for so long not to get like too deep into it,
but queers were in media or in our culture seen
as perverted and mentally ill and on the outskirts of
society and fucked up, And so our media representation has
(15:16):
done a one to eighty where we're trying to showcase
that queers, especially queer teens, are human too and right
just sex obsessed perverts and have emotions and have crushes
and have innocence and have sweetness and have problems in
our lives. But I just don't know, especially in the
world we live in today, any teens that aren't having
(15:40):
sex shoved down their metaphorical throats. Like sex is everywhere,
and it's talked about so much, and it's fed to
us through so much media when we're young, and the
talking about sex, whether or not you're having it, or
wanting to have sex or not wanting to have sex,
or thinking about the to have sex or whatever like,
(16:01):
is so pushed upon young people. So I can't relate
to a world in which you're a teen and you
don't know about sex or have any interest in talking
about it or thinking about it, And so in telling
stories about teens in general, I just think that that
sex is part of it.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
You said that, like you definitely saw yourself in Jewish characters,
but was there, ever, like, even before you were out,
any sort of like queer representation that made you think, oh,
that's something else. Because I feel that way sometimes when
I'm watching things now, or I'm like, I wonder would
I have come out sooner if I had all of
these shows and movies.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, it's not as simple as like, oh, I'm in
high school and I see a gay movie and I go, oh,
that makes.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
Sense, that's me, right, which is often the conversation about representation,
like it is so important and it does matter, but
it's not so simple as like and then I see
myself represented and now I know who I am and
I'm okay.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
With it, and I'm so okay with it.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
No, it's going to introduce a lot of questioning existential crises.
But did you was there anything that kind of sent
you spiraling like that that you watched when you were younger.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I didn't have anything that sent me spiraling, but I
definitely felt like when I would catch moments of queer
women on screen, it would freak me out and make
me feel like, honestly like disgusted a little bit. I
would never say that a loud or anything, but I yeah,
I think that one that probably has to do with
(17:33):
the lack of just a lack of representation, like queer
men have been advancing on screen quicker or you know,
historically more than queer women. And two also because clearly
there was something deep down that was ashamed or something. Yeah,
I don't know. I remember catching like bits of but
I'm a cheerleader or Debs on TV and being like, eugh.
(17:54):
I think the biggest moment, which is such a cliche.
But when I saw Jennifer's body in theaters, I think
I was twelve or thirteen, and during that kiss between
Megan Fox and Amanda Siphred, I remember feeling horny and
was freaked out. I was like, this is not.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Good, and you're very we have a problem.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah exactly. I was like, m this is not appropriate.
Like I see men and women kissing all the time,
I don't have this feeling. Not that I was thinking
that consciously about it, but I was like, oh, you
know that sound. I think that I found it easier
to watch and enjoy storylines with queer male characters because
(18:40):
it allowed me to see something I hadn't seen where
it was like touching a part of my soul and heart,
but it wasn't so close to home where I saw
myself and got freaked out.
Speaker 5 (18:56):
So as we're wrapping up from the super fun and
flirty convo with my bestie, I guess my question to you,
Emma is like, what do you hope to see from
queer filmmakers? Like moving forward? Like what are you kind
of excited about? What do you want to see on screen?
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Honestly like I don't. I'm just more excited I'm just
so excited for queer filmmakers to make whatever they want
to make and to indulge in whatever their imagination wants
to to sort of provide to us that we're lucky
enough to receive. I think that I would love to
see more queer characters just like live in their lives.
I know that sounds so basic, but I think that
(19:34):
the more specific the representation is, the more universal it is.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
I think I'm most interested in seeing career stories that
are highly specific that give us windows and peaks into
queer people's lives, in their relationships and in their communities
and in their friendships, because that is the way that
I sort of discover my queerness and more about myself
and what it means to, you know, to be queer
(20:06):
or be in a community that's that's that's not part
of the mainstream. So again, I'm excited to see whatever
it is that queer filmmakers want to do in the
next generation. But I'm most excited, I think, into continuing
to tell intimate queer stories that feel highly specific and
therefore more authentic and universal.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I love that too, Susie, You and I are back
next week. What do we have in store?
