After accidentally burning his breakfast, a man goes to a nearby cafe and struggles to read a graphic novel.

Director’s Vision for ‘The Jokes’

I decided to make The Jokes because it was all I could do with the amount of money I had while I was waiting for funding for a larger project. The crew consisted of me, a sound recordist, and an assistant; and we shot everything on my Sony a7s iii. The film is a loose adaptation of a collection of 4-10 sentence short stories by Stephen Thomas (also called The Jokes). The stories don’t have beginnings, middles, or ends; they are moments more than anything else. I singled out the moments that felt like the characters were disassociating, experiencing the intense mental process of disconnecting from oneself, and doing so in mundane locations and trivial environments. Having an intense emotion while in a disconnected public place brings out a certain comedy due to its juxtaposition. Having an existential crisis in a cafe while the stranger beside you is filming a TikTok dance on their phone could cause one to question the significance of the crisis itself. I wanted to explore this scenario visually and sonically and meld several of Thomas’ micro moments into a series of connected vignettes; slivers of life rather than slices of life. In short, I’m attempting to see if there’s some comedy in struggling with mental health.

The actors were an assembled group of friends and peers, and their dialogue was a combination of words straight from Thomas’ pages and improv. I enjoyed making this film because I was making it completely on my own volition. I didn’t need to rent any equipment, just a few hours in two locations. The extent of the prep work (after scouting locations) was charging camera batteries, and checking if my friends were available on a given day. Upon finishing The Jokes, I have been encouraged to shoot all my future films in a similarly simplistic and stripped-down manner.