Sarah Kambe Holland is a film director based in Los Angeles. She is best known for her debut feature, Egghead & Twinkie, which she directed, wrote, co-produced and co-edited. The film, which won the Jury Award for Best Comedy Feature at the 2023 Austin Film Festival, is out now on digital. Holland also directs commercial work for the advertising agency, 21GRAMS. She specializes in branded video content for social media, relying on her background as a YouTuber and TikTok creator. In 2020, Holland developed a viral TikTok campaign to raise funds for Egghead & Twinkie, amassing millions of views and growing the @eggheadtwinkiefilm account to more than 250,000 followers. Holland loves working with emerging talent and developing multi-faceted characters, with a passion for telling queer and Asian American stories. She is currently writing her second feature.
When I talk about my directorial debut, Egghead & Twinkie, people often assume that the main character, Twinkie, must be based on myself. After all, we’re both queer mixed-Asian girls with a weakness for Doc Martens. She must be my self-insert character, and the story of her coming out of the closet must be based on my own experience. Right?
Well, the answer is wrong … mostly. Egghead & Twinkie is a fictional story, and Twinkie is her own person. She steals her dad’s car and travels across the country to meet her Insta-famous crush in person for the first time. I never did anything as epic as that. I was too busy maintaining straight A’s in school and forcing my younger siblings to act in my shitty short films.
That said, there are moments of truth in Egghead & Twinkie. If I scrutinize the film, I can see facets of myself reflected on screen, in ways that were not always intentional when I wrote the screenplay. So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are the glimmers of my life that made it into the movie (whether I meant them to be there or not!).
My Own Egghead
Egghead is Twinkie’s best friend, and early in the film, we learn that he has a big fat crush on her. People often ask if I have an Egghead in my own life. And I do … sort of. I didn’t have anyone in mind when I originally created the character, but in retrospect, Egghead has a few things in common with my good friend, Zach. We’ve been friends since we were 15, and at some point during my junior year of high school, I’m pretty sure he developed a crush on me.
The issue was, we were such close friends that I was totally oblivious to his feelings. He gave me an elaborate gift for Valentine’s Day that year, with a giant Hershey’s Kiss, an acrostic poem, and a card with the words “Don’t Be Afraid to Love” emblazoned on the front. I received all of that and thought, “Oh wow, what a great friend!”
Needless to say, it didn’t work out romantically between us. We laugh about it now, and I’m so lucky to still have him in my life. He’s an incredible voice actor, so he leaves me voicemails in funny voices when I don’t answer the phone. In my opinion, that’s very Egghead-coded behavior.
Being Queer and Online
I think every queer teen has Googled “how to know if you’re gay” at some point on their road to self-discovery. I was no exception. At the risk of exposing all my secrets in this article, I had several gay awakenings thanks to the internet, including a particular Tumblr blog called “Fuck Yeah Androgynous Girls.” It was on YouTube and social media that I saw the first glimpses of real gay people living happy, fruitful lives.
All these experiences lead to the creation of BD, Twinkie’s online crush. In the movie, Twinkie falls hard for BD, even though they have never met face to face. BD is out and proud, living her best life as a lesbian DJ in Dallas. Sure, Twinkie wants to be with BD, but she also wants to be just like her.
A lot of gay teens turn to the internet for community and acceptance. When Twinkie takes off on a cross-country road trip to meet BD, it’s not only to chase an online romance, but also because she’s searching for a place to belong. I was lucky to make a few queer friends thanks to the internet, one of whom lives in Sweden. When I was 20, I flew all the way to Europe to hang out with her IRL.
Huh, maybe I’m more like Twinkie than I thought.
“I Want to Be an Animator Someday”
It’s one of the opening lines in the film. Twinkie is addressing the audience in voiceover, telling them a little about herself and her hopes and dreams. She loves drawing and animation, and she wants to be an animator someday.
I never wanted to be an animator, but I did want to be an artist. From the ages of 7 to 12, I was very serious about drawing. Not to brag, but one of my self-portraits was even hung in the Hall of Honor at my elementary school.
Drawing fell off to the wayside when I discovered creative writing, acting and, eventually, filmmaking. But I still have a soft spot for visual art, and I love animation. Maybe I made Twinkie an artist so I could live vicariously through her.
In a way, working with some kick-ass animators on this production was a way for me to realize that childhood dream. Shout out to Dillon Cefalo and Bea Wisch, our animators on the film!
On the Word “Twinkie”
Personally, I don’t like the term “twinkie.” I’m not talking about the snack. I mean the slang word for an Asian person who is Americanized, or rather, “yellow on the outside and white on the inside.”
In the film, Twinkie has adopted this controversial term as her own name. Whether it’s an empowering reclamation or a defense mechanism is open to interpretation. Personally, I think she’s still figuring that out for herself.
I grew up in a white-majority community in Austin, Texas. Twinkie lives in a similar neighborhood in suburban Florida, where she feels very alone in her Asian-ness. Like me, she is also mixed race, which can lead to feeling like you’re not enough of anything.
I was nervous to tackle such a nuanced topic in this silly, lighthearted movie. But being mixed-race and Asian American is a part of my story. It’s a part of Twinkie’s story too.
Coming Out
I often describe Egghead & Twinkie as a coming-of-age comedy about coming out. And it’s true, Twinkie coming out of the closet is the main event that kicks off the entire plot.
My coming-out scene wasn’t quite the same as Twinkie’s, though. I came out to my parents in a First Watch restaurant, and the first words out of my dad’s lips in response were, “Shhh, not so loud!” Sorry, Dad, I’m an ex-theater kid! I speak from my diaphragm.
In the film, Twinkie’s parents tell her that she is too young to know her own sexuality. This was a deep-rooted fear that I had when I came out at age 19. So, I made sure to lock down a real, live girlfriend when I came out to my family, so they couldn’t possibly deny it, because I had indisputable proof.
While my coming out experience was better than Twinkie’s, I think the fear of not being believed or taken seriously is one a lot of young queer people can relate to. There’s a line that Egghead says to Twinkie toward the end of the film that I wish I could relay to my younger self: “You don’t have to prove yourself to me. You don’t have to prove yourself to your parents. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.”
You know who you are better than anyone else. And that’s enough.
Featured image shows Sarah Kambe Holland and actor Sabrina Jie-A-Fa on the set of Egghead & Twinkie; all images courtesy Sarah Kambe Holland unless otherwise stated.
