GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

So it seemed like a few people on ILX did not like Tiny Furniture, but I did, I like Lena and I am really anticipating GIRLS. No doubt we'll talk about all this here as we anticipate the show and all try to look smart (I'm smart, btw).
http://www.tvequals.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Girls-HBO.jpg

I guess we can talk about this too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/lena-dunham-weight_n_1321414.html

Obviously that story itself is not interesting or special (jn fact it is idiotic), but it does raise some larger questions worth considering although goodness knows we should be more evolved than this by now

Wanna be appalled? go to the criterion forum and read the Tiny Furniture thread. Total fanboy meltdown.

ok i just read a few pages of this^ and suddenly i want to become her biggest champion

(i haven't seen anything she's done tho)

still haven't seen tiny furniture; need to get on that. read two paragraphs of that story about the complaint about her weight. couldn't read any further.

criterion fandorks who complain about WHY ARE THEY RELEASING X FILM AND NOT Y?!?! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE = shut up shut up shut up you are the fucking worst

I didn't really care for Tiny Furniture on the whole. Lena Dunham seemed like someone who's talented but (unsurprisingly) a little too solipsistic to adequately wield her talent. I'll give her show a shot in the hope that she's matured a bit.

Tiny furniture is one of those movies with about zero sympathetic characters. And I really couldn't figure out if I was actually supposed to think that or not.

I liked Tiny Furniture and am looking forward to this show.

I agree completely, chinavision. And I think Dunham was at least canny enough for that to have been intentional. I just don't think she was canny enough to make the overall experience appealing or thought-provoking enough for me to like the film.

I do want to give her props on a number of fronts. I just can't give her props for cohering those fronts into a particularly good movie.

totally dug tiny furniture

i sympathized with most of the characters in tiny furniture? i mean they did a lot of stupid shit but no one was really hateful, besides i guess the two guys.

guardian interview - http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/mar/23/lena-dunham-tiny-furniture-emma-brockes

http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/tv/features/girls-lena-dunham-2012-4/

I'm seriously hyped about this; she's way funnier and more clever than she has any right to be.

i also got a little crush on her y cuz she's smart

Watched Tiny Furniture on the weekend. It's the kind of thing i normally hate but she won me over by the end.

tiny furniture is pretty interesting. i thought it would be funny but kinda frothy, and instead i thought it said some pretty interesting things, way more than it was an amusing film. like (SPOILERS, I GUESS) the more it committed to refusing the sweet narrative arc you'd expect to unkink & take over - her remembering how lovely Frankie was, or arriving at some kind of agreeable romantic situation - the more it seemed like good, lacerating, self-loathing criticism of dumb, shortsighted early life blundering.

the nyer profile from a while back is good reading also

just watched 'tiny furniture' and was surprised by how much i (and especially my gf) enjoyed it.

the pipe scene was the clincher

yeah, agreed.
the pat on the thigh from spent dude was just painfully real.

i channel surfed through Tiny Furniture for a few minutes recently and could barely stand it, the direction/acting was like kevin smith-level bad

"In the street?"
"No, worse than that"

Dunham is curating a mini-fest where i work called Hey, girlfriend. bummed i missed mulholland drive last night (one of her picks)

at least i have seen it on the big screen b4 tho

twice actually!

haven't seen any of her stuff, she's doing several days of film 'presenting' at BAM, tonight w/ Whit Stillman.

i sympathized with most of the characters in tiny furniture?

haha me too

i saw one of the episodes on the weekend it was... idk, im p excited to watch them properly but it was a bit of a mess. theres a lot of ambivalence in general i guess

Tiny Furniture was horrific but she might do okay in a TV format. As long as she's not directing.

oops hey i missed surm's posts, sorry.

some dude OTM about Tiny Furniture's filmmaking, but I also can't find it in myself to give a shit about the problems of an educated rich kid in this hard hard world of moving back into the 'rents multimillion dollar loft.

still going to give Girls a shot, maybe there will be characters who aren't hateable

I think she's more self-aware than people who offer that criticism realize

I think she is sorta cute and seems fun and smart

"WKIW", as I believe you say

Like the scene where she has the big argument with her mother and she's all "I'm 22 and i just graduated and i got my first job". I have to believe that was somewhat tongue in cheek

I don't think it was, or that the entire movie was one big self-aware joke at the expense of overprivileged twentysomethings... but I'm not sure that it would improve things had that been her intention.

i like how the friend from ohio felt like a protagonist that wandered in from some other (slightly more conventional) movie

That's another thing. She tells her friend a day before she moves to New York that she's not going to move in with her, avoids all her calls, blows her off at the art thing cos that dude turns up etc. It has to be a joke, right?

idk it's all part & parcel of being an actual horrible, spoiled 20-something

the character, not lena i mean

I think there was a degree of self-awareness on display in Tiny Furniture, but probably not the degree of self-awareness that she might've had if she'd waited a couple more years to make it.

Which is a lot of why I'm open to Girls being more "my thing".

its not a "joke" but it is "self-aware"

Yeah but she didn't. She made it when she was like 23/24 and it's pretty much ABOUT being that age.

xxp

I mean, she was self-aware enough to not portray her character as a completely sympathetic protagonist (see: the treatment of her friend from Ohio) but I don't know that she was as aware of her character's/her own level of privilege as I would've liked.

It's certainly no less self-aware than you might hope/expect given the age and status of the filmmaker.

Why does she have to apologize to you for being rich

I never really understand the "ugh, why would i want to watch something about rich people" criticism. I like to watch things about all kinds of people. I'm not rich btw

She made it when she was like 23/24 and it's pretty much ABOUT being that age.

That being the case, I almost wish it had been less self-aware and more just a document of 23/24-ness. She probably had more awareness of how ridiculous people are at that age than most people do when they actually are that age, but it still didn't seem like a terribly high level of awareness.

am i automatically supposed to give a shit about poor people but not about rich people

I've also heard the opposite argument, the why-make-art-out-of-other-people's poverty argument that seems to suggest ALL films should be about people who are at LEAST of the same social status as the filmmaker/potential audience, which is deeply weird.

It's interesting that a desire to see a higher level of awareness of the characters' privilege translates to some as a demand for an apology or a lack of desire to see a movie about rich people. Kinda not the same thing at all.

i think its really 'self-aware' but not entirely self-critical, like these are the worst impulses and decisions and stuff but its not about how terrible its just like, this is how it is

i tend to think that the best art is usually made about people from the same social/economic background as the filmmaker, this is not a real Rule at all but i guess im saying id rather lena dunham make this movie and whit stillman make those movies and john updike write about rabbit than have them all try to do like "menace II society" or something

OTM. Although the attempt might be horrifyingly absorbing.

anyways her character is not rich, her parents are better off than average. she leaps head on into being working poor. Having the puffy white cloud of conditional support beneath you is nice, but her story seems to be about what happens when you've always had gentle hands carrying you everywhere and then the palanquin stops and you gotta figure out how to be a grown up.
the "I feel like I'm entering a really exiting period in my life right now" / "What are you talking about? Everything you own is in garbage bags on my kitchen floor" joke is very much dead on with my experience during that time and feels pretty real. sure it's privileged, but she's hyperaware of it and seems to be primed to make good stories within that space

a desire to see a higher level of awareness of the characters' privilege

i mean i think there are lots of parts of 'tiny furniture'/what ive seen of 'girls' thats really aware of how privileged some of the characters are but they maybe still dont know what that means, how they should deal with their comparative privilege not knowing the right tone to strike or pose to take or w/e like knowing w/o really understanding, being 22

^

as a guy who DID move back home with his parents after college i suspect i'll find things to sympathize with here

I don't think that it's about rich vs. poor, it's about the stakes being so small that Tiny Furniture/Lost In Translation/etc. wind up being about "this is how it is" for the overprivileged. Which is just not a very interesting story to tell.

