Young filmmaker comes back to Jacksonville for his first feature film, a hometown affair

The day after graduating from the University of North Florida in 2019, Jake Pearthree left his hometown of Jacksonville, driving out to Los Angeles to try to make it in movies and TV, as so many before him have done.

When it came time to make and star in his first movie, he came right back home to where he had the family, friends and connections to make it happen as efficiently — and cheaply — as possible.

The result: “A Day in the Life,” a feature-length comedy shot over two weeks, mostly in San Marco and Riverside. Filming took place in March, just before the coronavirus pandemic shut almost everything down.

Buoyed by a successful crowdfunding campaign, he and filmmaking partner Michael Pettit, a native of the Florida Keys, made it to Jacksonville, where they met up with actors who had traveled from up and down the East Coast for a chance at a movie credit. 

For Pearthree, who is 24, it was a hometown affair.

His mother, Cheryl Pearthree, a teacher at Hendricks Avenue Elementary, moved in with friends and let the young filmmakers and actors crash at her house

Friends loaned locations such as Sherwood’s Bar in San Marco, Moon River Pizza on Edgewood Avenue and Make Believe Costumes & Dancewear off Beach Boulevard.

And “a coalition of moms” kept everyone fed. 

”Nine of the 13 days we filmed we got free lunch brought to us by different mothers of Jacksonville,” Pearthree said. "That was so big. That goes a long way on your budget. Having those mothers was massive — shoutout to all the moms.”

The movie doesn’t explicitly say it’s set in Jacksonville, but anyone who’s been there will recognize it. The trailer, for example, shows the bridges downtown and Riverside’s Memorial Park.

“It has some of the tone and style of ‘Superbad,’” Pearthree said, “but with some of the adventure maybe of ‘Pineapple ‘Express’ or ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’”

It’s about three friends (Pearthree plays one of them) who find a blood-splattered bag with $20,000 inside and decide to spend it, despite some understandable misgivings.

As one character in the trailer says: “If I have learned anything from any movie ever, it’s that when you find a bloody bag of money, someone is searching for it.”

And indeed there is.

Pearthree was a student at Tallahassee Community College when he started getting cast in student productions at Florida State University's prestigious film school. And that’s where he met Pettit, an FSU student (not at the film school) who was making films of his own. 

Pearthree then went to UNF, where he was an English major, and took some acting classes. While there, he wrote, directed and co-starred in a short film, "We Do Feel Bad," for the Campus Movie Fest, a nationwide competition.

An irreverent and profane comedy about two chatty hitmen, it won a jury award at a regional festival and went on to Campus Movie Fest's national festival where it was nominated for best comedy. It was then available on Amazon Prime for a year afterward.

Pettit, who is now 25, has worked on the sets of shows for HBO and Fox, and helped on Pearthree’s short as well.

When it came time to make “A Day in the Life,” the two spent hours on the phone and in Zoom calls, hashing out the plot and script. They sought out actors, who did virtual auditions for them. They rented a camera and other equipment that met the standards required by streaming services such as Netflix.

Then they got together in Jacksonville for two hectic weeks in March. They share writing and directing credits.

A few months later, they’re just a few tweaks from a finished product, which they hope will catch the eye of film festivals or one of the many streaming networks seeking fresh fare.

Pettit notes that there are a lot more ways for work to be seen than in the past, but there’s also a downside to that.

“It’s also easy these days for things to get lost in the great ocean of content that is out there,” he said. “But we’re getting a lot of great feedback. We just have a lot of faith that something good’s going to come out of it.”

The two were driven to make their film themselves, Pettit said. “A lot of people think about it, they talk about it,” he said. “But you just have to actually make those things happen. No one’s really going to hand you an opportunity to direct something unless you’ve done something in that regard.”

Pearthree, meanwhile, is back in Los Angeles where he works as a “manny” (a male nanny) and seeks out acting jobs in an industry still dealing with restrictions from the pandemic. He’s been cast in a comedy feature that’s in pre-production and is finishing up work on “A Day in the Life.”

It’s tough out there, he said, but he feels up for the challenge.

“It's definitely humbling here,” Pearthree said. “If you can’t handle being told no or rejected, it’s not the gig for you.”