Othello: The Moor Claims the Stage

Othello was the play that made me fall in love with Shakespeare. I read it on holiday in Geneva when I was 12, having borrowed a musty book of Shakespeare plays from the local library where one side was in English, one in French, and the type was so impossibly small that I had to hold the book as close to my face as possible without going cross-eyed. But despite all those distractions, and despite the fact that I had never read an entire play before, only the snippets of various soliloquies and scenes we read in my eighth-grade Shakespeare class, Othello blew my mind. More specifically, Iago blew my mind. Through all that iambic pentameter, that man's deviousness and lies were crystal clear on the page and I found myself furiously reading each scene to see how the tangled web he weaved would ensnare Othello and Desdemona. Last week, I finally got to see this play performed live at the Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare in the Park. And I was surprised to discover that it was a very different experience from reading the play.

Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this production aims to re-center the play around its title character, instead of letting Iago hog the audience's attention. Over three hours, I was astonished at how often the audience laughed when Iago delivered his lines instead of cringing in horror at his evil machinations. Every time a character described him as "honest Iago," the audience would laugh, where I would have expected a shudder at how easily this man had deceived those around him. Corey Stoll does a magnificent job as Iago, but he almost comes off as a comic buffoon rather than a devilish puppeteer who makes everyone dance to his tune. Instead, all the sincerity in the play is focused on the relationship between Othello (Chukwudi Iwuji) and Desdemona (Heather Lind) and watching how their love is corroded by lies and jealousy. Viewed through that lens, the story of Othello becomes less a tale about a master villain and more a tragedy about an easily-manipulated man. In fact, given how buffoonish Iago seems in this version of the play, it makes me even more angry to watch Othello fall for his lies.

Chukwudi Iwuji is a brilliant Othello and plays his role with immense pathos. He is so in love at the beginning, and then so utterly bewildered and consumed by jealousy by the end. It is heartbreaking to see that man brought so low by some well-chosen lies and that damned handkerchief. One of the things that struck me is the immense racism this character faces throughout the play. When you read Othello, the fact that everyone calls him the "Moor" starts to feel a bit commonplace, but when you are watching a live performance and see the vitriol that accompanies those words, you see exactly why Othello might already be in a frame of mind to think that everyone's got something against him. On the other hand, Heather Lind's portrayal of Desdemona is magnificent, giving her a backbone and a fierce sense of outrage when her husband accuses her of infidelity. This was a characterization I could get behind: rather than being a hapless Shakespearean female, she fights every step of the way, and her death is staged in a way that makes it clear that this is a woman who will not just lie down and take what is coming to her.

The sets are incredibly spare and there's nothing particularly elaborate about the staging or costumes. This is certainly one of the least fanciful productions I've seen at the Delacorte, which squarely places the emphasis on the dialogue. As I discovered when I first read this play, it is all about words and their power to move men to destructive ends. Iago wreaks havoc simply through malicious gossip and creating doubt; he does not need any other weapons in his arsenal. I would also be remiss if I didn't highlight the performance of Alison Wright as Emilia, Desdemona's lady-in-waiting and Iago's wife. We rarely get to see female friendships portrayed in Shakespeare but it is enchanting to see the few scenes Emilia and Desdemona have together where the women trade some bawdy conversation about men and genuinely enjoy each other's company. It makes you wonder if this is why it was easier for Iago to trick the men around him - men don't often share details about their personal lives so it's easier to feed them lies without worrying they will gossip with others later and discover the truth.

Shakespeare in the Park heralds the arrival of summer in New York, so enter the online ticket lottery or stand in line at Central Park and try to get a ticket before Othello ends on June 24. I would be intrigued to know what you think of this production - while it didn't reflect any of my preconceived notions of the play, it made me focus on elements I had hitherto completely missed because I was too captivated by Iago. Come to think of it, Iago had hitherto ensnared me in his web, and it took this production to make me hear more than just his honeyed words.

Nell Scovell & Alyssa Mastromonaco: Women You Should Know

I was recently on vacation and, quite by accident, read memoirs by Nell Scovell and Alyssa Mastromonaco back-to-back. Turns out I want both of these women to be my mentors and give me advice on how to live my life every single day. Intelligent, kind, and supremely self-aware, they have two very different lives that surprisingly have a lot of similar themes about being a working woman in America.

