Coming of Age

You would have a hard time missing Ike Holter in a crowd. Blazing down streets on his roller blades, gliding through crowds with his carefree attitude, this 26-year-old Chicago playwright is always on the move. Occasionally I see him at parties, with his addictive sense of humor calling out to you “Holl-ler” as he glides up with a smile. It is not unusual for Ike to attend numerous events on the North side all in one night, skating from place to place with his backpack in tow. He sat down with me, a rare occasion for this man, on an unusually cool August night to share some red wine and answer some questions about his life, career and his upcoming Steppenwolf Garage series production Hit the Wall.

Editor-in-Chief Sawyer J. Lahr reviews Tomboy, a transsexual coming-of-age story by up-and-coming French Writer/Director Celine Sciamma (Water Lillies), returning to Chicago for a one-week run at The Music Box Theatre, Friday, Jan 27 through Thursday, Feb 2nd.

You’re 22 years old and being sent off to war in a few days. You admit you don’t know what the war is all about. (The harshest criticism you make of Saddam Hussein is that he is “hypocritical”, which strikes me a bit like condemning Hitler for being a lousy pinochle player.) You don’t know if you’ll ever return home, if you’ll ever see your family and friends again. You realize that you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life by joining the National Guard; it never occurred to you that you might end up in a war zone.

Xavier Dolan has been called the "Canadian wunderkind" by indieWIRE, but he'll have to keep the momentum with his third feature, Lawrence Anyways. Dolan does not consider his debut feature film, I Killed My Mother (2009), part of the "gay cinema canon;" he says in an interview with Fab Magazine TV at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, "It's not a gay film. It's not a gay flick. It wasn't particularly difficult for me to come out of closet. My coming out wasn't harsh or hard at all. I don't know that. I want to talk about things that I know." Dolan lost distribution of his first feature to a precarious Regent Releasing; I Killed My Mother received the Prix Regard Jeune Director's Fortnight award at Cannes in 2009, and has never been released.