Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature film, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, plays with many of the themes that have interested the writer-director in their previous two films, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair and I Saw The TV Glow. In all three movies, media like video games, TV shows, and movies become conduits for deeper exploration and self-discovery. In their latest film, a loving obsession with a horror movie becomes the key to unlocking its main character’s desires.
In Camp Miasma, Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a filmmaker loosely based on Schoenbrun, who’s been tasked with rebooting a nearly dead horror franchise with a fresh perspective. She becomes intent on casting the original film’s final girl Billy (Gillian Anderson). Far away from the coasts, Billy lives on the frosty camp property where the original movie (and some of its less-than-stellar sequels) were filmed. She insists that the film’s serial killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), still lives at the bottom of the lake, waiting for the next film to begin. Enamored with the actress’ eccentricities, Kris stays with Billy to convince her to work on the next film, even if it means risking awakening Little Death.
The A.V. Club spoke to Schoenbrun and Einbinder about creating a horror franchise within a film, parasocial fandom, and experiencing a sexual awakening at the movies.
The A.V. Club: Jane, your previous films were trans coming-of-age stories, and Camp Miasma feels like the natural next step: A movie about embracing who you are. How did you know this is the next story you wanted to tell?
Jane Schoenbrun: I said the first two movies were trans coming-of-age movies. And this time, I said, let’s just get rid of those last two words. It came from being at a point after the intensity of early transition, and of blowing up one’s life so that I could become myself, where I was starting to really enjoy being me, and where the world was starting to feel like it had some color in it instead of being oddly drained of the possibility of magic and joy.
A huge part of that was coming into myself sexually, physically, and just being able to be the person I had always wanted to be without shame or embarrassment. It was also really tender. Learning how to undo many, many years of internalized shame and trauma and dissociation from being able to be present in my own self sexually. That took a lot of gummy candy and a lot of conversations with people who I really loved and trusted to be able to open up a part of myself that I thought I would always have to keep hidden. Where it led was a trans-coming story.
AVC: Kris is such a great character, a neurotic filmmaker who over-intellectualizes the movies she loves. I’d like to hear more about writing that character and exploring what it means to criticize art that you love.
JS: Kris is a funhouse mirror of myself, obviously. The film is self-reflexive, and it wears this on its sleeve, but I wanted it to have a real sense of humor. There is a version of sitting you down to lecture you about the problematic nature of the slasher genre that would be excruciating for me as much as anyone. I don’t want to make movies that feel like a screed. I want to make movies that feel like smoking a joint, hanging out, and having a really cool, fun, good conversation. I knew early on that the movie needed that moment where Hannah’s character whispers like, “This part’s transgender.” And Gillian’s character says, “Shut up.” That “shut up” needed to be said out loud so that the movie could have fun with itself and be self-effacing.
It was really fun working with Hannah, who’s such an amazing performer, to create this character who’s so lovable even while she’s so tightly wound, and who goes on this journey from being the person sort of whispering at the screen and critiquing the screen and pointing out the split diopter shot to the person in the split diopter shot and the person living in the movie. It’s an arc for the character that is unambiguously joyful. Watching Hannah grow and change as Kris from the beginning to the end was beautiful.
AVC: Hannah, how did you bring Kris to life, with her physical discomfort and intellectual passion? I can’t get the Zoom meeting scene out of my head, it’s like a one-woman show.
Hannah Einbinder: It was so nerve-wracking at first. I was certainly committed to embodying an energy far different from my own. In spending time with Jane, and then in figuring out the costuming and also the specs—the glasses—made a huge difference on how I felt as a person and how I was able to transform in that way. Barton Fink was one that Jane had me watch just for certain mannerisms. Between some of the things that I stole from Jane, and then just like the archetype that I feel a little bit familiar with, and then trying to add in that third thing that feels really personal, it started to come together right as we got to filming.
