A student film so prescient it predicted cancel culture before Twitter existed.
UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Jeanna Peterson, a reporter from Sight magazine, sneaks in to get an interview with mindlink artist Jeremy and inadvertently discovers that he is a mutant, not a "normal." He takes her on a ride through his old neighborhood where he gives money to the mutants that have been exiled there after the pollution disaster of the 1980s and 1990s. She decides not to reveal he is a mutant in his story, but encourages him to reveal it himself at his next mindcast, which will reach an audience of billions. However, when he begins his confession, the brutal Ian Stone interrupts it. He must now go underground, as the government broadcasts a message that he is wanted for impersonating and murdering Jeremy.
Production
UCLA student budget stretched into convincing futuristic decay.
Writing
Journalist-mutant dynamic feels ripped from 2024 headlines.
Director
Joe Schleimer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot during the Reagan administration, the film's pollution-backstory eerily anticipates climate displacement debates. The 'mutant' metaphor plays differently post-COVID.
Garret Pearson later became a prolific television character actor; this early role as a telepathic performance artist remains one of his most unusual. The film sat in the UCLA Archive for decades before recent rediscovery.
US
