Mile End Kicks director Chandler Levack is a recovering music critic

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Paste Magazine: So lovely to meet you at South By and now talk to you here! Kismet, truly. I just saw Mile End Kicks and it was lovely—but I’ve gotta say, I did spend a lot of it distracted and horrified by the fact that the 22-year-old protagonist already had a 33 1/3 deal. I felt very inadequate. 

Chandler Levack: If it makes you feel any better, I definitely didn’t have a 33 ⅓ when I was 22. [laughs] I didn’t have my shit together enough to do that, that’s for sure.

That does make me feel a bit better, actually. 33 ⅓ aside, though, how long did you work in the music criticism industry—well, so much as it is an industry?

Oh, great question. How long did I work in the industry? Did I work in the industry? I mean, I started when I was 18 and I probably stopped writing about music around ten years ago, give or take.

Why did you get into it in the first place?

Because of Almost Famous, literally. I saw that movie when I was 15 and I just was so floored by it. It kind of remains the most foundational art I’ve ever seen in my life. And I was just like: “How do I live in the movie?! Well, I’ll just become the main character. I’ll start writing for magazines and newspapers.” And I did. I did that when I was 18 and I dropped out of school—I just went for it.

Well, do you ever feel like you actually got to become Cameron Crowe?

I mean, I guess if Cameron Crowe was, like, a 39-year-old single woman with a giant butt that makes movies, then sure. [laughs]

He wishes. What was your experience like in the early days of being in the industry? Because obviously, Grace has a bit of a rough go of it in the film.

It was both awesome and messy and complicated. I interned at SPIN when I was 20. I was living in New York in the summer of 2007. As a kid, I was just so deeply obsessed with New York, so it was such a dream come true—beyond my wildest dreams, really. I would, like, go transcribe an interview with Thurston Moore, where he’d be talking about the record store he was in when he found out that Kurt Cobain died, and then after work, I would walk to that record store and stand there to just soak up history. I would go on these rock pilgrimages. I remember I walked into the Chelsea Hotel and begged the concierge to let me sneak up to the roof—and he let me do it, so I walked up to the roof, but then I immediately saw a naked man and he was like “You shouldn’t be here.” [laughs] Classic. 

As the summer went on, I started working for the magazine full-time, because I think I was just so, like, “I’ll do anything.” At the time, nobody cared about the internet or knew that the internet was a big deal for writing. The people at SPIN were like, “Well, we have this thing called a website? And, I don’t know, you could write for the website if you want.” That was amazing, because I started interviewing bands all the time. That just kind of led me on this career: I started writing for them more often, and then writing for the Village Voice, and then I went back to Toronto and started working at mags there when I was 22. 

But then moving to Montreal in the summer of 2011, I was so amazed by all of these young musicians who were just making art for art’s sake. My whole life, I’d been this weird professional  child-adult, and this was like the first time that I was really around people my own age, partying and doing things and being part of something as opposed to just writing about and observing it., I think that’s why that summer was so pivotal for me.

Looking back on it now, I was so confident in my critical opinion as a writer then, but it was all formed by men in their 40s wearing plaid who loved the Hold Steady. I was just trying so hard to be their peer—and I thought that I was! But now I’m like, “No, you weren’t; you were like a dog who could walk on its hind legs. A cute little prop or something.” I don’t know. The more I think about that time, the more I’m like, “What was that?”

A lot of the movie really revolved around being a young woman in this often older and male dominated space—feeling like you need to take the opinions of other people as gospel in order to make any headway in the industry. What was your own journey with that like?

I think it was writing the script for Mile End Kicks that made me really come to terms with that for the first time. I started writing it in 2015, when I was probably only about three years older than the character that I was writing about. And, you know, now I’m in my late 30s. It was a decade of writing and rewriting the script, and admitting to myself that a lot of the canon for a long time that I found valuable—in music, in art, in film—was entirely shaped by these dudes who were my bosses and friends and mentors at the time. I wasn’t curious enough to seek out other modes of thinking, because they were kind of the authority. A lot of my conversations and interactions were just pretending to know what they were talking about. Trying to have a seat at the table and parroting back the kinds of albums and filmmakers and writers that those guys liked so that they would like me—even though I fucking hate Béla Tarr movies and I don’t give a shit about Hüsker Dü or [Charles] Bukowski. Like, that stuff makes me want to sear my eyeballs; stab them with a sharp fork or something.

It took me a long time to unpack my own misogyny in my taste in art and figure out what the fuck I had to say as a person and even admit to myself that I wanted to be a filmmaker. Because for a long time, criticism was very safe for me. It was kind of, like, adjacent to the thing that I wanted to do, but I didn’t actually have to go through the pain and vulnerability of admitting that I wanted to be an artist myself. I always had a complex about it. You know, my mom would always tell me that being an artist was very indulgent. And, wow, wait till she sees what I’ve been cooking up lately. [laughs]

There’s a part in the movie where Grace, if I’m remembering correctly, says something like, “Do you think that girls who date guys in bands just want to be the guy in a band?” And on some level, I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It’s hard to be so close to art but not making it, you know?

