“A beautiful documentary…heartbreaking, but never maudlin.”
—The Lowbrow Reader
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12 Oct 2015

Team

 

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Joshua Neuman

Writer, Producer, Director
Joshua Neuman is a Los Angeles-based storyteller, content creator, and the older brother of Jonathan Neuman. He grew up in Paramus, NJ, went to college at Brown University, and received a Master’s Degree from Harvard Divinity School. He taught courses in the Philosophy of Religion at NYU before joining the founding editors of the Brooklyn-based, satirical Jewish culture magazine, Heeb. He has appeared on The Travel Channel, BBC Radio, VH1, The Sundance Channel, A&E Biography, Court TV, NPR, Extra, and his speaking engagements have taken him around the globe. Since moving to L.A. in 2010, he has written jokes for The Friar’s Club Roast of Quentin Tarantino, edited the international fashion magazine FLAUNT, and served as the head of content for the lifestyle magazine, GOOD. This is his first film.
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Pete Lee

Editor, Producer, Cinematography
Pete Lee is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who specializes in music videos, fight scenes, and making food look really, really sexy. He has directed comedian Patton Oswalt, hip-hop artist Aesop Rock, martial arts legend Patti Li, celebrity dwarf cat Lil’ Bub, and many others. His directorial work has premiered in Rolling Stone, MTV, NPR, Vice, Comic-Con, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. On days off, Lee enjoys inventing Taiwanese dishes, faking martial arts, and singing Mariah Carey songs. While working on the film, he also worked his way though mastering Jonathan’s catalog on the piano.
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Edet Belzberg

Executive Producer
Edet Belzberg is known for elegant, in-depth, and powerful storytelling. Her debut feature, Children Underground, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Sundance Film Festival’s Jury Prize, the International Documentary Association’s Documentary Award, and the Gotham Awards’ Documentary Achievement Prize, among many others. Her film The Recruiter had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO. Watchers of the Sky, her most recent feature, had its world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Prize for the Use of Animation. The MacArthur Foundation, in selecting Belzberg as a Fellow, praised her for her “graceful and insightful” films.
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Trevor Hall

Executive Producer
Trevor Hall is an educator, writer, business consultant, and the President of the Creative Visions Foundation, an agency that supports creative activism around the globe. Hall has a Masters of Education from Harvard University, where he was awarded a three-year fellowship to serve as the head teaching fellow for the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor, Robert Coles. In 2010, he edited a collection of Coles’ lectures into the book titled, Handing One Another Along (published by Random House). Hall has also served as a Director of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program where he established relationships with Motorola, The Boeing Company, and United Airlines.
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Kimya Dawson

Co-producer
Kimya Dawson is a Seattle-based musician and was one-part of the seminal, anti-folk band, The Moldy Peaches. She has collaborated with Ben Kweller, The Mountain Goats, and Aesop Rock. Her “Anyone Else But You” was the anthem for the 2007 film, Juno. A former friend of Jonathan’s, this is the first film she is co-producing. She claims to have been totally naked while recording her cover of Jonathan’s song, “Lightning Dream” for Johnny Physical Lives.
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Jeremy Wang-Iverson

Co-producer
Jeremy Wang-Iverson is a Brooklyn-based publishing professional who has worked for Granta Magazine, Oxford University Press, and Bloomsbury. During his freshman year in college, he lived in the same dorm as Jonathan and the two became close friends. Over the course of the time he knew Jonathan, he was a close friend and de facto publicist. He still is.
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Sam Chou

Animation Director
Sam Chou is the Toronto-based founder of the boutique animation studio, Style5.tv. He co-created and directed the award-winning, web-series CRIME: The Animated Series, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and directed the animation for the award-winning documentary, The Real Superhumans and the Future Fantastic. He wrote and co-directed for the award-winning short film, The Wrong Block, and directed the animation for the award-winning, feature documentary Fly Colt Fly: The Legend of the Barefoot Bandit. His animation of Johnny’s guitar was largely influenced by Walt Simonson’s treatment of Thor’s magic hammer in the famed comic book series.
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Miranda Quesnel

Animation Director
Miranda Quesnel is a Toronto-based animator and artist. After studying animation at Sheridan College in Ontario, she worked as an animator on the first season of the Disney XD show Penn Zero: Part Time Hero. As part of the animation studio, Style5.tv, she co-directed the comedy/noir web series The Wrong Block. In depicting the universe of Johnny Physical she channeled the era of Glam Rock, specifically early Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust years. “
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