Blowing up millennial angst in Fort Tilden

Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty play two young women from Williamsburg who detonate hidden comedy land mines tripping on millennial terrain in the new movie Fort Tilden, the prize-winning feature debut from director-writers Sarah-Violent Bliss and Charles Rogers

By Katherine Monk

It’s a road movie in rompers, a coming-of-age story without a defining moment of arrival, and a prize-winning festival film that speaks to an entire generation of young people born at the turn of the millennium.

 

That said, you can understand why Fort Tilden was labeled a ‘movie about millennials’ since its world premiere at the 2015 South by Southwest festival in Austin, where it picked up the grand jury prize for best narrative feature.

 

A comic adventure featuring two privileged 20-somethings searching for purpose as they make an ill-fated foray toward the beach, Fort Tilden stars Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty as Harper and Allie – best friends, roommates and weirdly passive aggressive soul sisters.

 

“You have to be careful with labels,” says Elliott, responding to the ‘millennial’ tag stamped on Fort Tilden’s forehead.

 

“We’ve been talking about this particular millennial thing for a while and it makes me nervous. You know, you’ll be on a panel and someone will ask you what’s wrong with their daughter. Well, I don’t know what’s going on with their daughter… I think the more we talk about it, the more it makes me want to reassess what these terms really mean.”

 

Elliott says ‘millennial’ is now used to bundle personality traits, and also to assign worthiness to a given demographic.

 

For instance, it is now culturally assumed that ‘millennials’ are self-absorbed, addicted to social media, unable to commit to routine, unwilling to work for minimum wage, the product of helicopter parents and yet, still drenched in a sense of entitlement that makes them believe they are not only better than their peers, but destined to accomplish great and heroic things.

 

It’s not exactly flattering, but it’s probably the reason why Harper and Allie create such grotesquely comic moments. From borrowing someone’s bike and then leaving it in an alley, to ordering iced coffee from the local mini-mart then dumping it in the garbage, these two young women are difficult to love, but easy to laugh at – if only because we recognize bits and pieces of our baby id.

 

“Harper is sort of passive, and unable to engage in her own life,” says Elliott, herself the child of a comedy dynasty that began with Bob Elliott of the Bob and Ray comedy duo back in the 1940s, and continued with her father Chris Elliott (recurring presence on David Letterman) and sister Abby Elliott, of Saturday Night Live.

 

“I could relate to the anxiety. She judges other people but she also can’t stop judging herself. She’s not moving forward with her own life, so she’s judging everyone else who tries,” says Elliott, 30.

 

“She is so riddled with insecurity. I could relate to that. You know, like ‘What’s your thing?’ What’s going to make you yourself? I know that feeling.” – Bridey Elliott

 

“She is so riddled with insecurity. I could relate to that. You know, like ‘What’s your thing?’ What’s going to make you yourself? I know that feeling.”

 

McNulty gets it, too. “I’m 25 now… and I keep wishing I could get over the bad parts of myself. But I think every generation probably faces the struggle of not having a place yet. But what may make this generation different is the social media aspect of it, and this need to project something externally. There’s this need to at least appear that you have it together.”

 

In the film, the need to create the perfect social media avatar is articulated through McNulty’s Allie, the ‘nicer’ one, who applied to the Peace Corps, but bails on the final interview for visa processing so she can hang out on the beach with Harper – and the two guys they met at a party in the giddy opening scene.

 

Shot entirely on location in New York, there’s a slightly drier Seinfeld feel to the hilarious denouement that takes us from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to Fort Tilden, Queens – with many unpredictable stops along the way.

 

Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss, the writer-director team responsible for this accidental manifestation of the Zeitgeist, say the whole thing started as an idea for two characters trying to get to the beach.

 

“As soon as we said that to ourselves, we knew what kind of girls those were,” says Rogers. “The way Sarah-Violet and I riff is through a common language that speaks to who these girls are. We are referencing a lot of our friends, and maybe things we were trying to reconcile within ourselves. It feels like a collage of a lot of the people in our lives, and in our time.”

 

Bliss says it wasn’t specifically generational, but because it’s coming from a very real place both she and Rogers understand intimately, it’s going to be seen as some form of next-gen statement.

 

“When you end up talking about it with press later, it becomes part of the film’s story. But we really just wanted to write two characters that we knew and understood, and to explore what was funny, complicated and tragic about them,” says Bliss, who cast her old Oberlin College classmate, McNulty, as Allie.

 

“I think Allie is just really funny. She’s also this great combination of being super sweet, but also able to see herself, and who this character is, and adding to it. She was perfect for this part. And Bridey had made these videos of herself that were so smart and so specific, and so funny. We both just kind of fell in love with her,” says Bliss.

 

The two laugh at a question about the nature of their relationship. “I am a homosexual,” says Rogers. “We just write together.”

 

“But it’s funny how people ask about it,” he says.

 

“Well, I am single!” says Bliss, laughing, as we pick up the social media side of the film, and the digital presence that defines an entire generation.

 

“I think texting is a like talking about people in a room, and that is a reflection of a larger motif within the film which is the way you represent yourself to people, and what you actually are. That part of it is of our generation, because no other generation has had to be so aware of that before. Social media has made everyone self-conscious. We can’t hide,” says Rogers.

 

“I think texting is a like talking about people in a room, and that is a reflection of a larger motif within the film which is the way you represent yourself to people, and what you actually are. That part of it is of our generation, because no other generation has had to be so aware of that before. Social media has made everyone self-conscious. We can’t hide,” says Rogers.

 

“But I think first and foremost, this is a story of a troubled friendship. And everyone can relate to that. We’ve all had friend breakups, and I think they are complex, and under-represented in stories. And we wanted to draw on that,” he says.

 

“We all have conflicting feelings,” says Bliss, who says she’s had to wrestle with her own insecurities about perception, success and social media, especially after winning big in Austin earlier this year.

 

“I don’t want to be in a crowded space talking about what moves me, and there are a lot of things that I’d like to see change, but I don’t know what it means to stand for something. I will write a movie about that. That’s my contribution,” says Bliss.

 

“Actually, I think we are both a little hard on ourselves,” says Rogers. “I think we are both empathetic people and sensitive to how situations play out in real life. And because we are hard on ourselves, we are hard on other people and those qualities end up influencing characters like Harper and Allie.”

 

“But in the end,” says Bliss. “They’re just two people. And we’re trying not to judge them….”

 

Fort Tilden opens in theatres August 20.

@katherinemonk

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