Let's start with Just the Funny Parts by Nell Scovell. Even though you may not know her name, you will certainly recognize the slew of TV shows she has written for during her long career in Hollywood. This includes The Simpsons, Murphy Brown, Charmed, Late Show with David Letterman (there's plenty of juicy detail there about that show's appalling lack of diversity), and she also created Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which is of course my favorite part of her credits. That very abbreviated list already demonstrates her range - this is a woman who can write for anything, and I haven't even mentioned that she co-wrote Lean In with Sheryl Sandberg, and wrote some of Obama's jokes for the White House Correspondent's Dinner. For a few seconds, she was responsible for the words coming out of the mouth of the leader of the free world, and if that ain't powerful, I don't know what is.

Because Scovell is a TV writer, this book is chockful of eminently quotable lines, and I kept highlighting them on my Kindle as I went through the book. One of my favorites is, "I truly believe that if you're a comedy writer and have never been told 'You've gone too far,' then you haven't gone far enough. I also believe that if you're constantly told 'You've gone too far,' then maybe you're an asshole." Which is a nice segueway into her discussions about the many writers' rooms she has had to work in where she was the sole female. The book dissects the implicit biases in Hollywood that lead people to constantly hire white males instead of women or people of color, and also includes Scovell's own #MeToo moment in the early stages of her career. It's not a fun story, but Scovell uses it to illustrate how women feel in male-dominated workplaces and why these heinous scenarios are all too common.

Just the Funny Parts is also an excellent look at why showrunners are sometimes terribly equipped to run shows. As they mostly begin as writers and move their way up the ladder, Scovell points out that "At no point are writers taught how to manage people. Eventually, the writer who was good at ordering around characters in his head ends up in charge of actual human beings." In the same passage, she talks about the importance of empathy and generosity, characteristics that most men probably do not focus on when they think of what constitutes "management material." When she talks about her mentors in the business (many of whom were male, because, well duh) it is clear that she has found some wonderful men who genuinely know how to make her fight for her dreams and tell her that she is more than equipped to put up with the bullshit. And when she talks about her work and research for Lean In, she provides all the statistics and depressing information that re-emphasize the difficulties women face when trying to get ahead in the world.

Scovell doesn't shy away from the fact that she too is guilty of keeping people of color out of her writer's rooms. Never intentionally, but again, just like men didn't hire her to write for TV, she only managed to hire people who looked like her when she was a showrunner, and that is an oversight that she calls herself out on. She doesn't have all the answers, but she is certainly striving to get the message across that things still suck for women and minorities. And she does it with wit and warmth and plenty of common sense, which is something we could all use more of in this day and age.

Moving on, we come to Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? by Alyssa Mastromonaco. She served as Obama's deputy chief of staff and while I previously had no idea what that entailed, now that I have read this book, I am amazed that anyone can actually do that job without having a heart attack. Mastromonaco managed to do it impeccably, even if she does suffer from IBS, which led to a particularly hilarious moment at Vatican City where she shook the Pope's hand while the staff around her were all gazing on in horror to see if she would poop on the Pope (seriously, her words, not mine). She was responsible for coordinating logistics and planning emergency relief for hundreds of thousands of people when Hurricane Sandy hit and was in Haiti for a week during the earthquake. She is also responsible for the White House finally getting a tampon machine in the women's bathrooms. And that seemingly simple gesture demonstrates what a no-nonsense and capable women she is. As far as I'm concerned, organizing fuel tankers and hiring $3 million dollar planes is of the same importance as getting the male-dominated White House to understand that female officials need tampons, and running through multiple levels of security to get to the CVS across the street is not a tenable solution.

Mastromonaco's book is a quick read but searingly effective, with not a single wasted word (much like the woman herself). She describes it as a guide to women who want to break into politics; she was never able to find such a book when she was younger as first of all, there's a dearth of female politicians, and secondly, male politicians write books to showcase their legacy and don't really spend any time telling you how to do the job. So this book is divided into ten sections that cover the key qualities for success: leadership, preparedness, independence, self-awareness, personal shit (because there is always personal shit, but only she is honest enough to address it), confidence, humility, risk-taking, resilience, and kindness. Look at that list - it is brilliant in itself and I want to tape it up by my desk as a personal mentorship guide to think about how I am developing those qualities every day. But thankfully, Mastromonaco does one better and actually talks about these subjects in vivid detail, offering up personal stories of various events at the White House or during Obama's campaigns that helped her learn and grow into the powerhouse she has become.

