A few years ago, I recall seeing a Tweet about how “cold-emailing can completely change your life”. Since seeing the post, I’ve thought of it regularly, and I do believe it to be generally true and advice to live by. The notion had a resurgence on social media earlier this year, various posts popping up on my timeline about it multiple times a day. All of them had the same gist: you never know what can happen by sending one, unprovoked, seemingly random message to someone that you want something from, no matter who they are or what it is. This might be the story of the most-successful cold Instagram DM (in at least recent memory) at Bennington College.
Isabella Clark and Ruby Lundberg both arrived to Bennington as transfers in September. The two hit it off relatively quickly due to their similar personalities, shared study of philosophy (Isabella studying philosophy and anthropology, Ruby studying philosophy and theatre), and their mutual affinity for film. By February, they were best friends. This story begins where all great stories begin: Instagram DMs. More specifically, Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Instagram DMs.
You might know Eugene (there’s a high probability that you do not) from Spree starring Joe Keery or Wobble Palace starring and co-written with Dasha Nekrasova, a frequent collaborator. During the pandemic, he started work on an unnamed project that came to fruition after years of rumination around a vague idea because of COVID presenting him with an opportunity to finally sit down and get to the bottom of it. In the fall of 2021, he finished the script, and in July 2023, he wrapped filming what would become The Code, starring Peter Vack, Dasha Nekrasova, Ivy Wolk, and Vishwam Velandy. Isabella is specifically interested in the internet and digital ethnography/hermeneutics– ideas that preoccupy Eugene’s films– and has been following Eugene and his work for a few years now. She remembers when The Code was actually in production, before anything about it was even officially announced.
“I had been following the film for a little bit, like the marketing and the filming when they were taking pictures back in 2021,” she recalls. “I find Eugene to be one of the most interesting film directors working today, like the way in which he integrates the internet and challenges traditional filmmaking techniques to show that you are not bound by the rules of filmmaking.”
Ruby, though she had seen Spree when it came out, was less familiar with Eugene as a director. She did know this, though: “Isabella is a fan of his. Wobble Palace is one of her favorite movies.” When the trailer for The Code came out, she remembers Isabella making her watching it, and subsequently talking about it and Eugene as a director nonstop during the lead-up to the film’s actual debut at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. After it premiered, receiving positive reviews, Eugene geared up for a tour premiering the film at theaters around the US with Q&A’s run by a decorated cast of moderators: actors, friends of the actors, prison escapees, exes of the actors, similarly problematic podcast co-hosts of the actors, producers, and friends of Eugene. What happened next is something I can slightly recall: Isabella and Ruby, at lunch one day in the beginning of this spring term, sat down and said that Isabella had direct messaged Eugene on Instagram, and he had actually responded. (To this day, she is “still kind of baffled that [he] responded to [her] DM so quickly.”) After the two of them explained who exactly he was and what exactly The Code was to some of our friends who were looking at them blankly, they went on to tell the story that the two recall like this:
“A few weeks after [Isabella] showed me the trailer, he posted about finding venues for the premiere tour. I talked Isabella into DMing him about showing the film at Bennington. It wasn’t really that serious of a proposition,” Ruby explains. Her and Isabella assumed that Eugene would be familiar with Bennington and, as Ruby puts it, “all the strange gossip and lore” about the school because of his past relationship and current friendship with notorious alum Honor Levy. “I think in [Isabella’s] original DM, she didn’t even mention Bennington.”
“I thought it would be funny to message him, but thought he most likely wouldn’t respond because my account has no name and no face on it– but he responded pretty quickly, and we got to talking,” Isabella recounts. Ruby continues, “Once she mentioned Bennington, he seemed pretty excited about it.” After the initial conversation, both Ruby and Isabella were left to figure out if a screening would, one, even be possible at Bennington, and, two, how it would actually happen especially if they were the ones completely in charge of planning it. For over a month, I would sit down at a meal or be in a conversation with either Ruby or Isabella where I would receive piecemeal micro-updates about this entire thing, which I found simultaneously hilarious and far-fetched. It seemed like there was a large demand for money to actually pay the distributor and crew (money that we did not have or could drum up even after propositions of bake sales, kissing booths, and crypto rugpulls) and issues with scheduling. Amidst all of this, Isabella took matters into her own hands and asked Eugene for the distributor– Monument Releasing– and how to communicate with them. This began a months’ long email chain. “I probably sent so many emails, but they were really nice and the guy who I communicated with was pretty happy to work with me. His wife went to Bennington […] I talked to student life, and some other people, and found the funds to set him up and get him here to do a talk and premiere the film.”
In early April, everything seemed to fall into place. There were funds that would be sourced for the film to premiere, Eugene was excited about being able to come to Bennington, and he officially announced on his Instagram on April 10th that there would be a stop on The Code tour at Bennington College on April 28th. As the date actually approached, the fact that it was actually happening settled in, and Ruby and Isabella wrapped up the final preparations in the midst of midterms and a trip to Philadelphia with the philosophy club that only finished up the day before the screening, the two of them (along with myself, coincidentally) only coming back to campus less than 24 hours before Eugene and an unnamed “special guest” were set to arrive.