It’s so true. You get close to it. The thing is, I’ve never felt cool. And there was something about being a journalist and interviewing people and being on the list and all that… Like, in a very vulnerable time where I felt so socially awkward and self-conscious and repressed and terrified, being a music writer gave me a sense of identity, a sense of weird power, in a way, and just belonging. Because I could interview people, and if I could interview people, then I could make them my friends or prove to them that I had some kind of value. So a lot of my friendships and relationships were kind of formed by, like, writing about someone to make them love me.

I think it’s just really hard to be like, “No, I’m just gonna focus on myself—my own thoughts, my own feelings, what I want to say about the world.” Because a lot of times in my life, I’ve just been told, like, “Stop talking about yourself.” It’s scary to say out loud that you want to tell your own story, but the voice insisting I needed to just got louder and louder until I couldn’t ignore it. 

I’d imagine it was an odd transition, especially once I Like Movies got such rave reviews—because now here you are, having a press cycle about you, rather than being one of the cogs pushing it forward. Being interviewed, rather than interviewing. What’s it like being on the other side of the equation? 

It feels so weird. One thing you don’t realize when you’re making these films in a vacuum is that you have to do public speaking and weird photo shoots and talk to, like, bloggers from sites called Rachel Loves Popcorn or something, and a lot of the conversation will be just: “How much of this thing is you? And what do you have to say about this? Tell us more about you!” I don’t like talking about myself. I get scared. My biggest fear is being perceived. I want the film to speak for itself, I don’t see the point in me speaking for it. I don’t want to be known. But that’s a journalist’s job: to know you, to get you to talk and say something interesting and compelling and new. So it’s a very strange relationship.

But, of course, I know what it’s like to be on the other side. As a journalist doing interviews, it’s this weird thing where like, for 15 minutes, you have absolute power. Like, one time I interviewed Armie Hammer—pre-scandal!—in a hotel room. For 15 minutes, Armie Hammer had to answer anything that I wanted to ask him. As a writer, I always wanted to get to the heart of why somebody makes things, but now, as the person being written about, you do kind of understand why people get burnt out: they’re tired of answering the same question over and over again, or maybe they’re just lonely and sad and exhausted.

Something I’ve always thought was funny is that there’s a very obvious power imbalance during an interview, but honestly, I feel like both sides think they’re the ones on the bottom. The subject is at the mercy of the journalist, but the journalist is at the mercy of the subject, too—they need access, need a story, and they’re entirely reliant on the subject for that, who is typically also just a much more important and powerful person than the journalist. Both parties feel like they’re the one on the back foot.

Oh my god, that’s so true. It’s so weird! It’s crazy to think, like, from 18 to 25, that’s how I spent all of my time. The most formative years of my life, and it was just me doing that always. It’s such a weird, weird thing—to feel both powerful and like you have no power at all. I remember talking to the lead singer of the Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne, about grief and his wife’s mother dying, and how they were both so sad and traumatized by the experience of grief that all they did was have sex. How that was the best sex they’d ever had, and it changed their relationship and their marriage. And some part of me was like, “Why are you telling me this? I’m 21 years old.”

Sounds like a killer interview, though.

Oh, it was amazing. I would just luck into these great, candid interviews with people. I interviewed Joan Jett about The Runaways, and she was talking about working with Kristen Stewart, teaching Kristen Stewart how to play guitar. And she was like, “Kristen, if you hold your guitar like this, hold the amp like this, then you can use it as a vibrator to get off. So Kristen, push it to the wood, fuck your guitar.” And I was like, “Okay, writing this down.” In hindsight, I kind of think my superpower was that I was just very small and disarming and surreptitious, so people were like, “Oh, I’ll tell you stuff, because you don’t even really seem like a journalist to me.” People will tell you their secrets, because they don’t view you as an actual journalist, just a lady with a tape recorder. 

What are your thoughts on journalism and criticism these days?

Honestly, journalism as a craft and profession just feels like it’s becoming more and more undervalued. Now, it’s like, “Well, we don’t need that. We’ll just get you to do a TikTok where you answer silly rapid-fire questions, or play a drinking game, or try a bunch of, I don’t know, British snacks.” [laughs] I mean, I can see why actors and celebrities prefer to do those kinds of things sometimes, because it’s safer—they’re not gonna have to be at risk of exposure. But it lessens the value of what great magazine journalism and profiles can do. I just miss real cultural critical engagement. It’s becoming a lost art and that kind of breaks my heart.

Casey Epstein-Gross is Associate Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].