SXSW Film Interview: Putting the Teen in My Sucky Teen Romance with Director Emily Hagins

Yeah, what is that one...Friday Night or something?

Oh, Fright Night? I love Fright Night.

It's hilarious. Would you say My Sucky Teen Romance is more a commentary on or celebration of your age group's preoccupation with that particular genre?

It's more of a teen movie with vampires in it as a plot device. But, also, having made two other horror films, I wanted to be really respectful of the vampire genre. I didn't want to make them over-romanticized like I think they are in Twilight, with the sparklies and the "oh, we're all good." I think vampires are...I don't know, they're monsters. They're bad.

Maybe it's a bad answer to say both. At first I was annoyed by how much teen vampires were all over the place. I felt like the people that were too into it were kind of representing everyone in my age group and people were getting the wrong impression. So that's why all the protagonists in the movie don't particularly like that vampire craze — they just want to go off and be geeky kids and not have to deal with it. But they do like vampires, so I think they do celebrate the vampire movies and culture, but not so much the over-romanticized part that's really prominent right now.

We love that major plot elements from this film are pulled from firsthand experience. For instance, you are a regular attendee of CONvergence [science fiction convention]. Any real life CON moments make it into the film?

[laughs] Yeah. It's funny, 'cause that convention takes place in Minnesota and I fly up every year for it. I was a guest four years ago and I just fly back every year because it's fun. I have friends up there that I based some of the characters on and some of our little goofy things that we did at the festival wound up in the script. They're going to fly down for the premiere, so I'm kind of nervous. They're going to be like, "Hey! I said that."

I think—because the main character is kind of shy and a girl, and it's written and directed by a teenage girl—people are going to think, "Oh, that's her. She just wants to live out her fantasies." No. Not at all. I barely watched any vampire movies before I did research. That character is based on one of my Minnesota friends that's just very much like me, so that was easier for me to write because I could bring qualities of myself into it. There are some things...the teen meet-up, when they go in and it's not at all what they expect, that's exactly what happened to us at the convention. All the little things they do before they meet the vampires...a lot of that really happened to us.

Your age is constantly highlighted—and rightly so—as the youngest female feature film director in the U.S. How do you feel about this fixation on the fact that you're doing all of this as a teen? Are you like, "Yeah...watch the movie."

I like to embrace being a teenager. I think there is so much comedy in teen awkwardness and I really want to put that in my movies and make it more genuine. A lot of the kids in the movie aren't professional actors. There's this really genuine sense about them and what they're saying. It doesn't feel like kid actors. It feels like regular kids.

I try and use that..what I know about being a teenager firsthand, so I don't want to ignore being a teenager, but at the same time I want to be taken seriously as a filmmaker. I just try to keep up with my age and take whatever I learned from my other films. You know, Pathogen, my first movie, looks like it was made by a twelve-year-old. It doesn't look like a child genius made it.

Speaking of age, we wanted to touch on some other youth-oriented things like social networking and...computers. [laughs] How important is Facebook, Twitter, blogging, YouTube, etc. to your filmmaking?

The Internet has been a really big part of this movie. With Facebook, I had all the kids make profiles for their characters, so they had to pick out their likes, interests, and put up pictures of themselves that they thought represented the characters. Then they had to friend the ones that they would know...like the kids that meet at the convention, they wouldn't know each other so they wouldn't be Facebook friends.

We used a crowd-funding website called IndieGoGo, which helped us fund the majority of the movie. I had no idea. It gives people a really good sense of community and their name can get in the credits depending on how much they donate. It was a huge help and I don't know how we would have done the movie without the Internet resources. It helped with the characters and it helped with the actual production, too.

How did you go about crewing up and casting the film?

A lot of the people on both the cast and crew were people I had worked with on short films or my last two features. With some people, it was just the right place at the right time. Like the producer, Paul Gandersman — we were jut at a party and he said, "I like the title of your movie. I want to produce it." I was like, "Oh, yeah, we'll talk about it later." And he said, "No, I'm just saying right now. I want to produce it." He ended up being a really big part of it.