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I've been dying to talk about a scene in Devilwaar's
product that has me thinking about women and work and
ambition and honestly my own ambition. So that's what we're going.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
To get into. Ooh, can't wait.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
This is in Retrospect.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Thanks for listening. Is there a pop culture moment you
can't stop thinking about and want us to explore in
a future episode? Email us at in retropod at email
dot com or find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist,
Fike Club, and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Jaron
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from Pentagrieve. Our mixing engineer is Amanda Rosemith.
Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are your hosts
Susie Bannacarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
We are also executive producers. For even more, check out
inretropod dot dot com. See you next week, MHM.
I think that once I figured out that I was queer,
had lived a little bit of a queer life for
a few years, I think that that just changed every
sort of movie that I dreamed up in my head.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacharum. And this is
in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment
that shaped.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Most of the time we look at the past, but
sometimes we want to hear from someone who is changing
the pop culture future. Today, we're handing over the pod
to our amazing associate producer, Sharona Tia. She's talking to
Emma Seligman, the director of the delightfully funny gay fight
club comedy Bottoms, which Harper's Bazaar called a horny masterpiece.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Hi, I'm Sharona Tia.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
I'm the associate producer and researcher on the show, and
I also happened to be Emma Seligman's best friend. Emma
is the writer and director behind my favorite movies of
all time. She Have a Baby and Bottoms. Shiva Baby
is this claustrophobic indie hit that follows a college student
who runs into her sugar daddy and ex girlfriend while
at a shiva with her parents. And Bottoms is a
(01:10):
recent blockbuster about two lesbian losers who start a high
school fight club to try and lose their virginities to
the hot cheerleaders. Since Emma's films are redefining the canon
of queer comedies, movies that we'll for sure look back
on in retrospect, and because these are exactly the kinds
of things that Emma and I talk about, I invited
her on to chat about movie making today, queer representation
(01:31):
and how that's changing. Here's our conversation. Hi, Emma, Hello,
that's my intro for you.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
That's such a sweet intro.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
So for our listeners who don't know your meteoric rise
and just every amazing thing that you've ever done, maybe
we'll give them just some brief background.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, Okay, I'm from Toronto where I am right now,
and I feel like I just grew up in a
family of film lovers, no one in the industry, but
in a community of people who love watching movies, which
is honestly most of the city of Toronto. I would say,
because of Tiff the film festival here. There's just something
(02:16):
about living here where everyone's very culturally in tuned with
what's out and I was always interested in movies. When
I was nine, I submitted a movie review for this
contest to become a juror for the kids Film festival
that tifferent.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Do you remember what the movie was for that you
wrote the review?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So my parents never took me to kids movies, and
they barely let me watch kids' TV shows if they
were in the room because they were bored by them.
So because this was my choice, because I got to
see the movie, I really wanted to see this ice
cube movie called Are We There Yet? Comedy about how
far one Man will go?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Hey, I want to say hi to the kids, I love.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You, to become part of the family. And I ended
up writing a bad review, which I didn't expect to
do because I think I was so snobby from the
taste that my parents had instilled in me that I
was like, this was cheesy and unrealistic, and I think
I was the only kid that submitted a review that
was like a bad review. But yeah, I did that
(03:23):
that festival, and that was the first time I'd really
seen a lot of foreign films and independent films, and
so I don't know, I feel really lucky. My parents
encouraged me to like watch movies whenever I wanted. I
didn't do sports or anything like that, so it was
just like that was my hobby. Samela girl same. We
all had to find something. And then I started directing
(03:46):
theater in high school and because I really loved acting
for fun, and then I just learned more and more
about acting through our drama program. Even though it wasn't
like an art school, it was just had good teachers
and I was really My mom was very encouraging about
me going to a US school, which is not an
easy decision to make when you're not from the US,
(04:08):
But I just figured if I got in and if
they were going to spend that kind of money, then
like I really needed to be serious about whatever I
was choosing to pursue. And then that's how I sort
of came.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
To movies, and how you came into my life because
you moved to New York to go to NYU and
we met, I want to say, within the first week
of school welcome week.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
That was like the first time we hung out.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
That was ten years ago, and since then we've both
come out as not straight.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Love that for us.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So let's talk about the intersection of those two things,
your queerness and your movie making. So your first film
was Shiva Baby, which was a short film, your thesis film,
and then you went on to make the feature the
set of which I got to beyond for a couple
of days, which was just so fun to be a
fly on the wall and see you make that film.
