Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the year’s most talked-about movies continues with I Saw the TV Glow, A24’s coming-of-age psychological horror drama written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun.
The film, which world premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, stars Justice Smith as Owen, a teenager just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.
The pic hit theaters in early May and has been rounding up awards nominations, scoring five from the Independent Spirit Awards including for Best Feature, Directing ands Screenplay for Schoenbrun. It also scored three noms at the Gothams.
The film is bathed in hues of neon pinks and greens, setting the stage for this ’90s nostalgia trip, reminiscent of the late-night TV shows we weren’t supposed to watch. It’s like reliving that teenage thrill of sneaking a peek at forbidden content on a friend’s borrowed VHS tape.
Set in a suburban neighborhood, Owen meets Maddy and finds a common interest that leads to an obsession with a late-night television show, The Pink Opaque, a show about two demon-fighting teenagers.
Schoenbrun delved into the script, exploring themes of identity, the fallibility of memory, and self-acceptance. Drawing inspiration from personal experiences in an online community, the roots of the film grew out of analog fandoms and ’90s television.
As Schoenbrun explains, that generation of mass culture lent itself to a film about self-recognition and self-denial. “I had this idea in my head for years about the TV shows of my youth and how I felt haunted by them,” the said. “In hindsight I think I hid from myself inside the screen, and just obsessively waited for Saturday night Nickelodeon or Tuesday night Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the point where fandom became a mode of dissociation for me. I had this idea about a TV show that ended on an unresolved cliffhanger that becomes an obsession that sort of infects a character’s mind. And then I realized this was a coming-out metaphor.”
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Films like The Matrix, directed by the Wachowskis, who later came out as transgender, and They Live have explored similar metaphors, but none have been done in such a pointedly trans way.
“The film posits this idea of being buried far away on the other side of a screen. I think the further I get into my own transition, the more I realize that this is what I was trying to do — to unbury myself from the other side of that screen. To stop dissociating through fiction. To, like the characters in my film, make it to the other side of the screen. And to do that requires a reassessment of reality at the most deep and core level. This movie poured out of that realization.”
The film also stars Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler and Fred Durst.
Read the script below.