The actress and first-time feature film director reveal how they handle sexist reviews.


No one walks into a stoner film expecting to leave feeling warm and fuzzy, but Augustine Frizzell&rsquo;s first feature&nbsp;Never Goin&rsquo; Back&nbsp;is like a relaxing contact high.

Model Camila (<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/film-tv/model-cami-morrone-is-making-her-first-serious-foray-into-film">aka Cami</a>) Morrone, 21, who recently plunged into acting full-time and Australian actress Maia Mitchell, 24, whose previous screen credits are the epitome of PG, make a charming pair as foul-mouthed high school dropouts Jessie and Angela. Their troubles begin in good faith: Angela spends the savings from their waitressing jobs on a birthday present for Jessie&mdash;a trip to Galveston Beach in Texas&mdash;only to find out that Jessie&rsquo;s brother (newbie actor Joel Allen) has spent everyone&rsquo;s rent money on a botched drug deal.

While the latest A24 enterprise has many of the tropes we&rsquo;ve come to expect from a teen-centric stoner comedy&mdash;unwitting consumption of edibles, projectile vomit&mdash;there are plenty&nbsp;we don&rsquo;t, including palpable financial hardship, the easy depiction of&nbsp;fluid sexuality, and a beautifully poignant female friendship.

Jessie&rsquo;s brother and his guy friends and their foolish hijinks remain forever in the background, serving as a reminder that this movie is unequivocally not about boys&mdash;in fact, there&rsquo;s no cute-boy love interest to speak of, nor a single heteronormative kissing scene. It&rsquo;s based on Frizzell&rsquo;s own experience as a young woman in Dallas, making destructive choices with her BFF as a means of entertainment in what she calls the &ldquo;cultural desert,&rdquo; having fun while doing it, and, through a combination of privilege and luck, coming out on the other side unscathed.

As the 39-year-old director tells it, that construct doesn&rsquo;t bode well for everyone. &ldquo;I didn&#39;t expect the vitriol and how people are just mad about it,&rdquo; Frizzell says of the critical reaction. &ldquo;I just thought maybe you&#39;d think it was dumb and unfunny but I didn&#39;t think you&#39;d be pissed off that the women are behaving this way.&rdquo;

To her point, sexist undertones&nbsp;permeate&nbsp;every negative review of&nbsp;Never Goin&#39; Back.&nbsp;One critic&nbsp;<a href="http://filmthreat.com/reviews/never-goin-back/">goes so far</a>&nbsp;as to say there&rsquo;s &ldquo;a real danger in perpetuating this type of teenage girl,&rdquo; another refers to a scene of Jessie and Angela getting slut shamed by an old man as &ldquo;<a href="http://ew.com/movies/2018/08/01/never-goin-back-review/">self-inflicted humiliation</a>.&rdquo;

Similarly, long-time movie critic Todd McCarthy, for his review of&nbsp;Never Goin&#39;&nbsp;Back&nbsp;in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/never-goin-back-film-review-sundance-2018-1079171">The Hollywood Reporter</a>, writes &ldquo;first-time writer-director Augustine Frizzell makes it a fierce competition as to which characters are the most moronic: Angela and Maia [ed note: we assume he meant Angela and Jessie], whose every other word is the f-word,&rdquo; labeling the lead characters &ldquo;hormonally supercharged&rdquo; when the most ass they get is a makeout scene with each other. In the privacy of their own home.

Consider for comparison the language used in reviews of Greg Mottola&rsquo;s hit movie&nbsp;Superbad&nbsp;[2007], whose plot is premised on two teen boys trying to get laid at a party,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcBxlzKyvko">dropping f-bombs</a>, and committing crimes with no consequences. Years earlier&nbsp;the same critic wrote for&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2007/film/reviews/superbad-1200557352/">Variety</a>, &ldquo;Seth (younger Rogen clone Jonah Hill), is a motor-mouthed fatso born with an over-supply of vulgar bravado. Best friend Evan...is thinner, taller and more presentable, but equally keen to get a little experience in the saddle before heading off for college.&rdquo;

The exact&nbsp;cussing that makes Angela and Jessie moronic is quickly dimissed&nbsp;to be innate &ldquo;vulgar bravado&rdquo; when Seth does it, while Seth and Evan&#39;s central sleazeball mission of bedding girls so drunk they don&rsquo;t realize who they&rsquo;re banging is euphemized into an admirable film plot, instead of being called out for the&nbsp;danger&nbsp;of perpetuating this type of teenage boy.&nbsp;McCarthy goes on to call&nbsp;Superbad&rsquo;s star ladies Emma Stone and Martha MacIsaac &ldquo;accessibly human and nothing like the snotty &lsquo;whatever&rsquo; bimbos so often seen in such fare.&rdquo;

Yet ask a woman for her critical opinion and she may tell you that Stone&rsquo;s&nbsp;Superbad&nbsp;character is&nbsp;&ldquo;<a href="http://ew.com/article/2007/08/15/superbad-2/">even less likely representing a real, live gir</a>l,&rdquo; than any Judd&nbsp;Apatow film with female leads so unrealistic that they could only have come from the male imagination.

