I Like Movieswill make you want to hug your old DVDs tight and call your mom.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
A torrented Sum 41 album burned onto a CD in a PT Cruiser.
Theclickof the lid on a VHS cassette rewinder.
A DVD cover so scary that you ritualistically avert your eyes when you walk past it at Blockbuster.
We used to have physical media we could hold and own, or at least rent.
We used to have video stores in every strip mall.
I felt like I was living my life through the TV shows and movies that I consumed.
Like, my relationship to the Strokes first album and the works of Paul Thomas Anderson was so primal.
Its a teen movie where nothing happens to the protagonist.
He doesnt go to the prom, doesnt have any realistic love interests.
He just has to confront his own narcissism and entitlement.
That was kind of my last year of high school.
Its rare to see this sort of coming-of-age movie made by a female director about a boy.
And she asked, Why is this about a boy?
It doesnt make any sense.
Itll be easier for you to get Canadian arts-grant funding if its a woman.
Also, theLady Birdcomparisons would have never ended, and might have even hurt the movie.
I kind of feel bad for some of them.
Thats an interesting character for me to unpack.
I think that a lot of a womans job is thinking about how men think and feel.
I grew up consuming every coming-of-age movie made by a man.
Why wasnt there a femaleGarden State?
The movie opens on Rejects Night, a video made by Lawrence with his friend, Matt Macarchuck.
So we were going for that iMovie 3 aesthetic, and also looked to Lonely Island.
Theres also a lot of Canadian culture in there.
When Swollen Members gave us the rights to their song, I cried.
I dont know why, but his voice was so immediately clear to me.
And I was like, What?!
That was shocking, even to me.
I had a desire, but I didnt want to name it.
I just thought,Im not Godard, or Jane Campion.I was really too scared to even try.
But being a critic was a safe enough thing that was adjacent to what I wanted to do.
I loved film criticism.
I found Pauline Kael and Wesley Morris.
And I love Chuck Klosterman, who was another 90s Gen-X hero of mine.
So then I needed to figure out,Who is gonna get me pregnant?
You had to give birth to Lawrence.My beautiful son!
Hes in every frame of it.
He never stops talking.
We expect cute, sweet, blank-slate audience surrogate characters from a lot of our teen and YA movies.
I needed someone who actually had a considerable amount of edge and volatility to them.
So we did this Canada-wide casting search.
Gabriel LaBelle fromThe Fabelmansauditioned.
Another young cinephile!My editor saw it and she was like, Oh my God, Chandler!
Theres a panic-attack scene!
Theres a year-end senior video!
Both movies came out at the same time, and some people at TIFF did double-bills.
I think you have to watch this one first.
Or maybe its a goodFabelmanschaser.
Isaiah was one of the last people who auditioned.
His tape wasnt what I was expecting, but it was so much more interesting and complex.
There was this sincerity in his voice, and that conviction.
She said, Hes a really great actor.
Hes got a star power to him.
But hes too much like you, and people are not gonna like that.
We watchedShrektogether, and the Christmas special,Shrek the Halls.
Romina DUgo, who plays Alana, is also so extraordinary.
She was another self-tape, and I wasnt familiar with her work.
And I love the two of them together.
It was aRear WindowBart Simpson summer for me.
But there are other scenes, too!
All of the shorts and music videos I had made felt more like extensions of somebody else.
I had written personal essays and criticism, but thats still not like making a piece of art.
At the time, I got $125,000 CAD from them [around $91,000 USD].
You dont have to pay it back; there are no strings attached.
They dont even give notes or influence casting.
Then I got a Canada Arts Council grant.
So it was entirely based on grants.
What is Canadian art, if the government is deciding whats valuable?
I dont see a lot of Canadian movies that feel like theyre intended to be crowd-pleasers.
All of these Canadian movies are set up to fail.
Theres such a fractured landscape, and so many barriers.
It feels like youre hitting this maple ceiling.
Its important to memorialize the place that you grew up in.
Everyone has a love-hate relationship with where they come from.
Im a person whos always crippled by nostalgia.
I feel like Im only making movies to understand weird parts of my life and move forward from them.
