“It will all turn out alright, it always does,” says Leah, the protagonist of Elizabeth Wood’s provocative first feature-length drama, “White Girl.” It speaks to Leah’s utter naiveté, but the all-too-real nature of her white privilege; she’s never faced true consequences and she might never. For Leah, with parents who have money and status, things generally do turn out fine, but for her Puerto Rican boyfriend who sells drugs to get by, it’s a much different, darker reality.
“White Girl” isn’t just concerned with examining privilege, nor is it a SJW treatise, it’s also a kind of Harmony Korine-esque “kids gone wild” film. But that “White Girl” is layered with often dubious ethical, human and moralistic questions over the lead character’s reckless behavior demonstrates how it’s more than just a cautionary tale party film. Drawn from Wood’s own personal experiences, “White Girl” is complex and that’s exactly how the director wants it to be, leaving the audience on edge with questions about white-girl saviors, accountability and the privilege of people who can’t even fathom how the other half lives. The film also offers a showcase for Morgan Saylor, the young actress from “Homeland” who is practically unrecognizable as Leah, the young, out-of-control hedonist who dates the local drug dealer on a whim, and then traverses all of New York to get him out of jail when he’s busted.
Co-starring Brian “Sene” Marc, Justin Bartha and Chris Noth, Elizabeth Wood’s “White Girl” is an arresting debut, certainly influenced by “Kids,” but never defined by it. As her film plays in limited release, we talked to Wood about The Movies That Changed Her Life (see more entries from our recurring feature right here).
The first movie you ever saw.
At age three I started watching “Poltergeist” on repeat morning til night. When it would end I would wait for static to show up on our big wood-paneled TV and touch the screen. My whole family thought it was cute, but that’s kinda creepy right? I remember then the VHS cracked, it was a tragic day.
The first moviegoing film experience you can remember.
I went to “Batman.” when I was 7. We waited in line for hours and my family sat in the front row. I laid on my back and watched it giant above me.
The best moviegoing film experience you ever had.
Well, maybe it was the craziest, but I might be guilty of equating crazy with good. “The Virgin Suicides”: when Air‘s “Playground Love” came on I was already tripping out. By the time the film was over I had lost it. Drugs and or alcohol were probably involved, I was 17. I sobbed through the credits and in the lobby. I made my boyfriend sit in the parking lot of the mall all night while I carried on so insanely it’s nearly indescribable. I was such a dramatic teenager. My film “White Girl” is opening in that same mall movie theater in Oklahoma City. I hope it makes some teenager crazy.
The runner up is when my parents took me to see “The Crying Game” when I was 9 at the other mall in town. When there was full frontal nudity they gave me a twenty and told me to go shop at Claire’s until it was over. That was the first time I was allowed to walk through the mall alone and I had just seen my first dick. Big day.
The first film you saw that you realized that you too could be a filmmaker.
My freshman roommate Melissa, a psychic filmmaker, turned me on to avant-garde and documentary film. She took me to see Jonas Mekas‘ “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses Of Beauty,” a 5-hour experimental film made from 30 years of home footage, at Anthology Film Archives. It was so epic that it compelled me to start documenting everything immediately.
The first movie you became obsessed with.
“Flowers In The Attic.” My cool babysitter rented it for me when I was 5. It’s about these siblings that get locked in an attic by their mom and begin a borderline incestuous relationship (in the book it gets way more serious). I used to make friends act it out in attics, it was very inspirational.
The next one was “Kids,” when I was 12. My parents tried to get me to see it as a warning of what would happen if I had sex and did drugs. They were so scandalized that I knew I should refuse to see it with them and instead snuck in to see it on my own. I’m afraid it had the opposite effect of what they hoped. I couldn’t believe anyone was allowed to tell stories so freely. Years later, Christine Vachon, one of the “Kids” producers, produced my first film “White Girl.” People sometimes compare the two, and while that’s a huge compliment, I think they are two very different flavors of film with extremely different points of view. But I know “Kids” extreme honesty was formative to me as a storyteller.