#rachel korine rare

[mildly-mandy]

The Making Of a Fanfic

Okay, so I've brought it up here before, but I have a fanfic I'm working on over on AO3. It's called Some Kind of Cyberpunk, and it's a Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Digimon fusion fic.

Why, you ask? Because I could. But mainly because some years ago, I got a secondhand or more copy of the old Bandai DVD release of the Gaiden and Legend of the Kikoutei Armor OAV. One side had the dubbed Ronin Warriors version, and the other had the subbed Samurai Troopers version.

Gaiden is a WEIRD story. I think I read somewhere that it was a thank you for fans who supported the series. It's two episodes for a story that absolutely needed at least three or four, and it shows. Anyway, the storyline involves the Troopers discovering that their friend Seiji has been lured to America in order for a sorcerer and a mad scientist that I've described as an absolutely unlikeable version of Peter Venkman to experiment with controlling his armor via technomystical means. They meet up with a girl named Luna who wants revenge for her dead brother, and end up having to go to Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood to confront the culprits. Seiji is unhooked from the computer he's been hotwired into, and Luna dies taking a blow for the sidekick characters Nastui and Jun while trying to stab the sorcerer when he goes after them.

The OAV ends with them back in New York, reuniting with their friends, and Ryo throws a bouquet of flowers off of a bridge, presumably for Luna.

That's it. The events of this little storyline are never mentioned again, aside from the implication that Shuu has had to use the rest of the money he won in Gaiden to pay for their trip to Africa in the next OAV. The final OAV storyline, Message, is done mostly in monologues by the Troopers over flashback footage, and Seiji's episode never mentions the use of his armor to murder innocent people. Ryo's episode never brings up that a girl who loved him died in his arms, a smile on her face.

And that irked me. But more than that, I was inspired. Because as the computer freaked out over the Kikoutei super armor, I remembered how in Digimon lore Ikkakkumon was discovered in the computer of an Arctic research base. And then I wondered what kind of Digimon could have resulted from a teenage boy with mystical armor made from a demon lord's corpse being hotwired into a computer with occultic programming.

I organized what would become the prototype playlist that acted as a soundtrack. The characters came next. Dianamon has always played a major role in the story, but as the plot evolved, so did her role. Much has been made about the fact that she can shift to a human form. As of right now in the story, the reasoning behind that is a mystery to the characters, who are still in the dark about many things.

Sage has always been meant to be a riff on the Ronin Warriors dub, but it's also a misinterpretation of his first words when encountered. He is an embodiment of the program used to control the Korin armor (and something else), and due to the extensive connection with Seiji, has his memories up until a certain point.

The people who discovered him are original characters, a necessity for a series so focused on the core characters that there is pretty much no one else important to the series. Background characters are rare in Samurai Troopers, and the title characters and their three companions are always kept separate from them. Anyone else who interacts with them are either enemies or are going to die. That's it.

So I wanted a way for the OCs to be able to connect. And that's where Rachel and her parents come in. Rachel and her friend Jason like doing urban exploration, a practice of wandering around places that are obscure or off limits. This can be hazardous, due to various circumstances like building conditions, people, and surprise animals.

Rachel learned self defense from her father, a man who had joined the army after she was born to help his little family. After he was stationed in Okinawa when she was three, the events of the first arc of the Samurai Troopers TV series occurred, and he was among a group from his base sent into Shinjuku when the populace went missing. His experience would lead to a great deal of PTSD, an honorable discharge, and an eventual career as the paranormal consultant for the city of Los Angeles due to it. He's still amazed that that turned out to be an actual career choice, but has set up a network of informants and associates that keep an eye on the City of the Angels.

Rachel herself is a young foul mouthed blonde woman with a tendency to think with her fists when she's angry, something that has gotten her into trouble in the past. An encounter with a bully in kindergarten led her to her friend Jason, a quiet nerdy boy with black hair that's always falling into his eyes. They've been friends ever since, and he treats their exploration hobby like real life dungeon crawling, making maps and researching the places they visit. He gets a lot of help from Rachel's mother Laura, a librarian at the LA Public Library. A fellow nerd, Laura speaks her mind, a habit her daughter has picked up on (much to her chagrin).

A report about a hidden tunnel in a cemetery outside of a long abandoned Buddhist temple in Little Tokyo sets off the events of the story. There have long been stories about that part of the neighborhood, as the property had been known to be associated with a man who had a reputation as a sorcerer. People who crossed him tended to end up in bad shape, dead, or just never seen again and presumed dead. Wanting to check this out before the neighborhood kids get curious and investigate it themselves, Richard calls his daughter, asking her and Jason to help look things over before closing it off.

