Our guest today on SNAPSHOTS is a writer/ director who brought to life the upcoming film “The Comic Shop”, a moving story of friendship, resilience, and the power of community within the indie comic book world. The film stars Jesse Metcalfe. He plays Mike, a devoted comic shop owner fighting to keep his passion alive, and rising star. Micah Giovanni is Brandon, a teenager navigating family struggles while finding solace in the shops, a tight-knit community. For like-minded people like me, I can relate to this film.
Friends of the Revue, let’s welcome to SNAPSHOTS, Jonathan L. Bowen!
Thank you so much for having me and for checking the movie out. I appreciate it.
Oh, absolutely. No matter what type of fandom you’re in, you can relate to this. And I’m so glad there’s a great independent film out there that explores that world and doesn’t hide the fact that a lot of fans out there, whether it’s when I started doing fandom to the fandoms of today, that they always try to find that escape, and in this case, we’re talking about a comic book shop. This feels like a deeply personal story, and that’s what I got when I was watching a film. What inspired you to explore the narrative, and does it reflect on your experience with comic books, independent storytelling, or a bit of both?
So, it is a personal film. Of all the scripts I had written and was thinking of, what’s the next project? This one was the most personal. I grew up going to this comic store all the time with the real-life Mike. And he was great. I got to be kind of friends with him, as much as a 12-year-old can be with a forty-year-old. He was always nice to me. He always showed me all the new, cool stuff that was out. And as the years passed, he didn’t seem quite as happy. He didn’t have the same passion and wasn’t showing up to the store. He had other employees run it, and then went out of business.
My thought was, how could he afford the other employees to be running it, but he was across the street sometimes, having a couple of drinks. So as an adult, I was thinking about this and how my childhood perspective is, “wow, owning a comic store would be like the coolest job ever”, but then I’m running my own small business that does corporate video work, and not very passionate about it. It pays the bills, and there’s all this nonsense that you have to do for a small business. I took that real-life Mike with myself, and many years after having directed my first movie, I felt like Mike, thinking, “Am I ever going to get another chance? Should I give up on it?”
There were a lot of midlife crises coming up. I married those two with a heavy element of fiction, which became Mike. But then, to develop the story, I needed to figure out what moves Mike and gets him out of this property, and that’s where Brandon came in. I started thinking of Brandon as a young Jonathan, he’s full of optimism. The world has never taken its shots at him, and he feels if you try hard, you can do it, no matter what. Would it be possible for a young Jonathan and a more middle-aged Jonathan to meet each other? What could each of them get from the other? Everyone thinks you always learn from the elders. Young people sometimes have something there too that we can tap into. They don’t set so many barriers for themselves all the time, they have a youthful optimism that we might call invincibility or something like that. Right?
You’re right, and especially for many people today, they still go to those comic books, because that is usually their first taste of exposure to the heroes of Superman & Batman. All these films from the MCU and the DCEU, the comic book is the next best thing to follow all those adventures outside the film universe. So why was it essential for you to tell the story set in the world of the indie comic book scene?
That was important to me because we’re making an independent film, and we have to hope that our viewers will watch a movie that isn’t in theaters. It isn’t a big movie made on a high budget. So, I thought we could have this whole thing be David & Goliath, like the small store against the chain store. Then us as a small film that gets more significant films so you’re right, when you talk about the comic shop, I think of it as this kind of like special sacred place where a lot of people discover things that they love and then get to celebrate those things and hopefully hang out with other like-minded people.
And it’s because it’s not the same thing, like if you just had all the products and they just showed up on your doorstep, like in a box every month, right? That’s not the same thing as browsing the store shelves and then meeting some people, and they say, “Hey, have you checked out this thing?” And, “oh, no, I haven’t seen that.” And it’s that exchange of ideas that we miss out on. If future society looks like houses and warehouses, and it all just goes from the warehouse to our home, and we never go to craft brewers, we don’t go to movie theaters, we don’t go to comic shops, or malls, or any of those things. I wanted that to be a setting where Mike is fighting against the present and the future that he doesn’t like.
