I first met Lena at SXSW in 2009, when her first film Creative Nonfiction premiered there. She asked if I would see her movie (I did some YouTube videos a long time ago), which I did. Creative Nonfiction was not a perfect by any means, but even then, I realized that Lena was something special. I had no idea her parents were people who were big in the art world until I came home from Austin and read this. When Lena was still struggling like the rest of us, I never got any "snotty attitude" or a sense of entitlement, so what Michael Tully is saying here rings true to my experience.
The fact that Lena is able to profit from her vision and make a real living from it far exceeds the best case scenario many of us had for ourselves. It gives hope that perhaps one day, our own work will find the same wide audience that hers has. I'm jealous of Lena, but not the way that the "haters" are. That she accidentally excluded me from the credits of Tiny Furniture is truly the worst thing I can say about her.
