My Old School is a delightfully unique new film about a bizarre true story, told in a way that’s both lightly humorous and honestly creepy. It manages to land this tonal balance through a variety of smart creative decisions from director Jono McLeod in his debut feature. He creates a compelling narrative by playing his cards close to his chest, editing a variety of charming interviews with brightly animated recreations, found footage, and a brilliantly meta-casting decision.
My Old School is best seen without any spoilers. Suffice it to say that its main subject, Brandon, chose not to physically appear onscreen; instead, the great Alan Cumming plays Brandon, but Cumming never actually speaks. He lip-syncs his entire role to interviews that Brandon gave, something made doubly weird by the fact that Cumming was cast to play Brandon 25 years ago in a movie that never got made. The result is a playfully deceptive, very fun, yet mildly disturbing film that, like any good hybrid documentary, combines the best of fact and fiction to create a distinct experience. McLeod spoke to us about his life and his film, both of which are surprisingly intertwined.
Jono McLeod on Making My Old School
Again, discussing My Old School without spoilers is a tricky endeavor. The main subject, Brandon, is a mysterious figure, someone who begins the story as an outsider, gradually becomes beloved and popular, and then is found out to be a master manipulator. McLeod interviews not just Brandon’s classmates, but his own; that’s because McLeod is a tangential part of this story, someone who went to the same school as Brandon at the same time.
The wild tale has stuck with him all these years, and My Old School finds McLeod going back to the classrooms of yesteryear in order to parse out the truth. “I’m the only classmate that grew up to be a filmmaker,” McLeod says, “but for all of us, we were all sitting and waiting for this film to appear, because the ultimate high school movie had happened to us.”
For a while, My Old School does feel like a great high school movie, a coming-of-age story about the weird underdog kid who ultimately comes out on top. The film takes a turn when Brandon’s deceptions are realized, and it becomes clear just how many myths and rumors obfuscated the truth when McLeod interviews his classmates. As he says:
Some of the confusion that plays out in the film between us all is partly informed by the fact that the person who has been telling this story over the years was Brandon himself. He’s published multiple memoirs, he’s done movie deals, and he did the chat show circuit, all that stuff that you see in the film. But I realized that it would be quite interesting to kind of try and tally his version of events with everyone else’s, and that’s what we see in the film.
Some of the kids at school were very close to the story, being good friends of Brandon or believing many of his lies, while others had only heard distant rumors. McLeod was in a unique position to tell this story, though; in a sense, he relates to Brandon. “I was also an outsider at school, and not from the town where the film was set. I came in by bus every day and from a town across the other side of the tracks that’s not quite as fancy,” he says. McLeod is kind of a stand-in for the audience in this way. “I’m afraid me and the audience were the kids with no pals at school,” he jokes. “So come on this journey, let’s find out what happened.”
McLeod Goes Back to His Old School
McLeod connects to Brandon (and all the “kids with no pals”) in a more significant way, which is why a documentary about someone else could actually be so personal to the filmmaker. While Brandon was living in a web of deception, McLeod felt pressured to do the same, an experience many LGBTQ+ people might relate to.
“School was like being in prison,” he says, “I was desperately trying to not be bullied, to not be found out as a gay kid. So I just had to get my head down and get out of there. I ran away and didn’t look back or stay in touch with that many people, so when the time came that I decided I was going to make this film and I had to reconnect with everyone, it was really scary.”
Going back to his old school, reuniting with former classmates, and dredging up the past with his film was obviously cathartic for McLeod. “Hell yeah, it’s saved a fortune on therapy,” he half-jokes. “It’s weird. It’s really weird and emotional, but it has reconnected me with my childhood self, in therapy-speak.” There’s often a spark in the eyes of his interviewees that signifies a reality-altering moment; for McLeod and his classmates, it’s like being shown that one’s memories are completely false (something the film’s narrative replicates). That’s what the deceptions and revelations surrounding Brandon did.
“Actually, this film isn’t just Brandon’s story,” McLeod elaborates, “it’s a story of the impact that he had on everyone. Basically, that’s what kind of came out of it, the fact that you can that you can’t do anything in life as big and as momentous as what Brandon did and not have there be a butterfly effect. More than a butterfly effect — people’s lives have been changed forever because what he did. I don’t think he realizes that.”
Alan Cumming Plays Brandon in My Old School
Brandon is that central butterfly, flapping his wings and changing the lives of a small town, but he’s an endlessly mysterious figure. Part of this is because he’s probably a pathological liar and perhaps mentally unbalanced, so it’s never entirely certain what to believe when he tells his story; the truth gets parsed out by examining the butterfly’s effects. The interviews with the classmates are very fun and edited in such a way as to build a genuinely strong narrative (the high school movie turned mystery thriller). It’s Brandon himself, though, who proves to be the most captivating, even if he’s never onscreen (except in footage from decades ago).
Alan Cumming does his usual wizardry here, fully inhabiting a role without ever standing from a chair or using his own voice. He perfectly lip syncs to Brandon’s interview (which is bonkers but confident, charming but mental) and conveys the essence of the man with just the voice; he’s practically possessed. Since the film already uses vibrant animation to reenact certain memories, it’s a bold choice to cast a renowned actor in a documentary. “I wanted to capture that a higher level of performance,” McLeod says, referencing just how performative Brandon really is, to the extent that he always seems to be already acting. McLeod continues:
I knew that he would personify this person through the voice. I also knew that it was just perfect, because in the 1990s Alan was slated to star as Brandon and direct a movie about this story, and it never happened. So in a film about going back, reconnecting, and changing things from your past, who better to play the role of present-day Brandon than the man who was meant to do that all those years ago? So I knew that his connection to the story would kind of permeate.
The actual Brandon remains a mystery (it’s even hinted that he’s used plastic surgery and facial reconstruction to look like somebody completely different), even if he’s open to tell his story. “He was certainly open in the beginning. He’s told his story in various ways over the years,” McLeod says. “But he’s always been the one telling the story […] I think maybe his interest in the project waned when he realized that I was going to be talking to multiple people about his story whose version of events might not tally with his own.”
Separating Fact From Fiction in My Old School
“You’re interviewing someone who can’t necessarily be trusted in everything that they say,” McLeod admits. “That’s why I needed 30 pupils and classmates to try and work our way around it, because there was more going on than the version of events he gave.” That’s the interesting challenge of great documentary filmmaking — it can be detective work, where the best access to the truth is by traveling through dozens of half-truths and downright fiction. This is also why the playfully experimental quality of the documentary works so well.
The truth is an elusive (or perhaps even illusive) concept, which may be why McLeod is considering embracing fiction. “My agent wants to kill me, but I’m so documentaried-out,” he says. “This had drained everything from me. It’s so personal in some sense, but the thought of delving into people’s real lives again just fills me with horror. So I’m afraid I’m joining the ranks of people that want to make a narrative film. Sorry, guys.” No apology is necessary — fact and fiction aren’t so different than they seem.
An official selection at Sundance, My Old School is in theaters on July 22nd from Magnolia Pictures.
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