This is not some slick feel-good political memoir. Mastromonaco lays her life bare, highlighting all of her successes but also her failures, many of which she struggled to take in stride at the time. She suffered from anxiety, overwhelming stress, and she talks about how she is a crier and can't keep her emotions off her face, a fact that made me feel a thousand times better about myself. If that lady can have a good cry and then plan a multi-country trip to help determine American foreign policy, I can probably survive my job just fine. And she too had wonderful mentors who pushed her to take more challenging roles and insisted that she could do the job when she felt under-qualified. But she also calls out the overwhelmingly male-dominated meetings, and the times when she was talked down to or talked over simply because she was a young woman in the boy's club.

So what ties these two books together? Both women are exceedingly funny and unafraid to share the good, the bad, and the ugly. These books are hilarious and profound in equal measure, and while I was able to read them rapidly, I am certain I shall be re-reading them multiple times to gather up more wisdom and laugh over the more inane stories. Scovell and Mastromonaco may have been in two very different fields, but they both highlight how men dominated the rooms they worked in and why we need more women in those rooms. They are at the top of their game and it is clear that the world would have truly been a less wonderful place if they hadn't managed to get their foot in the door. They also demonstrate the importance of mentorship: both women had (and continue to have) excellent mentors who serve as sounding boards and provide sage advice on how to survive in Hollywood and politics, and in turn, they both serve as excellent mentors themselves to their fellow colleagues and up-and-comers.

This brings me to the point that struck me the most deeply about these books: the emphasis on empathy and kindness. These marvelous women place such a premium on these qualities, and that is why I have always personally believed we need more women in senior leadership roles. Women do not merely want to create a legacy and highlight their individual accomplishments - they usually want to build a team and get the job done effectively. And that is something we need to recognize and nurture as true leadership material. The tenth chapter in Mastromonaco's book focuses on kindness and it honestly made me tear up as she cited various examples of the kindness she experienced through the years in the Obama administration. It isn't sappy and female to treat people kindly - it is the human thing to do. Given the current state of our world and the neverending tales of misogyny, harassment, racism, and ignorance, these two books serve as a guide on how to be better. Be a better colleague, be a better boss, be a better human being. And I will be taking those lessons to heart. 

Firebird & Afterite: Balletic Brilliance

I have lived in New York for 16 years. Which means that I always imagine I will have the chance to do "New York-y" things, so then procrastinate and never do. Which is why I had never seen a ballet until yesterday, when my friend Candice and I headed off to the Metropolitan Opera to indulge in the American Ballet Theatre's production of Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, with ballerina extraordinaire Misty Copeland as the Firebird. Yeah, my introduction to the ballet was certainly as spectacular as possible.

The story of The Firebird is fairly simple. Ivan (Herman Cornejo in the performance I saw) is searching for his lost love in a creepily enchanted forest. He happens upon a flock of mythical firebirds and chases one down (Misty Copeland) - she escapes but leaves behind a feather that will summon her when he is in trouble. He then finds a group of enchanted maidens, but cannot tell if his lady love (Skylar Brandt) is among them as they are all under a spell by the evil sorcerer Kaschei (Duncan Lyle). What follows is your classic battle between good and evil, and the Firebird comes to the rescue to help Ivan kill Kaschei, break the spell, and reunite with his love.

I don't know where to begin. I was so moved by this performance that I was rather appalled I had waited this long to see a ballet. While the orchestra (conducted by Charles Barker) were phenomenal, I will confess that I did not pay as much attention to the music as I expected because I was too captivated by the dancing. The grace and beauty of ballet is something I thought I understood, but it turns out watching Black Swan is insufficient to capture the power of a live performance. The choreography by Alexei Ratmansky was stunning. Combined with the costumes by Galina Solovyeva, you almost don't even need the summary of the story I provided above, because the dancers were able to capture every nuance of this tale perfectly through their movements and the feathers ruffling on their costumes. The fiery red of the Firebirds was in beautiful contrast to the green tutus sported by the pirouetting maidens, while the sorcerer's black and green swirly cape was in stark contrast to Ivan's innocent white suit.

The dancing maidens were both beautiful and funny - initially, as they are all under a spell and running around the stage following each other with exceedingly silly movements accompanied by a very amusing interlude in the music, you feel like chuckling. Skylar Brandt was magnificent as Ivan's lost love, capturing the silliness, and then moving into haunting loveliness when she meets Ivan and is drawn to him. When Duncan Lyle shows up on stage as the evil Kaschei, things take a dramatic turn, and as he controls the maidens with his invisible puppet strings, it is a sight to behold.

