Emma Seligman spoke to Variety about creating a film all about a queer fight club
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY ORION PICTURES INC
Starring Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott as two high school teenagers who set up a school fight club, Bottoms is set to be an instant classic. Creating the club under the guise of teaching self-defence, Bottoms sees the pair of unpopular lesbians try to hook up with the hottest cheerleaders in school.
Director Emma Seligman told Variety on 25 August, that the film is an homage to the exaggerated tropes of early high school movies.
“I just miss that genre,” Emma said. “I miss over-the-top high school movies…I just wanted to bring it back. And part of bringing it back for me is making it queer and female-driven. But to me that doesn’t change the genre, it just is our version of it.”
An unlikely star in the film is American football running back Marshawn Lynch who took on his role in the film to show his support for his queer sister.
In a film all about a fight club, Emma revealed that the lead actors did all the stunts themselves. “We wanted the girls to do it,” the director said. “We didn’t want stunt doubles. We wanted it to look like our actors were actually kicking ass. It was just so cool to watch the actors get really good.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Emma spoke further about the importance of focusing this film on queer high schoolers. Responding to a question about where the satire of the film was focused, Emma said: “[We wanted to focus the satire on] The way queer teen characters are always so innocent in teen movies. Whether they’re being traumatised or finding love, they’re so sweet and often don’t have any sexual thoughts at all — or if they do, they’re not expressing it, or they’re not talking in a vulgar way.”
Emma continued: “And we also wanted to satirise the way female friendship is often shoved down our throats onscreen with teen girls — characters that are like, “I love you, queen! You’re the best thing ever!” We wanted to make fun of that.”
Bottoms is a film which centres on the queer high school experience, something which you won’t see in its predecessors like Clueless or Mean Girls. We’ve got our fingers crossed that they’ll announce the UK release date soon!
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