Hot Literati, A24

This past year more than ever I’ve loudly claimed my identification as a party girl. I party not just because I'm a college student and it’s “what we do.” I party because I really truly enjoy it. And I don't just mean that I enjoy drinking and drugs, though I appreciate the supplementary value they can offer. I mean I enjoy what life becomes under flashing club lights or on dim city streets lit only by the storefronts. I live for a sky so dark that everything under it becomes a figment of imagination, something you can only see if you squint hard enough, something that may not actually be there.

When I first found out Matthew Bires, co-founder and COO of A24 and alum of my soon to be alma mater, was coming to give a talk in October I wanted to throw him a party. Hailo had just attended the We Live in Time premiere, and we were preparing for a premiere of our own, Jon Literati: The Movie. Getting a24 to engage with our silliness was fresh on our minds. I texted Hailo immediately.

I emailed him and our career center, respectively, asking for “an interview.” But in my personal email to him I suggested we go see something at the local cinema or to a live show. And then I would give him a bid to our Hot Literati Fraternity and an invite to our party that just so happened to be that night, and he would either hate it or love it.

I don’t consider myself much of a cinephile but I love what watching a good movie can do to you. I think partying is the closest I'll ever get to the intimate experience of life I crave after I’ve seen a good movie.

So, a24 and a party – what else is there to do?

But I was ultimately denied an interview – as were the writers of our alumni magazine – on the premise of tradition: a24 doesn’t do personal, on the record profiles. Thus, I was never able to invite Bires to a party. This bored me to absolute death. I didn’t even get a reply from Bires himself but rather a message passed from his assistant to a career center advisor, who then passed it on to me. BORING! Here at Hot Literati we are all about personal. All of our decisions are subjective, based on what we like, you like, they like, i like, and/or don’t. Nothing exists without the person behind, in front, beside it. Not even you. Why hide from your own narrative? Why dance around records? Why not party with your fans, like me?

For some time now, my long term goal has been to produce and/or publish. It’s for a selfish reason – there are many people I know who I think have such important things to say that everyone should hear, or at least get the chance to. It’s a part of my life’s agenda. My manifesto, even. This semester we talked with artist Micheal Rakowitz during one of my classes and he told a story about how his gods came to be The Beatles at a very young age. If the artists I love are my gods then why wouldn’t I want to avoid attention myself and instead shift it to the artists themselves? Isn’t that the ultimate show of devotion? Touché, Bires.

But, during his talk, Bires revealed that Disney was A24’s North Star, and suddenly the prospect of artistic gods seemed phony. I spent the rest of the event nodding along to the similarities I was finding between Bires and mommy literati, simultaneously wondering how we could avoid becoming them, and questioning why I wanted so badly to avoid this.

He entered the bright red fishbowl auditorium in which my school loves to host important events wearing all black. It was very Steve Jobs. A woman whom I gather was a personal support of his sat in the second row from the front, also wearing all black, including round, Edna Mode style glasses. Very artiste, I giggled to myself. They were a perfect pair. I loved it and I despised it. I would never, could never, be like that.

A24 started as a distributing company before moving into production. They were the vessel through which access to films was granted before they were the provider to the films themselves. Maybe this is where fear of publicly archiving the self in attachment to creative pieces comes from. Or maybe it’s the fact that the founders aren’t creative artists themselves, and ultimately, this is what distinguishes us from them. Hot Literati is all at once – founder, producer, artist, distributor. Coverage of one is coverage of all.

In August I wrote a piece about curation and concluded that Hot Literati is a gift that forever gives recommendations; life philosophies, thoughtful media, fun, etc. Disney is not our north star, because if there’s one thing Disney does is prescribe; it owns things so that it can recommend the things to you. It traps you in their world. I don’t feel that Hot Literati owns much of anything. We build a world that is simply what already exists, written about in a way that may or may not be unique to us.

When I party, I surrender a certain amount of control. I become more freely expressive. I’m not preoccupied with what power I hold throughout the night, except, maybe, while I'm waiting to get through the door. And even then I understand that there’s only so little I can do to change my fate, so if I'm turned away it just means I reroute. I like to think I’m the same way with my creative work. But while I relinquish some control – of my party self, of my creative work – I don’t relinquish ownership, and I think a24 does this, too.

And so I return to my internal dilemma in an attempt to understand why Bires wouldn't party with me. What is the allure in owning something and people not knowing you own it. I want the world to know I own my dancing body and the senseless poetry clouding my google storage. It’s mine, from the womb. Maybe A24 doesn’t have a womb.

So now we get to the gender argument and perhaps it is all meant to be a battle of the sexes. Hot Literati is woman-founded and women-forward (i’m not sure how to define that but it feels truthful). The co-founders of a24 are men. Anonymity is a men's sport…or something like that.

I wonder what the response would be if the higher-ups of a24 were to give personal profiles. Perhaps dangerous parasocial attachments to them would ensue, forcing them into a cautious living for fear of mistake-making. Perhaps people would like a24 less because it doesn’t match their indie, progressive imagination of the company. Maybe it would give the founding fathers of a24 too much power — to let down their hair, climb out of the tower, and let the rest of the world get familiar with them.

Luckily, less people attach to the founding mothers. And besides, mommy literati is only an idea of a person rather than an individual, isn’t she?

But of course it is not really just a gender thing (though I would be interested to hear an argument that claims a24 is a feminist production company), but rather a testament to the power of the personal. It is likely that any one of us would say yes to a personal profile because we want you to know who we are. We want you to understand where and what we are coming from and grounded in. We do this because we want you to make the decision for yourself, to be or not to be a participant in our/this world. Rather than a North Star, we share a universe of many stars.

I think a24 is well on its way to Disney status and I’m rooting for them. As long as we watch films we won’t have the option of whether to engage with them. And because this is where they are headed, their anonymity keeps them safe. They can’t party with us because they’re busy producing the inspiration for the party. I’d like to believe there is a world where they can double dip, but I don’t blame them for avoiding the risk.

So, a24, as much as I yearned to party with you for a night, believe me when I say I love mornings too. I love the bright beating of the 7am sun or a foggy November dawn. But I must admit that I love them even more when I'm on my way home or elsewhere, and my body has not stopped moving for eight hours and there are seven rhythms swimming through my blood. And nobody who passes by knows the details of my night but they know I’ve been alive and awake for at least a few hours before they saw me. It kind of feels like when you emerge from a movie theater after watching an a24 film and find that the rest of the world has kept moving, you know?