Notes from the Teenage Underground

It's said that good things come in threes: wishes, kings, back-up singers….Then there's Gem, Lo, and Mira—three good friends with something to prove, if only to themselves.Gem is initially thrilled when she convinces her two friends to take their antisocial edge one step further and make an underground film. After all, movies are her thing, and this may finally be her opportunity to shine.But while Gem is mastering the art of the slow pan, and Mira contemplates the casting couch, no one knows what it is that Lo—the most subversive of the three—has planned. In the back of her mind, Gem's worried. Instead of equalizing the friendship, the movie seems to bring Lo and Mira even closer together, leaving Gem in a very distant corner. Suddenly, three seems a very uneven number, and the hip underground they've chosen a dark and lonely place to be.It will take great films, bad haiku, and a pantheon of inspirational guides—from Andy Warhol to Henry David Thoreau—to help Gem discover the true meaning of friendship, where family fits in, and that when it comes to underground, a little bit of light is all right.