Today we’d like to introduce you to Juston James.
Hi Juston, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born on Friday, March 15th, 1991. And as I born into the world on that day, the gift, talent, and privilege of being a Filmmaker seemingly accompanied me into the world.
Writing films first became apparent to me in the year of 2000, at the age of nine, when I wrote the film version of my favorite video game at that time, Resident Evil 3: Nemeses.
However, at that time, I was still unaware of my inherent gift, as my dream at that time was to be a WWE Wrestler.
In 2009, at age 18, I was a High School drop out. A year later, I began working at a factory. It was during that time that I knew I truly needed to figure out a direction for my life. So I started looking into going back to school.
My search for further education led me to finding The Art Institute of California – Los Angeles. After getting all the necessary items in order, the last piece I need was a GED.
It took me three attempts, but on April 2nd of 2011, I received my GED diploma in the mail; solidifying my trip to Los Angeles to study Film Production at the Art Institute.
From that year on, I realized my inherent filmmaker talent and desire.
As my continued to take twists and turns in the following years, I continued writing scripts and story ideas, even managing to shoot a few short films that I released on YouTube.
In 2023, while living in Colorado, I began doing therapy. My own journey of healing led to a rapid development in story and character ideas that over the next two years would become the finalized version of my first feature length screenplay, Alive Again: Day 1.
AAD1 is a very spiritual, existential, and psychological story on the backdrop of a vampiric apocalypse, all wrapped into an Independent Film budget.
I am extremely proud of this screenplay.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Absolutely not.
After a failed 2018 return to living in Los Angeles, I returned home to Toledo and realized it was time for me to face the fact I needed to buckle down and sustain myself with a 9-5 job.
However, facing that fact, plus other societal-theories I had at the time, both sent me down an existential-rabbit hole that drove me into a perceived life-stagnancy, and a resulting deep depression accompanied by a side of wondering, “what’s the point of life if all we’re doing is working to pay bills?”
Despite the privilege of getting to work in such fields as Substance Abuse and Developmental Disabilities, I was still very unfulfilled with life, and had been entertaining certain “ideations” of not being here anymore, since 2020.
A combination of not wanting to devastate my family plus the emerging story/screenplay ideas kept me here in the game.
Fast-forward to today, I now have Alive Again: Day 1, but more importantly, a grounded-willingness to actively put in the inner work of developing my love for living life again.
This part of my story isn’t complete yet, but damn, I can say I’m happy to still be here.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a Filmmaker that specializes in thought provoking, existential, spiritual/religious, psychological End of the World type stories.
I’m most proud of my ability to understand and blend different spiritual and societal philosophies into grounded human stories that many different people will be able to relate to.
What sets me apart from others is my skill in crafting complex characters (and their back stories), original world building and lore, and structured plot-design into a well-paced independent, budget-friendly, screenplay.
What matters most to you? Why?
Existence is such a complex, challenging, and mysterious experience that we have yet to figure out.
I truly believe the global cultures of humanity all hold pieces of the puzzle, and that once we learn to unite as Humans Beings and put our knowledge and wisdom all together, we will finally see the Big Picture.
That is the big “why” behind the art projects I will be giving to the world.
Contact Info:
- Facebook: Juston James
- LinkedIn: Juston Lee James