Perhaps that&rsquo;s the issue:&nbsp;Most people don&rsquo;t know what an &ldquo;accessibly human&rdquo; woman looks like&nbsp;because so few women are depicted in their full humanity&nbsp;on the big screen.&nbsp;Certainly Frizzell&rsquo;s film represents only a specific demographic&nbsp;(white, beautiful) and everyone is entitled to dislike it, but&nbsp;Never Goin&#39; Back&nbsp;should be judged on&nbsp;the same merits&nbsp;as every non-moralizing dude flick of the same genre&mdash;not on how it jives with what we think we know about women.&nbsp;

Below, we speak to Frizzell and Morrone about all of the above.

JG: Cami, what attracted you to the role of Jessie?

CM: I am someone who has always loved comedies and I&#39;m a big fan of&nbsp;Thelma and Louise, and&nbsp;Superbad, and&nbsp;Pineapple Express&nbsp;and fun stoner comedies, and I had never seen a female version. So when I read the script I thought it was super fun, I loved the dynamic between Jessie and Angela, and I really felt like this hasn&#39;t been shown in this light for a female. And as a big comedy fan myself, I was laughing throughout reading the script, and laughing while making it and filming it.

There are a lot of challenging moments. There&#39;s a scene where Maia and I get high out of our minds and there&#39;s a scene where I have an incident in the closet, so all those things, as an actor, are in my opinion, challenging moments I&#39;ve never played before. So I decided to take that on. I was nervous as to how I would be portrayed, but I try to do anything that makes me a little nervous.

JG: Did it help to have a female director on set?

CM: I have worked with both female and male directors and I&rsquo;ve had really great experiences with both. Augustine, Maia and I have great chemistry. This was Augustine&rsquo;s story we were telling. But, Maia and I were able to interpret certain things in our own way that we think the characters would say. There were a lot of women on set. Our DP was also female, it just makes it an a lot more comfortable, easy environment.

JG: Augustine, since this film is based on your life, did you feel when you were growing up that having fluid sexual relationships, dressing a certain way, experimenting with drugs, was all taboo?

AF: In that town where I grew up, I think there&rsquo;s a certain facet of society where the drug doing is kind of a way of life. I think when you&rsquo;re from a town like that and when you have no money, no access to art, culture, or adults that want to lift you up and help you become a better person, you&rsquo;re kind of lost. So what do you do? You find ways to entertain yourself, and most of those ways are destructive. The more people who&rsquo;ve seen the movie and talked to me about it, they&rsquo;re like, &ldquo;I grew up in a small town in Australia! That&rsquo;s what we did!&rdquo; Maia talked to me about this the other day, &ldquo;We used to put a mattress in the back of a pickup truck and go hangout and do drugs in a field because you don&rsquo;t have anything else to do.&rdquo; And so, I think it&rsquo;s kind of expected in that way.

On the broader scale, showing teenagers doing drugs is definitely controversial and I haven&rsquo;t demonized it either. I haven&rsquo;t placed judgement on them. You&rsquo;re just seeing them in their element doing their thing, and I think some people expect me to have an angle. Like, &ldquo;Can we see the consequences of this behavior, and why didn&rsquo;t you show that?&rdquo; They&rsquo;re clearly going down the wrong path, but I feel like that is an exception that&rsquo;s placed on these characters for a number of reasons. One, they&rsquo;re young. They&rsquo;re female, and they&rsquo;re poor. So, as soon as you put poor people in a situation like this, they&rsquo;re judged so much more harshly. You can take the boys from Superbad, I keep taking this an example, but they&rsquo;re doing just as dumb of shit.

They&rsquo;re messing up left and right, they&rsquo;re sexualixing girls, they&rsquo;re talking about dicks, they&rsquo;re cussing, they&rsquo;re committing crimes. But, it&rsquo;s okay to laugh it off because they&rsquo;re young white guys with a promising future of college and they have a stable home life and plenty of money. As soon as poor people are doing it, it&rsquo;s like, &ldquo;Hey! Now, shouldn&rsquo;t you be doing something to better your shitty situation in life?&rdquo; You can&rsquo;t watch them with the same removed humor that you can watch middle class white kids from the suburbs. Yes they&rsquo;re young, attractive, white girls, but there&rsquo;s still a double standard.

