57 Thoughts I Had While Watching Lena Dunham’s Debut Film, ‘Creative Nonfiction’

I’ve been as Lena Dunham-pilled as anybody since finishing her latest memoir, Famesick, but learning that the woman who gave us Girls turned 40 today felt like a perfect excuse to re-familiarize myself with some of her oeuvre. Weirdly enough, for someone who’s seen Dunham’s 2010 breakout Tiny Furniture more times than I can count, I’ve never watched Creative Nonfiction, Dunham’s 2009 directorial debut, made during her junior and senior years at Oberlin College—until now, that is.

Below, find absolutely every thought I had while watching Creative Nonfiction—which you, too, can stream with a Criterion Channel subscription.

1. There’s our girl, requisite thick-framed millennial glasses and all!
2. I love this Secretary-ish, vaguely sexual yarn that Lena’s character Ella is spinning.
3. Ah, an in situ, 2009-era use of the R-word.
4. The guy she’s cast as her crush grosses me out now, but I probably would have been enchanted by him in college.
5. Why did we all have vintage globes in our dorm rooms?
6. I bet Dunham and I bought ours at the same antique store in Columbus, Ohio, in fact.
7. Themes of letting guys platonically sleep over in your room that would later be repeated in Tiny Furniture…Lena, I see the kind of self-referencing director that you are.
8. If only calling the girls that your crushes like “stupid” ever worked to get you what you want.
9. I’m so emotionally overwrought re: Ella’s poorly semi-bleached hair.
10. Being into men who can’t pronounce “hegemony”…oh, liberal arts college, we hardly knew ye.
11. Babe, don’t let this man into your bed.
12. I feel like I’m watching Jaws right now, but with a horny, annoying undergraduate man circling the waters instead of a shark.
13. “…The way you broke three bones in the list of my heart.” LOL.
14. I mean, to be fair, all poetry is embarrassing when read aloud.
15. “I thought it was trite sometimes,” said every creative writing major offering feedback in a seminar ever.
16. Does 2009-era Lena Dunham have the same swoopy bangs that I have…right now?
17. God, I’m viscerally remembering how awful it is to hear everyone absolutely beat the shit out of your writing in a “workshop” setting.
18. This girl wanting to jump in and defend her poem is very much giving Hannah Horvath flopping out of her Iowa MFA program.
19. To this day, I have fond memories of doing my laundry with my friends in college (and I still judge the almost invariably Republican boys on my hall whose parents paid hundreds of dollars a semester for a laundry service to spare their precious sons that particular indignity).
20. The specificity of Ella having towels that match her comforter is so “I’m in college and my parents love me.”
21. All I can think about right now is Dunham’s character’s mother (and Dunham’s actual mother, as it happens) screaming, “YOU ARE NOT EVEN HAVING SEX WITH THIS PERSON!” about the guy she’s letting sleep in her bed in Tiny Furniture.
22. Oh God, and now they’re spooning?
23. Ella’s attempt at looking professional for her meeting with her professor (miniskirt and blazer, natch) is killing me.
24. A long, schlumpy dress worn under a backpack really screams “college” (or the way I dressed for it, at least).
25. These gold script hoops on Ella……………
26. The vicarious discomfort of this kiss scene is giving me hives.
27. Aw, Dunham’s had some of her tattoos since before she made her first movie? Cute (genuinely).
28. When a guy says “I feel like I won’t follow through and you might get upset,” believe him.
29. I’m not saying every girl wants a boyfriend, but this specific girl most definitely does.
30. Is that…Audrey Gelman?
31. Lena looks so young and vulnerable in so many frames of this movie, I could cry.
32. God save me from the college virginity debate.
33. Remember telling random people embarrassing secrets about yourself at almost any opportunity during college?
34. “I don’t intend to be anyone’s boyfriend”……..it’s giving lie!
35. This random bed-crasher has a lot of rules for someone who doesn’t even have a dorm room.
36. Being 32 has its downfalls, but at least I don’t have to watch college kids “do music” anymore.
37. Female-friendship fight!
38. Lena doing what she does best, truly.
39. How did I ever survive people randomly dropping by my dorm room in college, or even…enjoy it?
40. I don’t trust this Carly girlie, I have to say.
41. In my experience, people do not want to hear your negative first impressions of them.
42. Wow, Ella’s room really is the sleepover hot spot.
43. Okay, I was right not to trust Carly!
44. And Edie (a.k.a. Audrey Gelman) was right to call her a “gremlin”!
45. God, girls are so scary.
46. Especially when they’ve been jilted.
47. I love how little Ella knows about drugs.
48. The variety of wigs in this film…Nicole Kidman is shaking!
49. Beware the therapist’s son, Ella!
50. Although this guy is definitely a step up from the bed-crasher whose name I forget.
51. Why does he own a recorder, though?
52. This guy’s cartilage piercing and Nintendo boxers…
53. God, college sex is so undignified.
54. I mean, in a way, I guess you could say all sex is undignified.
55. Okay, Ella clearly has the ick (fair).
56. Oh, diva, leave bed-crasher be!
57. Ah, the spring break schlep from rural Ohio to New York City. I know it well.