Needless to say, they find more than they bargained for, A burned out computer on a raised platform above a pool of water. Wires leading into the pool below, weighed down by a white shape that moves in a way that Richard Does Not Like. Scattered papers and notes about a process to mesh magic and technology, using what sounds like a teenager lured to the place for that specific purpose. An old army knife and a bloodstain. And then there's the boy who shifts like satellite signal in bad weather, who can give off static and emit lightning. Using what information they can gather from him and the notes, they form a theory about what happened.

They think Sage is a remnant created from a boy that died down in that moldy pit that still smells of ashes and rot.

They aren't right. But they're not wrong, either. They're just missing a great deal of information. Either way, they mean to track down his companions, the mysterious Samurai Troopers. Because they deserve to know that their friend is still alive, in a way.

But what's going to happen when they meet? What are these strange beings that call themselves Digimon, and just what can they do?

I have had a LOT of fun plotting out this story. It's been in my head for about ten years now, and I'm still tweaking it.

[radiatingrares]

Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez & Rachel Korine (x)

[stainedglassgardens]

Watched in April

Queen of Earth Black Christmas Dogs of Chernobyl Firecrackers Les Misérables The Evil Dead The Daughters of Fire (Las hijas del fuego) The Fallen Idol The Wailing (곡성, Gokseong) Inherent Vice Sorrowful Shadow Mistery Lonely The Grand Bizarre Zombieland: Double Tap Waves '98 Uncut Gems The Last Séance Too Late to Die Young (Tarde para morir joven) Room Queen & Slim The Holy Mountain (La montaña sagrada) The Chaser ( 추격자, Chugyeokja) Made in Dagenham The Color of Pomegranates (Նռան գույնը, Nřan guynə) Lost Girls Ghost Town Anthology (Répertoire des villes disparues) And Then There Were None Doctor Sleep Meshes of the Afternoon Circus of Books Catfish Wildling Delphine The Strange Love of Martha Ivers The Red Balloon (Le Ballon rouge) Nona. If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them (Nona. Si me mojan, yo los quemo) The Lodge Invisible Man Sans Soleil

Did not finish

Horsehead (Romain Basset, 2014) Sinister (Scott Derrickson, 2012)

Did not like

Sorrowful Shadow (Guy Maddin, 2004) Mistery Lonely (Harmony Korine, 2007) Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019) The Last Séance (Laura Kulik, 2018) The Holy Mountain (La montaña sagrada, Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973) Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019)

Okay

Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 2015): The way it was filmed reminded me of The Midnight Swim and Always Shine. I watched it because Elisabeth Moss is in it but was rather disappointed in the end -- it was beautifully shot but went nowhere

Black Christmas (Sophia Takal, 2019): Like Assassination Nation, this is a film I'm glad young people today have -- and it was fine, and if there’s anything I’ve got to say about so-called raging feminists it’s that we need more of them, but yeah the ending was disappointing and I felt that I had aged out of the target audience a good number of years ago

The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981): Finally saw this! Love me a a good campy horror story once in a while

The Wailing (곡성, Gokseong) and The Chaser ( 추격자, Chugyeokja) (Na Hong-jin, 2016 and 2008): A healthy dose of wtf in both of those, I’m still not sure I “correctly” grasped the intended tone. I also just lost all interest in The Chaser when (spoiler) the girl died. What’s the point of that? Are we in Game of Thrones now? I may still be angry about that, actually

Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014): I know it’s a good film but it bored me to death. I don’t like stories about men or drugs

Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer, 2019): A sympathetic, slightly disappointing sequel

Waves '98 (Ely Dagher, 2015): I don’t remember much about this short but I did think it was good

Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015): I couldn’t watch this as separate from the book, it felt more like a companion film to me than anything else. It was good I think, but I’m definitely not the best judge on this one, because the book was so amazing and I’m still not over it, apparently

And Then There Were None (René Clair, 1945): Was it good? Who knows. They changed the ending and added in a crap love story, so who cares, really

Wildling (Fritz Böhm, 2018): I liked it? I didn’t really see the “feminist themes” in this but it was good

Delphine (Chloé Robichaud, 2019): This is one of those short films that are a little too “slice of life” for me to really enjoy. I can tell it’s good, tho