I loved 'Wendy & Lucy,' which is also kind of "this is how it is" (you could criticize Michelle Williams's character's choices and how it all could have been easily avoided, etc.) but there's real shit going on there.

anyways her character is not rich, her parents are better off than average.

(will totally cop to being a Stalinist about the wealthy, fwiw)

I will allow for the possibility that I didn't particularly care for the movie in large part because it's so grueling to watch people in their early 20s wrestle with the inherent douchebaggery of being in one's early 20s.

Have said elsewhere that my response to Metropolitan after 30 minutes was "nuke them all from orbit," Tiny Furniture was not this bad.

it's about the stakes being so small

'what is a life worth?'

i tend to think that the best art is usually made about people from the same social/economic background as the filmmaker, this is not a real Rule at all but i guess im saying id rather lena dunham make this movie and whit stillman make those movies and john updike write about rabbit than have them all try to do like "menace II society" or something

I get your point max but I guess it really depends on how much the filmmaker has a public presence that forms part of the conversation around the film. Obviously with LD that is a factor, but not every artist fits neatly into some social or economic type and it always seems like a much bigger deal than it should be. If you only make work about who you are and where you are from, you can easily turn that into an examination of identity or you can just come across as totally self-absorbed. I think it is to Lena Dunham's credit that folks ITT seem split on that question.

"anyways her character is not rich, her parents are better off than average."
basing this on the promo language where she asks her parents for 1100 a month for the next two years to get on her feet and they straight up laugh at her; the rich would shrug and put up with that shit methinks
anyways, i'm talking about a show I haven't seen yet; I should shut up until I see the pilot.

I loved 'Wendy & Lucy,' which is also kind of "this is how it is" (you could criticize Michelle Williams's character's choices and how it all could have been easily avoided, etc.) but there's real shit going on there.

Didn't love W&L, but otherwise this is OTM.

in any case, she is hella primed to be A BIG THING and a VOICE OF THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION and i am curious to see how she/this holds up to broad scrutiny
anything's better than miranda fucking july

OTM

TRUTH. BOMB.

Don't know enough about Kelly Reichardt to know if she has experience of being young and broke in nu-recession America, but I'm going to assume not.

I get your point max but I guess it really depends on how much the filmmaker has a public presence that forms part of the conversation around the film. Obviously with LD that is a factor, but not every artist fits neatly into some social or economic type and it always seems like a much bigger deal than it should be. If you only make work about who you are and where you are from, you can easily turn that into an examination of identity or you can just come across as totally self-absorbed. I think it is to Lena Dunham's credit that folks ITT seem split on that question.

― og (admrl), Thursday, April 5, 2012 2:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah i agree with this

Is Louis cK "richer" than Lena Dunham? Is he really more "self-aware" or is he just much harder on himself? He's also much older of course and balder and fatter

louis ck is now hella rich
also balder fatter and more penis endowed

why the pootie tang royalties alone

He certainly doesn't portray himself as being rich though

xpost

Endowed him with more penis?

more penis than lena presumably

doubling back on that promo joke, i love that it looks like her parents have taken her out to dinner to tell her the support teat has been tapped; that's such a privilege moment.
some of my redneck friends just came home and found their shit in bags by the trailer park door and the folks said happy birthday and good luck out there

He certainly doesn't portray himself as being rich though

In the first season when the school bus breaks down he gets each kid their own limo.

ha, forgot about that

Lena Dunham's life of privilege is no less interesting to me than Larry David's or James Bond's or etc.

Novel James Bond was a rough, poor kid who found it difficult to interact with polite society IIRC

nevermind privelege, "the lives of young people in NYC" is a pretty tapped vein, were you guys this pumped about How To Make It In America?

"pumped" is a bit strong, but I haven't seen How To Make It In America. Was it funny? Tiny Furniture was pretty funny.

i dont think people are psyched about girls because theyre psyched to see another depiction of the lives of young people in nyc

How To Make It was about as funny as the early Entourage seasons, with a different kind of name-dropping.

I don't much about How to Make It in America. For a long time I thought it was a crime story but apparently it's about fashion?

two young guys from Brooklyn want to be designer/entrepeneurs, so they fail miserably at selling skateboards and then at making jeans and then one of them bangs Gina Gershon and there's a chance for success and then the series gets cancelled

Luis Guzman was probably the saving grace of the whole affair as an ex-con who actually starts a successful, normal business selling energy drinks

wow, this sounds bad

imagine Entourage if Vince wanted to be Michael Kors instead of Brad Pitt and was still doing commercials and waiting tables

number of GIRLS on the GIRLS talk thread = 0

i'm lurking.

i count at least 2 in the first few posts?

Oh yeah, horseshoe made one post. I stand corrected. (Donna is not a GIRL, btw)

i been done fooled

i figure you're all girls unless your display name starts "Mr."

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3b/Boys_Don

and they think they know how girls talk
girls talk, girls talk

I am gonna make BOYS, it's gonna be all about an English guy in LA and his basic middle-class post grad school life.

Actually I think it would be great if I had the time to make it.

isn't their a current buzz band named girls too, not sure if the world is big enough tbh

i liked the first 10mins of tiny furniture but then i turned it off cause i cant deal w/that level of embarrassment

i'm also lurking. i am putting off watching tiny furniture because i assume i'm going to really like it and then feel like it's very important for me to defend it on ilx and embarrass myself etc.

don't be embarassed

So much embarrassment itt.

its a good movie horseshoe you should just go ahead and watch it, its p self aware and privileged or w/e

i've softened a bit on tiny furniture. it's not without its charms. there's something about dunham as a performer too, where at first you think you're not gonna like her but you end up finding her pretty compelling. not interested in Girls but i'll probably give it a shot

the comparison to whit stillman is interesting because the milieu of eg. Metropolitan is certainly as alien to me (though the place & time of the movie is also intentionally obscured) as the one in tiny furniture, yet Metropolitan is a movie i can relate to far more easily than TF - on a broad level the group dynamics in it are just so well observed that it hits that sweet spot of feeling universal without being generic (and maybe being about boys put it more in my wheelhouse too)

i dont think i could argue that tiny furniture is less well observed, because im not in a position to know, but it was definitely less relevant to my life

i dont think people are psyched about girls because theyre psyched to see another depiction of the lives of young people in nyc

― max, Thursday, April 5, 2012 2:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think that's certainly why they're cynical about it though (its why i am anyway)

i tried metropolitan expecting to like it and turned it off after like fifteen minutes as utterly unredeemable
i tried tiny furniture expecting to dislike it and ended up being shocked at how good it was

how to make it in america was pretty crummy (in a bland way, not in the way entourage made you feel that it was necessary for civilization that beverly hills be bombed), but it did lead to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7vPfmiDLpI

heh the first 15-20 mins of tiny furniture are a real trial by fire imo - once you get past that it starts to get a bit better

that guzman video has moments of pleasure in it for sure

the 15 mins of 'how to make it america' i watched seemed like the same empty vodka ad fantasy-world that lots of other nyc shows inhabit for all their privilege the characters in 'tiny furniture' are occupying a more realistic and observed world

i agree though i did find it funny that hbo was clearly pushing how to make it and now girls as replacements for entourage and sexcity when neither are appealing as lifestyle fantasies in the slightest, which is the aspect that kept people watching their predecessors long past their primes

i think that's certainly why they're cynical about it though (its why i am anyway)

― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, April 5, 2012 4:53 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah, sure, i was just calling out al's (intentional?) point-missing

admrl can i be in your show??

the same empty vodka ad fantasy-world

love this description

of course!

i tried metropolitan expecting to like it and turned it off after like fifteen minutes as utterly unredeemable

Watch the whole movie, it's dope.

man i just i dunno

oh yeah, sure, i was just calling out al's (intentional?) point-missing

― max, Thursday, April 5, 2012 5:10 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

oh yeah it was pretty intentional. but seriously at this point any new york-based artist whose art is primarily about being a starving artist in new york can jump in a well afaic

food in there

also other artists, so warm

i know no-one was waiting for a sincere & impassioned defence of miranda july's work itt but:

