Johnny Physical Lives! - a rock'n'roll documentary about cancer

Started by pete, November 08, 2015, 03:05:41 PM

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pete



hey. so this is the trailer for a doc that I've been working on for the past two and a half years. it's found-footage and animated, and I shot, edited, produced, and did some amount of directing for this piece. I'm pretty proud of it. it's 20 minutes long and is definitely the heaviest thing I've done, but it's also badass as fuck. take a look.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Garam

Looks like a lot of fun. When and where can I see the whole thing?

Jeremy Blackman

This looks pretty intense. And original. Actually the trailer kind of confused me, but the Kickstarter page has a description that helped:

"A short film about my younger brother's experience of leukemia through the eyes of his alter ego— a rock star named Johnny Physical."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/649770462/johnny-physical-lives/posts/1275124

pete

yeah the film's changed quite a bit since the kickstarter (which I wasn't a part of) - but in short, a kid who dreams of being a depraved rock star gets lung cancer, and he and his brother pretend all the painful bouts with cancer were just this rock star character trying to kick off a nasty habit. It draws a lot of parallel between having leukemia and having an addiction, except the latter is way more glamorous and rock'n'roll. we animate the adventures of the alter-ego trying to fight the demons in his blood and contrast it with the much more depressing and frustrating reality of battling cancer.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

pete

anyone interested in seeing a cut PM me I'll link you but please please please don't share it.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

pete

https://sheffdocfest.com/films/6041

got into hot docs in toronto - totally forgot to post about it here - and it'll be playing at Sheffield Doc Fest and Nantucket Film Fest next month.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Just Withnail

Oh, you just mean two of the most important doc festivals in the world? No big news!

Congrats motherfucker!

Just Withnail

And I just watched it and it floored me. Heartbreaking!

Quote from: Garam on November 08, 2015, 03:30:58 PM
Looks like a lot of fun.

It was, but fucking intense towards the end.

pete

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

jenkins

xx

"what's important is that you get everything you can out of every last second"

pete

it was a pretty crazy experience making this - I thought it was gonna be some fast bucks that would take maybe three months at most, but it ended up lasting three years plus a ton of re-writes, re-edits, and a trip to Toronto where I acted out the entire final fight scene for the animators. It was pretty brutal to try to cram 22 years of someone's life into 22 minutes, and Josh - although a very seasoned writer, is a first time director. We spent a lot of time just trying to teach each other new skills - he really stressed on some hard and fast rules we just can't break in telling this story, no matter how convenient it seems (for example, in no way he wants to portray his brother as a snowflake or talk about this experience as a lesson in life with some type of character arc, he feels like those cliches are the reason we still can't talk about cancer in an honest way) and I told him that we can't be married to any detail, no matter how poetic, unless they work into the development of the story - or everything has to be represented visually  - via home video footage, photos, something we've shot, or animation, but we don't do talking heads and we don't do title cards. We didn't know those two rules would increase the production time to three years, but here we are finally.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

polkablues

Those self-imposed restrictions were well worth it in the end. It feels like a very cohesive, very honed piece of work. Subtly devastating in a way that a more straight-forward telling of the same story couldn't have achieved.
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