Lena Dunham wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the 2010 independent film Tiny Furniture, which features her own short video The Fountain, and the artwork of her photographer mother, Laurie Simmons. Seth Rogen co-wrote, co-directed, co-produced, and starred in the 2013 studio film This Is the End, featuring the artwork of actor and artist James Franco. Although each of these films features an ensemble cast and a host of collaborators, I have chosen to focus on Dunham, Simmons, Franco, and Rogen as characters whose work structures the films, facilitates a discussion about artists and entertainers in film, and the art world versus mainstream entertainment culture. Tiny Furniture and This Is the End have a number of things in common including a similar time period (the early YouTube era), a similar set (the interior of modern open-plan homes collapsed with the identities of the artists who own them), a similar plot of ego-death, and a similar use of self-aware humor. Piecing apart the films’ similarities will facilitate a better understanding of how artists and entertainers play themselves in film, and what these two films suggest about the potential for a middle ground between the art world and mainstream entertainment culture.

Tiny Furniture

In Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham plays Aura, a “video maker”1 who moves home to New York City after graduating from a liberal arts college in Ohio. Struggling to find her next steps in her career and personal life, Aura reconnects with her mother Siri, sibling Nadine, and childhood friend Charlotte.