A FFILM CYMRU WALES, EDICIS, SODA PICTURES, VISIT FILMS, BBC FILMS, S4C, BFI PRESENTATION VOX PICTURES PRESENTS A CRAIG ROBERTS FILM JUST JIM STARRING EMILE HIRSCH AND CRAIG ROBERTS INTERNATIONAL SALES VISIT FILMS 173 RICHARDSON ST. BROOKLYN, NY 11222 +1.718.312.8210 | WWW.VISITFILMS.COM INTERNATIONAL PRESS TBC JUST JIM. A dark coming of age movie. SYNOPSIS Jim is a high school outcast. His only friend, Michael, has left him for the cool crowd. His crush doesn’t even know his name. When his dog runs away too, Jim has no one left. All that changes when Dean, a mysterious American with movie star good looks, moves into the house next door. Dean offers Jim friendship and a makeover to help him become the popular kid at school. When it turns out that Dean is hiding a dark secret, however, Jim is forced to question if his newfound popularity is worth it. DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT At the heart of this melancholy tale is the simple message of ‘just be yourself’. JIM Jim has always been a strange kid. He emerged with his best friend Michael as the loners of the school until Michael was called up by the cool kids to hang out, leaving Jim on his own. Jim has always fancied Jackie so when Michael starts going out with her it’s devastating for him. Jim is a teenager frustrated with every aspect of his life. He’s constantly being bullied, his parents prefer his golden child sister and his old best friend is now snogging the girl of his dreams. Life sucks and it’s about to get a lot worse... DEAN Dean is a psychopath who comes to Wales and preys on the weak and the weakest being Jim. He looks like a movie star and seems very calculated. His dress sense is styled on James Dean. Dean has studied what it is to be cool, he was once exactly the same as Jim and so Dean pushes Jim over the edge. In a weird way he’s sort of a good guy as he helps Jim achieve his resolve. TONE The tone of this movie stems from the nihilistic town these characters live in. In the film Maesycwmmer is like a pointless creation, like somebody built it and left. There is little hope and the streets are paved with boredom. This is where the comedy stems from. I wanted the comedy to come from the awkward moments with Jim. He is our way into this town, he is our eyes. Donald has lost his mind, Beatrice has lost her mind, the Headmaster is in the process of losing his mind. Jim is the only normal one reacting to these people. They all have the emotion drained from their faces, they are robotic and have nothing left to give. It’s a dark comedy. The audience is supposed to laugh at the awkward situations, Donald jumping off the viaduct Beatrice talking about people in walls. When Jim reaches his highest point there is a tonal change, and the movie becomes more serious and surreal. THEMES The main theme I explore in the film is the quality of existence. Jim has the idea that being cool is the answer to everything. No matter how old we are, everyone wants to be respected but it’s a big mistake to try to be someone or something we’re not just to impress others. If the film were to have a message it would be ‘just be your self’. Loneliness is also a key theme. Jim is not very smart. Not as smart as he thinks he is. He wouldn’t be as lonely if he manned up. Pride comes in the way of stopping him. Loneliness comes from not being able to do anything. Not learning about life. When the young leave school there is nothing to do. The town is also full of depressed people who are stuck in limbo. Jim’s parents are happy because they have each other but everyone else is lonely. Growing up and becoming a man is the final theme. The killing is a metaphor for Jim becoming a man and the water is his rebirth. I want to leave the audience wanting to know what happens to Jim next. SHOOTING STYLE We shot with an anamorphic lens to give a retro feel, using crash zooms and lots of tracking to keep it imperfect. The beginning uses a combination of static frames, locked off shots of Jim in the house, as everything in the town is at a standstill. At the start we used as little movement as possible but when Dean comes into the story, the movement becomes more rounded, like Dean. As the pace changes, the pace of the camera and the editing reflect this, giving the audience time to breathe after the intense first act. The middle act is more playful. Jim has a friend. Dean completely changes Jim’s look and gets him to have real fun. With the new friend comes a new energy, a more heightened experience - lots of 2-shots, like American movies. So we start with a loner movie, then it becomes a buddy movie and then reverts back to loner movie. At the end it goes back and the world is the same, but Jim has changed as a person and so he’s allowed into the frame. We understand that was the only thing that needed to happen, he manned up and we go back to normal. He is a hero as well as a villain. I wanted the film to have a timeless feel, so chose not to use phones or the Internet as these devices would be an easy escape route. Jim escapes with the cinema. His only ways to escape are through his computer game, which is his connection to Michael, or with a movie set in the 50’s, The Piper’s Revenge. He doesn’t know any new themes or trends; he’s stuck in an old world. THE PIPER’S REVENGE The noir movie is symbolic for Dean. Dean is the Piper. He gets rid of the ‘rats’ in Jim’s life. The Piper is a killer who leaves behind a lit cigarette. Dean smokes in every scene. Dean moulds Jim into a version of himself. Perhaps Jim is the piper. THIS IS A PERSONAL FILM The great thing about shooting this film in my hometown and at my old school is that it was very personal to me. JUST JIM is a reflection on what growing up in Maesycwmmer was like for me. If only I had a James Dean character to help me. Some of the moments in this movie actually happened, so it has been great to stay true to the locations and capture the town as it was to me when I was growing up. The town is filled with people who are happy to be living the life they have chosen, like Jim’s parents. This is what Jim eventually grows to learn and accept: that what happens will happen. If you are meant to be the loser at school 9/10 it’s probably best to just go with it. INTERVIEW WITH CRAIG ROBERTS HOW DID JUST JIM FIRST COME TO BE? It was just the Cinematic scheme [Cinematic was set up by Ffilm Cymru Wales, the BFI, BBC Films, S4C and Soda Pictures to encourage emerging filmmaking talent from Wales]. I’d been writing stuff beforehand, nothing worth mentioning, and then I saw this scheme. It was two months until deadline and I was in America at the time, shooting something. I had some downtime so I just started writing, and sent it in. I was always writing to direct, not because I think I can write. WAS IT STRANGE BEING PART OF THE SCHEME, GIVEN YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN TO HOLLYWOOD? Much as I’d done all that, when it came down to actually writing and directing, I hadn’t done anything. The acting wasn’t of any value. I was the least experienced person there. It was really scary, actually. The only experience I had was in reading scripts, I suppose. You kind of get a gist of it from that. The format of a script is very simple once you actually break it down. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO WRITE THE SCREENPLAY? I wrote the first draft in five days and it didn’t make any sense! It was 80 pages and that’s the draft I sent in. In the end I had 14 drafts. They took about six months. There’s no final draft. I was redrafting as we shot. THEY SAY ‘WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW’, JUST HOW AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL IS JUST JIM? Events get pretty bizarre, so it’s not /that/ autobiographical! The first half is, definitely, just from being set in my hometown, and it’s based on my experience I had with a best friend. You know, you just grow apart from people and there’s nothing you can do about it. All the characters are based on people I know from my life. And, I suppose, my experience of trying to get with girls, which was pretty unsuccessful. YOU CAST CHARLOTTE RANDALL AS YOUR LOVE INTEREST. SHE WAS IN THE DRAMA CLASS AT YOUR OLD SCHOOL, RIGHT? She’s never acted before. I went back a couple of months before we cast and she was in school at the time. I wanted to source as many people from the local areas as I could.