Thoughts on I Saw the TV Glow

    I went to see I Saw The TV Glow yesterday and really liked it. It's an A24 artsy indie movie directed by Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair), about two teenagers, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigitte Lundy-Paine) who, in 1996, become obsessed with this supernatural teen TV show called The Pink Opaque, that looks like a Nickelodeon teen drama mixing the monster of the week Buffy the Vampire Slayer drama with some Secret World of Alex Mack 90s effects, and references to Are You Afraid of the Dark? and The Adventures of Pete & Pete. The teens are both very isolated, both on the queer spectrum (Maddy is a lesbian, Owen might be asexual/ace), and get wrapped up in this show to escape their empty, depressing lives. The show effects them both in greatly different ways, using the media consumption of the show as a substitute for actually living their lives, and using the show to identify themselves rather than anything in their real lives, being obsessed with the TV screen and sitting in the dark with the TV glow.

    I was really into the movie, and liked how the director is clearly a millennial, as they depicted the fictional show in a very mid-90s, SNICK kind of way (SNICK was the programming block that Nickelodeon would do on Saturday nights to air more teen-oriented shows, like Are You Afraid of the Dark? or All That), with the TV's show credits done in the same font as Buffy the Vampire Slayer's. The show, which was basically about two teen girls who are psychically connected to fight monsters, definitely had a queer coding vibe between the two girls, hence why a character like Maddy would be so drawn to it.

    I don't think I really understood the second half of the movie, as the first half is told through Owen's point of view, then when Maddy is talking about the show and their teen years, as the second half takes place a decade later, she looks back on events with a very different perspective, and I wasn't really sure if I was to take her perspective literally or not, I think some of it was lost on me.

    But I did like the movie a lot, and it did benefit from having more of a budget and added star power for more distribution. Besides being an A24 film, it is produced by Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCrary through their production company Fruit Tree, it had Danielle Deadwyler as Owen's mom, Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst in a nearly silent role as Owen's dad, and the dance choreographer Emma Portner in multiple roles (Maddy's friend Amanda, as well as the monster characters in the show).

    I also really liked Brigitte Lundy-Paine a lot, they were dynamite in this role. I had heard of them years back from the Netflix show Atypical, playing a teen girl, and they also played Keanu Reeves' daughter in the third Bill and Ted movie, so it's nice to see their star rising more.

    I read the Stereogum music blog, and they've been covering the soundtrack for this movie, and it's really excellent. There is a sequence in this movie where the teens go to a bar where a band fronted by Phoebe Bridgers is performing onstage, and it's like a whole music video just takes over, and it's fantastic.

    Jane was on this past week's Criterion Closet video, and I liked their picks, like Peeping Tom (a British 1960 psychological horror film about a serial killer who films people with a mirror to witness their own deaths), and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, one of my favorite films by him next to The Royal Tenenbaums. I like Jane's nerdy enthusiasm about films, and am glad their movie is getting way more attention, as We're All Going to the World's Fair got critical acclaim but came out in 2021 during the pandemic and had limited availability to see.