The Red Balloon (Le Ballon rouge, Albert Lamorisse, 1956): This is apparently a classic short film, and I think I would have enjoyed it a lot had I seen it in 1956. Seeing it today, when everything in it has been used in a hundred thousand other films, made it fall flat a little

Nona. If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them (Nona. Si me mojan, yo los quemo, Camila José Donoso, 2019): Watched this because it was directed by a woman! Did not know what to expect at all. The non-linear narration kept me trying to remember if there was something I could possibly have skipped that would have made more sense of it. I think the premise (old woman throws Molotov cocktail at former lover’s car) is better than the finished product, although it is very well-shot and the acting is amazing

Good

Dogs of Chernobyl (Léa Camilleri & Hugo Chesnel, 2020): Short documentary that had me on the verge of tears several times (you can watch it for free on YouTube!)

Les Misérables (Ladj Ly, 2019): It’s hard to talk about films like these. It is very good, very important, I think everyone should watch it. Think a new La Haine

The Daughters of Fire (Las hijas del fuego, Albertina Carri, 2018): Loved the reflection on pornography. The pornography itself was a little more... boring... but I appreciate the intention, and the guts it took to shoot something like this

The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed, 1948): An amazing British classic (adapted from Graham Greene!) that I had somehow never heard of. Great acting, especially considering the main character is a small child

Too Late to Die Young (Tarde para morir joven, Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, 2018): There will be people in this world to say that "uhh nothing happens in this film", a statement to which my reply will be twofold: first, it's beautiful so who cares, and second, how many other films have you seen that take place in a commune in the 1990s in Chile? That's what I thought. Shut up

Made in Dagenham (Nigel Cole, 2010): Films like this and Suffragette, that is, mainstream films about the working classes and political activism, are almost bound to be flawed, but I'm grateful they exist all the same. And how many of those have we seen that are about workers’ unions, with an all-female main cast, and nuanced dialogue about communism and the place of women in the home and of men in feminism? I’m glad that male directors have finally figured out that one of the best ways to avoid showing a one-dimensional idea of women is to have lots of them in one film. And Sally Hawkins! I love her

The Color of Pomegranates (Նռան գույնը, Nřan guynə, Sergei Parajanov, 1969): Another one of those classics I had never heard of (until I got Mubi!). Indescribable, beautiful

Lost Girls (Liz Garbus, 2020): Really liked the speech at the end about the police failing the victims and their families, really liked that the old inspector guy wasn't made to be someone who was on the side of the victims instead of on his own side. Bleak, sobering. When I watched this I didn't know Garbus was the person who directed that Nina Simone documentary, which I also love.Will definitely seek out more Liz Garbus in future

Ghost Town Anthology (Répertoire des villes disparues, Denis Côté, 2019): I watched this not knowing anything about Denis Côté or the film, and I loved the atmosphere even before the supernatural element really kicked in. Films like this and The One I Love or Everything Beautiful is Far Away are my kind of low-key science fiction

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943): Aaaand another classic I finally saw! It just warms my heart to see that stuff like this was being made (by a woman!!) in the 1940s

Circus of Books (Rachel Mason, 2019): I saw a headline calling this “the queer Stories We Tell” and I loved Sarah Polley’s documentary and wouldn’t go quite that far but I can see where it’s coming from. A good autobiographical documentary about the complexity of families

Catfish (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, 2010): I think everyone going into this today knows what this is going to be about, but let me tell you, it does not reduce the impact

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946): Barbara Stanwyck and Lizabeth Scott! Murder! Intrigue! Love and sleaze!

The Lodge (Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala, 2019): This was so efficient. It is so well-done, and Riley Keough is amazing as usual. More subtle than Franz and Fiala’s last effort, Goodnight Mommy, and at least as good

Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983): It’s hard not to be disappointed by this after hearing every film bro I’ve ever met describe this as his fave ever. It is... pretty racist and sexist... but yes, very pretty, very nice if you can get past that

Faves

Firecrackers (Jasmin Mozaffari, 2018): Is this a coming-of-age story? Anyway it’s about two working-class teenage girls in small town Canada who are this close to making their dream of leaving for New York, and one of them is fuuuuucked up...