On the evening of the 28th, I sat down to eat dinner before the screening was set to begin at 7 after Eugene, his guest, Isabella, and Ruby were set to come back to campus after having dinner. I had been under the impression that they were going to Fuji– partially because of it being one of the only real options in Bennington, partially because they thought Eugene would find the atmosphere to be an encapsulation of Bennington. Prior to their arrival, I had actually been given a task to help prepare for the screening, which managed to make me feel genuinely useful for the first time in the months of planning for this event: I was to find a box to collect donations in. So, while I was deliberating where I would actually find a box and why I had put off my one job for this screening until the literal hour before it was set to happen, my train of thought was entirely interrupted by my co-box-acquirer, Sean, who made a sort of quiet exclamation and motioned for me to look towards the opposite side of the balcony. There, Isabella and Ruby guided Eugene Kotlyarenko to sit down with their dining hall dinners, Honor Levy in tow. Over the next few minutes, I got a few texts from both Isabella and Ruby urging me to come over to them as Honor wanted the inside scoop (gossip) about things around campus that everyone assumed I would know as a writer for the Lens. Unfortunately for me, I did miss these texts and multiple phone calls, including one from Isabella that bluntly said “what happened to chef steve” and then the follow-up (sent two times): “they want to talk to you”.
“Honor was very into reminiscing about her Bennington days. She was FaceTiming one of her friends who went here, I think,” says Ruby about the completely hilarious scene I got to be, gloriously, a quiet witness of. Honor was nearly entirely bent over the balcony, sticking her phone out to show Commons Lawn to the person on the other end of the phone call and loudly exclaiming about being back on campus. This went on for about thirty minutes before Sean and I actually forced ourselves to stop watching and to get up to find a box of some sort for the event– Honor, Eugene, Isabella, and Ruby all eating “various fruits and vegetables and Froot Loops for dinner”, popping a bottle of champagne open to have a toast, and discussing Bennington.
“I’m just so grateful for even having Honor and Eugene on the deck just eating D-Hall food and asking about all the “saffron in D-Hall” posters,” Isabella grins. She’s still baffled, in general, that any of these things happened and managed to pan out the way they did. “Like, this relatively well-known director just agreed to go to a school and meet with a person he knows exactly nothing about, and the distributor also was just like: yeah, sure.”
About fifteen minutes before people were set to arrive, Eugene, Honor, Isabella, and Ruby all headed to Tishman to gear up for the event. The nerves had mostly dissipated by then– they had gotten all of the hard parts of meeting Eugene and Honor out of the way, realized they were two mostly-normal people to talk to and that all should go smoothly with technology. Eugene, as people were coming in, had a playlist going that was evocative of the 2020 setting of the film. He demanded that Subway Surfers gameplay be projected before the film began and walked around to talk with random students. As people began to filter in, Isabella and Ruby’s fears about no one showing up were quelled.
Isabella points out the fact that she had “a lot of caffeine” so she was “pretty paranoid” when explaining her thoughts on that night to me. Besides that, though, things were looking great. “A good amount of people ended up showing up, and a surprising amount of people came from outside the campus,” continues Ruby. “It was also kind of crazy because I know that some people on campus have strong opinions about the actors in the film, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to go. But, I figured people would voice their opinions or not, and that was fine. If they did [voice their opinions], it meant more people coming to the screening,” Isabella went on to add. “Eugene and Honor talked to almost everyone who came in.”
(If, at this point, you are at all curious about how successful the box-acquisition was, it ended up being entirely useless because Eugene graciously declined to take donations. This, however, came after my last-minute search in Dickinson for some sort of container that proved to be bizarrely difficult. I thought it would be very easy to find some sort of empty cardboard box or plastic bin, but after scouring basically everywhere in the building, I had nothing. In a miraculous stroke of luck as I went to check the reading room, something caught my eye nestled behind and obstructed by a door in the corner. It was this vase, the oddest work of craftsmanship I have ever seen. So, with the female Supreme Court justices biblically-accurate angel vase cradled in my arms, I walked back up to Tishman where Eugene and Honor had arrived with Ruby and Isabella. My first conversation with the two of them began with some variation of what the hell is that? and they seemed disappointed there was no use for it just because it was so strange. I am still very confused as to why this exists, who made it, if it’s available for purchase, and why it’s in Dickinson. If anyone has answers to any of these questions, let me know.)
Eugene– eccentric and very talkative– gave a brief hello and thanks to the crowd before the film started before he left to walk around campus and explore with Honor during the duration of the film itself. I imagine it would get tiring to watch your own film over and over again, multiple times a week, so for the hour and half runtime, we were left to our own devices.