All of which brings me to Misty Copeland. The Firebird is her signature role, and having witnessed this performance, I have no doubts as to why. The costume was perfect, a red leotard with feathers on her head and back that let you watch her execute her dance with grace and precision, with just the right amount of fluttering feathers to make you fully believe she's about to take flight from the stage. The little hops and steps as she turns, the way she bobs her head, it was so bird-like, I was in utter awe. And of course, as she claimed the stage in jumps and pirouettes and all manner of other ballet moves that I lack the vocabulary to describe, I fully understood why she is a dancer who is celebrated across the world. There were moments when I genuinely wanted to weep and cheer, and when the entire performance was over, I felt stunned, like I had witnessed a miracle.

Following intermission, there was a very different ballet, Afterite, which had premiered on Monday. Years ago, when I was unemployed, I took an online course on classical music, and wrote my final paper on Igor Stravinsky. Part of that paper was about The Rite of Spring, a ballet that premiered in Paris in 1913 with choreography by the famed Vaslav Nijinsky, that incited a riot because it was so unexpected and unconventional and led to the composer and choreographer fleeing the theater. Well now, choreographer Wayne McGregor has created Afterite, a creepy and compelling ballet set to The Rite of Spring, with a dystopian story about the last colony of humankind. I'll confess, Candice and I (and the ladies sitting next to us) were a bit perplexed about what exactly the story was, but the choreography and music were exemplary and managed to creep us out. It was eerie, and frightening, and quite the turn from the fairytale of The Firebird, and this time, I paid attention to the music and found it utterly bewitching and bizarre when accompanied by the machinations on stage.

Firebird and Afterite are only playing at the Metropolitan Opera House through May 26. If you're in New York, I cannot urge you enough to buy a ticket and witness these thrilling ballets firsthand. But even if you don't live here, I cannot urge you enough to buy a ticket to see a ballet performance wherever you can find one. Perhaps, like me, you were laboring under the impression that this is a high-class inaccessible art form. However, it turns out, as long as you're a human being, you will find yourself transformed by the athletic grace, power, and beauty of these dancers, the ability of classical music to weave a story as it seeps into your bones, and for the choreography and costumes to come together in perfect harmony to tell a story that transcends language and time. 

Santa Clarita Diet: Mom's Eating Men

I never got around to reviewing Santa Clarita Diet last year, but I certainly told everyone I met to watch it. So now that I'm done with the second season on Netflix, let me take to the blog to tell all you holdouts that there's yet another thing you need to binge-watch posthaste.

Drew Barrymore stars as Sheila Hammond, a realtor who lives a very contented suburban life with her husband and coworker, Joel (Timothy Olyphant), and teenage daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson). However, their normal existence is quickly disrupted when Sheila falls sick, profusely vomits all over a house that she and Joel are trying to sell, dies, and then comes back to life as an undead zombie craving human flesh. Did I mention this is a comedy?

Like any great sitcom, Santa Clarita Diet has two key things going for it: stellar writing and a stellar cast. The main cast are sublime, including Skyler Gisondo as Eric, Abby's nerdy best friend who quickly learns the Hammonds' secret and employs his love of science and science fiction to help them out with possible cures. Olyphant's line delivery as the completely hapless Joel, who loves his wife and will do anything to save her, which now suddenly means having to murder people, is one of the highlights of the show. You are guaranteed to keel over at least once per episode from watching him deliver some utterly insane line with a terrified grin. And Hewson is fantastic as the profoundly sarcastic Abby, a girl who will never tell her parents she loves them, but will fight tooth and nail to keep her family together.

The writers on this show are comic poets. I could pull up any episode from the show, scroll to a random timestamp, hit Play, and immediately giggle over some ridiculous joke. This show is so densely packed with humor that it's one of those rare treats that you could binge-watch multiple times to ensure you got all the jokes you missed the first time around. And of course, at the center of all this hilarious mayhem, is Drew Barrymore, America's Sweetheart, playing both to and against type. This role is perfect, because it allows her to both portray the nice and sweet lady we're familiar with, but then suddenly revert to a raging cannibal who waxes lyrical about the orgasmic delight of eating a man's liver while her husband nervously titters.