(05:05):
But it was so different from Bottoms, and that was
like a tiny, non existent budget indie and then Bottoms
was this like huge, your first big studio film. You
have a huge cast, so many extras, these big high
school scenes, but like at its center are these hilarious,
incredible queer characters. And Shiva Baby, which also stars Rachel Sennett,
(05:29):
also has a bisexual character as the lead. And so
did you always know that you wanted to make movies
with queer characters at the center, or that just kind
of happened organically.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I think that happened organically. I think that, especially for
Shiva Baby, what drew me to that story was the
jewishness of it. I mean, I've known that I'm Jewish
for far longer than I've known that I'm queer. I
think as a kid, I saw myself more in the
Jewish characters and got more excited and seeing Jewishness on screen.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
That's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'd only seen Jewishness portrayed on screen with a little
bit of hokeiness and like stereotype, super stereotypical characters, especially
when it came to Jewish women, you know, like the
Jewish mart So I've always been driven by telling Jewish
stories because that's my world. Those are the characters that
I know the best. Especially going into college, like before
(06:20):
I really had a sense of myself and my identity
as a as a young person or as an adult,
or as a queer person, or as a woman. Even
like I think that I felt like, Okay, I got
this community down.
Speaker 7 (06:34):
Who died?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Ibby, Uncle PORNI is stuck? And wife Schuster you don't remember.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
No, I don't think so she used to play bride
with Bobby?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Really?
Speaker 7 (06:42):
Yeah, Oh, mamma, can't eat that?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Why not? I'm vegetarian. You're killing I've told you so
many times.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
You've not eaten a single thing. Old, that's because we
just got here. You look like Gwyneth Paltrow on food stamps.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
My God, and not in a good way. While developing
the short film in school, like my thesis, it wasn't
about this bisexual love story. It was about this girl,
you know, coming face to face with her lack of
self worth.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
And running into her sugar daddy at a shiva.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Running into running into her sugar daddy at a shiva.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
And incredible promise and sort of.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Letting that make her feel like a little child. And
that was the sort of main focus of that. And
then I started getting more curious about queer characters in
other genres of movies. I think Transparent really changed the
game in terms of.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Kind of that intersection of both of those things, right,
like seeing Jewish characters and different types of queerness, and
like different relationships with sex and real characters too.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Now that you want to be a woman all the time,
do you still want to date women?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
If?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I mean, she's still me.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So you're a lesbian.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well so we got gay married before it was fashionable.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
That sort of was a real moment of feeling seen
in so many ways all in one, and that at
that point I was out. Yeah, I barely understood my
queerness yet, but I was aware of my identity and
also there's characters in that show who are discovering their
sexual identity, right, many of them are discovering their queerness
in different ways.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
Yeah, and so with Bottoms, did you know that you
wanted it to be this like queer teen comedy or
did you want to make a teen comedy and the
queerness just followed.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
I knew that I wanted to make a teen comedy
and that I wanted it to be queer from the
get go. Yeah, there was no we'll see what the
sexualities of these characters are.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
We teach a bunch of girls how to defend themselves
against the evil Huntington Killers.
Speaker 7 (08:43):
They are grateful to us. We build the community, we bond,
we share, we connect or punching each other, adrenaline is flowing.
Next thing you know Isabelle and bringing all kissing as
on the mouse.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I think that once I figured out that I was queer,
had lived a little bit of a queer life for
a few years, I think that that just changed every
sort of movie that I dreamed up in my head.