But it would’ve been more repulsive if I was like, “Okay, I’m going to have her work in a prison, because that will make her gritty and likeable.” That’s playing it safe, to make everyone likeable and a good person, you know? I think it’s more interesting if you go all the way with the world you have, and really look at it, and push it to an even more extreme extreme. So I guess that’s my answer. But then I don’t have the same relationship to those characters that a critic would, because I wrote them, and they come from things that matter to me.

she said this about the future, in response to criticism of it solely depicting the angst of handsome metropolitan white liberals, & it's otm i think. i can't correlate between filmmaker circumstances & films in class terms - & it ignores the i think pretty broad correlation between higher-class filmmakers having made a lot of the key depictions of lower-class living in cinema (particularly british & neo-realist stuff iirc) - but yeah i can't understand automatic disdain for something that doesn't feel earthy enough.

the 2nd ep of this show is called "Vagina Panic" fyi

I don't really give a fuck if the subjects of someone's fiction are suitably earthy or working class or whatever, I'm just tired of the world bowing down everytime someone finds a slightly insightful new way to say "student loans, amirite?"

like honestly, i think it's great that navel-gazing meditations on urban bohemia have made great creative strides since Reality Bites, but that was gonna happen no matter what with all those monkeys typing away about the same subject

it is hard, turning on the tv and its like non-stop navel-gazing mediations on urban bohemia

*throws tv down well*

so glad I had cable taken out and my antenna gets nothing

max you've got new york goggles on you don't even notice this stuff do you

no! i mean, really! how many shows on tv are "navel-gazing meditations on urban bohemia" right now!

i kinda think you may have internet goggles on where you think that "the world" is "bowing down" to "insightful new ways to say 'student loans'"

i mean, replace some dude's "the world" with the more accurate "whatever phrase means 'Tumblr whites' that won't cause a 30 post clusterfuck," and he's as otm as otm gets

just for that i will raise a glass to you sir and ruefully say "tumblr whites, man"

where do you guys hang out online?! seriously i actually *like* most tumblr whites and you guys are more expert in the stuff theyre doing than i am

NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO MAKE IT SO, WHINEY, 'TUMBLR WHITES' WILL NEVER BE A THING OTHER PEOPLE SAY. And if it becomes so, may god have mercy on your soul.

i kinda think you may have internet goggles on where you think that "the world" is "bowing down" to "insightful new ways to say 'student loans'"

― max, Friday, April 6, 2012 9:09 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not literally saying Lena Dunham is on the cover of Time Magazine, afaik it's only Forks Monthly that is calling her the voice of her generation

then what are we talking about here

i'm just shooting the shit

once this airs tho the forks monthly circulation is gonna skyrocket

i mean, unless it bombs like 'how to make it..' but i expect it to be at least like competant

NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO MAKE IT SO, WHINEY, 'TUMBLR WHITES' WILL NEVER BE A THING OTHER PEOPLE SAY. And if it becomes so, may god have mercy on your soul.

― 1 of paper = 4 of coin (Deric W. Haircare), Friday, April 6, 2012 9:19 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some dude just said it :)

yeah i mean 'tumblr whites' is totally a thing on ilx at this point, and whiney's use of it isn't that much less sarcastic than anyone else's

okay i really liked tiny furniture

what'd you think

tiny furniture is pretty interesting. i thought it would be funny but kinda frothy, and instead i thought it said some pretty interesting things

yeah, i mean, i definitely thought it was funny but in addition to being a portrait of early-life blunderings, as someone upthread put it, i thought it was about women and work and ambition. the scene where dunham's character actually explains the film's title was the scene where i realized how much i liked the movie. the observation about her female friends in college getting really into baking and then making tiny furniture. that's a real thing.

i guess if people's critique about her privilege is how dare she take the problems of people that rich seriously, i can't argue, but i find the suggestion that she's unaware of her own/the character's privilege absurd; i mean, look at her mother's apartment! also the way charlotte is like, i've been using my dad's credit card all week. also a million other moments.

on the other hand, my sister, who also really liked tiny furniture, is annoyed that there don't seem to be any brown girls in the cast of girls. i'm reserving judgment.

also the dunhamy thing she does that i had read about before (maybe in the new yorker profile?) where she unflinchingly portrays her character's utter humiliation at times in her attempts to connect with dudes, i love that. it doesn't seem punishing, just honest. the way she uses her body, both comedically and pathetically. that people would complain that there's a woman whose body is insufficiently sexy onscreen (if i'm to take the huffpo piece seriously, which i don't know) is of course totally unsurprising but also exactly point-missing.

also she was just great at the whit stillman/chris eigeman q&a after the screening of last days of disco last night.

i think i'm done.

yeah i do find that her comic persona has grown on me, her semi-deadpan reactions to an endless procession of humiliation. the scene where her sister is yelling at her and she's just sort of mildly wacking her with a spoon killed me

i find the suggestion that she's unaware of her own/the character's privilege absurd; i mean, look at her mother's apartment!

But I think that was Dunham's mother's actual apartment, just as that's Dunham's actual mother and actual sister in the movie. That blurred line between the fiction of the film and Dunham's actual life is a lot of what makes me question her distance from and awareness of her character's privilege.

haha yeah that was great. "stop hitting me! it doesn't hurt!"

xp i don't see how making a film in her mother's own apartment means that she's not aware her mother has a lot of money?

she's found a way to show people having unpleasant and unenjoyable sex where the men are doofuses and the women are entirely unclear as to how they got into this situation without slut shaming which is pretty clever imo

question her distance from the character, sure.

xp

that works kinda as a non xpost too

Yeah, her comic persona was one of the things I pointedly liked about the movie, which is why I'm willing to give Girls a chance. She seems a'ight, generally speaking.

I'm just tired of the world bowing down everytime someone finds a slightly insightful new way to say "student loans, amirite?"

haha i thought the problem was that 'tiny furniture'/'girls' is pointedly NOT about the sort of ppl who have student loans

well like i said, i was just shooting the shit and have seen like <10 mins of the movie. people can feed the troll if they like but i'm happy to duck out of the thread and not defend my tangent any further at least until i see an episode of the show or something.

it is really not your kind of movie, i think, al.

How did enjoying a movie and discussing filmmaker's next project become "pumped" and "bowing down"?

As for " student loans", well yeah just like Lena Dunham maybe they are mentioned a lot, but only by certain people and not in the context they should be.

whiney's stamp of approval is def a sign i went too far with the hyperbole, sorry for the loaded language

:(

i understand exactly where sd and whiney are coming from in their distaste for the thing they describe, but after a point you just gotta judge things on their own merits

sorry to whiney for sneak dissin

buying flowers for everybody here

yeah word hungry

where she unflinchingly portrays her character's utter humiliation at times in her attempts to connect with dudes, i love that. it doesn't seem punishing, just honest

yeah this is really good and like really the whole point, i mean the show is called 'girls' and i think this is really the best, the most honest and funny, stuff in the movie too? like the maybe cliched 'post-collegiate search for purpose and identity' stuff is p inextricably mixed up in this kind of sexual and romantic flailing? which i mean '2 broke girls exists' but its really dishonest and terrible so

exactly, fucking whitney cummings is evil and this is antidote
it is bemusing how they're presenting this as sex and the city for youngsters and it looks anything but

but again, i should follow al's lead and shut the fuck up until i actually see the dumb thing

let's hold hands and shut the fuck up together

i mean it's definitely the gender stuff that matters to me. i think the work/ambition strand is of a piece with that though. it's not like "everybody young is searching" it's more specifically about a paralysis women of a certain privilege experience wrt work, in part because they haven't been acculturated to valuing their own labor, taking making money as a goal, etc.

i can see how that would be deeply irritating to some people, but again, i think it's real.

