Early in the short film The Realest Real, directed by Carrie Brownstein for the Kenzo fashion label, Abby (Laura Harrier), a gorgeous young model, is being walked to the office of a bigwig (Mahershala Ali, of “Luke Cage” and the upcoming film Moonlight) by one of his underlings (Rowan Blanchard.) Along the way she notices she’s being trailed by a line of people.
“Who are they?” she asks. “They’re your followers,” chirps the underling just before one of them turns heel and walks away. “They’re fickle like that,” explains the never-named assistant. “You’ll never know what you did wrong, so don’t even worry about it.”
A wickedly sharp satire of the ways social media has overtaken our lives – the way we perceive the world and our place in it, how it shapes our fantasies and desires – the short also features Natasha Lyonne (voice as gorgeously husky as ever) who becomes Abby’s new mom when social media and the real world bleed into one another. It’s a world where puppies take selfies. The great Kim Gordon also makes an appearance.
Tony Quattro, courtesy Quattro
The film’s music composer Tony Quattro, a DJ/producer who has composed music for “Broad City” and Amy Poheler’s “Difficult People,” and has released his own music on Skrillex’s OWSLA label, recently spoke to Crave about collaborating with Brownstein.
“It’s awesome to finally see this come out,” he told us. “Carrie, her editor, and an engineer polished off my final composition with a couple twists of their own which is really cool to me – almost like we were jamming. I’m a huge fan of Portlandia and Carrie’s music, so it was an honor to work so closely with her on this project. It only took a couple rounds of feedback to nail the score, which was crucial because I only had about a week to get it done from start to finish.”
When asked what one bit of information he could share about Brownstein that isn’t widely known, he laughs, “She has a really funny email address you’d never guess.”