The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018): I think this is what I want from a non-narrative documentary. I’m tired of seeing pretentious Godfrey Reggio knockoffs. This quite simply blew my mind and is one of those very rare films I can see myself rewatching ten times

Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas, 2019): I can’t not compare this to Natural Born Killers and Thelma and Louise, both of which I used to love and haven’t seen in a number  of years -- but Queen & Slim is quite possibly better than both of those. The tone, the breadth, the acting -- even the soundtrack. It’s a masterpiece

Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, 2020): This is about a man who creates an invisibility suit. This is also about a woman who is being stalked and abused by a controlling man who just won’t rest until he has completely destroyed her -- but of course, since this is cinema and the woman in question is Elisabeth Moss, she ultimately beats the shit out of him. This was very difficult to watch for me but I’m glad I stuck through

*

I got Mubi this month! So glad I did. It’s so much better than both Filmstruck (RIP) and Amazon Prime. I like that choices are made for me up to a certain extent -- and those choices often turn out very good, and always interesting. And yes, we’re still in lockdown, I’m still unemployed, hence the number of films watched this month. Hopefully we can get out in May and I’ll end up watching less!

[fuckyeahevanrwood]

"No Bra, No Panties": How Thirteen Defined A Generation Of Women

Catherine Hardwicke was paid $3 on Thirteen — $2 for the screenplay, which she co-wrote with actress Nikki Reed (then 13), and $1 for directing. Fifteen years later, that film stands out as a still-potent cultural milestone for women who grew up in the early aughts — a searing snapshot of the twisted, painful turmoil of being a teenage girl, without the redeeming after school special epilogue. Thirteen spoke to us, not at us. 

“I was a first time director,” Hardwicke said during a Refinery29 roundtable for the landmark movie's anniversary— the first time Hardwicke, Reed, and Evan Rachel Wood have been together since its release. “All the characters are women, and it was going to be rated R and about a teenager. That does not check the boxes for any studio.”

So, in her pursuit to get the film made, Hardwicke worked for nothing and poured whatever money she could into production. The filmmaker, who would go on to direct the first installment in the massive Twilight franchise, used her own furniture as props. Her car makes an appearance, as do some of her clothes. She and the cast, including leads Wood and Reed, slept in the rented house in Los Angeles where they filmed, often in the same bed. (Since then, the film has turned a profit — Hardwicke says she received a check for $18,000 two months ago.)

All of this — the paltry $1.5 million budget, the whirlwind one month summer shooting schedule — contributes to the raw, dizzying atmosphere of Thirteen, a dark and gritty take on the experience of being a teenage girl at a time when the only cinematic alternatives were Freaky Friday and The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Harmony Korine’s Kids — perhaps the closest example in terms of impact and subject matter — had come out nearly a decade before.

I vaguely remember the circumstances under which I saw Thirteen. It was likely a hot, humid early September day in Montreal — the kind that would make my best friend and I seek refuge in one of the city’s downtown movie theaters. I was 13; my best friend was days away from her own 13th birthday.

What I vividly recall are the feelings the film elicited. I remember being terrified, a fear I couldn’t exactly name, but which gnawed at my innards as I watched Tracy Freeland (Wood) morph from a prepubescent innocent into a sexualized harridan who hides her tongue and belly button piercings from her mother. Would I be like that? Should I be? I remember feeling seen, recognizing how intimate a relationship between two teenage girls can be. I remember squirming at the scenes showing interactions with boys, things I was starting to think about but couldn’t imagine myself actually going through. 

Of course, none of these anxieties were voiced as the lights came up, and my best friend and I wandered back out into the haze of the afternoon. But Thirteen had made its mark, as it has on countless women of my generation.

I wouldn’t learn until years later that the film was helmed by women. The script emerged out of a collaboration between Hardwicke and Reed, who had a personal connection: Hardwicke had been in a long-term relationship with Reed’s father and thought of her as a surrogate daughter. They kept in touch after the breakup, and Hardwicke started noticing that something wasn’t right with Reed. Much like Tracy, she was acting out, rising rapidly through the ranks of popularity at her West L.A. school. And then her friends got busted for selling crystal meth.

In her concern for Reed, Hardwicke invited the teen to her Venice Beach home. It was there that over a six-day period in January 2002, the pair wrote the script that would become Thirteen. In the aftermath, they made a pact: If Hardwicke could get the film into production, she would direct it, and Reed would star in it.