Every time I go into that comic book store, it feels like a second home where I can be geeky or talk about Spider-Man without feeling invisible, right? It’s always been perfect, and I’m glad comic book stores still exist and are with us. Outside the conventions where you meet thousands of people, comic books are just a few of us, and we can debate about the newest Batman until we are red in the face.
It’s funny that you say that, because you’re right. That’s like the community. You know that the local community center is a gathering place. I remember several people in high school with different nicknames for me, but one was a “Star Wars” guy. It’s not like lots of people don’t love Star Wars. I mean, “The Force Awakens” is still the highest-grossing movie in North America, but that doesn’t mean they identify as fans. They’re more like, “oh yeah, Star Wars is cool”. So, when I went to the first Star Wars Celebration in Denver in ’99, there were 30,000 other fans there.
I look around and say, “Man, every guy here is a Star Wars guy, and this is awesome.” So since, like you said, a community where I can geek out with those people and, they’ll probably be geekier than me. Who knows? It’s not like if I try to tell like a regular friend, “dude, no one cares.”
You are undoubtedly the “Star Wars” guy. I’ve been the Star Trek guy for many years. Since you mentioned that you went to the Star Wars Celebration of 1999, do you still attend conventions to this day?
I can’t seriously say yes because I tried. I had tickets to the 2021 in Anaheim, but it was postponed.
Well, speaking of comic book fans & fandom, as we both know, comic book fans and creators are close friends, and sometimes they are part of this overall fandom universe. How were you able to capture that essence, that magic, those moments, and put it on the screen?
When it comes to these artistic communities, some creators are aware of what the fans are looking for. We’re very outspoken about geek culture when we don’t like something. And what’s tough is that it’s hard to guess what people are going to enjoy before they’ve seen because sometimes people say, “I want this to happen, I want that to happen,” but when it does, then maybe it feels too expected, or it doesn’t feel natural enough. I think one thing I really want to do in the movie is have conversations about comics and illustrating. These people are all part of that same community. They are excited about the next issue but might complain if it isn’t what they want.
You captured it well because one of the things I picked up on is that camaraderie. There was no faking or trying to guess what it could be. You have that mindset based on your personal experience.
One thing I wanted to do was there’s a signing scene with a comic creator, and the first guy that we see come up is grilling him about why he quit the last series. I wanted that because I’ve seen that kind of thing happen where not everybody is there to kiss butt. “Why did he do that? Why did you kill off this character? Why’d he quit this?” But then, the fan comes around, and he’s like, “look, I just had a different creative impetus, you know?” And he’s like, “okay.”
That’s nerd culture. They’re not mean people. We just know that we love something so much we want it to be right. And sometimes, if we feel like it isn’t being handled right, maybe we get a little butt hurt over but it doesn’t mean we can’t be assuaged if things are put back, you know, in the right direction, right?
Absolutely. Now let’s focus on the casting, because Jesse Metcalfe and Micah Giovanni brought so much depth within the mentor/protege relationship we see in this film. What was it like to watch their chemistry come to life, and did you have them in mind when you wrote the film?
No, I didn’t have anyone in mind. I wrote it in 2018. I didn’t know if I would get to make it one day. When we found Jesse, the first linchpin was that we had to get a lead actor. The distributor gave us a list of people who would like to check the boxes for us regarding getting the money back on the film. Jesse was a perfect choice because I liked his meteoric fame when he was younger, like “Desperate Housewives” and “John Tucker Must Die”. It’s not like he hasn’t been working his butt off since then, but he knows what he’s capable and more. I saw that fire within. I would show up on screen like “I felt that this is a guy who wants it, like Mike wants it.” But at the start of the movie, when we meet him, Mike almost has given up.
With Micah, we did a little zoom call just to make sure there was chemistry between Jesse and him. We looked through a ton of options, and he looked the part. When we found Micah, he was a very small guy, and he turned 21 just after we shot, but at least in close age. He’s very believable as somebody in high school. Their chemistry was excellent together, which is the key element of the film. So, seeing them interact together, and having that work is the heart and core of the film. I thought we had something because they both did well.