Santa Clarita Diet is a masterpiece of a show, endlessly entertaining with never a dull moment. Created by Victor Fresco (the man who created the similarly bonkers and spectacular Better Off Ted, a show you must seek out immediately if you haven't already), this show is like nothing you've ever seen before. It is funny and bloody and you will find yourself constantly hitting "Play Next Episode," because nothing else is more important than finding out what is going to happen next to the Hammonds.

A Quiet Place: Silent Screams

By now, you probably don't need me to tell you that A Quite Place is a fantastic movie. However, as someone who generally doesn't watch a lot of horror, let me use this review to tell any fellow horror-avoiders why this movie might be right for them.

First off, this movie is written and directed by John Krasinski, of The Office fame. The man was renowned for comedy, and was not a horror fan before he got this script. Therefore, he's coming from the same place as you - he's not a big horror guy, but boy, oh boy, did he dig this story. And what a story it is. For two hours, you will watch a family living in near-perfect silence. Why are they doing that? Because aliens have invaded the planet and they attack any living thing that makes a sound. Which is quite a reason.

The entire film is a wondrous exploration of the powers of production design. This family has come up with incredibly innovative ways to minimize the amount of noise they make in their home or in their environment. Whether it's the little roadways of sand they walk on (on tiptoe in bare feet, natch) or the fact that all of their Monopoly tokens are made of soft material so you can't hear anything as they move around around the board, there are little gems of ingenuity hidden throughout the film. It makes you appreciate how creative and resourceful this family has been and understand how they've managed to stay alive for as long as they have.

The cast is also nothing to sneeze at. Playing the husband and wife, real-life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are pitch perfect as the protective parents who will stop at nothing to save their children. Blunt, in particular, is a wonder to watch as she manages to convey love, warmth, terror, and sorrow effortlessly without a single word of dialogue. And the children (Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds) are astonishing actors, particularly Simmonds who is actually deaf and clearly had a phenomenal influence on making this movie feel real and true.

The amount of silence in A Quite Place is profound, and it is a very eerie feeling in a theater when you can literally hear your heart thumping because there is nothing to hear on screen. There were moments when an audience member would cough or a phone would beep and I would jump because I thought it has happened in the movie and the aliens were about to come bursting in. This movie firmly instills a sense of terror in you, and I don't think anyone ever screamed when something shocking happened on screen because we were terrified of making any noise. It is an atmospheric and creative horror masterpiece, and while you might be a little twitchy during and after, you'll also be flooded with a sense of amazement about what a truly unique experience you had at the movies. 

Blockers: Comedy With a Heart of Gold

When I saw the trailer for Blockers, I was certain I had zero interest in watching this movie. It looked loud, crude, and unremarkable. However, the weekend it premiered, I saw a lot of a articles from critics I respected, all raving about what a great movie it was and exhorting audiences to not be misled by the trailer. Sufficiently intrigued, my friend Katie and I headed off to the theater, where we proceeded to laugh for two hours and walk out with a warm, fuzzy feeling of a Saturday morning well spent.

On the surface, the story doesn't seem to warrant this much admiration. It's about three high school girls and their parents on prom night. The girls have all decided to lose their virginity (hashtag #SexPact2018!) and their parents, who find out accidentally, are determined to hunt down their daughters and prevent them from making a huge mistake. Cue the hi-jinks, with the harried adults (played by the hysterical trio of Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) trying to crash high school parties, battle with belligerent teens, and get to their precious angels before it's too late.

Meanwhile, the three girls (the incandescent trio of Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Vishwanathan, and Gideon Adlon) merrily barrel through this film as the three most natural teenage girls you have seen on film yet. Each presents a very unique variation on girlhood: there's the pretty and put-together extrovert, the sporty and frank go-getter, and the shy introvert battling with some secrets, but together they are a formidable example of female friendship, steadfast, supportive, and true. They reminded me a great deal of the friends I had growing up (and still have to this day) and there isn't a Mean Girl in the bunch. Which is always a relief in a comedy where you're trying to imagine a good world that isn't populated with garbage people.

