Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine and Director Jane Schoenbrun stopped by The Hollywood Reporter's studio during the Sundance film festival to chat all about their film 'I Saw the TV Glow' and reveal how '90s girl power shows like 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' and 'The Secret World of Alex Mack' had a big influence on the film.
00:00When I can't sleep at night, I'm just thinking about, like, how can we save ourselves as a species?
00:11Burn it all down and start to go shut over?
00:14I don't know.
00:18He wants to explain for viewers the concept of the show within the show.
00:23I can do it.
00:24And where you got the idea for The Pink O'Pake.
00:27The Pink O'Pake is a TV show from the 1990s.
00:30It's about two best friends.
00:32They meet at summer camp.
00:33They live across the county from each other, but they have a psychic connection, and they help each other each week fight a new monster who's trying to trap them in an evil hell dimension called the Midnight Realm.
00:45It aired for five seasons on the Young Adult Network and is a beloved 90s supernatural girl power TV show.
00:55The show is sort of an amalgamation of a lot of the shows that I grew up watching as a kid.
01:01Everything from Alex Mack to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Are You Afraid of the Dark?
01:06Does that show, like, bring up anything from your, like, childhood or watching shows?
01:11Like, where does it fit on, like, what you would watch?
01:13Are You Afraid of the Dark?
01:15Definitely I would watch.
01:16Goosebumps?
01:16I would watch, um...
01:19Hannah Montana.
01:21That's not really the same.
01:22Just to complete the trilogy.
01:24Feels the same to me.
01:25Do you remember that movie, um, the Disney Channel original movie, Don't Look Under the Bed?
01:29No.
01:29Okay, well.
01:30I lived in.
01:31It reminds me of that, too.
01:32I was gonna ask why the 90s, but I suppose it's because, for, like, for you, there's a nostalgia element.
01:38Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs in the 1990s.
01:42Um, I think, actually, like, a very specific time, you know?
01:48Uh, my parents' generation, I think, fully bought into this, like, Reagan-era idea of, like, uh, like a white flight out of, uh, a working-class background into this, like, nook where you can be a kid.
02:02It can be, quote-unquote, safe, but safe can also mean homogenized and repressed.
02:07So, yeah, just reflecting back on, like, my gaze on my own childhood now that I've, you know, understood myself as pretty intrinsically different than the image of normal that, uh, was sold to me.
02:21What, like, what did you connect to from either your own upbringing or current day?
02:27Like, what kind of was top of mind as you were on set every day for you?
02:30I was raised in a really queer, really freaky, like, art family, and I think I was instilled with, um, a lot of, like, freedom to be strange.
02:42And I felt that through this film it was really important for me to, uh, communicate that to people who don't know or who have been told repeatedly that it's not okay to be strange.
02:53Um, and so I kind of wanted to, like, use the energy of the film to, like, break into people's psyches and, like, uh, kind of allow them to, like, pervert themselves more freely.
03:03I had a lot of fight growing up, um, and although, you know, I had to fight a lot, uh, I'm, I'm grateful for my ability to, um, push through and survive.
03:18And I, uh, wanted to examine, like, what it looks like when you don't have that sense of fight, when you really are at the hands of your environment, even though it's, um, wasting you away.
03:33Uh, how you'll still kind of succumb to conformity just because it's less tragic than defying it.
03:44If you guys are, like, up in the middle of the night, what is it that keeps, keeps all you up at night?
03:49Like?
03:51The anticipation of things to come, um, I'm a very impatient person, and so I find that, like, I'm always like, let's just go, go, go, go, go.
04:01Um, and so when I have to wait, it really, um, drives me crazy.
04:05Um, and I feel like sleeping is waiting.
04:07I feel, like, very anxious to, uh, dismantle Empire.
04:14This, and, like, this movie feels like it has that in it.
04:18Like, I feel like this movie is, like, gut scream, and so when I'm, uh, can't sleep at night,
04:24I'm just thinking about, like, how, how, how can, how can we save ourselves as a species?
04:33Burn it all down and start to go shut over?
04:36I don't know.
04:37I think about, um, how the trick is played where we are, uh, made to desire our own repression.
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