Here's the trailer for Phoebe Gloeckner's 'Diary of a Teenage Girl'

May 27, 2015 at 2:55 pm
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Earlier this year, we chatted with Phoebe Gloeckner, a Philadelphia-born, San Francisco-raised cartoonist and novelist who now works as a professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. A film based on her book The Diary of a Teenage Girl — which incorporates her actual teenage diaries — had screened at Sundance; Gloeckner told us that Sony Pictures bought it and that she was anticipating a wider release this year. 

Yesterday, Yahoo! Movies released the trailer. While no Michigan screenings have been scheduled yet, when we interviewed Gloeckner she said she might pursue her own screening:

It's been well-received generally, so that's a good sign. I don't know how broad the distribution will be, but if it doesn't show in Ann Arbor we're going to show it somehow.

It's been nearly eight years in the making. The director first pushed for making a play — she did that in New York City, and I loved it. Then she asked if she could do a movie. So I've kind of gotten to know her over 10 years. I've been able to consult and give my two cents.

I'll say it is a really good movie. It's different than the book. I think the book is a lot darker than the movie, and you'll have a different feeling in the end. Whether it's exactly like the book or not, it doesn't really matter. It's shorter, distilled, and they didn't put all the really bad stuff in there — the drugs, you know.

Yahoo! Movies calls the film "autobiographical," though Gloeckner has rejected that label, explaining that she distances herself from the representation in the story. "It's a schizophrenic process, where I can still say in all honesty my work is not autobiographical," she says.