Spiral showtimes7/29/2023 It may be random to her, but for viewers it creates a universe of familiar stress that is uniquely Holofcener’s. (In Walking and Talking, for instance, Heche calls Keener’s date “the ugly guy” on an answering machine without realizing he’s listening.) “And then I think, Oh, fuck it, whatever.” Similarly, only after the fact does she recognize that characters in her films are often overhearing things they aren’t supposed to. “It’s only later I realize that I’m kind of repeating myself, like, Oh, shit. Still, Holofcener doesn’t think about her work in terms of overarching themes. Not me, thank God.” Beth and her sister, Sarah ( Michaela Watkins), also do volunteer work in You Hurt My Feelings. “That happened to a friend of mine, actually. “It was just about this character based on me, and how useless I felt volunteering, and the blind, bleeding heart of offering a Black man a meal when he’s just waiting for a table,” she says. Holofcener wasn’t trying to make any grand statement about culture at large, though. Please Give is an almost prescient take on the embarrassments of allyship and the absurdity of white guilt, derived from Holofcener’s own experience volunteering. In Enough Said, Louis-Dreyfus’s divorcée realizes she’s accidentally become friends with the ex of the guy she’s dating and starts absorbing her criticisms. In Walking and Talking, her protagonist (played by her sometimes-muse Catherine Keener) spirals as her best friend (Anne Heche) prepares to get married and starts to doubt that commitment. Her heroines are never as successful as they want to be, often coveting a lifestyle that’s just out of reach. Holofcener’s films mostly take place in New York or Los Angeles-while she’s lived in both, her decisions are largely based on which will give her tax breaks-and capture the neuroses of the white middle-to-upper-class intellectual breed. (For what it’s worth: Holofcener also did a pass on Marvel’s Black Widow.) After she leaves me, for instance, she’s going to have to go home and get a producer’s notes on a Netflix script she’s rewriting. “I feel like if I stick to doing what I love or really like, my career’s always in jeopardy,” she says. In our conversation over coffee and toasts-during which Holofcener also peppers me with questions-she is frank about the unglamorous aspects of how she makes a living. She’s been one of the preeminent voices in American indie cinema since her 1996 feature debut, Walking and Talking, but still struggles to get her productions off the ground. You Hurt My Feelings is a return to form for Holofcener. “I feel like I am my movies, but I’m not, right?” She seems to be genuinely asking the question. “Because my movies are so personal, I sometimes wonder if the people in my life who love me-do they love my movies, and do they have to? And if they don’t, do they actually get me?” she says. Like all of Holofcener’s films, You Hurt My Feelings is rooted in her own life.
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