Emergent: Mike Mills (Thumbsucker)

Birthplace: Berkeley, Calif.
Favorite Album: Smog’s A River Ain’t Too Much To Love
Favorite Book: Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances Of Man
Pets: Bowser, a Jack Russell Terrier, and Zoe, a border-collie mutt
Favorite Beverage: Tea
Guilty Pleasure: Crying during in-flight films

He’s directed music videos for Air, Moby and Yoko Ono. He’s done graphic-design work for The Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth. And he’s written and directed handfuls of short films and documentaries. But behind the camera on the set of his feature debut, Thumbsucker, is where Mike Mills found himself.

Adapted from Walter Kirn’s novel, Thumbsucker tells the story of Justin Cobb, an awkward suburban teenager who can’t shake the habit of sucking his thumb. He tries dousing it with ink, being hypnotized by his New Age orthodontist and medication.

Mills was interested in Kirn’s story because of its unflagging honesty. “Walter wasn’t lying,” he says. “He was showing us stuff about real life, how flawed and messed up we are. That’s a very generous thing to do.”

Mills—whose mother died just five months before he started filming—particularly identifies with the unusually tight bond between protagonist Justin and his mother. “I was continuing this conversation with my mom,” he says, “and it became a part of me processing our relationship.” Even Mills’ relationship with his father, who passed away when he finished the film, is relatable to Justin and his father. “The kind of distance that they had echoes parts of my life,” Mills says. “The film became my family. I was definitely having therapy.”

But Thumbsucker isn’t just about Mills. It speaks to a culture that tries too hard to use age as a definition. “I think that there’s adolescence in the 17-year-olds, the 18-year-olds in the film, but it’s also in the 40-year-olds,” says Mills. “Thumbsucker is kind of saying that age is slippery and not one thing at a time.”

Also slippery is the idea of addiction, which Thumbsucker tackles gracefully. While Justin’s habit appears on the surface to be an addiction, Mills argues that it’s merely a symptom of a much deeper dependence the film’s characters share. “They’re addicted to the idea that they’re unlovable, that they have to wear a mask in order to be lovable,” he says. “And all of their masks run out in the film.”

Mills, who started directing partly because movies are “the closest you can get to that feeling music gives you,” chose songs for Thumbsucker that support the sense of fragility and exposure he hoped to convey. The soundtrack consists mostly of songs by the exuberant 20-plus member Polyphonic Spree, and three songs by melancholic singer/songwriter Elliott Smith, who died before he could complete his tracks for the film. “While The Polyphonic Spree and Elliott Smith are very different, they’re very similar in that they’re really singing about what it’s like to be fragile,” Mills says. “They’re promoting that it’s OK to be fragile, it’s OK to be broken, it’s OK to be messed up. I’m really attracted to that.”