“Memory is a very subjective and ever shape-shifting thing, just like Brandon”: Director Jono McLeod and Alan Cumming on My Old School

My Old School is the off-beat new documentary film from director Jono McLeod which tells the stranger-than-fiction tale with charm and affection of one Brandon Lee, his former classmate at a Glasgow school back in the early 90s who wasn’t who he seemed. Weaving together interviews with those who were there at the time, audio interviews with Lee himself – lip-synced by Alan Cumming, who by another strange twist was set to play Lee in a movie that never came to be, as he didn’t want his face to appear in the doc – and imaginatively conceived animations that draw on one of the foremost cartoons of the era, Daria, this is not your average documentary. But then, Lee is not your average documentary subject.

The Upcoming had a fantastic chat with the filmmaker and Cumming over Zoom ahead of the movie’s release. The pair told us about why they wanted to tell Lee’s story now, the non-conventional form of the documentary and the sense of affection for their subject, despite the bizarre circumstances.

Sarah Bradbury

My Old School is released nationwide on 19^th August 2022. 

Watch the trailer for My Old School here: