DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:
Like most people, Jane Schoenbrun hasn't had a direct path to finding themself. But because Schoenbrun is a filmmaker, they've tracked that journey on the silver screen, and their last in a trilogy of trans self-discovery might be the bloodiest yet.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CAMP MIASMA")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, screaming).
KURTZLEBEN: That's the movie within the movie, a gruesome slasher set at a summer camp.
JANE SCHOENBRUN: "Camp Miasma" was a long-running franchise. There's the original that they kind of just make out in the woods. And then there's a pretty good sequel. Maybe the sequel is even better than the first one. And then there's a third one. And pretty soon, there's just, like, eight entries, and they're going straight to video in the '90s. But, yeah, like, loosely based on something like "Friday The 13th" or "Halloween" or "Nightmare On Elm Street," which are slasher franchises that I grew up watching at way too young an age.
KURTZLEBEN: Schoenbrun's movie is called "Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma," and it begins as a queer filmmaker, played by Hannah Einbinder, is hired to try her hand at a new movie in the franchise.
SCHOENBRUN: The studio kind of wants her to make, like, a woke reboot because there's all these problematic themes in the original movie, and since she's queer, she can do that. But she's much more interested in this one particular woman, the reclusive actor who played the final girl in the original movie.
KURTZLEBEN: In this movie, you have the movie within the movie. There's the movie we are watching. Then there's the movie that Hannah Einbinder and then Gillian Anderson playing that reclusive actor, the movie they're watching, the original "Camp Miasma." It's a sort of, like you were saying, a tribute to '80s slasher movies like "Friday The 13th." What was it like to direct those sequences that are an '80s slasher movie?
SCHOENBRUN: So fun. I've done this a few times in my work. My previous film had a TV show within the movie that was sort of my take on, like, "Buffy" or, like, the WB '90s-era supernatural soap opera. I think I'm a funny mix of intellectual, postmodern pretension and just, like, the kid who grew up watching slasher movies from the video store and bad TV shows on cable. And so I kind of want to do both in my movies. And by creating these layered screens within the screen of my movie, it kind of allows me to go, like, full camp or full pastiche in certain moments. And it's like water oxygen to me. I just - I know the slasher movies so, so deeply that it's so fun.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. Well, there's kind of a fun irony in your movie then, where Kris, Hannah Einbinder's character, she's kind of the butt of the joke for a while, for making her movies too intellectual and being too in her own head.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA")
GILLIAN ANDERSON: (As Billy Preston) It's a good pitch. I'm just not convinced that it'll work.
HANNAH EINBINDER: (As Kris) Why not?
ANDERSON: (As Billy Preston) Because you talk about it so academically. In "Camp Miasma," it wasn't about cultural depictions of monstrosity or gender trouble or any of that stuff. It was about two very simple things - flesh and fluids.
KURTZLEBEN: Your movies, while fun, are also very multilayered. You could call them cerebral. Are you poking fun at yourself?
SCHOENBRUN: For sure. Yeah. I'm poking fun at myself, and I'm trying to put people at ease 'cause I think, unfortunately, like, when you're a queer filmmaker, trying to make, like, work that is expanding language in some way, cinematically, you're going to get a lot of people, like, expecting that this is going to be, like, vegetables. It's been really fun from, like, really, even just, like, the very first time I was showing the movie to, like, some of the constituents who were part of it. I could see people's eyes light up as they realized that, like, I was actually trying to have a good time at the movies. And the movie is very much like a comedy. It's self-effacing. It's romantic. It's sexy. It's funny. And it does go to some, I think, challenging and serious places, but it wants to wine and dine you a little bit before it does that.
KURTZLEBEN: You also mentioned the film "Camp Miasma" within your film was problematic and, you know, had a character at the center who was - I don't know how exactly to describe it.
SCHOENBRUN: The line that I like is he was a different gender every day of the week.
KURTZLEBEN: There we go. Yeah. And so - but the movie really has a sense about it that it's OK to have had these problematic, quote-unquote, "pieces of media" imprint themselves on you on a young age, and to still have a soft spot for them even while it seems like you are also trying to - maybe trying to write those wrongs a little bit. How do you feel that tension when you're making a movie like this?
SCHOENBRUN: Yeah. I don't know that I'd say right the wrongs as much as remake, right? This is a movie about somebody making a remake, and it tries to be thoughtful about, like, what that word might mean to remake something, right? To not just, like, give it, like, a more woke backstory and, you know, like, keep making money for the studio, but to really, like, remake and reimagine and recontextualize these very powerful, almost, like, libidinal tropes that have just been with us. And at the same time - yeah, like, I love those movies. It's a complicated relationship, and I think, especially growing up, like, queer and repressed, I'm not watching like "Silence Of The Lambs" being like, look, it's me, when Buffalo Bill is, like, dancing.
KURTZLEBEN: Good. OK.
SCHOENBRUN: But there is, like, something comforting, right? Or, like, if you're queer in whatever way, you're so starved to see your invisible experience on screen. Like, I think this is true of, like, people reading Henry James novels and, you know, like the turn of the 20th century. Any moment where you could catch some wisp that these divergent desires might have, like, power is going to be an enthralling and intoxicating space.
KURTZLEBEN: You know, your first three feature films are a sort of trilogy about coming to terms with who you are as a person, and "Miasma" ends with a warm but also very bloody feeling of acceptance. Do you have more to explore about that coming to terms with yourself in your movies?
SCHOENBRUN: Yeah. I think it's something I've been aware of from the very beginning because I needed to come out and I needed to begin the process of transitioning before I could have the, like, ability to speak honestly as an artist. And I really try to, like, hone in on a mystery that I want to explore, and it usually is the mystery that I am exploring in my real life. I was 32 and married. This movie is trying to do the same thing for what happened next, which was the process of starting to feel something that had been obliquely broken since I was a kid, start to heal a little bit. In this way, it's a movie about, like, finding courage to explore things that are scary and fun, like the horror movie.
KURTZLEBEN: On that note, I have to ask. Would you find it a challenge if you were approached to do a new "Friday The 13th" or "Nightmare On Elm Street"? Is that something that you would be interested in?
SCHOENBRUN: I know they're trying to reboot "Nightmare On Elm Street" right now, and that one is enticing. I would need to at least feel, like, completely confident that I wouldn't be, like, a bored middle manager. Like, from the very beginning, that has been, like, my biggest fear because I was that for so many years in my, like, day job life. And even in school, I was, like, such a B, B-plus student because I was smart but I just didn't care. And I don't want to make B, B-plus movies. I want to really care emotionally and deeply about the thing I'm working on.
KURTZLEBEN: That's Jane Schoenbrun. They're the director of "Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma." Jane, thank you so much for joining us.
SCHOENBRUN: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I LOVE YOU ALWAYS FOREVER")
DONNA LEWIS: (Singing) I love you always, forever. Near and far, closer together. Everywhere, I will be with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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