Still, the road ahead was rocky. An R-rated movie co-written by a teenager with female leads wasn’t exactly an easy sell. Securing funds wasn’t easy for Hardwicke, who was then working as a production designer in Hollywood, and had no prior directing experience; Reed, meanwhile, had never acted onscreen, and the screenplay was her first. It wasn’t until Holly Hunter, who would go on to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Tracy’s mother, signed on that the project finally got off the ground. After an acclaimed premiere at Sundance, where Hardwicke won the top directing award, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the film for distribution. Thirteen was released in five U.S. theaters on August 20, 2003, and grossed $116,260 opening weekend. But the salacious subject matter resulted in word-of-mouth and heightened press coverage, especially for the teen leads. By its third week of release, Thirteen’s gross had increased by 622%, as did the film’s reach, as it went on to screen in 73 theaters, and then up to 243, for a total domestic gross of $4.6 million. 

But the value of seeing oneself represented on screen is something that’s harder to quantify.

“It takes women to tell female stories,” Reed says during the interview. This is something we’ve heard many times as Hollywood grapples with the way the industry historically treated women, as well as the systemic inequality that has resulted in a still-egregious gender gap.

Thirteen was an extreme portrayal of the alienation of an especially troubled teenage girl. But that hunger for an outlet for those complicated emotions is universal. “I had a need in me, like Tracy, to just explode,” Wood said. “And acting was something I did so that I could do that. I felt like I couldn't do it anywhere else.

”If it’s been a while, here’s a quick recap: Tracy Freeland (Wood) is a good girl. She gets straight As, loves golden retrievers, and wears her fair blonde hair in cute dual buns. But that doesn’t mean everything’s rosy. Her poetry is an intense, poignant exploration of early teenagehood. Her single mother Melanie is a recovering alcoholic who runs a beauty salon out of her kitchen, and though she’s an attentive parent, she’s overwhelmed. And Tracy’s father (D.W. Moffett), constantly behind on child support, is too focused on his new family and new job to care very much. Tracy copes by locking herself in the bathroom and resorting to self-harm, an act that was shocking to many at the time. But not to Wood.

“I hadn't really done drugs,” she said. “I was a lot of talk, sex-wise, but wasn't really doing much. But the emotions, and that feeling of frustration and being lost and angry, and the dynamics with the family and the cutting — those were things where I was like, ‘Oh. I know what this is. Like, I understand this really well.”

“That's one of the reasons why I wanted to do it too,” the actress, who recently testified before Congress about a sexual assault that led her self-harm and two suicide attempts, explained. “Because I was like, I didn't know cutting was a thing until I read the script. And that's when I was like, ‘Other people do this?’

”So, when classmate Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed) comes along with her jeweled cross necklace, long glossy hair, and jeans so low you can see her thong peeking out, Tracy is already primed for some acting out. It would be easy to paint what comes next as black and white — and in fact, many of the film’s critics did so at the time. Evie and Tracy strike up a friendship, which leads Tracy down a bleak path of drugs, questionably consensual sexual encounters, illicit piercings, and shoplifting. But the truth is more complicated. In her own way, Evie is as vulnerable as Tracy. She lives with a woman named Brooke, sometimes referred to as her guardian, other times her cousin, whose main occupation seems to be recovering from Botox injections and getting drunk. She doesn’t care what Evie does with her time, as long as no ones calls the cops. With Evie by her side, Tracy upgrades to It Girl status at school. But that comes at the expense of her grades, her relationship with her mother, and even her own mental health.

The acting is fantastic. Seasoned child actress Wood, who would be nominated for a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award, handles Tracy’s descent into hell with fiery zeal, concealed under angelic looks. When, towards the end, she’s wandering Hollywood Boulevard in a crop top and smeared black lipstick, drunk, she looks like a nightmare version of herself, her inner turmoil having taken over. It’s a duality that would come into play later in her career, as Dolores, the mild host-turned-avenger on HBO’s Westworld. Reed exudes an uncomfortable degree of sexuality for such a young woman, but there’s also a sadness to her, a need to be loved. And as Melanie, a mother who loves her daughter fiercely, but is blind to the scope of what’s going on behind her closed bedroom door, Hunter quivers with anger, anxiety and concern.

Watching the film for the first time as an adult, I was amazed at how avant-garde it feels.

The central relationships aren’t romantic in nature. Instead, the film focuses on the dynamics between female friends and mothers and daughters. That fraught connection between Tracy and Melanie is one that we’re only just starting to see again, in films like Lady Bird, and, veering sharply into supernatural horror, Hereditary.

Evie and Tracy’s friendship is complex and intense, vacillating between almost sensual devotion and cruel rivalry, especially where Melanie’s affections are concerned. That need to be utterly consumed by one’s best friend while grappling with latent jealousy is so specific to young women of that age, and a dynamic that’s rarely portrayed, even today.