But I really missed the teen movies of our childhood
and of just before our childhood that really honored the
(09:17):
teen characters as humans and as people and honored them
with quality filmmaking that at the time I don't think
we appreciated because teen movies would always get bad reviews,
especially if they were female driven, like it was geesy
and unrealistic, and they were repeating the same sort of
storyline about a bet or some sort of lie, or
you know, turning Shakespeare on its set or whatever. So
(09:39):
that was part of why I wanted to make a
teen movie, and I think also one of our producers,
Elizabeth Banks say is something like, you can't underestimate how
much young people want to see themselves on screen. I
think that when it comes to seeing myself and seeing
other queer people on screen, then teen movies were the
first place that I went to, probably because those were
(10:01):
the movies that I like, loved the most growing up,
and also feel the most universal. I think that no
matter how old you are, or what your gender is
or your sexuality is, everyone can relate to a teen
movie to a certain degree.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I didn't even realize.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
I guess I had associated teen movies so near and
dear to my heart because I watched them semi around
that age, But in reality, I actually still hold them
close to my heart because I think that that time
in your life, the stakes feel so high, and so
everything just feels important and it is important, and so
(10:39):
playing within that world and that genre is just so
fun because I think everyone's on board.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, that's why Olivia Rodrigo music like hits so hard
for anyone of any age, but older millennials especially.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
Because Ali, if you're listening, no, because it's like that
time just feels so oh unnecessarily emotional, and it's easy
for people to put themselves back in those or maybe
not easy, but there's a frame of reference that you can,
you know, put yourself back in when you're watching these
youthful stories.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Speaking of teen movies and how we're growing up during
what I would say is like a golden age of
the teen movie cannon in the nineties and early two thousands.
Can you talk to us a bit about some of
your references for bottoms or any sort of inspo that
you had.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, I mean, I do think the late nineties, early
two thousands, the Kirsten Duntz era was the heyday of
teen movies. Everything from the super campy cult classics like
Dropped at Gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I never liked her but she didn't deserve to die
in the belly of a swim like that.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And Dick.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
You can't let Dick run your life.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Bring it on, it's not a democracy, it's a cheerocracy. Jawbreakers,
Like there's those like can't be female driven, often dark
kind of movie. Yeah, and then there were like the
male driven comedies like American Pie, which I loved growing up.
And then I Love you know, I mean ten days
I hit about you. She's all that. I think that
(12:14):
as we got into the early two or the mid
two thousands, you know, we were very lucky and I
mean it like She's the Man, and Mean Girls felt
really female driven in a strong way that was like
complicated and fun and silly and stupid, and yeah, got
to sort of place these women at the center of
(12:36):
these like funny ensemble movies that had also like a
little bit of edgy humor to them despite the fact
that they were PG. Thirteen, you know, like especially Mean Girls.
And then there were still more not Broie, but there
were more boy driven teen adventure movies also around that time,
like kick Ass is one of my favorite movies in
(12:56):
Scott Pilgrim.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Yeah, you love an adventure movie.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
I love any say the day, fighting to get the girl,
fighting to save the world and doing it with your
friends and being stupid, and then of course super Bad,
which just changed the game in terms of just how
funny teen movies can be. Yeah, just how funny the
teen sex comedy can be. I mean, American Pie was hilarious,
but super Bad that changed the genre as well.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
This guy's either gonna think here's another kid with a
fake ID.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Or here's mclovin, the twenty five year old Hawaiian organ donors.
Speaker 7 (13:29):
So what's it gonna be?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I am mclovin.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
I feel like a lot of the things that I'm
seeing because I famously will consume absolutely any piece of
content that is both teen and queer. Is that a
lot of the storyline are kind of moving away from
showing sex or horny characters. And maybe this is because
(14:08):
for so long that was like the only thing that
was focused on, Like people are just obsessed with like,
but how do queer people have sex? So it's either
like a coming out or traumatic story or it's like
so dripping in sexuality that there's no nuance and they're
not complete human characters. Is that something that you're noticing
as well in terms of queer representation, horniness, first, innocence,
(14:30):
all that jazz.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, definitely, I understand that critique of sort of telling
queer stories that go beyond what our sex lives look
like and how sex works and trying to explain that
to a straight audience. But I think that when it
comes to telling queer stories for young characters, with young characters,
I'm very grateful for the amount of progress we've made
in queer representation over the last even like five to
(14:55):
ten years, you know, But I think that there's almost
been a little bit of a course correction because is
for so long not to get like too deep into it,
but queers were in media or in our culture seen
as perverted and mentally ill and on the outskirts of
society and fucked up, And so our media representation has
(15:16):
done a one to eighty where we're trying to showcase
that queers, especially queer teens, are human too and right
just sex obsessed perverts and have emotions and have crushes
and have innocence and have sweetness and have problems in
our lives. But I just don't know, especially in the
world we live in today, any teens that aren't having
(15:40):
sex shoved down their metaphorical throats. Like sex is everywhere,
and it's talked about so much, and it's fed to
us through so much media when we're young, and the
talking about sex, whether or not you're having it, or
wanting to have sex or not wanting to have sex,
or thinking about the to have sex or whatever like,
(16:01):
is so pushed upon young people. So I can't relate
to a world in which you're a teen and you
don't know about sex or have any interest in talking
about it or thinking about it, And so in telling
stories about teens in general, I just think that that
sex is part of it.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
You said that, like you definitely saw yourself in Jewish characters,
but was there, ever, like, even before you were out,
any sort of like queer representation that made you think, oh,
that's something else. Because I feel that way sometimes when
I'm watching things now, or I'm like, I wonder would
I have come out sooner if I had all of
these shows and movies.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, it's not as simple as like, oh, I'm in
high school and I see a gay movie and I go, oh,
that makes.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
Sense, that's me, right, which is often the conversation about representation,
like it is so important and it does matter, but
it's not so simple as like and then I see
myself represented and now I know who I am and
I'm okay.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
With it, and I'm so okay with it.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
No, it's going to introduce a lot of questioning existential crises.