The Code is a truly strange film that follows a young couple, Celine (Dasha Nekrasova) and Jay (Peter Vack), through their sexless, tumultuous relationship during the pandemic. Almost the entire film is from the perspective of security cameras, handheld camcorders, Instagram stories, iPhone cameras, screen-recordings of text conversations and Zoom calls, Tiktoks– the list goes on. It’s bawdy and purposefully uncomfortable; you either love it or hate it. The stand-out performances, in my opinion, come from side-characters Colette and Parthik, played by Ivy Wolk and Vishwam Velandy respectively. Now, to be transparent: I am not a film critic nor am I even a cinephile, so perhaps my thoughts on the film itself should end here. If you’re curious about the film, it’s available for streaming now on Mubi.
The Q&A portion of the film’s tour has been well-documented via Eugene’s Instagram– every night there was a premiere, he would livestream the Q&A afterwards on Instagram live, his phone strapped to his chest with some sort of selfie-stick-esque contraption that requires no hands and records a flattering angle of the user’s face from about 2 inches away. The Q&A at Bennington was moderated by none other than Isabella and Ruby– all of the attendees pushed back and sat in the last 10 or so rows, typical for any event in Tishman I have ever been to in my time at Bennington. Eugene had a relaxed conversation with the two organizers before opening up for comments from the crowd, the livestream pulled up and screen-mirrored behind him on the screen. Admittedly, I had quite a blast seeing usernames I recognize pop up and say hello in the chat– there was something surreal and hilarious about seeing my friends moderate this Q&A and for the chat to scroll by with people I recognized from my too-many years of being terminally online commenting and popping in and out.
“The funniest bit for me was during the Q&A and afterwards…Eugene was incredibly funny; putting the livestream of the Q&A– which had a lot of people in it– up on the projector. He was walking around the room…I don’t know, it was ridiculous,” Isabella similarly shares. When I asked Ruby about the Q&A, she entrusted Isabella and myself to be able to provide a more detailed account: “I don’t even know how to describe it. It was really strange.” You can watch a recording of the Q&A here on Eugene’s Instagram.
Once the talk finished, in typical Bennington fashion, everyone headed outside to smoke. Eugene was asked for a photo with an attendee and offered a cigarette, which he declined.
“I’ve actually never smoked in my life […] The other week, I had one of those Zyn things, though. It was crazy,” he told us as we stood around outside of Tishman.
I chatted with him about his loose inspiration for the film, the 1956 Japanese novel The Key, while other students chatted with Honor about her time at Bennington. She was particularly concerned with, as she put it, “where the hell is everyone?” When I asked Ruby about this particular detail after Honor and I briefly talked about how she had been walking up to random students walking around campus during the screening to ask them “where everyone was at”, she did emphasize both Honor and Eugene’s confusion on this apparently dead campus when compared to the pre-pandemic years of Bennington that Honor attended. “They both seemed quite baffled by how quiet the campus was on a particularly warm day,” Ruby laughs. Honor, before I left, did mention the fact that she’s still “offended” that there has not been a Lens or Bennington Banner written about her. So, shoutout to her.
For the rest of the night after the screening, I was terribly eager to hear about what Isabella, Ruby, Eugene, and Honor ended up getting up to after the premiere. When we had been standing outside of Tishman, the four had realized that there was, quite literally, no bar or restaurant still open in all of Bennington for them to go to.
“Afterwards, they had both been pretty hungry […], so we went to the only bar that was open and serving food still, which was The Sand Bar in Hoosick,” Ruby tells me when I ask about what they did that evening once I caught up with her and Isabella a few hours after, around 2 in the morning. “They served all their drinks in red solo cups, and we sat right next to the Touchtunes jukebox. Eugene was explaining some joke his friend used to do where he would use the Touchtunes app and buy a bunch of tokens– or however you use the app– to play the Schindler’s List soundtrack, but [just] as he was explaining it, the jukebox randomly started playing “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” which none of us had queued, but was probably better than anything we could have played.”
After further research, The Sand Bar might be the weirdest place I have ever seen. There’s beach volleyball fully just on the side of the road, if you’re into that.
The next morning, the four bid their goodbyes at The Blue Benn, where Eugene apparently “talked to a lot of old people” and might have “gone to a swimming hole” on his and Honor’s way out of Bennington. All and all, every story I heard about both the oddball director and moderately-disgraced Bennington graduate outside of the screening and my conversations with them check out.
Now that I’ve sat and actually written this whole article, the peculiarity of the whole thing really strikes me. There was absolutely no benefit for them screening the film here– Eugene has no problem filling theaters around the US with his and his actors’ cult-followings, and he wasn’t receiving some big payout from the school or massive publicity by coming here. Truly, it was just a cool, pretty awesome thing to do just because some random college students cold-DMed you on Instagram and tried nonstop for months to make something a little outlandish happen mostly because they thought it would be funny; a “good bit”. Isn’t this all in the spirit of Bennington? Love or hate this cast and crew comprised of literally ½ of the “Notable People” section of the Dimes Square Wikipedia page, it’s weird, outrageous art that some weird, outrageous people made and then came to Bennington with, for basically nothing in return. Isabella and Ruby, at least, will never forget it. When I asked Isabella how she felt about it after a whirlwind 24-hours only possible because of months of work, she answered without hesitation: “It was surreal. I would do it all over again if I could.”
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