Girl on Film

by Cecil Castellucci

Girl on Film is a graphic novel memoir by Cecil Castellucci, the author of, among other things, Boy Proof, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes, and Shade, The Changing Girl, all of which I enthusiastically recommend. In this memoir, Castellucci documents her obsession with becoming a movie director, a goal she developed at a young age and pursued through her years at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (the high school in the movie and TV show Fame) and for many years after graduation. It also documents her frustration with the technical aspects of filmmaking, and her transition into life as a musician, a novelist, and a comic book writer and artist.

One of the most interesting aspects of Girl on Film is that interwoven with a straightforward memoir are discussions the author had with her father, a scientist who studies memory. These discussions of how memories are formed and retrieved, and how the change and how our interpretations of them change, give shape and depth to the story.

It’s lucky that those meditations on memory exist, because while Castellucci’s story is full of passion and excitement, it falls into a trap of relentless name-dropping that feels shallow. It also ends just as things are getting most interesting, with her moving to L.A. and exploring different careers in the arts. After a promising start, the book gets a little too superficial and rushed toward the end.

I do recommend this book to people who feel passionate about artistic lives (their own and others’). In particular, Castellucci’s passion for art in all forms illuminates every page of the book, which is truly a gift. I hope she writes a second memoir about her life as a novelist and a comic book creator. It’s sure to be equally enthusiastic.

– Carrie S

One thing young Cecil was sure of from the minute she saw Star Wars was that she was going to be some kind of artisté. Probably a filmmaker. Possibly Steven Spielberg. Then in 1980 the movie Fame came out. Cecil wasn’t allowed to see that movie. It was rated R and she was ten. But she did watch the television show and would pretend with her friends that she was going to that school. Of course they were playing. She was not. She was destined to be an art school kid. Chronicling the life of award-winning young adult novelist, and Eisner-nominated comics scribe Cecil Castellucci (Shade the Changing Girl, Star Wars: Moving Target), Girl On Film follows a passionate aspiring artist from the youngest age through adulthood to deeply examine the arduous pursuit of filmmaking, while exploring the act of memory and how it recalls and reshapes what we think we truly know about ourselves.

Memoir, Graphic Novel, Nonfiction