where she unflinchingly portrays her character's utter humiliation at times in her attempts to connect with dudes, i love that. it doesn't seem punishing, just honest

yeah this is really good and like really the whole point, i mean the show is called 'girls' and i think this is really the best, the most honest and funny, stuff in the movie too? like the maybe cliched 'post-collegiate search for purpose and identity' stuff is p inextricably mixed up in this kind of sexual and romantic flailing? which i mean '2 broke girls exists' but its really dishonest and terrible so

― Lamp, Friday, April 6, 2012 11:08 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this stuff reminds me of some m*mblec*ore flicks (thinking 'hannah takes the stairs'), tho it's played less explicitly & not really for laughs. also, i feel like greta gerwig in that & others rec'd similar crit @ the time (can't act; only cast cuz shes v embracing of nudity, etc)

idk what my point is, just sayin

Just FYI, I will not be "embracing nudity" in BOYS.

the other thing is obv the mumblecore ones are lacking the sheen of privilege basically entirely & ppl seem to find them MORE detestable lol

haha im one of the feel ppl on ilx whod got to bat for 'hannah takes the stairs' but i think its a lot more exterior than 'tiny furniture', less interested in hannah as a person than hannah as an idea? its probably guiltier of the kind of post-collegiate ennui cliches as well

horseshoe yah i think its really all of a piece if for no other reason than dunham as a whole is so indivisible the ideas she has about girlhood and adulthood and class and sex are totally bound up in her weird family dynamic and who she is as a person. i think this helps w/ the sort of 'voice of generation' cuz theres lots of different xps/things to relate to in her work but also helps her rise above cliche because she can describe these things in a personal language somewhat free of quotation marks or w/e

it's more specifically about a paralysis women of a certain privilege experience wrt work, in part because they haven't been acculturated to valuing their own labor, taking making money as a goal, etc.

I weep for them.

i expect this to be really good. I liked tiny furniture. I'm really impressed with LD, I think she's a great writer and a good director particularly considering how young she was when she made that film.

http://www.theawl.com/2012/04/talking-to-lena-dunham-about-being-a-girl

You said that "Girls" was untitled for a long time. I read that a friend had joked that it was the “Entitled Lena Dunham Project.”

He was like, “change one letter!” When I first told him, he thought that I had said “entitled,” and he made me a tiny sign for my door, it was the funniest thing ever, that said the “Entitled Lena Dunham Project.”

Do you think that people think that about you? That you’re entitled?

I’ve definitely heard that critique of the movie, and a little bit of the show, less though since it’s clear that the character is having a financial struggle.

The thing about Tiny Furniture is it was a character who moved home to what looked to be a luxury New York apartment. Although it’s funny, when a friend came over, she said, "It looks a lot nicer in the movie." My DP worked some magic to make the whole thing look whiter, crisper and larger.

But that said, I think that people don’t always love seeing a certain kind of privilege shown on screen, even if the creator is self-aware about it, which I tried to be. I tried to make it clear that this character was not necessarily appreciative of all she’d been given, and that all she’d been given wasn’t necessarily a gift, because it prevented her from having a work ethic and it prevented her from other things.

I hope that there’s room in our society for an exploration of class in that way that goes beyond. I like a movie like Raising Victor Vargas, that’s one version of New York, but I think there’s also room for a movie about the kids who grew up taking too many different kinds of piano and dance lessons in Tribeca. I hope that the artistic landscape can accommodate all of that and that I’ve approached it in a way that’s self-aware enough that people know where I’m coming from. But of course there will always be detractors and I was prepared for that. Sometimes I’m my own detractor.

lena dunham responds to thread basically

That’s an interesting question. I don’t think that anybody looks at me and says, "she looks amazing and I want to be that lady," but I think that there’s a thing that people trying to present their own experience, there’s a little bit of “who told you you were allowed to do this and why do you think we’re interested?” phenomenon, which I completely understand, although I think that people challenge women more who want to tell their own story.

Nobody challenges why they want to watch Larry David at lunch. You know why you want to watch Larry David at lunch: Cause he’s fucking hilarious and it’s amazing to watch him at lunch. You don’t care that he’s mean to his friends and lives in a giant house, it’s just interesting, and I think that women often have to make more excuses for why they want to portray themselves. I used to always apologize, to say, I’m so sorry for bringing misogyny up, but I’m going to stop apologizing for bringing it up, because we all know it’s real.

Love the creative class entitlement that assumes everyone can watch tv during lunch

hah

http://i.imgur.com/Lazgx.jpg

I weep for them.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, April 6, 2012 12:28 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doth protest

Love the creative class entitlement that assumes everyone can watch tv during lunch

uh

can't everybody watch tv on their phones now? i might be wrong about this, still have a flip phone.

fuckin chinese hipster factory cafeteria

http://i.imgur.com/APvAh.jpg

i am at least w/ her abt the show "baggage", as described, sounds incredible

haha i just thought in the intvw jordan quotes shes talking about how like half of 'curb your enthusiams' scenes take place over lunch at expensive restaurants not about her eating lunch while she watches the show

that is what she was talking about

the "half of 'curb your enthusiams' scenes take place over lunch at expensive restaurants" part

haha i guess that makes more sense!

Love the creative class entitlement that assumes everyone can watch tv during lunch
― #yolo contendere (Whiney G. Weingarten)

I know you're trolling but i think the implication is "watch Larry David at lunch", not you're at lunch watching the show
xp fuck it nevermind

lol whiney

btw, whiney, i think it might mean that larry's at lunch not the viewer, ever thought of that

lol i thought whiney was joking

"I hope that there’s room in our society for an exploration of class in that way that goes beyond. I like a movie like Raising Victor Vargas, that’s one version of New York, but I think there’s also room for a movie about the kids who grew up taking too many different kinds of piano and dance lessons in Tribeca. I hope that the artistic landscape can accommodate all of that and that I’ve approached it in a way that’s self-aware enough that people know where I’m coming from. But of course there will always be detractors and I was prepared for that. Sometimes I’m my own detractor."

^^^ this is sort of a funny thing to say -- its absolutely true but its weird that she doesnt acknowledge that the artistic landscape of new york stories is probably more biased towards the too-many-lessons kids than the victor vargases of the world. which shd be apparent in part because the first example of a movie about non-privileged kids in nyc she can think of is like 10 years old

wait a second, what if it's LARRY at lunch and not the viewer
makes u think

I hope that there’s room in our society for an exploration of class in that way that goes beyond. I like a movie like Raising Victor Vargas, that’s one version of New York, but I think there’s also room for a movie about the kids who grew up taking too many different kinds of piano and dance lessons in Tribeca. I hope that the artistic landscape can accommodate all of that and that I’ve approached it in a way that’s self-aware enough that people know where I’m coming from. But of course there will always be detractors and I was prepared for that. Sometimes I’m my own detractor.

See, I think this just comes down to a disagreement about storytelling. Too many piano and dance lessons? Rich people are playing life on God Mode, and narrative without risk is pretty dull IMO.

its about larry lunchin i think right

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0997079/

milo do you only watch action movies or something

Larries Who Lunch

no, because most action movies are crap because the hero is playing on God Mode

iddqed

anyone else getting Parker Lewis Can't Lose flashbacks right now?

http://www.corinnemec.com/images/stories/parker-lewis/parker-lewis-dvd2.jpg

milo do you only watch action movies or something

― max, Friday, April 6, 2012 1:34 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its funny cause i was thinking the actual popular movies re new york are prob mostly abt people killing each other and the mafia - this discussion is abt a p niche product that prob mostly appeals to people of similar background

nb: I didn't think Girls was funny, either, or I'd cut it a lot more slack. It read as painfully awkward melodrama to me more than comedy.

you mean tiny furniture?

