When I was freshly twenty, on summer break from college—­a place tucked between scenic Midwestern cornfields and a postindustrial wasteland where meth had replaced sprockets as the major export—­I made my first short film. I called it a satire, although I’m not sure I knew what that meant. It was about a teenage art dealer (played by my brother when he was still presenting as female) who ruled her gallery with an iron fist, bossing around people three and four times her age, an idea that seemed like a fairy tale but was, in retrospect, a rather prescient vision of my life to come.

I cast my family, used our home as both production office and set, and made ruthless fun of the very industry that had allowed me to grow up in the city and attend the esteemed liberal arts school I was currently enrolled in. I haven’t watched the film in twenty years—­I’m sure I would be both charmed and alarmed by its amateur presentation—but at the time, it felt like one small step for me, one huge step for womankind. It’s that kind of hubris that defines being a young artist, and which should never be beaten out of anyone.

I submitted the film to Sundance’s even more indie counterpart, Slamdance, and when I was accepted, it felt like the beginning of my life—not just as a filmmaker, but as a human being. I booked tickets to Park City and dragged along my two best friends at the time, Audrey and Sara—two stunningly petite brunettes who made me feel both more and less worthwhile when they flanked me. There was a Facebook group for accepted filmmakers, where cheap house shares were available, and we secured a single king-­size bed in a run-down ski lodge, splitting the house—­which had a dusty pair of antlers over the nonworking fireplace and a dubious “native” decorating scheme—with film bros in their thirties and their wanly supportive girlfriends. All we knew is that the film festival promised celebrity sightings (I kept track in scrawled notes on the back of an envelope—Jared Leto! Gary Coleman holding hands with Teri Hatcher! Scott fucking Speedman!) and, if we played our cards right, the chance to get very drunk with our fake IDs.