The same way Scorsese forces you to sit inside Travis Bickle's POV before you understand what he's becoming, this film asks its audience to relate to Michael first.

I'm also inspired by Eighth Grade, where verisimilitude - the texture of screens, authentic references, young-adult self-consciousness - evokes a loose, spontaneous approach that catches life as it happens rather than staging it.

Growing up, I felt completely repulsive. Like something was fundamentally broken in me that women could smell from across the room.

Nearly all of the flashbacks with Michael's father in the film are things that happened to me as a child. My father taught me to swim by nearly drowning me. He taught me to make women uncomfortable by staring at them. He did these things because it's how he was raised - the son of a Greek soldier. Though I hated him for these things for many years, I now know, he loved me in the way that he could. He thought he was making me a stronger man.

Boys inherit these cycles of violence, and these malignant ways of relating to women, because the fathers that pass it down frequently think they're offering their sons an expression of love - however distorted that may be.

This film isn't looking to forgive or to explain away, but to authentically reflect the consequences of the male loneliness epidemic.