This is just off the top of my head, here’s what I would put in my start pack currently, if I was trying to make everybody feel the inside of my brain: I’d probably put Ariel, the Sylvia Plath book of poems, I’d put the new Sheila Heti novel, How Should a Person Be, I’d put Wallflower at the Orgy by Nora Ephron. Those would be my three books. I’d put Gilda Live, the documentary of Gilda directed by Mike Nichols, I’d put An Unmarried Woman, and I’d put in Clueless and then maybe like one Sufjan Stevens for feeling feelings too: Seven Swans. Then I’m just gonna throw Betty Davis—Miles Davis’s wife Betty Davis, not the disco crazy nutbag singer—I’d put her cd in there. Right now, if I was like, I want you to feel my feelings, I’d hand you those things.

er, yeah, because I was going to say that I'm giving Girls a shot because it might really be funny

surfin stevens and betty davis and gilda radner are faves of mine too, maybe I'M oh wait i fucking hate nora ephron

yeah i dont know man i think if "actual lives are at stake" is for an important characteristic of good art i dont think were ever going to agree about art period let alone an hbo show

I didn't say "actual lives are at stake," I said risk.

conflict is importnat to narrative, what kind of protagonist do u have

give Girls til the end of season 1 to see if they resolve any conflicts with physical violence imo

what are we talking about then? is it that emotional/psychological 'risk' arent important enough?

a story can be seen as a mountain climbing your hero will have to overcome many obsitcles one is a huge rock in the way

I laughed at the younger sister, the white cabinets, the explanation of fucking in a pipe.

I did pretty much hate all the dudes in the movie to a degree that bothered me.

Emotional/psychological risk is pretty much every love story ever, so yes that's important.

The malaise of being young and privileged, though, doesn't cut it for me.

the tools u are using to assess this art are too crude for the job

i dont know that being privileged is the source of dunhams 'malaise' though -- it inflects it in certain ways but shes not exactly sad *because* her parents are well-off

surely the source is Sufjan Stevens for feeling feelings

if only she were sad because OBAMA wouldn't let her buy more handguns

that would be more interesting tbh

In my mind, I see a link between the Dartmouth frat bro writing a memoir and Tiny Furniture (which is memoir-ish) - if you're 22-24, the odds of you having done anything worth writing a memoir or making a movie about are pretty slim.

which is also a privilege thing because State U grads who have to start working soul-sucking jobs just to survive aren't exactly getting $$$ to make films that mirror their real lives (those films would be just as dull as Tiny Furniture, most likely)

how old or underprivileged would she have to be before the odds of her art being worthwhile were sufficient to engender interest

(i am just pretending u r not interested in this show for the sake of argument)

you can always make art that isn't suffocatingly autobiographical iirc

i feel like im losing the thread here

the thread wants to be free, max. don't try to control it.

'write abt what you know' important tip for making compelling art

fwiw i dont think tiny furniture is a memoir

i dont have a problem with young people writing memoirs

i imagine that a "State U grads who have to start working soul-sucking jobs just to survive" as perceptive and funny as dunham could probably make a film as good as tiny furniture

some dude otm twice

what abt someone who dropped out of jr college tho

what is the dartmouth frat bro movie called? is it animal house?

i googled dartmouth frat bro and apparently its a real thing, i thought milo was trying to draw some weird false equivalency there with a made-up example

http://jezebel.com/5897558/dartmouth-frat-bros-bro-memoir-will-one-day-polarize-bros-everywhere

we talked about it on another thread? Dartmouth hazing whistleblower now writing memoir etc.

yeah i dunno i dont really find the concept of a dartmouth frat bro writing a memoir galling

ha, I hadn't even seen that Jezebel thing. <3 the phrase frat bro

it's not galling but it's difficult to believe that many 22-year old who aren't war heroes or w/e have a compelling tale to tell unless you're also a frat bro

is that the guy who did the hazing piece in esquire or whatever? that made for some nauseating reading
apparently bros like to puke on each others faces and genitals until they have no more tooth enamel

easier to just watch this
http://www.thecinemasource.com/moviesdb/images/TheSkullsPoster300.jpg

there was a time when i had not heard the term "vomlette" and i want that time back

that story sounds actually too compelling

even tho its not abt war and took place before a person was 22 which is generally just meaningless bullshit not worth mentioning

what if your under 22 but also a vampire

have to be a sexy vampire imo

still need that tooth enamel

it's more specifically about a paralysis women of a certain privilege experience wrt work, in part because they haven't been acculturated to valuing their own labor, taking making money as a goal, etc.

I weep for them.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, April 6, 2012 12:28 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

look i followed that by saying i understand it can be offputting. i also think this undervaluing of labor affects not-rich women fwiw, though they obviously have less freedom to go unemployed.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/29/be-kind/

lol i just love good lookin rich ppl tbh will ryde 4 them 4 all time

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max)

; )

otm

I don't even know how anyone can follow this show bcuz these four white girls all look exactly the same

At least the Sex and the City gals lived a little first before talking about themselves!!

I have a lot of friends like this, albeit a little older.

One likely criticism of the series is that it dwells on privileged white-girl problems; in fact, its core cast members are all famous people's kids. (Williams' dad is newsman Brian Williams, Mamet's is playwright David Mamet, and Kirke's is Simon Kirke, drummer in the classic rock band Bad Company.) Asked about the casting, Dunham says, "The only thing that would make it not a coincidence is that they came in with a preternatural willingness to play and an understanding of the creative process that probably comes from being raised around it."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-lena-dunham-20120408,0,2699677.story

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef016764b18d27970b-600wi

"The only thing that would make it not a coincidence is that they came in with a preternatural willingness to play and an understanding of the creative process that probably comes from being raised around it."

lol uh oh

ugh ugh ugh @ that quote

awareness and critical of privilege, eh

eh showbiz has always run in families

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoJwJX5B84Y

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2b/White_chicks.jpg/220px-White_chicks.jpg

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/10/dunham_girls_sex_scares_men/singleton/

There’s also a scene in one of the episodes where a guy says to one of the characters, “The first time I fuck you I might scare you a little, because I’m a man, and I know how to do things,” and it’s supposed to be a huge turn-on.

Somebody actually said that line to me, only afterward he was like, “That’s the thing my friend who works at Vice magazine taught me.” And I was like, the best way to negate the hot thing you just said is to end it with, that’s the thing my friend at Vice magazine told me.

shes on conan tonight as the 2nd guest and larry david is the 1st guest

that's way too late to be eating lunch

"if you're 22-24, the odds of you having done anything worth writing a memoir or making a movie about are pretty slim."

http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/597896-L.jpg

if memory serves, rimbaud wrote a season in hell cuz he was pissed at his mom cuz she made him empty the chamber pots one day.

this show looks funny. would watch. still haven't seen the movie. watched the downtown diva shorts on youtube and some of those are funny.

http://gothamist.com/2012/04/09/lena_dunham_girls_guide_to_going_ou.php

do you associate with "grown up brooklyn?"

oh nevermind, I was gonna harp on that but then I noticed it was a phrase used by a character and not like an actual argument. I guess I enjoy petty inter-neighborhood fighting.

Hey guys, I just read most of the literature ever published and I thought, "rich people problems."

haha she goes to the same bars i do!

max people problems

in my mind max and dunham are always in brooklyn at opposite ends of the bar

haha she goes to the same bars i do!

irl lol

I;m not surprised, she basically seems like a girl max

GIRLS (to the max)

washington commons, check, awkward sex, check, acclaimed hbo series, check

acclaimed cover art for Fever Ray, check

she goes to steampunk bars too??

steampunk cabaret

*shamefacedly hides tickets*

not sure if ya knew you can watch the debut free Monday online

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/04/12/hbo-offers-free-access-to-debut-episodes-of-new-comedy-series-girls-and-veep/128783/?

shock shock, here's Brody: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/04/girls-armchair-sociology.html

just saw 'tiny furniture' and was shocked by how much i liked it. i hate this sort of film, as a general rule, but the gradual shift in tone completely won me over. it was scathing and observant without being mean-spirited. in an odd way, it reminded me more of bresson than woody allen. (not that it's really much like either.)

i'm kinda floored that a couple of ppl here found it poorly directed -- i thought it was incredibly well-crafted, every shot beautifully composed. light-years ahead of someone like miranda july.

im actually really tempted to make a lena dunham vs miranda july poll

can we wait til she has more than one film?

she's got a tv series starting Sunday morbs. by the end of it she'll have more output than July.

if you have HBO

i'm going to finally watch Tiny Furniture tonight. Surely it can't be worse than a Miranda July film. Surely.

as opposed to the inescapably huge national roll-outs of Miranda July's work. xpost

plus you can watch the first episode and write it off even without HBO. Perfect!

can we campaign for a GIRLS theatrical run plz shes the next bresson fyi

yeah, there's a cable series debut and a ton of interviews, omg quick quick let's evaluate before she expires!!!

yes plz. i haven't seen this show but it really speaks to me on a personal level. so audacious but...real...y'know?

by the end of it she'll have more output than July.

