Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney and Portlandia fame, has created a short film called The Realest Real as part of KENZO’s fall-winter campaign. It had a premiere during KENZO’s New York Fashion Week show, and follows in line with the recent KENZO short film My Mutant Brain directed by Spike Jonze and starring Margaret Qualley.
However, Brownstein’s film has a much different focus than bonkers dance fun; its target is the social media world. The Institute of the Really Real has the power to literalize phrases like “followers” and “mom” and “the cloud.” We see one guy who comments “wife” on a post by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, wife her as a result.
The film also stars Mahershala Ali, Laura Harrier, Rowan Blanchard, and Natasha Lyonne. Brownstein both wrote and directed The Realest Real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbfSRa5BRhk
This project is just the latest one for the multi-tasking cultural force that is Brownstein. Earlier this year she and Fred Armisen released Season 6 of their hit IFC show. On the rock front, Brownstein and her band, pop-punk heroes Sleater-Kinney, are busier than ever. Last year, they put out a new collection of twitchy-catchy rock on an album called No Cities To Love. They followed that up with live shows, including playing this weekend at Chicago’s Riot Fest, sharing stage time with what is essentially an encyclopedia’s worth or indie, alt, and punk rock legends: The Flaming Lips, Morrissey, Death Cab For Cutie, Ween, Gwar, Meat Puppets, and on and on and on. If you’ve got the strength, it’s sure to be one of the most memorable three days of rock-face-making you’ll ever have.
Speaking of strength–know who has buckets of it? Yep, Carrie Brownstein. How else to explain the fact that on top of all this music and movie business, she found time and energy to crank out the very well-received memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl last fall.
All of this vast output makes us wonder if there is anything Brownstein is terrible at? Seriously, anyone know if she has skillz when it comes to the following things?
- Putting up dry-wall.
- Cooking a whole fish.
- Roller blading.
- Deconstructing Sartre.
- Folding fitted sheets.
Actually, you know what? Don’t tell us; we don’t want to know. This post has made us feel totally un-talented compared to Carrie. Let’s just move on now.
