Local Makes Good

Lewisville resident Ashley Chan hitting it big on Jeopardy

Lewisville resident Ashley Chan is winning on Jeopardy.

Photo by Alex Bentley

Dallas-Fort Worth can lay claim to a rising Jeopardy! champion: Ashley Mungiguerra Chan, a resident of Lewisville, is now on a four-day winning streak after besting her competition on Tuesday, December 17.

Chan, who works in public relations, began her run-up to champion status on December 12, taking down the previous three-day champion with ease, finishing with a runaway total of $15,600.

Since then, she has shown to have a broad range of knowledge, as well as the buzzer skills, to keep her on top.

Chan is a graduate of Hofstra University in 2015 and a publicist at Dala Communications in Dallas. In an interview with her alma mater, she shared some of the strategies that have helped her stay on top now for four days in a row.

“I told a lot of people before I went on Jeopardy!, ‘Oh, I feel like I have a leg up on other contestants because I’ve been on TV before and hosted programs,'” she said. “I also did debate in high school. So, being on stage in front of people didn’t make me nervous.”

“Having experience with hands-on news work was really helpful for me because I was able to focus on gameplay and not worry if my mic was messing up, if I was looking in the wrong direction, or if my outfit was OK,” she said.

She applied to be on the show more than once, and was eventually accepted by the show's producers in 2024. Her episodes were filmed in October.

She brushed up by listening to the show's podcasts and said she was grateful they got to rehearse the process of hitting the buzzer, since that was one of the most rattling aspects of the show. Hit it too soon, and you're temporarily frozen out.

"It is so much more difficult than it looks on TV," she said.

Knowing how much to risk during Final Jeopardy was also a key strategy that helped her in her second game on December 13, when a smart wager allowed her to retain her title despite not knowing the answer.

The game on December 17 was her closest yet, with all three contestants having amassed more than $10,000 heading into Final Jeopardy, a rare scenario for the game.

The category was "Fictional Characters." The clue: "Dressed in white in her first scene, this play character says her name means 'white woods.'"

Chan's correct response of "Who is Blanche DuBois?," along with a little lucky wagering, enabled her to win by a mere $300. Her four-day total winnings now stand at $67,400.

Root for her on December 18 on CBS TV at 6 pm, when she'll compete once again. Can she win a fifth time? Whether she does or not, with four wins under her belt, Chan is likely to be invited back for Jeopardy's annual Tournament of Champions, set to air in January 2026.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Chan lost in her fifth game to a fellow Texan, Eric Weldon-Schilling of Houston.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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