"OUTPUT"? If all is equal by the clock, more than Jean Vigo too.

I got your output right heah...

"content"

art is now just as series of products morbs. get with the 90s.

i'm kinda floored that a couple of ppl here found it poorly directed -- i thought it was incredibly well-crafted, every shot beautifully composed. light-years ahead of someone like miranda july.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, April 13, 2012 8:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

"incredibly well crafted" might be a little over the top

In any case, the creation of artistic products is intrinsically an “elite woe,” regardless of the financial status of the artist; priests and poets and painters are all members of the idle class (see Plato’s “Republic,” Book Two, on the creation of the “luxurious State”). At the same time, form reflects circumstances. I remember the early days of hip-hop—I had the sense that a new form was arising to express experiences that weren’t yet widely depicted, and that its aesthetic characteristics were integral to this communication. And those experiences, in that form, proved to have a worldwide, quasi-universal power

um

Cock

yeah, there's a cable series debut and a ton of interviews, omg quick quick let's evaluate before she expires!!!
--World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius)

Seriously, why don't we hang out, dogg

I'm generally cool with narratives about rich people -- lots of time for urban culture snobs (Woody Allen types) or upwardly mobile suburban professionals (Updike) -- but a big reason Sex and the City makes me uncomfortable (NB: I haven't actually seen it) is that it seems like a show that's not just set in an upper-class milieu but actively fetishizes material objects like designer shoes and fancy cupcakes.

This has nothing to do w/Lena Dunham, whose work I haven't seen, either, but whatever.

Sex and the City 2 was about the most grotesque consumerist thing I've ever seen. And I've seen all three Transformers films.

all the people are dancin and theyre having such funnn i wiiiiish it could happen to me...

a friend of mine's wife insisted on naming their first daughter after her favorite sex and the city character so the daughter would "always have a reminder of who the right rolemodels are" :( :(

ha which one was it

ch4rlotte (she is my goddaughter btw probably shouldn't be shittalking her moms on the Internet)

the mating habits of contemporary 24-year-olds? what could be less relevant to meeee? (straight, M, F, gay, I don't care)

so you're why Hollywood won't cast black actors as leads

terrible non sequitur imho

Sex and the City makes me uncomfortable (NB: I haven't actually seen it)

jeezus man, btwn this and the 3 silent features you've seen, put down the puzzles.

Not sure what you're objecting to there -- that I haven't seen SATC or that I'm biased against something I haven't seen? I'm sure there's plenty of quality TV you've missed, and I *know* you prejudge stuff all the time.

(Also, lol @ "put down the puzzles" as a zing. Pretty much the only time I solve crossword puzzles is on my commute. Would you rather I be watching silent films on my iPod?)

just a joek

*farts*

that good, huh

Yeah, that was rough.

The scene at her internship was what I didn't like about Tiny Furniture, the back and forth is already stilted and it's not helped by the way she shoots.

thought it was p good - i think that it can be so much looser than tiny furniture is a huge virtue

lol that she was interning @ tao lins publisher

I seriously have no idea why anyone would even watch this

Why do you guys even care about this stupid looking show?

lol u like portlandia

TS: "THIS IS THE SHOW THAT FINALLY GETS ME" Vs "LOL THIS SHOW DOESN'T GET ME AT ALL"

Portlandia's a bunch of joeks. This is a bunch of people on the Internet either a) putting all their hopes and fears and desires on hoping we get our new Woody Allen ever since FREAKS AND GEEKS OMG NAILED IT or b) sniffling that its not getting the complexities of Tumblr whiteness right DUDE WHERES MY PANTS MTV(tm)

All on some show that had zero episodes until an hour ago and whoooooo carrrrres

ts watching a show because it "gets you" vs not being motivated by weird stuff like that

http://prodstatics3cdn1.tastingtable.com/images/articles/2010_08/localfolks_sm.jpg

The inflated sense of importance people have around TV shows is so fucking stupid right now

You're never going to run out of windmills, are you?

The inflated sense of importance people have around TV shows is so fucking stupid right now

― azealia canks (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, April 15, 2012 8:50 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The inflated sense of impotence people have around TV shows is so fucking stupid right now

it's funny how i hate the idea of this show probably as much as whiney but he makes me want to switch sides

(probably funnier than the show idk)

I actually think it's a great idea for a show!

I just think it's so stupid that since it's about "real hipsters" and not "2 Broke Girls hipsters" or whatever, everyone on Twitter has to have an opinion about where they fit into the narrative.

your life might be longer and easier, then, if you stopped caring what "everyone on Twitter" has an opinion about?

guy who spends hours reading brooklyn-based twitter feeds angry about brooklyn-based twitter activity

your life might be longer and easier, then, if you stopped caring what "everyone on Twitter" has an opinion about?
--Kiarostami bag (milo z)

OTM

wait this show is about "real hipsters"?

is grimes a character

There was some good stuff in here. It might be good.

oh wait i just checked my twitter feed and it looks as if people like this too much.

this show is utterly fucking shit and god fuck all these people with their fucking lives and opinions and their ham-fisted attempts at comedy i mean seriously let me know if a cannon shoots out the support of a guard tower and Lena Dunham falls out and then maybe we can talk about Real F-ing Comedy.

terrible show. enunciate for gods sake

should have been father-and-stepmother. the mom made no sense

side dude (ray?) at dinner party was funny once or twice. that was about it

isn't this show about failing yuppies not hipsters

let me know if a cannon shoots out the support of a guard tower

^excellent

what replaces shoes from S&TC here?

I think I like the idea of show, gen limboy, but I have only read about it and not watched it, but I am afraid if I watch it I will stop liking it

that it's SATC influenced seems worrying? SATC's only virtue is that it will merit a lot of analysis in whatever 'fall of the american empire' tome is written in 50 years

how exactly is this 'satc' influenced' anyway. four women? that's it? four women. they all look alike huh.

well it's more like it's being groomed as the anti-SATC (complete with deliberately eye-rolling SATC references in the pilot) than that it's influenced by it, to be fair

it was aight but really, i dunno that this is much better than, like, Garden State

oof

four women? that's it? four women.

NYC, first-world problems, HBO Sunday night etc

The 2nd and 3rd seasons of S&TC were quite funny btw, before SJP swallowed the show.

satc is a p good show just kinda disturbing

2nd and 3rds seasons of SATC were excellent.

This was not as interesting as I had hoped.

In your pilot, you have overt references to Sex in the City.  Obviously, you’re writing about four young women friends in New York City. Do you see Girls as sort of a response or reaction or a tribute to SATC?  Was it just something that naturally these characters would reference themselves in comparison to? 


That was sort of the first thought was that Shoshanna [Zosia Mamet's character] would have moved to New York because of Sex in the City.  And a lot of these girls, even Hannah who might make fun of the girl who were the “I’m a Carrie” T-shirt, part of the reason she came to New York is clearly because she thought she was a Carrie.  It’s almost like not only is this a show that talks about Sex and the City, these are women who couldn’t exist without Sex and the City.  And I sort of wanted to reference that, honor it and get it out of the way.  

