Oscar-Nominated Short Film Depicts Teen Sexuality

NEW YORK (AP) — Long before a laughing Riz Ahmed read his headline on Oscar nominations morning, Pamela Ribon’s short “My Year of Dicks” was already having an effect on those who heard about it. Like when Ribon picked up his credentials at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, shortly before his premiere.

The title can mean in English “my year of cretins”, but also “my year of virile members”, it does not go unnoticed.

The film, written and created by Ribon, and directed by Sara Gunnarsdóttir, is one of the funniest, most painful and sweetest portraits of adolescence in all its weirdness. It’s nominated for best animated short at next month’s Oscars. Phil Lord, screenwriter of “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse” (“Spider-Man: A New Universe”) and “The Lego Movie” (“The LEGO Movie”) described the 26-minute film as “one of the best films of the year whatever their length.

It is based on Ribon’s 2014 memoir, “Notes to the Boys (And Other Things I Shouldn’t Share in Public)”, specifically a chapter documenting Ribon’s resolve to lose his virginity at age 15 in 1991 when I was growing up outside of Houston. It’s divided into five chapters of intimate encounters with not-so-nice guys, though as the title “My Year of Dicks” says, it’s not just a judgment on Ribon’s less-than-ideal pairings, it’s is also an enlightened account of these first awkward ones. stages in sex.

“She’s cheeky, but she’s not rude,” Ribon said in a recent interview via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “It was an inclusive feeling of, ‘We’ve all been through this, haven’t we? “”

When they started, Gunnarsdóttir, an Icelandic animator who created the vivid motion pictures for the live-action movie “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” wondered if “Notes to the Boys” would be a better, less awkward title. But Ribon felt there was something people could relate to, something universal, about “My Year of Dicks.”

“Not everyone has messaged a guy, but everyone has had a great year…whether in college, in business or in dating. It has many layers,” Ribon said. “So we did it that way to include everyone.”

“My Year of Dicks,” which is currently available for free on Vimeo, became one of the most talked about movies at this year’s Oscars. People are eager to see if Ribon and Gunnarsdóttir can win on March 12, but perhaps they are more curious about which host, at the most prestigious film gala, will deliver the title of the short film to an audience of millions of people on live television.

“Do you think they will censor it? Ribon wondered anxiously.

For Ribon, 47, “My Year of Dicks” is an eerily appropriate highlight. Although she is known for writing more kid-friendly animated productions like “Moana” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” (“Wifi Ralph”), Ribon has long been, as an essayist, blogger and podcaster, a strangely open book. Her 2012 essay, “How I Could Have Been the New Urban Legend” describes an unsanitary trip to a massage therapist when she was well into her pregnancy.

“People were like, ‘I never thought I’d share this story with people,'” Ribon said. “And I asked them what you would have done? And they said ‘never tell anyone for the rest of my life what just happened to me'”.

“Sometimes I feel like a living cautionary tale,” says Ribon.

Even as a teenager, Ribon was acutely aware of the tragicomedy of his coming of age. She did not keep a diary, but she wrote extensively, on a typewriter or by hand, about her life. Holding a large green notebook, Ribon flips through stories, notes for the boys, and event tickets he’s amassed over the years.

“I liked having an audience early on when I was processing my thoughts,” Ribon said. “I’m always like that, I’d much rather write an email about my day than keep it to myself. It’s weird talking to me.”

Ribon brought all of this footage and more to Gunnarsdóttir, who, with a small team of freelance animators, created an independent, rotoscoped version of young Pam mixed with an old home video of her in high school. Each of the five chapters has its own animation design, including an anime section and a vampire story-style section. For Gunnarsdóttir, the power of animation is about taking something natural and adding expressionism to it.

“So you have this base that feels very real, but the magic happens when you step away and go to a very abstract side,” said Gunnarsdóttir, from France.

“That honesty comes with it,” added Gunnarsdóttir. “I think he is very brave.”

Ribon sees it differently.

“I don’t know if I’m brave or rather ridiculous,” she laughs.

Among the film’s potentially embarrassing moments is an overly open discussion of sex with Ribon’s father. Ribon must have insisted to his mother that this was the case verbatim, since Ribon’s father died years ago. After initially protecting her mother from the film, Ribon’s mother became an ardent fan of the film, though she couldn’t bear to stick around for a public reading of “Notes to Boys.”

“My Year of Dicks” started out as a TV project for FX Networks, but eventually the filmmakers decided to try their hand at the festival circuit. Walt Disney Co. owns FX, so “My Year of Dicks” technically and ironically counts as one of Disney’s Oscar nominees, along with “Avatar: The Way of Water.” water”) and “Turning Red” (“Red”).

Over time, “My Year of Dicks” began to sound different and more distant from Ribon. The quashing of Roe v. Wade, who had guaranteed the right to abortion in the United States since 1973, made this type of sexual exploration more dangerous for young women. Texas law prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Ribon’s film increasingly felt like a capsule from a bygone era.

“In today’s Texas, this is the most dangerous thing a girl can do with her future. These people should not be held accountable for decisions that affect a lifetime by a political party,” said Ribon said. “At least I felt free to find out. Now I would have been too scared to find out more about myself. I’m grateful for my mistakes and for being able to make them. I didn’t have any sex in any of those situations, but it could have happened. And it could have happened with a dumber person than here (in the movie). It’s a much scarier thing to think about.”

Ribon considered that the animation ofrece una “herramienta para hablar sin filtros con el corazón de alguien”, que incluso en una animada muy adulta es possible conectar con ello, como dice, “esa parte en la que comenzamos un viaje con las mjores intenciones for us”.

“We’re going back to the Saturday morning cartoon feel,” he said.

“My Year of Dicks” may be the easiest Oscar nominee to laugh at, but it also feels the most honest.

“Maybe my role in life is to help people know that they are not alone and that things could be worse. There is something very satisfying about knowing that I have officially had the worst sex talk ever. It’s not something I’m just saying,” Ribon said, pausing to smile. “The academy has spoken.”

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Jake Coyle is on Twitter as: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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