Emily Berge

write, co-director

I grew up on American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused. My best friend and I, who were fourteen at the time, had to bribe a college student in the line at the movie theater to buy our tickets to Superbad. I’m obsessed with the American teenage movie – the stories of high school guys rolling around town in their shitty cars and trying to do anything to get laid.

As a female filmmaker and writer it can’t be overemphasized how much we need the stories of women and young girls. Not just the girls who are objects of the male protagonist’s teenage lust - but the girls in jean shorts and some poorly applied glow-in-the-dark body paint. I hated high school, but for some reason I feel myself constantly pulled back, wanting to revisit it through art. My friends and I were a bundle of contradictions – simultaneously self-conscious and absurdly confident, caught between being children and adults, constantly spewing raunchy jokes, but strangely and deeply innocent at the same time.

I’ve never seen a film that showed what my high school experience had been like. Sure, I loved those classic all-American boys lovingly portrayed in films like Stand by Me and Boyhood, but I wanted to tell my own story. I hope you feel that spirit in our film, Cosmic Bowling, the story of three teenage girls who, after their plans are cancelled, set out on an all-night odyssey through their suburban town in search of the elusive perfect Friday night.