JG: How do you stay grounded when you hear feedback about the art that you&rsquo;ve done? How do you take that criticism and manage it?

AF: I stress eat a lot! I&rsquo;ve gained a lot of weight since the movie&rsquo;s come out. I do think about it. I think about how it affects me and what I&rsquo;ll do in the future. I think about decisions that I&rsquo;ve made, I think about how can we address this in terms of art. I think about to what degree do I have a responsibility to address this? Do I need to consider these things when I make art? Because art essentially is a form of self expression and if we&rsquo;re letting other people&rsquo;s outside influences determine the way we&rsquo;re expressing ourselves is it doing a disservice to the art? Is it creatively fulfilling? I don&rsquo;t know, I do a lot of thinking and I do a lot of reading. I discuss it with my friends, it&rsquo;s been interesting. Cami, how&rsquo;s that been for you? I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ve been reading the reviews, what are your thoughts on that?

CM: You know what, I actually don&rsquo;t read reviews. People that have seen it aren&rsquo;t coming up to me and saying that they didn&rsquo;t like it. So, in my experience I&rsquo;ve just noticed that in other films, I have gotten my feelings hurt or gotten defensive while reading reviews, so I try to not even go there. Obviously for the director it&rsquo;s different because maybe there are constructive things that could be beneficial but, I just feel like once your work is done in the movie there&rsquo;s nothing you can do to change it back or change anything. It&rsquo;s kind of like the actor has to surrender. But people I love and I have a lot relationships in the movie industry, my mother was in the industry, my father is in the industry, when they watch it they know me so well, they&rsquo;re able to give me ideas or maybe tell me moments that they like or didn&rsquo;t like as much. All that stuff kind of helps.

JG: There are things to dissect in&nbsp;Never Goin&#39; Back, but overall, films by and about women are scrutinized in a way that films by and about men are not. That may also because we&#39;ve had so few female filmmakers actually given a platform for telling their stories, so people don&#39;t think women behave in this way because they&#39;re not exposed to stories of women who do.

AF: Yes! On a whole range of levels. Some women just hug. Some women, like me and my best friends, we did have sex&mdash;regularly&mdash;and it was never a deal that we had to define. We didn&#39;t have to label it. And I think that if we did see that happening more in films, that we would be able to look at a movie like this and be like &ldquo;oh yeah I&#39;ve seen that,&rdquo; and could immediately register a familiarity with these characters and follow along and enjoy the movie. But it&#39;s not something people are used to seeing because of the lack of female filmmakers, so it takes them out of the movie. It&#39;s like hey, wait I don&#39;t recognize this, so you&#39;re sitting here in judgement of these people whereas with those boys from Superbad, you immediately get who they are. We&#39;ve seen this a hundred times, we know it, we are familiar with it, now we can laugh and go along with the story.

JG: When women say something no one believes us, but we are sitting here as women telling you our truth. Just take it at face value.

AF: It&#39;s mansplaining. &nbsp;

JG: Who are some of your creative influences that you draw from?

AF: I am a huge fan of a ton of filmmakers, some of my favorites&mdash;I love Chantal Akerman&mdash;I have all of these filmmakers I love and specific pieces from various films of their work. I love Paul Thomas Anderson, the Cohen brothers, Anges Varda, Lina Wertmueller as controversial as she is I just think her films are interesting and a unique perspective. I love Zadie Smith, I think she&rsquo;s just so smart, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman, I really like Mike Leigh. I like a lot of filmmakers.

JG: Cami, who inspires you?

CM: I have kind of a random selection of inspirations. I watch a lot of really really old films from the 1930&rsquo;s and 40&rsquo;s out of those people it would be Vivian Lee], Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn. And skipping a couple of generations, today I love Jessica Chastain, I think Emma Stone is immensely talented, Jennifer Lawrence, Emily Blunt, if you open the door to that I could give you like a hundred words and up. It&rsquo;s [also] just incredible being in acting classes with actresses that aren&rsquo;t well known and are still struggling and trying to book work. There&rsquo;s such talent in an acting class that you&rsquo;re like, &ldquo;How have you not won an Oscar already?! How are you not successful?&rdquo; It&rsquo;s really, it&rsquo;s so much, so many women out there in the industry.

Never Goin' Back's Cami Morrone and Augustine Frizzell talk stoner films

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