Tina Kakadelis
Florida, by all accounts, is a weird place. From the manufactured theme park experiences to the bodies of water teeming with alligators, Florida remains an enigma, even to those who grew up there. Boys Go to Jupiter takes place somewhere in the state, an amalgamation of all the oddities Florida has to offer. It’s the story of a boy, Billy 5000 (Jack Corbett), and his quest to earn $5,000. That quest is derailed by an amorphous blob he names Donut, who is wanted by the evil Dolphin Groves Juice Company. The mastermind behind this film is Julian Glander. Ahead of the film’s theatrical release, writer/director Julian Glander and voice actor Jack Corbett sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss the beautiful weirdness that is Boys Go to Jupiter.
Glander once called Florida home. Even though the film’s title features the town of Jupiter, that was merely the result of some internet searching. “I grew up outside of Tampa. That’s where I was living as a teenager, but I was doing a ton of Google Maps and Street View research to make the movie. The name Jupiter kept sticking with me. I felt like, as the movie went on, it was perfect,” explains Glander.
While the film may have roots in Glander’s own childhood, Corbett felt an immediate pull to Billy 5000. “I felt like I’d lived a version of this,” Corbett noted. “It felt too close to me to not do it. Julian sent me this script and I read the entire thing and I’m like, okay, wait, this is awesome.”
The version of Florida that exists in Boys Go to Jupiter is both magical and mundane. It’s a pastel, surrealist wonderland built of strip malls, beaches, and parking lots. “It’s a fuzzy memory of Florida,” describes Glander. “I haven’t been back in more than a decade, and I think with the passage of time, it becomes easier to fantasize about it and forget about the physical discomfort of being there.”
The listlessness of the suburbs is not unique to Florida. Anyone who grew up hanging out in parking lots with their high school friends knows that there’s a specific ennui that exists only in teenagers in suburbia. When asked about capturing that sensation, Corbett first jumped in with an anecdote about a license plate he saw the other day. “ENNUI4U. It was awesome.”
“The suburbs are a very hostile environment for a teenager,” commented Glander. “Everything’s built for cars. Nothing’s really built at a human scale. My memories of that age are walking from one end of a strip mall to the other and that taking all day.”
“I was wearing black girls jeans and it was 105 degrees out, so that, for some reason, felt important to capture,” laughed Glander. “I knew I wanted this film to talk about the gig economy and about delivery workers. Originally, I wanted to write it on a fantasy mushroom planet 3,000 years in the future. I thought some distance would make it more interesting, but I actually think Florida is weirder than anything you can make up.”
Corbett’s character, Billy 5000, is the gig worker in question. Boys Go to Jupiter takes place during the weird, empty week between Christmas and New Year’s. Instead of hanging out with his friends and doing nothing, Billy is taking one food delivery order after another, obsessively tracking his earnings to make it to $5,000. Ironically, when Corbett isn’t voicing Billy, he’s the host of NPR’s TikTok account for Planet Money. If anyone could give Billy money advice, it would be Corbett. How do you make a living without making it your entire life?
“That’s the trap he falls into,” sighed Corbett. “He’s obsessively repeating $5,000, $5,000. He’s surrounded by his friends and then he just falls asleep from exhaustion. When he wakes up, everyone’s gone. He’s so tapped into this hustle mentality that he can’t appreciate these moments during his childhood.”
“The main thrust of Billy is feeling like he’s inconveniencing his sister, inconveniencing his family, and feeling like he wants to give back. As a high school kid, it’s like, anything you can do to help is so helpful,” continued Corbett. “Got to be honest, though. He could shower more often. That would help.”
The hustle and grind mentality is something entirely familiar to artists. When creative pursuits aren’t paying the bills, how do you find the time to both make a living and continue to make art that will one day put food on the table?
“In my 20s, I would go to the Dollar Store and buy these caffeine pills,” recounted Glander. “I would take a couple of those and stay awake for 3 or 4 days to make a gif of a pink blob. I let my teeth rot out and they’re never coming back. My mouth is all plastic at this point because I had to make, like, gifs for Tumblr.”
“As big of an undertaking as this movie was,” continued Glander, “it was actually done in a much more slow and balanced way, where I had nights and weekends off. I think that’s the unsexy truth of sustainability as an artist. It can’t be the all-encompassing fire that burns you alive. I spent a long time living in a very heroic, idealized version of being an artist, which meant destroying everything around me. Not taking care of myself or my relationships. Making art has to be a low and slow burn.”
“I think I needed that intensity at the very beginning as this kickstart,” offered Corbett. “Like, I have exactly seven square feet and I have a green bedsheet. I have to do something with this. I need to get out of Washington, DC. That can be the flint and tinder, but it can’t be your whole fuel. Ultimately, you’re going to make better work if you’re not currently destroying yourself.”
Even though Glander describes the process for Boys Go to Jupiter as more balanced, Corbett only had eight hours in the studio to record his lines and songs. Yes, songs. Boys Go to Jupiter is also a low-fi indie rock musical, and Corbett makes up the bulk of the film.
“He basically is the movie. He has five songs and dialogue in every scene,” explained Glander. “I was like, I hope Jack comes in and is perfect tomorrow. I hope this guy I’ve never met is somehow the greatest voice actor on the planet. I’ve also never heard him sing, but I hope he’s the best singer on the planet. It was miraculous. I had so much fun. I was actually like evil Phil Spector, torturing Jack in the booth, making him do it over and over again.”
“Certainly not the evilest thing Phil Spector has done,” Corbett added.
Billy’s journey in the film is one of not only self-discovery, but of the realization that the world is pretty screwed up. That he’s entering a late-stage capitalist society where things are bleak. Because Corbett is an expert in the field, Glander let him have a little fun with Billy’s enlightenment.
“It was Keynes’ rebuttal of communism. It’s just a very funny way of putting it,” Corbett smiled. “Not saying I’m a communist and I’m certainly not saying I’m a Keynesian. I just think it’s funny that he said, ‘how can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who, with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement?’ I was cracking up. I was cracking up at that.”
“This is my favorite scene,” said Glander. “Billy’s challenge through the movie is looking through all the layers of the way capitalism and the religion of economics are presented to us. I think this character of Rozebud (Miya Folick), who’s sort of a beautiful smokescreen for him, is the hardest challenge. She’s the fake leftist that we all know. I think it’s a turning point in the movie where Billy starts to understand this stuff and see through it. That’s very important.”
And yes, if you’re wondering, Rozebud was named after the cheat code from The Sims, adding another layer to the weird, surrealist Floridian odyssey that is Boys Go to Jupiter.