When did you realize that you had found the tipping point that said you were a filmmaker?
I’ll tell you the mini story of the date. It’s April 20, 2022, and I had just talked to my old producer from the first movie on the phone. And he said, “Well, hey, you know I’m going to be in Vegas next week if you want to have lunch.” And I thought, “wow, what weird timing.” I said, “Yeah, let’s have lunch.” And I brought my wife, and I think it was almost a four-hour lunch. As we got on, he asked if I had any other scripts written. “I have five, but, you know?” I said. He said, “Well, anything we could make for a reasonable amount.” I said, “there’s one.” Then I told him about this, and his eyes lit up because they were working on this other project, getting off the ground like a comic book inspired.
It’s basically like, I don’t know how much I can say about it, but they have the rights to unproduced Stan Lee characters, things that Stan Lee has come up with, and the estate has, a bunch of stuff. He was excited about “The Comic Shop” because it tied in with what he was doing. And then he tells me, “Well, let’s go make it.” And I’m like, “right now, you know, we’re just coming out of the pandemic, and I hadn’t been in a good mental state, because I felt like the pandemic lasted forever.” Yeah. Then, as we left lunch, I was quiet, and my wife would say, “What are you thinking? I’ve never seen you so quiet.” And I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m just thinking.” And she’s like, “Well, I think you should do it.”
We talked a little bit about your fandom. Since you’re a Star Wars fan, and you also mentioned in another interview that your favorite comic book hero is Spawn.
Yes, it’s close for me. Spawn is huge, but my choices are always weird. Growing up before Spawn, I would have said Venom. I’ve always loved Venom as sort of this, doing what he wants and being an anti-hero, but I would argue with people because they’d say, “Oh, isn’t Venom a villain?” I would say, “just because Spider-Man doesn’t like him, does not make him a villain like he’s a self-styled lethal protector, right?” Those are probably my two favorites, and I’m in the process.
I haven’t read a lot of comics recently, besides for research for this movie, but I just bought some of the digital editions of Spawn because I wanted to get caught up since I stopped reading in the late 90s. I love getting back into it. I’ll get all caught up here one day.
The one thing I love about “The Comic Shop” is that it champions the everyday heroes who don’t need capes. What do you hope audiences will take away after seeing the film? We’re talking about the non-comic book fans.
I knew this sounds stupid when I started writing it, but I wasn’t thinking as much about comic fans and all that culture. I’m making an indie movie that’s about relationships and second chances. And then we get closer to release, I’m realizing, “Wait, this is my core audience. It’s mainly geek culture and comic fans, but the big message is not to give up on your dreams. And it’s not too late to accomplish what you set out to do when you were younger. But it’s not so simplistic as to follow your dream.
The best way I put it is if you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I’m very familiar with that, get to that top step of self-actualization, you’re always going to feel like there’s a hole there. And Mike has that hole. We get the feeling that even when this guy ran a successful comic shop, he wasn’t so depressed. Something was missing, he wanted to draw. I know for me, this is another little input, is that every month when those new comics come in, it eats Mike alive after a while, after enough years, because he’s excited for them, in one sense, but in the other, he thinks he should be drawn. That’s how I felt after a while.
It doesn’t have to be comics or film. It could be volunteering for a cause that you’re passionate about, writing that novel that you know you always told your friends about, or something like that. I think we create these artificial barriers that, “well, it’s too late for me, or, well, I don’t have the time, or, no, it probably wouldn’t work out anyway”, but you’re gonna feel more fulfilled that you at least tried like and you’ll you won’t have to live with yourself when you’re 75 going “Man, what if I had just done that?” Take that leap!
“The Comic Shop” will be released on April 11th and is available On Demand, Amazon Prime, Apple, Google Play, and anywhere else digitally.
If you want to follow Jonathan on social media, click on the following
- https://www.directorbowen.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/directorbowen/
- https://twitter.com/DirectorBowen
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