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Mr. Jack is the story of the definitive prodigal son Val Shepard returning home to New York City after a self-imposed exile with the intention of picking his life up where he left off, but as his ex-landlord and father figure Jimmy Alfano tells him, “You can’t pick up where you left off, you got to start over.” Disregarding his advice, Val begins to live his life vicariously through Jackson King, or Mr. Jack.
Val, the POV character, is the classic tragic clown archetype, he feels he is not worthy of happiness. He does not recognize that he must take responsibility for his own contentment. Instead, Val lives vicariously through Mr. Jack, who ironically, by claiming credit for other people's art, sleeping with other men's wives, and substituting his endorphins for chemicals, takes a shortcut to happiness. On the film’s backstory, Val was a young artist on the verge of a breakthrough yet threw it all away as he lacked trust in himself. Upon his return to New York, Val’s refusal to accept his role in the grander scheme of things sets a series of events into action which will eventually lead to Jackson demise.
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Says Lexington of Mr. Jack, “I wanted to make a movie that told a provocative truth about the human desire for creativity and the moral responsibility one has to their existence.”
Mr. Jack is Lexington’s passion project, and he is looking to seek independent financing to make the film without compromises.
“In Crowdfunding… the spectator is helping
to take power away from studio bureaucrats
and put it in the hands of the creator.”
“I had 500K on the table to develop a TV series I wrote. The catch was I had to work with a producer that wanted to turn to turn my Drama into a Disneyesque slapstick action thriller. I walked away from that rather than have the project compromised. And don't think for a minute that's not a decision I don’t question every day. Yet at the end of the day ‘Created by’ was going to have my name on it.”
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Yet even with all the drawbacks of working outside the studio system, Lexington feels this leads one to consider an entirely new spectrum of opportunities. On Crowdfunding, Lexington believes you empower the full gamut of artistic expression from the artist to the spectator. Before Crowdfunding, the only control the cinema-goer had was the purchase of a ticket. In Crowdfunding, it is the viewer that shapes the future of communication through the medium of Cinema. More than merely the purchase of a ticket, the spectator is helping to take power away from studio bureaucrats and put it in the hands of the creator. It is the beginning of a movement; the empowerment of the artist to deliver without compromise.
“Art is that which exceeds expectations…
It should be the duty of every artist…
to pursue the objective of throwing complacency off-kilter.”
On filmmaking, Lexington believes that Entertainment is that which fills us with a quota of gratification, a defined value, boxes we expected to be ticked. Yet Art is that which exceeds expectations. Not just in cinema but in all disciplines.
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What is considered as art today does not challenge the audience or viewer? It anesthetizes it inebriates, but it does not transform. It should be the duty of not only the filmmaker but of every artist, regardless of medium, to pursue the objective of throwing complacency off-kilter.
I don’t believe an artist should put the responsibility for the significance of a work of art on the viewer. The artist cannot create and distribute without some rationale behind their creation. The viewer may have their own interpretation, and there is no right or wrong interpretation; beauty fails any dictate as beauty a cannot be legislated.
This is the importance of the artist in society; it lies in the truth that splendor cannot be legislated. A transformation which touches our souls breaks our hearts, causes us to laugh, permits us to cry, and kicks our asses into a higher state being.