And in essence, that is what is so special about Blockers. While it has loud and brash comedy moments (all of which unfortunately featured in the trailer), at its core, it is a story about a bunch of people who all love each other very much and only want what's best for everyone. Every single character (whether a parent or child) has been rendered in loving detail, and it's astonishing how the writers have packed so much character background into this movie without making it explode with exposition. Director Kay Cannon, who wrote the entire Pitch Perfect franchise, clearly knows how to tell wise stories about teenage girls, and what transpires on screen is a wonderful story about fast teenage friendships, transitory but binding adult friendships, and the different relationships mothers and fathers can have with their daughters that ultimately boil down to teaching your kid as best as you can and then trusting them to make the right choices.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my main takeaway from this movie, which is the performance of Geraldine Vishwanathan as Kayla, the teenage girl blessed with John Cena as her father (thereby making her a sporty superstar) and Sarayu Blue as her mother (thereby making her fabulously feminist and half-Indian). I don't get to see a lot of Indian women in Hollywood movies, and this was the first time I was seeing an Indian teenage girl on screen who simply looked Indian with nothing else really mentioned about her background. Instead, she got to be an everyday teenager who talked like everyone else and expressed normal, everyday teenage opinions. I turned to Katie and said, "This is the Indian teenager I've been wanting to see on screen all my life!" and now I finally have her.

So yeah, watch Blockers. It is an incredible film with at least one performance guaranteed to speak to some part of your life experience. And lest I forget, it is ridiculously funny and guaranteed to make you laugh out loud, so really, win-win all around.

Love, Simon: The Best Romcom of the Year

Yeah that's right, it's only April, but I'm calling it. Love, Simon is the best romantic comedy of 2018. Though perhaps it's difficult to call it a comedy, per se, as my friend Katie and I spent a significant time bawling in the theater while watching it. But they were happy tears, I swear.

Based on Becky Albertalli's novel, the movie tells the story of Simon Spier (breakout star in the making, Nick Robinson), a closeted gay high schooler. He has amazing parents (his parents are played by Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel, who from here on out should play everyone's parents in every high school movie ever), an adorable sister, and a core group of friends that he has known for years. But despite this strong support structure, he has kept one thing hidden from everyone who knows him - the knowledge that he is gay. His excuses are myriad: why do gay teens have to come out when straight teens don't have to, what if everyone treats me differently, I'll wait until college to be out and proud, let me finish high school without anything changing. It's all incredibly understandable and funny and poignant, and for anyone who has ever had a gay friend in their life, it's a terrific insight into their mind at this challenging time of life.

The plot centers around a website that all the high schoolers use to share secrets. When an anonymous student named Blue posts that he is gay, Simon starts e-mailing him under the pseudonym Jacques, eager to connect with one other person who is going through the same experience as him. Unfortunately, someone discovers his emails and blackmails him with that information, threatening to out Simon to the whole school unless he helps the blackmailer get a date with one of Simon's friends, Abby. Naturally, a lot of teenage comedy and angst ensues.

This is a clever, funny, and towards the end, stupidly romantic movie, replete with a grand gesture and swoony moment. But of course, what makes it so unique is that it's about a gay teenager finding love instead of a straight couple. And isn't it about time? I love romantic comedies, but lately the genre has felt played out. Turns out, I still love a romantic comedy, I just needed more diversity in terms of who was falling in love. If this was a story about a straight couple, it would still probably be funny and charming, but it would completely lack any pathos and wouldn't tug at my heartstrings at all.

So what moments made me cry? SPOILER ALERT (seriously, don't read this paragraph till you've seen the movie). The moment when Simon comes out to one person and she responds simply with "I love you." The moment when his best friend is talking to him about how she often feels like an outsider when she's at parties and doesn't really feel like she belongs (yeah, teenage me had all the feels). Of course, the much talked about moment when his mother accepts his coming out in the most loving and wonderful fashion every portrayed on screen. And the less talked about moment but equally wonderful acceptance of his father, who is such a bro but woke enough to know that nothing has changed just because his son is gay.

Like all great teen comedies, this movie also has an epic soundtrack that may be partly responsible for all my feelings. Directed by Greg Berlanti, who is gay himself and has made his fair share of TV shows about teens, Love, Simon demonstrates a warm empathy and love of all of its central characters. It features a world in which coming out is difficult but not insurmountable. This is a world that is still aspirational for many teenagers, though the tide is slowly turning and making it more likely that parents and friends react with loving acceptance. With the introduction of this movie into the pop culture canon, I can only hope more closeted folk have the courage to either come out and stop living in fear, or at least take joy in seeing themselves portrayed positively on screen. This movie may be the first time a gay teen discovers that people could respond to their revelation with a simple, "OK, I love you." We always say it and we have to keep saying it, in more movies and more TV shows and more songs. Love is love is love.