With his debut feature Boys Go to Jupiter, Julian Glander has taken his signature mix of surreal observational humor, DIY aesthetics, and digital artistry to new heights. The film, a scrappy yet ambitious animated odyssey set in suburban Florida, follows Billy 5000 (Jack Corbett) as he wanders through the humid malaise of young adulthood, hustling for cash on delivery apps, drifting between friends, and stumbling into oddball encounters that blur the line between the mundane and the absurd. It’s a movie that feels both intensely personal and delightfully strange, a portrait of teenage boredom and yearning refracted through Glander’s playful, off-kilter animated lens.
Check out our full review: 'Boys Go to Jupiter' is a Dreamy, Lo-Fi, Animated Exploration on Grindset Culture
Glander, who first made a name for himself with inventive shorts, viral animations, and commercial work, draws from a wide range of influences - everything from Gumby to indie rock to Florida’s uniquely swampy atmosphere - and channels them into something wholly his own. Boys Go to Jupiter may have started as a sci-fi story on another planet, but as Glander explains, the weirdness of Florida itself proved more than enough. We spoke with the filmmaker about his memories of growing up in the Sunshine State, the role of music and improvisation in the film, the validation he received from filmmaking influence Miranda July, and the joy of crafting an anthem about eggs that audiences can’t stop talking about.
Julian Glander: This is somehow related to Slipknot! Did not think we were going to get there with this movie. We’re so not Slipknot adjacent. Although, there is the one song when he goes to his mom's trailer, and she's listening to this nu metal song that we wrote. It's quite muffled and quite subtle, but it was actually probably the most fun thing to record, because it's me singing, and it's really more like Limp Bizkit.
Do you believe in the healing power of Gatorade?
Julian Glander: Are you kidding me? I go to Gatorade for everything. If I'm sick, I'm not going to the doctor until I've had five or six Gatorades. It's Florida's drink. It's a big part of Florida's history. I grew up outside Tampa, and my main memory of Florida is it being humid, and for some reason, I just had to have tight black girls pants on at all times. This was the 2000s and my straightened hair was frizzing out like crazy. That's my main memory, feeling like I was almost underwater just walking around. I have no regrets. There weren't that many pictures taken compared to now. So we can all just, you know, keep moving with it.
Do you have any specific memories of hanging out with your friends that really informed this movie?
Julian Glander: There's a scene in the movie where Billy falls asleep at the pool, and he wakes up and his friends have left him. That happened to me. We were teenagers hanging out at a park, taking up the swing set so little kids couldn't play on it, and then it was late at night, and I'd fallen asleep, and my friends left me. I woke up, and my wallet and my phone were gone. I finally walked to my friend's house, and they were all there, and they were like, “Oh yeah, we took your wallet and phone because we thought it might rain, and we didn't want them to get wet.” I'm like, “You could have woken me up, but I guess that's fine.”
I mean, there's something so sweet about that. It’s actually such a safe feeling to wake up in a park, like, on the tire chips, and it's the middle of the night, but it's still so warm and balmy, and then just walking through a suburb where there's no cars and nothing happening. I actually wonder if that even is real, you know? I wonder if that even happened to me, or if I'm completely misremembering it. Which is how, I think, as an adult man, that's kind of the only way to remember being an adolescent.
Was there ever the idea to change the setting to anywhere else, or was it always going to be Florida?
Julian Glander: No, it started on an alien planet. It started in the distant future on some other planet where everyone lived in mushrooms, and there was this sort of energy source. I think I really wanted to tell the story of a delivery driver who got his hands on something that was more powerful than he understood. And as I was writing the story, I felt like it made more sense to take place in Florida.
I felt like Florida was weirder than anything I could think of. It really does feel like we all understand it as a place where anything's possible and there are no rules, and we also all have some connection to it. Almost everyone I talk to either lives there at some point or had a great vacation there, or their grandparents are there. So it's a place that we all kind of understand as kind of a different place. There's something about it that's just darkly magical.
Besides your love for Gumby, are there any other influences in the world of stopmotion and claymation?
Julian Glander: I really liked the California Raisins growing up. My mom used to work on commercials when I was a little kid. I remember one time asking her, have you ever worked on a commercial with a cartoon? What's it like when the cartoon shows up? Do you treat them like a normal person? Do you do something special? Are you allowed to pick them up? And that was when I learned that cartoons aren't real. But it was a great parenting moment for my mom, because she said people make cartoons one frame at a time, and then she got some pieces of paper, and we made flip books together. That was my first animation experience. That's where it all kind of started going downhill for me, once I was hooked on that stuff.
Animation in general is in such an exciting and experimental place right now. Have there been any recent projects, feature-length or otherwise, that have been exciting you?
Julian Glander: I'm excited as everyone else about Flow. I was just screaming at the TV when they won the Oscar. I think we are at the moment where it's all going to happen, where the promise of the democratization of these tools comes into our hands. My friend Jaron Braxton is another great animator who's working on a horror movie with Kid Cudi that I'm eagerly tracking. It’s called Slime. He's a great animator where I've loved his work for many years and collaborated with him a few times. That’s my guy to watch.
You sent the script over to Miranda July at one point, and she actually sent over some notes back and everything. What are you willing to share about that conversation you two had about the movie?
Julian Glander: Basically, we were friends on Instagram. I said, I'm working on this movie. Would you take a look at it? She wrote me back a really beautiful message. And it was on a day during the casting process that we had had some real defeats. Our studio that we were going to record with had backed out on us. They had given us a deep discount but couldn’t do this anymore. It was a Friday afternoon where I really felt like, maybe I'm not supposed to be making this movie. She wrote me a really nice personal message, and the biggest thrust of it was, “Don't change the ending.”
The version I had sent her was the very wild and wacky ending that's in the movie. I had been a little self conscious about it. Miranda July is a hero of mine. The way she approaches filmmaking and art is life changing for me. So, for her to sort of cosign that ending like that, it was rocket fuel. And yeah, I cried from her Instagram message when she said that.
The egg song. Is that something that was improvised on the spot or something that was actually worked hard on?
Julian Glander: I'm glad that it feels like it was made up on the spot because it was a bit labored over. I sat with an acoustic guitar and had some points I wanted to hit. I guess I just wanted to have a song that was about, yeah, free association on eggs. I see eggs as almost the antithesis to money in the way that everyone's obsessed with it in this movie, where money is so abstract and so unattainable, and an egg is so substantial and real. It's where life comes from, but it's also such a nourishing thing.
But credit to Grace [Kuhlenschmidt] on that one, because it's her voice, her crazy performance on that one. I said, start at your kind of regular level of energy, and we'll just keep going up, up, up, up, up, up, up. We'll just keep doing crazier and crazier versions. By the end, she was screaming into the microphone this sort of like, pop punky take on the egg song. It seems to be the thing that leaves the biggest impression on people as they leave the theater. It seems people are driving home to listen to the egg song.
'Boys Go to Jupiter' is now playing in select theaters.