But did you was there anything that kind of sent
you spiraling like that that you watched when you were younger.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I didn't have anything that sent me spiraling, but I
definitely felt like when I would catch moments of queer
women on screen, it would freak me out and make
me feel like, honestly like disgusted a little bit. I
would never say that a loud or anything, but I yeah,
I think that one that probably has to do with
(17:33):
the lack of just a lack of representation, like queer
men have been advancing on screen quicker or you know,
historically more than queer women. And two also because clearly
there was something deep down that was ashamed or something. Yeah,
I don't know. I remember catching like bits of but
I'm a cheerleader or Debs on TV and being like, eugh.
(17:54):
I think the biggest moment, which is such a cliche.
But when I saw Jennifer's body in theaters, I think
I was twelve or thirteen, and during that kiss between
Megan Fox and Amanda Siphred, I remember feeling horny and
was freaked out. I was like, this is not.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Good, and you're very we have a problem.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah exactly. I was like, m this is not appropriate.
Like I see men and women kissing all the time,
I don't have this feeling. Not that I was thinking
that consciously about it, but I was like, oh, you
know that sound. I think that I found it easier
to watch and enjoy storylines with queer male characters because
(18:40):
it allowed me to see something I hadn't seen where
it was like touching a part of my soul and heart,
but it wasn't so close to home where I saw
myself and got freaked out.
Speaker 5 (18:56):
So as we're wrapping up from the super fun and
flirty convo with my bestie, I guess my question to you,
Emma is like, what do you hope to see from
queer filmmakers? Like moving forward? Like what are you kind
of excited about? What do you want to see on screen?
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Honestly like I don't. I'm just more excited I'm just
so excited for queer filmmakers to make whatever they want
to make and to indulge in whatever their imagination wants
to to sort of provide to us that we're lucky
enough to receive. I think that I would love to
see more queer characters just like live in their lives.
I know that sounds so basic, but I think that
(19:34):
the more specific the representation is, the more universal it is.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
I think I'm most interested in seeing career stories that
are highly specific that give us windows and peaks into
queer people's lives, in their relationships and in their communities
and in their friendships, because that is the way that
I sort of discover my queerness and more about myself
and what it means to, you know, to be queer
(20:06):
or be in a community that's that's that's not part
of the mainstream. So again, I'm excited to see whatever
it is that queer filmmakers want to do in the
next generation. But I'm most excited, I think, into continuing
to tell intimate queer stories that feel highly specific and
therefore more authentic and universal.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I love that too, Susie, You and I are back
next week. What do we have in store?
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I've been dying to talk about a scene in Devilwaar's
product that has me thinking about women and work and
ambition and honestly my own ambition. So that's what we're going.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
To get into. Ooh, can't wait.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
This is in Retrospect.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Thanks for listening. Is there a pop culture moment you
can't stop thinking about and want us to explore in
a future episode? Email us at in retropod at email
dot com or find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist,
Fike Club, and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Jaron
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from Pentagrieve. Our mixing engineer is Amanda Rosemith.
Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are your hosts
Susie Bannacarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
We are also executive producers. For even more, check out
inretropod dot dot com. See you next week, MHM.
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