I had so much fun inhabiting Kris’ energy because it is incredibly high, and my normal vibe is really low and slow, just like Cali vibes. I really enjoyed being in that high-energy, high-anxiety space and tracking that throughout Kris’ journey of letting go of some of that and accepting themself. [It] felt like a really natural process that intimidated me at first, but once we got started, I felt like, okay, I think I can do it.
AVC: I also wanted to ask about the world-building. How did you come up with the horror movie lore and the environment Kris finds herself in?
JS: I feel like it was this hidden way of storytelling. Not just the franchise, but the franchise with eight sequels. And then by the sixth sequel, they’re going to space, and they’re going to medieval times or whatever it is. Then they reboot the franchise, and they hire Michael Bay to produce it in 2006, and they try to make it as serious as the original, but then that one also sucks. Then they reboot it a couple more times, and they keep rewriting the mythology, and only the first couple are canon.
Drawing a map of some of these long-running horror franchises and looking at how convoluted and then unconvoluted, but then re-convoluted—as capital does its thing decade after decade—if you zoom out and just look at the map and say, “Well, let’s tell the story of that,” that’s fun. That’s a phenomenon that everyone knows about, but we’re still inside the cinematic universes rather than zooming out and being like, “Whoa, what a crazy cultural situation we find ourselves in.”
Then it was just like pure nerd stuff. Working with the team and everyone was such a big part of that creatively. My core group of collaborators and I basically did a pop-up writer’s room coming up with the taglines, even the names of the sequels, the fake press quotes on some of the ads. The board game that you see in the movie for about a second and a half is a fully playable board game with a rule book that somebody in the art department designed and made sure actually existed. My buddy Albert designed the 8-bit video game, which is a tribute to the terrible [NES] Friday The 13thgame. We just went deep, full nerd on it. And it was the most fun I’ve had since I was like 10 years old at Party City during Halloween.
AVC: Gillian Anderson is playing a character that’s not not Norma Desmond, and she brings an old Hollywood glamour and sense of mystique. Hannah, how did you find your rapport with Gillian considering the characters’ complex dynamic?
HE: The film examines the parasociality that fans have with the objects of fandom. It’s an interesting transition out of that. We meet them when Kris is enamored with Billy. Billy’s eating at their dinner, and Kris doesn’t really touch the food. She’s got this nervous tummy thing going on, and there is a lot of extra anxiety in addition to their natural disposition. Throughout the film, as Billy does a lot of work to calm that down and to ease Kris, she kind of lets her guard down and asks the questions she really wants to and gets the answers that she wants. They build that closeness. It is a cool examination of the way that we idolize these people and understand their humanity. They actually get close in a way that I think is genuine. They find camaraderie in a lot of ways. It is a cool meditation on fandom.
AVC: Although Camp Miasma deals with issues like transphobia in media and belated sexual awakenings, it’s also deeply funny. Jane, how did you find that balance?
JS: It was always my biggest goal with the movie to make something that was joyful and goofy and kind of like letting one’s hair down after my first couple of films, which came out of a really intense, deeply not goofy period in my life. But I’m goofy, and I want to make movies that are as true as possible to my personality. I grew up idolizing Kevin Smith. There’s definitely some Jay and Silent Bob in this movie. Obviously, the movie is talking about deeply serious things as well. And there’s a lot about overcoming sexual trauma and sexual trauma in different forms—the sexual trauma that Billy’s character is trying to overcome after an adolescence as a young woman in the horror film industry is a very different sexual trauma than the more oblique sexual trauma of dissociation that Kris’ character is dealing with.
The way they overcome it is by forming this relationship where they’re able to talk about things and explore things that feel off-limits, taboo, or dangerous outside of a situation where they feel really safe. The humor in the movie almost became a way to invite the audience into that process. It’s like only after we—as both the audience and the team making the movie—eat a bunch of fried chicken, smoke weed, hang out, and goof off, that we feel comfortable enough to go to those really vulnerable places. That’s been my experience during my own sexual awakening. That’s the experience that the characters have. They have to disarm each other with human energy before they can open up parts of themselves that they’re scared to show.
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