It’s so true to life that while filming, Wood and Reed developed a rapport that mirrored the one they were portraying on screen. “There were moments that I was completely in love with you,” Wood, who came out as bisexual in 2011, told Reed.“

We had this kind of innocence about our relationship that was so personal to us,” Reed responded. “It was ours, and it was so real [...] And then, because a lot of that was in the movie, when it became something that the press could talk about, suddenly it was like our actual relationship, in a sense, was put out there for people to talk about.”

As often happens in Hollywood, especially where young girls are concerned, the stars were held up for comparison by the press. Who was cooler? Who was hotter? Who would have the best career? Things actually got so acute that, like Tracy and Evie, the two drifted apart, not speaking again until nearly a decade later.

“We had to talk about it when we were 25,” Reed said. “I actually went to [Hardwicke’s] house, and I said, ‘You know, I haven't talked to Evan in so long, and I really miss her.’ You gave me her number, and I said, ‘Do you think she would even want me to call her?’ You were like, "Yeah. You guys are in such a similar space.’ We had both gotten married. I called [Wood], and it was so cool. [She was] like, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’"

Still, Thirteen is best remembered for its shocking scenes — and there are many, including the opening shot, which shows Evie and Tracy sitting on a bed, huffing paint and punching each other in the face, laughing. A provocative confrontation later in the film shows Tracy bragging to her mother that's she's not wearing a bra or panties. 

In one memorable moment, Evie and Nikki seduce an older neighbor, played by then-27-year-old Kip Pardue, who reportedly wasn’t aware that the actresses were 14 until he showed up to shoot. “‘He was in shock,” Hardwicke said.” I was trying to talk him down off the ledge, ‘Look, we're going to be safe. I'm going to be there, the teacher's going to be there. It's all gonna be cool.’"

Ground rules were established: A studio teacher was present at all times, sitting behind the couch the three were kissing on. “Couldn't touch the nipples,” Wood recalled. “Couldn’t touch the top of Kip’s pants.”

All the same, the final film was extremely controversial, so much so that, Hardwicke said, juvenile court judges and directors of rehab centers, accompanied her at Q&As after early screenings so parents could voice their concerns.

“Three mothers stand up: ‘My daughter would never do that,’ she recalled. “And then the judge would say, ‘Excuse me, this movie is mild. Not one person got pregnant. No one got in a car crash, no one [died by] suicide. Nobody died. I see much more elevated cases in this every single day.’”

“I found myself in a weird position where I was being asked to be sort of the spokesperson for teen angst,” Reed said. (A clip from her 2003 appearance on Ellen shows her on the defensive, explaining that she’s a straight-A student: “I just got my report card.)

Both Reed and Wood are parents themselves now. Reed and husband Ian Somerhalder have a one-year-old daughter, Bodhi Soleil. Wood’s son Jack, from her previous marriage to actor Jamie Bell, is five. “I'd show it to my son,” she said of Thirteen. “ I think boys need to be watching more female-centric films anyways, so they have a better understanding about women, and opposite sex.”

Still, they now feel they have a deeper understanding of the visceral reaction adults, particularly parents, had to the film at the time. “I see it all differently,” Reed said. “I’m totally terrified, and I’m also really grateful for it. I feel like I have a really good understanding of some of the things that are going on.“

The movie helped open the door for Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, which graphically depicts scenes of sexual assault, self-harm, and suicide, and even to a certain extent Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham’s film about the inner life of a 14-year-old girl who turns to the internet to compensate for the feelings of inadequacy she’s facing in the real world.

The lack of social media does date the film, as does its inability to really grapple with race and privilege. As a white middle-class young woman, Tracy is afforded the benefit of the doubt, not to mention a second chance. If she’d been a woman of color, she might never have recovered from her year-long bender. In fact, the only people of color in the film are the guys that Tracy and Evie alternately hook up with, and buy drugs from, a setup that is particularly iffy in hindsight.

Overall, however, Thirteen holds up in a way that never would have seemed possible to Hardwicke or Reed at the time they wrote the script. The impact it has had over the last 15 years far exceeds its original reach. Hardwicke’s $3 payday went a long, long way.

“Literally the other day, a woman came up to me, she's like 28 or 30, working at a cool company, Hardwicke recalled. “She goes: ‘You know what, I saw Thirteen,’ and it scared her straight. She never drank or smoked in her life, or did any drugs.”

“I don’t know if there will ever be anything quite like it,” Reed said. “It was kind of just magic.”

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please get help. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.