But I was sensitive about that Sex in the City reference.  I was scared when I sent the pilot to HBO that they’d be offended or find it to be too meta, and they told us that it was a big reason that they picked up the pilot.  They liked the fact that we were the first script about women that had commented on Sex in the City and took the issue head on.

the first episode went fast and had some promising stuff, but all the characters who weren't the leads were painted pretty broadly and unsympathetically. Found it really disturbing to have the mom from Freaks & Geeks being such a contemptuous monster with no explanation.

so her 3 co-stars are the daughters of David Mamet, Brian Williams and the Bad Company drummer? Worth boycotting for that alone.

well that's not an entirely unrealistic portrait of williamsburg, as long as they play themselves

yeah the show felt very much like 'every character who is not played by the writer/director is a cardboard cutout,' except for maybe the one other girl who kind of scolded the other girl in the bathroom. it was a pilot, though, presumably those people would need time to get fleshed out.

really think its a stretch to lump the drummer of bad company in w/those other two

she is eating a cupcake in the shower

yes, bcz I likely wouldn't want to kick the BC drummer in the face if I saw him on the street

xp

i am watching this

now they are talking abt satc

joylin knows photoshop, lol

no one really seems to be talking abt the apatow connection but it seems v apatow w/the mundane misanthropy

this is p funny

this does not taste like twix

that was so smh, it's not like he even pronounced it any way that could lead to that kind of misunderstanding

i support all twix based humor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72gsdsL26po

why dont u get a job and start a blog u r so spoiled

I just remembered the "I am busy...trying to become who I am" line and felt a strong wave of rmde all over again

One thing that really struck me with Hannah’s character in the pilot is that last scene where we see her take the $20 that he parents left for her and then the $20 for the housekeeper. You’re showing a not very sympathetic side of her. 


No, it’s like, “You just took that from a Mexican lady with five children because you want a fucking buy some fancy sandwich.”

What does it say about her?

I think it shows that she’s a little scared, that she’s a little desperate, but also that she’s a little entitled and like there’s a part of Hannah that probably feels like the world’s not giving me what I need and I need to take it. And she thinks she’s being proactive and she thinks that somehow like she’s owed this.

Of course it will cause her tremendous guilt later and she’ll probably confess to her parents in a year and try to pay them back. But, at that moment, like it was a moment where I sort of announce this is what the show is. You’re not going to necessarily be with this girl at every – you’re not going to necessarily agree with this girl’s every move.

bad company should be playing in the background of every scene in this show

i enjoyed the overall attitude of the dude she hooks up w/ in this ep -"i was fat in high school too, i didnt let ppl draw all over me"

hah he was so mean

I expected the Mamet kid to be like her character in Mad Men, which has nothing to do with the quality of the show.

i dont remember her on mad men, she was in the kids are alright tho, i like her

lol

From the steamy bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey to HBO's Girls, sexual domination is in vogue. Katie Roiphe on why women's power at work may be fueling the craze.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/15/working-women-s-fantasies.html

that article and hologram tupac dominated my twitter feed this morning

katie roiphe hologram in your living room

i dont remember her on mad men, she was in the kids are alright tho, i like her

she's peggy's friend who works at Life magazine and has all the counter-culture buddies.

o rite!

katie roiphe hologram in your living room

― buzza, Monday, April 16, 2012 2:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dominating u, u r a blogger

i was just thinking, i miss that katie roiphe.

what trenchant insights does she have for us about girls, not to mention Girls

idk there is no way im reading that article

i am going to save it for a time when i really need to yell at my computer

there is some key video content with katie how can u miss it

only if shes being tied up and written all over 'riot grrl' by teenage lesbians

then maybe i might watch it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80mdeRlbzvE

a lot of people are prob reading it on their ipads and kindles in their own universe

*thinks deeply*

thread summary for those coming in late:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQxRy30qs0g

Was thinking about the comparisons with Louis CK and the big difference is that Louis's horrible sex scenes actually have a punchline. There was no payoff to that scene, it was just "wow, they're both horrible and I didn't need to see that." And Louis seems to give a shit about the world around him, whether that's his daughters or the awesome gay neighbors who save him, etc.

eh his 'give a shit about the world' is kinda forced and self-congratulatory - let's have people call me a good father and show me being a good father on a show I write and star in

yeah louis ck has a good schtick but lets not read too much into it

HS did you watch this show? Should I?

i thought it was p funny, and people are prob making too big a deal out of it

its more apatow than it is meaningful

i am going to watch it some time this week!

xxp

apparently Louis CK's newest material features a routine on why, if you're a stand-up comic from Silver Lake, you need to get out of the game and why CK hates you.

Louie comparison leads to the question of what a gal Cassavetes would be like--gal equivalent of Husbands.

it does?

i mean not that im against that question

All Louie comparisons are way off the mark and I imagine anyone making them has never seen/understood either show.

its basically like louie but w/chix

not at all

heres the pitch hbo: louie, but w/ chix, & we make fun of SaTC - no punchlines tho

eh his 'give a shit about the world' is kinda forced and self-congratulatory - let's have people call me a good father and show me being a good father on a show I write and star in

you guys prob just cant see it because youre misogynists tho

whatever, reverse misogynist!

im pan-misogynistic

btw i thought it was roif not roy-fee

god that youtube. this person is a moron. she can't speak w/o some predigested phrase.

this was really good

my gf has college professor parents and is 24 and was an english major

the similarities end there but it's still kinda funny

oh man this show, i cant even blog abt it omg

haha did you like it or not

i feel like this show would be [obscure math] times better if no one else could ever have or at the very least publish opinions about it but as is i am in a crisis/teapot rn

sorry, haven't read this thread yet but just wanted to note briefly that holy shit this show is depressing + misanthropic. the only thing i knew about it going in is that ppl were comparing it to Louie but way off. Louie has a heart and is hopeful and this is just so bitter and cruel and angry. idk if i'll keep watching it. i'm not sure i have the strength for it tbh.

i dunno i feel like it's going for 'dark' in a way that's kind of intrinsically naive and eager-to-please

ya louis has a heart and is hopeful cause he is like a millionaire who lives in an imaginary nyc where you walk your kids to school and there's nobody on the street

at some moments, but all the body-hate + food stuff going on with the protagonist is really hard to watch, and all the characters are so petty without any level of self-consciousness that would make them palatable. xp

damn man give em a few episodes to become full humans

iatee, i'm not sure if you're just taking shots at louie, or defending girls as somehow more authentic in tone + style than it? bc a) the quality of either show is disconnected from how much misanthropy i'm personally willing to subject myself to (it's why i don't watch breaking bad anymore) and b) i don't think girls shows a more real nyc

lol ok

the characters are definitely unsympathetic in a way that goes beyond the deliberate she-took-the-cleaning-lady's-money stuff, but i dunno, women be having self-esteem/body image issues? that's pretty commonplace

let's not separate Dunham and CK into separate economic classes - they're both showrunners, they're both rich (or will be soon)

but yeah based on this pilot at least Louie is roughly 10000x better

i thought the verisimilitude re ny look and feel was v high

When I get a tweet from a girl who's like, "I'd love to watch the show, but I wish there were more women of color." You know what? I do, too, and if we have the opportunity to do a second season, I'll address that.

haha did you like it or not

i didnt really like it - ive seen a couple of other episodes i like better and i think theres some interesting stuff going on in the show but its all pretty qualified and hedged, like its not obviously 'good' or 'authentic' or 'funny' but it has flashes of being all those things? ive been thinking a lot about 'freaks & geeks' as a worthwhile comparison point rather than 'louie' or satc, like this facsimile of the real world thats more compelling for so obviously not being exactly the real world or w/e

haha im supposed to write about abt it but i dont really want to, everything ive read abt this show is so wrong-headed and terrible, idk

I would rather live in the louie-nyc than the girls-nyc it just doesn't exist

xp

i lived in nyc for ~13 years and it never looked like either depiction. it never looked like louie's NY, but it still looked more like his NY than Girls' NY and I lived in NY partially at the same ages as the protagonist in Girls (and even had internships in the media). also, i think the body-hate stuff goes beyond her negative self-image. i think some of the ways she's shot eating food (the spaghetti with her parents + the cupcake in the bathtub immediately come to mind) and the sex scene were particularly degrading

it seems like exactly the same joke as the credits for louie, people like to eat

i haven't seen it and don't really care, but just coming out as someone who knows Lena personally— she's a pretty rad person. and she works hard. and finally, in real life, she is fucking hilarious.

which means, to me, that while i hope this succeeds, if it doesn't, then meh, not really that big a deal.

wait so you think she is hilarious and rad and you really want her to succeed but you aren't willing to spend 30 minutes watching her show

so u dont care to watch this thing by this person you know and think is rad and hilarious lol xp

i don't have anything personal against her and it does seem like she's very talented and has a distinctive voice which is obv partially why i'm having such a strong reaction to the ep. xxp

lmao table

you can know someone is rad and hilarious without caring about what they do to make a living.