Director Emily Hagins

It was just a mixture of kids and adults throughout. Our Assistant Director was fifteen...everyone was excited to work on the movie. And with the kids, some of them I had worked on in features, some of them short films, some of them were just my friends and I had no idea they could act until they asked when we were holding auditions. I was blown away by their commitment to acting and wanting to be a part of the project. I think having something that they were all excited about helped bring out good performances and good special effects. Our vis effects team was mostly one guy doing all of these red eye shots and vampire bites...

It gets pretty bloody in the trailer.

Yeah. It's mostly a teen movie, but we had to put some gore in their for the vampires. It's just goofy. It's a silly movie. Very indie.

You've offered advice that it's important to find a balance between being confident in your project and humble enough to accept help at the same time. Do you attribute that way of thinking to the reason why your sets have such a great reputation of positive energy and good, productive vibes?

Just for me to be happy with myself, I don't want to come off like a self-centered director. As an only child, I loved working with a team all for the same goal. I've never seen myself as above anybody else on the set. But, to be in charge, you have to have some level of knowing what you're doing so people will want to follow you and will feel like you're the authority. You just have to be open to other people's ideas and suggestions, but still maintain that level of authority.

Right. You kind of touched on this, but do you feel like those qualities are innate character traits or something that you've been able to hone over the years filming?

I think it's as I've grown up and figured out more of who I am...just some people will tell me straight up, like, "You need to make good eye contact and this is how you do it." When people are really honest about it, I'm like, "Okay. Maybe I am too shy right now. I need to get more confident." Just trying to be better at doing that as I've grown up and being less of a teenager...saying less "like's" and "so's" and "um's." It's hard, but I'm trying and I think it will get better over time.

Yeah. I, like, totally understand that. [THAT WAS NOT ON PURPOSE] What have your SXSW experiences been like so far?

Well, I volunteered at the festival two other years and that was a lot of fun. I attended the festival when I was probably ten, I think. So I barely remember it...I remember liking the movies. This is actually my first movie to get into a film festival. I played my movies kind of on the side. It's kind of hard to explain. Pathogen played at CONvergence when I first went. It also played at Slamdance when the documentary played at Slamdance. Nothing has officially been accepted anywhere until this movie. The reactions have been really positive so far. It's just trying to figure out things about publicity and how to get people interested in seeing the movie. It's all very new, but it's exciting.

My Sucky Teen Romance Promo Shot

Besides your world premiere, are you looking forward to anything in particular this year?

I really want to see Paul, because I love everything about what I've heard. I loved Adventureland and Superbad, so I love that director...and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It's pretty similar to our movie in some ways with the "real" thing, the sci-fi convention, and the alien's name is Paul and our vampire's name is Paul.

Actually, reading about your film reminded us of Shaun of the Dead...their whole way of working, which is really funny, but also kind of creepy. They respect the genre a lot, but they're also having a lot of fun and it's kind of adorable.

Definitely. We were totally going for—not a mimicking Edgar Wright vibe—but if you're going to do a horror/comedy, you kind of think of Shaun of the Dead because they really do it right. I think it's a really difficult balance, too, because you don't want to go too much in either direction or else people aren't going to know what they're watching. We definitely tried to take the things we liked about that style. It was really good, because most of the kids had seen Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz and I could say, "Remember in the movie when they did this? We want to do something LIKE that." And they were like, "Oh, yeah! I know what you're talking about." It's very distinct...like enough to reference. Very much admire those guys.

Well, congratulations on selling out all 100 advance tickets [on top of badgeholders and film passes] to your world premiere in just 24 hours. Does a massive film fest premiere make you nervous at all or are you just ready to unleash My Sucky Teen Romance on the world?

[laughs] The first one. I'm so nervous. I'm probably going to have to stand in the back or something. I get nervous just watching it by myself in my house. Are they going to laugh? What if nobody laughs? I'm just a very nervous person. I think maybe 30 minutes into the movie, I'll relax and I'll be fine.

My Sucky Teen Romance world premieres at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday, March 15th at 9:30pm. It also screens at the Rollins Theatre on Saturday, March 19th at 8:30pm. For a complete list of screenings, visit the SXSW film schedule.