"i know her, she rules, but I can't be bothered to watch a show, don't care if it actually does well" definitely does seem like the material she's feeding on

Cassavetes NYC vs. Woody NYC

I do my best to seek out things that I know will be rad and/or hilarious

mad about you to me is the most realistic depiction of ny ever

lag∞nebb

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photos/rerunshow-ds2.jpg

lmao table

http://www.doubletroublepublishing.com/pc/catalog/MM52.jpg

If she's funny in reality, she's not very good (thus far) at translating her comic sensibility into actually-funny film/TV imo.

tbf most funny people never make funny tv shows

IRLs

kind of hate arguments about how accurate TV is when it comes to real places
the worst is watching any show set in NY with anyone who lived there

i dont think it really matters, but its interesting to look at

new yorkers are the worst people tho its true

yeah again I don't think the fact that this is realistic looking makes it better, it's just novel I guess. fake nycs seem like better places to live, usually.

yo iatee, i remember this one time we were talking and you were all like: "ya louis has a heart and is hopeful cause he is like a millionaire who lives in an imaginary nyc where you walk your kids to school and there's nobody on the street"

I guess Seinfeld/CYE really are the better comparisons in tone here (or maybe I just think that because I dislike both) - if Seinfeld could have gotten away with the relentless misanthropy of the first episode, he probably would have.

Louis's millionaire lifestyle is as much a fantasy to me as living entirely on money from one's parents, FWIW.

fuck white people

like I can't help but think that

HBO needs

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Jeffersons-title.jpg

eh, that wasn't really my cup of tea...mostly because it wasn't very Lena. i think Tiny Furniture is more Lena.

ha u just watched it

he's talking about the jeffersons

I was driving like an hour ago w/ a friend and when we saw this billboard at a light he asked me if I saw this yet, and I was like nah it's just some rich white girl new york shit and he was like oh man I thought it would be about awkward girls making their way through the world

and I was like nah I haven't seen it but I think its just some rich white shit

"I think it's like stillman's shit without anything worthwhile, but then again I didn't see it, I've only seen the billboard"

then what did he say?

he said do u want to get white castle

and then i was like naw thats just some white castle

I said "I'm sick of this bullshit I can't believe you lent me wonder boys"

because I was really sad about some shit and he came by and dropped off that terrrrible movie so I would have soem sort of light diversion

sometimes i think your posts should be in comic book thought bubbles

webcomics i'd think

BOYS

I said "I'm sick of this bullshit I can't believe you lent me wonder boys"

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:04 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

the 'rich white new yorker' criticism bugs me.

i think some of the ways she's shot eating food (the spaghetti with her parents + the cupcake in the bathtub immediately come to mind) and the sex scene were particularly degrading

that is kinda the point. i don't think it really needs punchlines. this maybe corroborates anyone who's saying that she's just preaching to the choir, but it's sorta enough that she's just rendering general shitty experiences; a lot of tiny furniture was about confronting and frustrating our ideas of how it should pan out & how it actually does play out, her fucking over her nice friend, her making bad but appealing decisions, just the slow undramatic unwinding of things.

i thought this was great!, anyway. i like the beeswax guy talking about mcdonalds, he is really honing a kind of irresistable-charming-asshole typecasting thing.

should have been father-and-stepmother. the mom made no sense

― fart bucket (toandos), Monday, April 16, 2012 2:08 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rofl, "mom was too mean, she should have been a stepmom, then it wouldve made sense"

maybe its just b/c we just did the big poll but i kept thinking about paul simons nyc when i was watching this, way more than louis ck's

also table in the table, you are a treasure on these boards, never leave

anyway, did not get the bitter and cruel and angry vibe from this at all, enjoyed it for sure, found it recognizable and funny, definitely not perfect and is sort of 'problematic' for a number of reasons but would recommend

yeah this is a fun/funny show and I liked it. it also still just kinda tickles at my class warrior itch, but I guess a lot of stuff does that, including a lot of real life.

I'm not digging the whole 'it's so true and relatable' thing. I mean, the protagonist stole money from the housekeeper. In a way, this is a lot easier to deal with if you think of it as the female Eastbound & Down. Instead of joining the major leagues, this Kenny Powers is delusional about being the voice of a generation. I don't think they'll take it as broad as that though.

"mom was too mean, she should have been a stepmom, then it wouldve made sense"

while we'd still be dealing with monstrous caricatures, it would make a bit more sense for a woman to be screaming about how she deserves a lake house if maybe the girl lying half-conscious on the floor wasn't raised by her. either way, people are really just asking for some backstory to explain why the "tough love" dunham is getting seems so contemptuous.

it kind of reminds me of that new "bff" show in that the half-hour format might be a little limiting. it asks us to get emotionally involved with character reality while indulging in broad cliches to move things along. We've got the lead's eating and fucking in stark indie-vision, but everyone who affects her life is a parody of a person.

yeah the episode felt shockingly short at a half hour.

oh god it'd be a nightmare as a 60-minute show, better too little than too much

kind of amazed judd "146-minute theatrical cut" apatow settled for that, actually

oh the old james l bridges understood how TV works even after he started making mammoth dramedies

lovechild of james l. brooks and jeff bridges?

lol

I would have enjoyed it at an hour I think. a longer show would allow it to stretch out and escape nightmare territory maybe? modulate tone a bit?

people are really just asking for some backstory to explain why the "tough love" dunham is getting seems so contemptuous.

― da croupier, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 8:10 AM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

asking her to get a job, what nazis

i mean she was not actually half conscious, as the mom said 'youre getting played by an all time player here' was the whole point, the tea wasnt knocking her out, her desperation to not get cut off was

i think its weird a parent would announce half-way through the dinner she was cutting off her child immediately with a nagging "no more money". ymmv

a lil grace period prob wouldve been wise but obvs the situation was already pretty loaded

and you're really ignoring the "i deserve a lake house" meltdown

i realized like an hour after watching the show that the mother is the mom from freaks + geeks, right?

There sure are a lot of boys on the Girls thread.

and, uh, pretty much every other thread. it happens.

I know, I know. Still.

she wants to use her hard earned money to sit on her ass at the lake, her daughter is being a manipulative lil monster and her husband is falling for it for the millionth time so she melts down a lil bit, no one behaved v well but it still ranks p low on the scale of family disfunction

obvs aside, i just think some backstory would help explain just how the situation is "loaded" and just how sympathetic the mom's anger is (though i know plenty of people who were just glad to watch a spoiled 24-year-old get shit on, even if it was by the presumable spoiler)

will admit having the freaks & geeks mom in this role made it more wtf for me

There sure are a lot of boys on the Girls thread.

― wolf kabob (ENBB), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 9:15 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh i thought this was the title of the show not an instruction on who should talk abt it, excuuuuse me

pretty sure the "backstory" is that her parents have been supporting her in nyc for two years while she writes her memoir